"Gross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew that there was consistency in it. Had she not said that love in itself was good? it must be good, then, both to the giver and receiver. He felt a certain awe at finding his own poor love embraced in such a doctrine; he felt for the first time how gross and selfish, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... pearl banks officially in 1848 in company with Capt. Stenart, the official inspector. My immediate object was to inquire into the causes of the suspension of the fisheries, and to ascertain the probability of reviving a source of revenue, the gross receipts from which had failed for several years to defray the cost of conservancy. In fact, between 1837 and 1854, the pearl banks were an annual charge, instead of producing an annual income, to the colony. The conjecture, hastily adopted, to account ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... me in a new scene of life. I soon became acquainted with the whole fraternity of sharpers, and was let into their secrets; I mean, into the knowledge of those gross cheats which are proper to impose upon the raw and unexperienced; for there are some tricks of a finer kind, which are known only to a few of the gang, who are at the head of their profession; a degree of honour beyond ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... ventures, his life with alacrity 'pour l'honneur du Roi'; were you to change the object, which he has been taught to have in view, and tell him that it was 'pour le bien de la Patrie', he would very probably run away. Such gross local prejudices prevail with the herd of mankind, and do not impose upon cultivated, informed, and reflecting minds. But then they are notions equally false, though not so glaringly absurd, which are entertained by people of superior and improved understandings, merely for want of the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... that they were naked. In place of conscious innocence and purity came the sense of guilt and shame. "We are not to understand," says Dr. Conant, "that there is allusion here to any physical effect of the eating of the forbidden fruit. So gross a conception is foreign to the spirit and purpose of the narrative. As the language in ch. ii. v. 5, is an expression of purity and peace of mind, so the language used here is the expression of conscious guilt, of self-condemnation and shame." Look at that criminal arrested. See him ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... dilemma was purely hypothetical; since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE. But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable. What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal? What if, for some one of the subtler reasons ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... citizens of one and all of them shall have the right to take into it whatsoever is recognized as property by the common Constitution. To have summarily confiscated the property in slaves already in the Territory would have been an act of gross injustice and contrary to the practice of the older States of the Union which have ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... no; a man did not live on his capital; it was not done! The shibboleths of the past are ever more real than the actualities of the present. And he, to whom living on one's capital had always been anathema, could not have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his own case. Pleasure is healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the youth of the young—and what else on earth ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the period of eight years between 1885 and 1892 there were 1352 boycotts in New York State alone. A sort of terrorism spread among the tradespeople of the cities. But the unions went too far. Instances of gross unfairness aroused public sympathy against the boycotters. In New York City, for instance, a Mrs. Grey operated a small bakery with nonunion help. Upon her refusal to unionize her shop at the command of the walking delegate, her customers were ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... dangling sword, and then Father Gonzales took the boy by the hand and led him away, and Mariano trotted along by his side, quite content, save for a stifled wish that the big yellow dog might go too. And it is a gross error to suppose that a yellow dog is necessarily nothing but a canine whose capillary covering is highly charged ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... faith, or who allow this ordinance to have its proper effect in awakening attention to the great truths which it exhibits, it is a powerful, divinely-appointed means of grace, whatever theory respecting it they may adopt—the Lutheran, the Reformed, or even the Roman Catholic transubstantiation, gross ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... sufficiently reveals himself, all others should be proud to give him due precedence. When the power of promotion is abused in the grand passages of life whether by People, Legislature, or Executive, the unjust decision recoils on the judge at once. That is not only a gross, but a willful shortness of sight, that cannot discover the deserving. If one will look hard, long, and honestly, he will not fail to discern merit, genius, and qualification; and the eyes and voice of the Press and Public ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... credible to think any one could be deceived by so gross a fraud: but to what length of credulity, will not superstition carry the weak mind! The infatuated lady believed it all; and rose from her knees in a transport, to prepare the entertainment for the heavenly ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... along the streets and among the surrounding hills. Everything was in holiday order. The coaches were hung with garlands, the shops were ornamented, the troops were reviewed on Bruntsfield Links, and the citizens drank the king's health at the Gross, throwing the glasses over their shoulders. The boys fired off gunpowder, or threw squibs or crackers from morning till night. It was one of the greatest schoolboy events of the year. My little brass cannon and hand-guns were very busy during that ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... King Constantine; that the territorial guarantee demanded by Greece would have become known to Bulgaria, thrown her into the arms of Germany, and precipitated her against Servia, whom King Constantine intended to leave to her fate; the trick was too gross to deceive the Allies, and they gave it the reception it deserved. Likewise in squashing the Greek efforts to concert with Servia measures for mutual safety against Bulgaria, while there was yet time, the Allies, said M. Delcasse, acted on the advice of M. Venizelos, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... second and third acts Tommy Gray rushed back with the box- office statement. The gross was $359. The instant that fact became known to Mr. Rushcroft he informed Barnes that they had a "knockout," a gold mine, and that never in all his career had he known a season to start off so auspiciously ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... affords no countenance to this notion of a divided sovereignty of the universe. The Divine Teacher, it is true, in discoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and which was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He nowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things. Pure himself, He can create nothing impure. