"Inordinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Conquest and Plunder.—The kings of these Oriental despotisms seemed to be possessed with inordinate vanity, and when once raised to power used not only all the resources of the nation and of the people for magnifying that power, but also used the masses of the people at home at labor, and abroad in war, for the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... I shave, I feel an inordinate desire to cut my throat; and my face, which I see in the little mirror, always the same, with soap on my cheeks, has several times made ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... important action, the decay of your greatest strength, and the destruction of your faithfullest servants?' His fury against Ralegh seems too excessive to have been genuine. In part it may be explained by his knowledge, on which Sir John Pope Hennessy has laid inordinate stress, that Ralegh was the most strenuous opponent of his Irish policy. He would detect the voice and hand of Ralegh in all the hindrances to, and in every criticism upon, his measures. He would imagine he heard him arguing adversely at sittings of the Council, to which he was informally ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... 1850. The last four years of her life were spent in Italy, so that American memories of Margaret must needs go back to 1846. Practically it is traditions of her that remain, and not memories. As she survives in tradition, she seems to have been a person of inordinate vanity, who gave lectures in drawing-rooms and called them "conversations," uttered a commonplace with the authority of an oracle, and sentimentalized over art, poetry, or religion, while she seemed to herself, and apparently to others, to be talking philosophy. She took herself in ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... will refuse to speak of the bestial side of the war-regime (already done justice to by many writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one deny that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to admit ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... It requires no inordinate effort for us who live in an equable political climate to realise the atmosphere of Dr. Price's Old Jewry sermon. The lapse of a century indeed has made him a more intelligible figure than he could have seemed to the generation which immediately followed ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... came of themselves to Caroline. The first was Janet's inordinate correspondence with Nita Ray, and the discovery that the girl held herself engaged to stay with ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... delineation, were such, as must excite universal admiration. Bold and daring, yet generous and disinterested, Colonel Clarke sought not his individual advancement in the projection or execution of this campaign. It was not to gratify the longings of ambition, or an inordinate love of fame, that prompted him to penetrate the Indian country to the Kaskaskias, nor that tempted him forth from thence, to war with the garrison at St. Vincent. He was ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... She so strangely wanted him to stay. She could actually have wound her arms about him, which was a queer enough thing to want to do, as if the feelers of some nightmare-crawling horned beast were twitching for him in the darkness beyond the door. This inordinate emotion must have some meaning, and it could have none other than that Great Granny Macleod had really had second sight, and she had inherited it; it was warning her that something dreadful was going to happen to him on his way to the hotel. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... statement left little doubt that segregation would remain the norm in most instances. It specified that a change to integrated facilities would be allowed only after the commander had decided that it could be accomplished without "inordinate interference with the Station's ability to carry out its mission." If other facilities stood nearby, the change would be allowed only after he had coordinated with the naval district commander.[19-34] Shortly thereafter the Acting Secretary of the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the advantages of old age, if we contemplate it in another point of view; if we consider it as delivering us from the tyranny of lust and ambition; from the angry and contentious passions; from every inordinate and irrational desire; in a word, as teaching us to retire within ourselves, and look for happiness in our own bosoms. If to these moral benefits naturally resulting from length of days be added that sweet food of the mind which is gathered in the fields of science, I ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... preternatural, and weakening exertions. Again; persons who live chiefly on animal food are subject to various acute and fatal disorders, as the scurvy, malignant ulcers, inflammatory fevers, etc., and are likewise liable to corpulency, more especially when united to inordinate quantities of liquid aliment. There appears to be also a tendency in an animal diet to promote the formation of many chronic diseases; and we seldom find those who indulge much in this diet to be ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... the whole poem. But the story is as nothing; throughout we have little really kept before us but the sordid vices of the sectaries, their hypocrisy, their churlish ungraciousness, their greed of money and authority, their fast and loose morality, their inordinate pride. The extraordinary