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and we have an atom of water; sever them, and the water no longer exists; but whether united or separate the atoms of hydrogen and of oxygen remain hydrogen and oxygen and nothing else. Differently mixed together or united, atoms produce different gross substances; but the elementary atoms never change their chemical nature—their ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the king, with ever-rising wrath, "will you at length tell me by what right you intrude into my garden with an armed host—specially at the same hour that I am here with my consort? Verily, there is no sufficient excuse for such a gross violation of the reverence which you owe your king and master; and I marvel, my lord master of ceremonies, that you did not seek ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... I marvel (if it be That aught may wond'rous seem to me) That Jove's high Gift, your noble Art, Bestow'd to raise Man's grov'ling heart, Refining with ethereal ray Each gross and selfish thought away, Should pander turn of paltry pelf, Imprisoning each within himself; Or like a gorgeous serpent, be Your splendid source of misery, And, crushing with his burnish'd folds, Still narrower ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... county proverb: 'As sure as God's in Gloucester,' it is not and never will be. The sooner they understand that the better. I do not say that there are any persons present who would be guilty of so gross an error. I do not believe there are. I do not believe that there is any intelligent person in this room who will not agree with me when I say that, though it is just and right that Labour should have a voice in the government, it is not just and it is not ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... her father was not alone. In the chair at the desk-end sat a man florid of face, hard-eyed and gross-bodied. His hat was on the back of his head, and clamped between his teeth under the bristling mustaches he held one of Jasper Grierson's fat black cigars. The conference paused when the door opened; but when Margery crossed the room ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... that any credit was due to him for that, since he had but obeyed the law of honour, the only law he knew or recognised. In his own estimation he was not less contemptible for having harboured a thought which would have been dishonourable only if it had been base and gross, but which, being so pure and sacred, was but the natural expression of a noble heart. But he saw in Hilda and Greif a generosity which seemed boundless when confronted with the evil of which he judged himself guilty, and he felt that genuine ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... report the result of the conference to the marshal, though he expressed a doubt whether he could agree to the terms proposed. The brigadier took leave of Cavalier by expressing the desire to be of service to him at any time; but he made a gross and indelicate mistake in offering his purse to the Camisard chief. "No, no!" said Cavalier, rejecting it with a look of contempt, "I wish for none of your gold, but only for religious liberty, or, if that be refused, for a safe conduct ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the case of windows, the points which we have to insist upon are, the transparency of the glass and its susceptibility of the most brilliant colors; and therefore the attempt to turn painted windows into pretty pictures is one of the most gross and ridiculous barbarisms of this pre-eminently barbarous century. It originated, I suppose, with the Germans, who seem for the present distinguished among European nations by the loss of the sense of color; but it appears of late to have considerable chance of establishing ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the church bells, a lover of dogs and horses, of rich clothes and great feasts. The portrait of the friar is still less sympathetic; he is a frequenter of taverns, a devourer of widows' houses, a man of gross, perhaps of evil, life. The monk abandons his cloister and its rules, the friar despises the poor and the leper. The poet is making no socialistic attack upon the (p. 003) foundations of society, and no heretical onslaught upon the Church; he draws a portrait of two ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... a fool!" replied Bigot, impatiently, although in the Intendant's usual mood nothing too gross or too bad could be said in his presence but he could ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... men ever came to want to make such strange chalk horses, when my chauffeur startled me by speaking for the first time for nearly two hours. He suddenly let go one of the handles and pointed at a gross green bulk of down that happened to swell above us. "That would be ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... is gross enough to return," said Louis scornfully. "What could be plainer—his movements ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... not only because he was on better terms with Philip than himself could hope to be, but because he understood him better. John knew that there were two tender spots in that moody King, and he knew which was the tenderer, pardieu! So Conrad's gross finger, guided by John's, probed the raw of Philip's self-esteem, and found a rankling wound, very proud flesh. Oh, intolerable affront to the House of Capet, that a tall Angevin robber should take up and throw away a daughter of France, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the gross caricature of this picture, and smiled securely at it. "I shall like it well enough," he said, "if you run down with them. Where ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... prone to envy the good time our compatriots were evidently having at the internment camp and the bed of roses upon which, according to the press, they were lying. But when we entered the camp and made enquiries, we discovered that the newspaper assertions were not merely gross exaggerations, but ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... of Egypt. She was found alone, and in a very disconsolate Condition. This Lady must, doubtless, said they to themselves, be the Queen of Babylon: And without listning to her Complaints, convey'd her instantly to my Husband Moabdar. Their gross Blunder at first incens'd his Majesty to the last Degree; but after he had view'd the Lady with an attentive Eye, he found she was extremely pretty, and was soon pacify'd. Her Name was Missouf. I have been since inform'd, that her Name in the Egyptian Language signifies the Fair Coquet. ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... illegitimate impost, a private tax levied by individuals in cowl and cassock on others in smock frocks, is a vexatious usurpation, and resembles the feudal dues. It is a radical operation, and in conformity with principle. Unfortunately, the puerility of the thing is so gross as to defeat its own object. In effect, since the days of Charlemagne, all the estates in the country which have been sold and resold over and over again have always paid tithes, and have never been purchased except with this charge upon ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I at the same time advise you to respect the prejudices and customs of the people. You can never win people over to the truth by insulting their superstition, however gross. I only urge you to be, in your own lives, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... physical aversion which he felt none would succeed in overcoming. He had seen some Greek women, and been attracted in a way, for they were not too like their sex; but these Jewish women—the women of his race—seemed to him as gross in their minds as in their bodies, and it surprised him to find that though many men seemed to think as he did about these women, they were not repelled as he was, but accepted them willingly, even greedily, as instruments of pleasure and afterwards as mothers of children. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... hall of the guards, with a calm demeanour, in the midst of an immense crowd. The poissardes, who had assumed a right of speaking to sovereigns in their own vulgar language, followed her to the very doors of her apartments, calling out to her with gross expressions, that she ought to produce heirs. The Queen reached her inner room, hurried and agitated; he shut herself up to weep with me alone, not from jealousy of her sister-in-law's happiness,—of that he was incapable,—but from sorrow ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... 'Sejanus,' which marks the beginning of his most important decade. He followed up 'Sejanus' after several years with the less excellent 'Catiline,' but his most significant dramatic works, on the whole, are his four great satirical comedies. 'Volpone, or the Fox,' assails gross vice; 'Epicoene, the Silent Woman,' ridicules various sorts of absurd persons; 'The Alchemist' castigates quackery and its foolish encouragers; and 'Bartholomew Fair' is a coarse but overwhelming broadside at Puritan ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Betty stepped upon the stage at Bath, and before a multitude of frivolous and simple, or gross and depraved spectators, incapable of comprehending her, she played to ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... inconvenience, or charge imposed upon the contractor, so as to constitute a consideration, the courts are not willing to enter into the question whether that consideration be ADEQUATE in value to the thing which is promised in exchange for it. Very gross inadequacy, indeed, would be an index of fraud, and might afford evidence of the existence of fraud; and fraud, as I have already stated to you, is a ground on which the performance of any contract may be resisted. But if there be no suggestion that the party promising ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... a fine powder as "alcohol"; and, so late as the middle of the last century, the English lexicographer, Nathan Bailey, defines "alcohol" as "the pure substance of anything separated from the more gross, a very fine and impalpable powder, or a very pure, well-rectified spirit." But, by the time of the publication of Lavoisier's "Traite Elementaire de Chimie," in 1789, the term "alcohol," "alkohol," or "alkool" (for it is spelt ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... narrow ugly grovelling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception, and I have a cruel conviction that the lives, of which these ruins are the traces were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality that will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers." George Eliot saw in imagination these unhappy and oppressed peasants with clear, unsparing eyes. She was right in calling her conviction ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... mouth-organ—nothing like these old codgers for thinking they're still kids," Mr. Hartwig puffed at dinner, then banged his fist and laughed rollingly. He seemed surprised when Father merely flushed and tightened his tie. For all his gross body, Mr. Hartwig was sensitive—so sensitive that he was hurt when people didn't see the humor of ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... he lifted up his voice to heaven, and cried, saying: O, how long, O Lord, wilt thou suffer that thy servants shall dwell here below in the flesh, to behold such gross wickedness among the ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... her husband's absence in Peru. The dignity and refinement of his prisoner made a certain impression on Morgan. After he had put to sea a cabin was reserved for her, she was treated with respect by the crew, but a guard kept her in sight always. The gross nature of the pirate disclosed itself in a few days, when, fresh from a debauch and reeking with the odors of rum, he forced her cabin door and attempted to embrace her. She sprang back with a cry of loathing, and grasping a dagger swore that if he ever intruded himself in her presence again ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... which were already rising high. Cushions of silk, interchanged with others covered with the furs of animals of the chase, were arranged round a repast, which a Norman cook had done his utmost to distinguish, by the superior delicacy of