felicity of the means taken to place all these things in the most ridiculous light has never been questioned. The doggerel metre, never heavy or coarse, but framed as to be the very voice of mocking ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... make a subtle distinction between true religion and superstition. They say, that the latter is only a base and inordinate fear of the Deity; but that the truly religious man has confidence in his God, and loves him sincerely; whereas, the superstitious man sees in him only an enemy, has no confidence in him, and represents him to himself ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... perishable quality of its individual monuments, and the temporary character and inconstancy of that fame which in many instances has filled the whole earth with its renown, may reasonably quell the fumes of an inordinate vanity, and keep alive in us the sentiment of a wholsome diffidence ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... common from October to April; they bring inordinate amounts of rain which can damage roads and houses; sandstorms and dust storms occur throughout the year, but are most ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... lord of that fair estate and many others in that dim time centuries before the building of the villa. Atlas was he named not at his baptism, but half in admiration, half in derision by his mates, for his burliness of body and his inordinate greediness of all kinds, for he coveted, say they, the entire earth, clutched at a mighty part thereof, and what he ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... party, like every one which promises to effect a great political change, was embraced by many equally careless of the one motive or the other; but who hoped to indulge their licentious passions, repair their broken fortunes, or gratify their inordinate ambition amidst ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... wires and indubitably established the fact that it was possible to send electric waves across the Atlantic. He found, however, that waves in order to traverse three thousand miles and retain sufficient energy on their arrival to affect a telephonic wave-detecting device must be generated by no inordinate power. ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... farming: or a widow with a little property placing her children under the doubtful protection of a young stepfather. Vanitia is intelligent and well read, and appears to advantage in general society; but her love of admiration, her wish to be thought superior, is so inordinate, that she cannot bear to appear ignorant of any subject; hence she often tries to seem conversant with matters of which she knows nothing, and perceives not that she thereby sinks in the estimation of those ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... and regularity in the common affairs of life; and in no case are order and method more necessary to happiness, (and consequently to virtue,) than in that, where the preservation of health is connected with the satisfying of hunger; an appetite whose cravings are sometimes as inordinate as they are insatiable. ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... on this chap we must keep in mind that his inordinate desire to waste his substance was no less than a vice if for no other reason than its example upon others; it is just as bad to be a "receiver" as it is to be a spendthrift. If we cannot build ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... learn, Thou didst use for my punishment- a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and so great a sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst well for me; and by my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... holders a right to demand any piece of land, at its registered valuation, in exchange for assignats to the same amount. There can be no question about the superiority of this plan over the one actually adopted. Had this course been followed, the assignats could never have been depreciated to the inordinate degree they were; for—as they would have retained all their purchasing power in relation to land, however much they might have fallen in respect to other things—before they had lost very much of their market value, they would probably have been brought ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... puzzled still, "You seem to know an inordinate amount about a simple tune, Joe." Then she said, "Why, now I remember where I've heard it recently. Wednesday, when I was waiting for you at the Agora Bar. The band played it when ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... seducer by strenuous legal methods, but when her ninth month came, and after the use of six baths, all the signs of pregnancy vanished. Harvey cites several instances of pseudocyesis, and says we must not rashly determine of the the inordinate birth before the seventh or after the eleventh month. In 1646 a woman, after having laughed heartily at the jests of an ill-bred, covetous clown, was seized with various movements and motions in her belly like those of a child, and these continued for over ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... hate maketh a man meek, and to feel meek things of himself. It maketh him patient in adversity, temperate in prosperity, and setteth him in all honesty of virtue, and maketh him to be loved both of God and man. And where this holy hate is not, there is inordinate love, which is the stinking canal of all sin, and root[126] of all evil concupiscence. Do therefore," she saith, "your business to put away such inordinate love of your