his art, from the gross meals of the Saxons, and the penurious simplicity of the Welsh tables. A fountain, which bubbled from under a large mossy stone at some distance, refreshed the air with its sound, and the taste with its liquid crystal; while, at ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of the eager alertness of his opponent, and his skin, of a dead white, with heavy folds about the chest and ribs, showed, even to my inexperienced eyes, that he was not a man who should fight without training. A life of toping and ease had left him flabby and gross. On the other hand, he was famous for his mettle and for his hitting power, so that, even in the face of the advantages of youth and condition, the betting was three to one in his favour. His heavy- jowled, clean-shaven face expressed ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... showed that, not gross mechanical movements alone, but also other invisible movements are initiated by the action of stimulus, and that the various activities, such as the "ascent of sap" and "growth" are in reality different reactions to the stimulating action ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... and holiness are sinful and most detestable hypocrisy. The fair show of feigned holiness which is in those ordinances does, in a marvelous and secret manner, withdraw from faith more than those manifest and gross sins of which open sinners are guilty. Now this false and servile opinion faith alone takes away, and teaches us to trust in, and rest upon, the grace of God, whereby is given freely that which is ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... illuminate a work of art by placing us in a position to judge it, does not alone suffice to bring it to birth in our spirit: taste, and an imagination trained and awakened, are likewise presupposed. The greatest historical erudition may accompany a taste in part gross or defective, a lumbering imagination, or, as it is generally phrased, a cold, hard heart, closed to art. Which is the lesser evil?—great erudition and defective taste, or natural good taste and great ignorance? The question has often been asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny its possibility, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... mockery which will always manifest itself to an honest mind like yours in such failure and disappointment in your own character as you are now lamenting, if not indeed in some mode far more alarming, because gross ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... land-rent.* We alienate a portion of that rent for limited periods in favour of those with whom we make such settlements, and take all the rest ourselves. On an average, perhaps, our Government takes one-sixth of the gross produce of the land; and the persons, with whom the settlements are made, take another sixth. The net rent, which the Government and they divide equally between them, may be taken, on an average, at one-third of the gross produce of the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the time is near when that tribe will be visited and cruel deeds done. They know nothing of a God of Love—only gods and spirits who are ever revengeful, and must be appeased; who fly about in the night and disturb the peace of homes. It is gross darkness and cruelty, brother's hand raised against brother's. Great is the chief who claims many skulls; and the youth, who may wear a jawbone as an armlet ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... that which thy fellows have passed on theirs before thee, saying, 'I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst' (Deu 29:19). If so, know thy judgment is gross, thy soul is miserable, and turn, or in little time thine eyes will behold ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... which should be filled with any rather fine kindly stuff that may be at hand, such as old hot-bed soil, leaf-mould, or a mixture of material turned out of pots, with some good decayed manure. In this the young plants will root freely and quickly without becoming gross, for they should attain a certain degree of vigour; but an excessive leaf growth may result in losses during winter, and a small crop of fruit in the following year. Well-cultivated soils need no such special preparation, but in any case a good digging ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... rather inefficient, well-meaning person, who bathed every day, and didn't steal, but whose only good point was "respectability," and who knew nothing of the great fundamental questions looming before us; or else they put up some big business man or corporation lawyer who was wedded to the gross wrong and injustice of our economic system, and who neither by personality nor by programme gave the ordinary plain people any belief that there was promise of vital good to them in the change. The correctness of their view was proved by the fact that as soon as fundamental economic ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... from the ignorant superstition which forms so sad an ingredient in the character of the uneducated peasants of these mountain districts, and was grieved when she found that poor Old Moggy had become the victim of the gross superstition of her neighbours, by whom she is reputed to be a witch who has flown across the sea from distant parts for the purpose of taking possession of the wretched hovel on the mountain. 'I do think, sir,' said Jenny, 'if the poor creature had had the power ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... discovered about Nothing, which have proved it—to me at least—to be the warp or ground of all that is holiest. It is of such fine gossamer that loveliness was spun, the mists under the hills on an autumn morning are but gross reflections of it; moonshine on lovers is earthy compared with it; song sung most charmingly and stirring the dearest recollections is but a failure in the human attempt to reach its embrace and be dissolved in it. It is out of Nothing that are woven those fine poems of which we carry but vague rhythms ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... consists partly of gross flattery and of being "all things to all men," as Saint Paul somewhere advises. "You're a man of the world," he says to Snagsby; "a man of business and a man of sense. That's what you are, and therefore it is unnecessary ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... prevailing of the gates of hell, the moral disruption of the universe, the absolute and total surrender of the world to them that plough iniquity and sow wickedness. Even under ordinary circumstances few men have gone through life without encountering some triumphant iniquity, some gross and prolonged cruelty, which makes them wonder how God should allow such things to be. If we remember the aspect which the Revolution wore in the eyes of those who seeing it yet did not understand, we can imagine what dimensions this eternal enigma must have assumed in their ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... take two, which was for them an extraordinary feat; all the rest escaped to the shore. Four boys remained in the canoe who were not of their tribe, but had been taken prisoners by them, and brought from another country. We were much surprised at the gross injuries they had inflicted upon these boys, and, having been taken on board the ships, they told us they had been captured in order to be eaten. Accordingly, we knew that those people were ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... Company had done nobly. From the moment when they had lined up before Montauban in the gross darkness preceding yesterday's dawn until the moment when Bobby Little led them in one victorious rush into the outskirts of the village, they had never encountered a setback. By sunset they had penetrated some way farther; ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... aside his brother Edward's children for their illegitimacy? Ladies of the least disputable gallantry generally suffer their husbands to beget his heir; and if doubts arise on the legitimacy of their issue, the younger branches seem most liable to suspicion—but a tale so gross could not have passed even on the mob—no proof, no presumption of the fact was pretended. Were the duchess(15) and her daughters silent on so scandalous an insinuation? Agrippina would scarce have heard it with patience. Moriar modo imperet! said that empress, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large impression of MR. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even something gross. The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to do. The working and growing ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... cause of all the inevitable imperfections of the universe. The soul of man was part and parcel of divinity or of increased light; it would never attain happiness until it was re-united to the source of all light; but for it, we would be free from all things we call gross and material, and we would be taken into the ethereal regions by contemplation and by abstinence from the pleasures of the flesh. When these absurdities were adopted for the regulation of conduct, they necessarily resulted in a fierce morality, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Don't you remember, sir? And now, sir, you would abandon her also. And you are angry, you storm and rave when a respectable person wants to save the unfortunate child from having her innocence corrupted, save her from withering away profitlessly in the claws of a pack of gross, rowdy, street-lounging, rake-hell young profligates, from living a life of wretchedness and shame, from dying abandoned and accursed, to say nothing of the fire of hell after death. And you even raise objections, sir! But, of course, I understand, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it's not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffyloaves, assuring you that he'd never slept on a softer mattress in all his life ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... being turned, and rules and measures being made; the thin blades of folding rules are made with marvellous rapidity, as had need to be the case, seeing how low is the price at which these and other goods of this kind are sold by the gross for foreign markets. Having gone through the various workshops of a large manufactory, my companion conducted me to see the handwork done at home. We found a young artist, for so we must call him, at work ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... displeasing than delicate satire, because it revenges us in a manner for the injury at the very time it is committed, by affording us a just reason to blame and contemn the person, who injures us. But this phaenomenon likewise depends upon the same principle. For why do we blame all gross and injurious language, unless it be, because we esteem it contrary to good breeding and humanity? And why is it contrary, unless it be more shocking than any delicate satire? The rules of good breeding condemn whatever is openly disobliging, and gives a sensible pain and confusion to those, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... mortifying fact that I was much worse, and with very slight hopes of amendment. Humility had not yet entered my mind; but it was the only basis on which any religious improvement could be created—the only chance of being saved. I rather became refined in vice, without quitting it. Gross and sensual gratification, so easily obtained in the West Indies, was disgusting to me; yet I scrupled not to attempt the seduction of innocence, rather more gratified in the pursuit than in the enjoyment, which soon palled, and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... still more elevated against him; and thus, as in some other respects, vilely insinuating that his most honourable and virtuous heart was tainted with the very vice which he ever held in the greatest abhorrence. Among the various gross imputations against his lordship, which the future historian may find registered in some of the preserved licentious public journals of blended facts and falshoods, and inconsiderately adopt, is that of the Hero of the Nile's having been so addicted to gaming, that he lost, at a single sitting, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... men, and it does not do them so much harm; but they would be still better without it. It makes them selfish and gross," said ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... genteelness, crumblingness, and generally unnourishing qualities it is really rather like Mrs. Winters. An immense desire, after two weeks of Mrs. Winters' mental and physical cuisine for something as hearty and gross as the mere sight of a double planked steak possesses her achingly—but Mrs. Winters was told once that ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... thee; the snow From swinish footprints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresentful falls again, To beautify the world ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... as trustworthy witnesses to the Truth of Scripture as either Cod. {HEBREW LETTER ALEF} or Cod. B. We have indeed heard a great deal too much of the precariousness of this class of evidence: not nearly enough of the gross inaccuracies which disfigure