own self, out of your hearts, and plant therein holy ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... long-suffering with a studied insolence of demeanour and the fabrication of insulting nicknames, such as Prince Featherhead, which run from ear to ear and create a laugh throughout the country. Gondremark has thus some of the clumsier characters of the self-made man, combined with an inordinate, almost a besotted, pride of intellect and birth. Heavy, bilious, selfish, inornate, he sits upon this court and country like ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... above all as to how (the "how" was the great matter and the fine emphasis) they had last appeared and might be conceived as carrying themselves; and that their consumption of neckties and Eau de Cologne was somehow inordinate: I might have been judging it in my innocence as their only consommation. I refer to those sources, I say, the charm of the scene, the finer part of which must yet have been that it didn't, as it regularly lapsed, dispose of all mystifications. If I didn't understand, however, the beauty ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... insanities of the pubescent state, erotomania and religious mania are the most frequent and the most pronounced. Sometimes they go hand in hand, the most inordinate sensuality being coupled with abnormal religious zeal. A young woman of my acquaintance, whose conduct has given rise to much scandal, is, at times, a reincarnate Messalina, while at other times she is the very embodiment of ethical and religious purity. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... gradually his interest waned. Jane's ideas did not increase with her acquisitions. Her young mind remained a mere receptacle for facts: a kind of cold-storage from which anything that had been put there could be taken out at a moment's notice, intact but congealed. She developed, moreover, an inordinate pride in the capacity of her mental storehouse, and a tendency to pelt her public with its contents. She was overheard to jeer at her nurse for not knowing when the Saxon Heptarchy had fallen, and ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... insecurity to navigation prevailed on both the African and Indian shores, at the entrance of the Red Sea; and one particular instance was adduced, in which the crew of a Muscat vessel, wrecked on the coast near Aden, were subjected to such inordinate extortion by Sultan Mahassan, that "the master, in anger or despair, burned his vessel. The Bombay government could only give general instructions, that in case of any outrage being offered to a vessel under ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... teaching provided an inordinate number of mechanical exercises in order to overcome so called 'technical difficulties.' Only the prima facie disturbance, however, was thus taken into consideration—not its actual cause. The result was, that notwithstanding the great amount of labor thus expended, the effort ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... he took the greater part of the conversation upon himself, and evidently expected to be listened to. But that was nearly all he wanted. Let him talk, and hear you laugh when he was funny, and he was satisfied. He seemed to have no inordinate desire for admiration or even for approbation. He was fond of telling tales of adventure, some wonderful, some absurd, some having nothing in them but his own presence, and occasionally, while the detail was good the point for the sake of which it had ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... not for this variability, it would be difficult to conceive the inordinate variety of human nature. But when you consider that all the important tendencies of the creature, his appetites, his loves, his hates, his curiosity, his sexual cravings, his fears, and pugnacity, are freely attachable to all sorts ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... being present, resisted him, and endeavouring to free her from his intended Rape, whereat the Spaniard enrag'd, cut off her Hand with a short Sword, and stab'd the Virgin in several places, till she Expir'd, because she obstinately opposed and disappointed his inordinate Appetite. ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... among those little girls practising their flip-flaps or gluing themselves to the wall to try their back-bendings. The pride of a Marjutti, who, they said, tortured her spinal column to achieve a double knot; the inordinate ambition of a Laurence, risking her life for the pleasure of risking it, were things which she did not understand. And then, all those accidents! Dolly Pawnee, the other day, had broken her arm at the New ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... after the Indian fashion round the fire to roast, and at ten the next morning the whole was consumed by ten persons and a large dog, who was allowed his share of the banquet. Nor did any inconvenience result from what may be considered as an inordinate indulgence." ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... had endeared himself to Lord Henry chiefly by the inordinate beauty of his person, his exuberant health, and his modesty. He was wealthy and the only son of a wealthy father. All the "loot" of the de Porvilliers had come to him through his mother, and to Lord Henry's surprise had failed to turn his head. On the contrary, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... inexpressible emotions in the general atmosphere of sweetness and light which they diffused. He liked picnics because there was much work to do, and never attended indoor parties because there was none. This inordinate taste for industry in connection with social enjoyment on Tom's part was strongly encouraged by the other young men, and they were the ones who always stipulated that he should be of the party when there was likely to be any call for rowing, ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... as he came up in his slow and languid way. "I am sorry to say that Stafford has an extremely bad habit of getting up at unreasonable hours. I wait until I am dragged out of bed by a fellow-creature or the pangs of hunger. Of course you have been bathing, Staff? Early rising and an inordinate love of cold water—externally—at all seasons are two of his ineradicable vices, Sir Stephen. I have done my best to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the proper number of cards, and seals, stamps and posts the invitations. The address of a professional secretary can always be furnished by the stationer. Very often, especially where lists do not run into inordinate length, the envelopes are addressed and the invitations sent out by the bride herself and some of her friends who volunteer ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... greater security or advantage in serving than in betraying that authority. I only met the Duke of Otranto twice, and had but two short conversations with him. No man ever so thoroughly gave me the idea of fearless, ironical, cynical indifference, of imperturbable self-possession combined with an inordinate love of action and prominence, and of a fixed resolution to stop at nothing that might promote success, not from any settled design, but according to the plan or chance of the moment. He had acquired from his long associations as a Jacobin proconsul, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... feelings and character, from public opinions and the institutions of society, so as to lead either to a lawful and regulated indulgence, or to partial or total abstinence, according to the dictates of moral restraint, which latter check to the inordinate excesses and unheard-of consequences of the principle of population, our author, having no longer an extreme case to make out, admits and is willing to patronize in addition to the two former and exclusive ones of vice and misery, in the second and remaining editions of his ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Whitman came from a very respectable family in Connecticut, where her father was a clergyman. She was possessed of an ardent poetical temperament, an inordinate love of praise, and was gifted with the natural endowment of beauty and perfect grace, while she was accomplished with those refinements which education can bestow. She was lovely beyond words. But her natural amiabilities were warped and perverted by reading ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which evil being once overcome and subdued, there will presently ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... aside till this trifling matter is settled. He is as anxious as any, or more so, to get on, because delay causes business to accumulate—the adjourned causes, of course, having to be heard at next Court, and thus swelling the list to an inordinate length. But, impatient as he may be, especially as he is convinced that one or other of the parties is keeping back a part of the truth, he is determined that the subject shall be searched to the bottom. The petty village shopkeeper ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success. So you see that though we have abolished poverty and the fear of it, and inordinate luxury with the hope of it, we have not touched the greater part of the motives which underlay the love of money in former times, or any of those which prompted the supremer sorts of effort. The coarser motives, which no longer move ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... jealous brothers. He was the favorite son of the patriarch Jacob, by his beloved Rachel, being the youngest, except Benjamin, of a large family of twelve sons,—a beautiful and promising youth, with qualities which peculiarly called out the paternal affections. In the inordinate love and partiality of Jacob for this youth he gave to him, by way of distinction, a decorated tunic, such as was worn only by the sons of princes. The half-brothers of Joseph were filled with envy in view of this unwise step on the part of their common father,—a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... love toward God should be without measure, and that for the creature should be measured by that for God, and not by the measure of one's own consolations, either spiritual or temporal. So do, then, that thou lovest everything in God, and correct every inordinate affection. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... are doing their best to "give LLOYD GEORGE a chance." True, they ask an inordinate number of questions arising out of the hot Easter week in Dublin—when, according to the local wit, it was "'98 in the shade"—but otherwise they have sternly repressed any tendency to factiousness. Yesterday, when a freelance sought to move the adjournment of the House in order ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... effects of a continued agitation of that disturbing subject. The limited influence of a national bank in averting derangement in the exchanges of the country or in compelling the resumption of specie payments is now not less apparent than its tendency to increase inordinate speculation by sudden expansions and contractions; its disposition to create panic and embarrassment for the promotion of its own designs; its