the text of those two Codices. Quite surprising is it to discover to what an extent Patristic quotations from the New Testament have evidently retained their exact original ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... when it is the sensitive part, the senses. And these are the principal offices whereby the soul declares its powers and performs its actions. For being seated in the highest parts of the body it diffuses its force into every member. It is not propagated from the parents, nor mixed with gross matter, but the infused breath of God, immediately proceeding from Him; not passing from one to another as was the opinion of Pythagoras, who held a belief in transmigration of the soul; but that the soul is given to every infant by infusion, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... were ushered into the presence of their infuriated captain. They were each handsome, broad-shouldered athletes, with keen, sparkling, fearless eyes that indicated fearlessness. He made a short, jerky, almost inarticulate speech on the wickedness and indecency of committing an act of gross disrespect to the vessel, the owner and himself, all of whom should have been shielded ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... better representative of the same type of text as that from which r had drawn, and he likewise made use of V. With the help of these new sources the {sigma} editors polished away a large number of the gross blunders of p and r, and added a sometimes unnecessary brilliance of emendation. Avantius's edition of part of Book X in 1502 was appropriated by Beroaldus in the same year and by Catanaeus in 1506; these latter editors had no new sources at ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... to commit suicide at Hombourg, they do it genteelly; early in the morning, or late at night, in the solitude of their own apartments at the hotels. It would be reckoned a gross breach of good manners to scandalize the refined and liberal administration of the Kursaal by undisguised felo-de-se. The devil on two croupes at Hombourg is the very genteelest of demons imaginable. He ties his tail up with cherry-coloured ribbon, and conceals his cloven foot in a patent-leather ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... ever eager to anticipate the vengeance of God upon all whose conduct or opinions they may conceive likely to provoke the celestial wrath. As soon as the priests have succeeded in reducing men to a state of stupidity gross enough to make them believe that their ghostly fathers are the faithful organs of the divine will, they naturally commit every species of crime, which their spiritual teachers may please to tell them is calculated to pacify the anger of their offended God. Men, silly enough to accept ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the marketmen and of their ladies ran thus: "I have reasoned it out with my wife that a house a thousand times as large as Notre Dame would not be able to hold all those who have reason to bless you." In the way of incense, nothing was too gross for the sovereign. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... 'My father, let me go. It cannot be but some gross error lies In this report, this answer of a king, Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable: Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame, May rue the bargain made.' And Florian said: 'I have a sister ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... seem a trifling one, but to Stockton's sensitive nature it was gross indeed. He and his wife knew that they could offer but little to make the poet's visit charming. New Utrecht, on the way to Coney Island, is not a likely perching ground for poets; the house was small, shabby, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the practice of dancing is attended with obviously good effects. Such as are blessed by nature with a graceful shape and are clean-limbed, receive still greater ease and grace from it; while at the same time, it prevents the gathering of those gross and foggy humors which in time form a disagreeable and inconvenient corpulence. On the other hand, those whose make and constitution occasion a kind of heavy proportion, whose muscular texture is not distinct, whose necks ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... a chemist, who affected some social superiority, and he became something of a snob, in his dogged fashion, with a passion for outward refinement in the household, mad when anything clumsy or gross occurred. Later, when his three children were growing up, and he seemed a staid, almost middle-aged man, he turned after strange women, and became a silent, inscrutable follower of forbidden pleasure, neglecting his indignant bourgeois wife without ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... I understood that he had the originals and correspondent allusions floating in his mind, which he could, when he pleased, embody and render permanent without much labour. Some of them, however, he observed were too gross for imitation. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... gross selves it helps us rise To something which we yet may be. And so I ask not to be wise, If thus my faith is lost to me. Faith, that with angel's voice and touch Says, "Pray, ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that our hostess should drive down-town with us, although we were going directly back, and a cold "Scotch mist" was beginning to fall. To this day, I do not know to what to attribute what I then felt—what I still consider—was gross incivility. The most charitable supposition is that it never occurred to her that it would be neighborly and humane to offer a luxurious seat in her swiftly rolling chariot to the woman who must otherwise walk a mile in the chill and wet. She had the reputation of absent-mindedness. Let us hope ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... community out of the mire of money-getting propensities, where every thing like public spirit was in danger of being swallowed up and lost? I protest against this wholesale abuse of what has been,—at best, a gross exaggeration. The whole truth in this matter is told in a few words. By constitution, by habit, by circumstances, our people are intensely active; and this activity, for want of other objects, has been turned into the channels of material prosperity. If, therefore, you ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker
... interests in the mundane mind to become one of the earthly viceroys of God. And the chosen were few. Nor had Warner, consciously or not, been indifferent to the sacredness of his wardship. Never for a moment had it felt the blight of his wild and often gross and sordid life. He had been passionate but never sensual, romantic and primal, but never immoral. He had consoled thousands for the penance of living, and he had written much that would perish only with the English language. All this might be as nothing to ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... upward at Dundee, Carolyn Drake then led the deuce of Diamonds, committing the gross tactical error of leading from the Queen. Karen added the Jack from the dummy, and Penny shruggingly contributed her King, to find the trick, as she had suspected in the original game, trumped by the five of Spades, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... have resented this as a gross misappropriation of credit—for surely all obligation was on the other side—had I not been deeply disturbed by the prospect of being haled before this committee like a criminal before the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... no sadder spectacle of artistic debauchery than a London theatre; the overfed inhabitants of the villa in the stalls hoping for gross excitement to assist them through their hesitating digestions; an ignorant mob in the pit and gallery forgetting the miseries of life in imbecile stories reeking of the sentimentality of the back stairs. Were other ages as coarse ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... countenance once more assumes a terrific expression. "How is this?" he exclaims; "I can scarcely believe my eyes—the most important life and trial omitted to be found in the whole criminal record—what gross, what utter negligence! Where's the life of Farmer Patch? Where's ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most unmodified characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink-and-white bit of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... trumpery trappings receive more attention than the fine music which ought to be recognized as the soul of the work, the vital spark which irradiates an inconsequential material body; but human nature has not yet freed itself sufficiently from gross clogs to attain ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the Substances capable of being frozen, there are not only all gross sorts of Saline Bodies, but such also as are freed from their grosser parts, not excepting Spirit of Urine, the Lixivium of Pot-ashes, nor Oyl of Tartar, per deliquium, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... them to doubt the truth of anything which fell from consecrated lips. The word of a priest with them was never doubted, but the promises of a bishop were assurances direct from heaven: they would consider it gross impiety to have any doubt of victory, when victory had been promised them by so holy a man as he who had just addressed them. After the Bishop of Agra had left the town, Larochejaquelin and de Lescure went through the army, talking to the men, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... pristine vigour—if he ever had any. But, whereas the spring gives a new glory to birds, and trees, and plants, she only gives to us—built in the image of God—spots, a disordered liver, and a muddy complexion. It seems a piece of gross mismanagement, doesn't it? It would be so delightful if, once a year, we were filled with extra energy; if our hair sprouted once more in the colour with which we were born; if the old skin shed itself and a new one ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... gross exaggeration, though it furnishes excellent material for satire. The man still makes the main conditions of life for both; his name is taken, his work sustains the household, his purse supplies the means ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... test the sample fuel should be spread out on a clean floor and all lumps broken up, so that no pieces are larger than 2 inches maximum diameter. Then the gross sample should be very thoroughly mixed by shoveling, after which it should be spread out in the form of a square of uniform depth and quartered down until a final average sample is obtained for shipment to a competent ...
— Engineering Bulletin No 1: Boiler and Furnace Testing • Rufus T. Strohm
... itself. Gradually the mere practice of war, and the culture of war though merely viewed as a rude trade of bloodshed, ripened into an intellectual art. Were it merely with a view to more effectual carnage, this art (however simple and gross at first) opened at length into wide scientific arts, into strategies, into tactics, into castrametation, into poliorcetics, and all the processes through which the first rude efforts of martial cunning finally connect themselves ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of justice, in particular, was infected by the most gross partiality. A case of importance scarcely occurred in which there was not some ground for bias or partiality on the part of the judges, who were so little able to withstand the temptation that the adage, "Show me the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... incumbent on those who have the honour of presiding over others, whether in civil, ecclesiastical, or military offices, not to content themselves with doing only so much as may preserve them from the reproach of gross and visible neglect; but seriously to consider how much they can possibly do without going out of their proper sphere, to serve the public, by the due inspection of those committed to their care. The duties of the closet and of the sanctuary ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... be told that they were of a gross taste in art, for they connected such a taste vaguely with high morals and with successful commerce. There was no surer way to a large sale than to start a revolution in appreciation every five years, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the devil of the Inquisition, with stake and torture-room, and war declared against the will and soul and heart and intellect of man; the devil of Jesuitry, with its sham learning, shameless lying, and casuistical economy of sins; the devil of vice-royal rule, with its life-draining monopolies and gross incapacity for government; the devil of an insolent soldiery, quartered on the people, clamorous for pay, outrageous in their lusts and violences; the devil of fantastical taxation, levying tolls upon the bare necessities of life, and drying up the founts of national ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... say (and this may be taken, too, as the poet's own creed), "Truth is WITHIN ourselves; it takes no rise from outward things, whate'er you may believe: there is an inmost centre in us all, where truth abides in fulness; and around, wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, this perfect, clear perception—which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh blinds it, and makes all error: and, TO KNOW, rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... a 'pigeon,' they could clearly accommodate him, but if, on the other hand, he was one of themselves, it was painfully apparent that there were far too many of them there already. Of course, the subject was not discussed in full and open conclave—they were all highly honourable men in the gross—and it was only in the small and secret groups of those accustomed to hunt together and unburden their minds, that ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... upon the approach of morning, Through the gross vapours Mars grows fiery red Down in the ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... knowledge of it with what these two people most lacked, it was a simple thing. They lacked, as you have already guessed, courage and directness. On Morton's side was all the dunder-headism of an aristocracy, all its romanticism, all its gross materialism, all its confusion of ideals. But you mustn't think that he, Morton, was cold or objective in all this: far from it; he was desperately in love with the girl himself, and he was playing his game like a man in a corner—all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... defeated by arbitrarily discharging him from his job and could not so easily restore with her change of whim. She did not feel any personal blame for his action, however, nor did she blame him for yielding to this gross temptation, as her more conservative neighbors might, although they sometimes yielded themselves both to drink and the stock market to stimulate their nerves. She merely hoped that he would think better of his purpose. For ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this sublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, there ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... fact that various gross, and I think I may say libellous and fictitious misrepresentations of me have been freely and unwarrantably circulated throughout Great Britain, the Colonies, and America, by certain "lower" sections ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... class in Germany; beyond that he had no ideas, he was inaccessible to ideas; his mind never rose for a recorded instant above a bumpkin's elaborate cunning. And he was the most influential man in the world, in the whole world, no man ever left so deep a mark on it, because everywhere there were gross men to resonate to the heavy notes he emitted. He trampled on ten thousand lovely things, and a kind of malice in these louts made it pleasant to them to see him trample. No—he was no child; the dull, national aggressiveness he stood for, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... by day to ingulf that of the husband. Once or twice in every year exposure and ruin seemed imminent, and Harry kept trotting round to all sorts of furnishers' shops, telling small fibs, and paying small advances on the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the lady and her faithful secretary breathed again. For Harry, in a double capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war; not only did he adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but he naturally sympathized with the love of finery, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... believe in the sacredness of the marriage relationship, and further, we believe that the ballot in the hands of women will strengthen the power of the home and sustain the sacredness and dignity of marriage; we denounce as gross slander statements made by the enemies of woman suffrage that its advocates as a class entertain opinions ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... it not only gross to eat flesh or fish, but also barbarous, nay cruel, to enjoy and sustain their own lives through the suffering and death of other creatures. This feeling, or prejudice as some would call it, extends even to eggs. They live chiefly on fruits, nuts, edible flowers, grain, herbs, gums, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... indeed between the regular clergy, or those belonging to orders and monasteries, and the secular clergy or parish priests, who were far better; and there was a jealous feud between them. There was a lamentable ignorance of the Scripture among the clergy, and gross darkness over the people. The paraphrases of Caedmon, the translations of Bede and Alfred, the rare manuscripts of the Latin Bible, were all that cast a faint ray upon this gloom. The people could not read ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... source; but this was, reasonably enough, held to be merely a measure of precaution in case the actual Baron Munchausen (who was a well-known personage in Goettingen) should be stupid enough to feel aggrieved at being made the butt of a gross caricature. In this way the discrepancy of dates mentioned above might easily have been obscured, and Buerger might still have been credited with a work which has proved a better protection against oblivion than "Lenore," had it not been for ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contest of sarcasm; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... usually sensual and gross nature, male eroticism has succeeded in modeling a whole class of women in whom ideal character in their desires is wanting. Instead of recognizing his own work and the vile image of his own person in these unnatural women, the libertine, as we have already seen, imagines them as the normal ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... of a great novelist. Clelia is, in fact, a kind of country-town Becky Sharp, whose wiles and schemes are not destined to end in a white-washed reputation at a fashionable watering-place. On the contrary she falls from one ignominy to another until, by a gross abuse of a public charity, she ends her ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... contradicted by facts. Over-production, the disproportion between the productivity of labour and the capacity for consumption as conditioned by the existing social institutions, has practically existed for generations; and yet it would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the moral sensibilities of civilised humanity had undergone such a terrible degeneration as is indicated above. It is certainly true that, in consequence of the increasingly reckless industrial competitive struggle, many kinds of valueless ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka |
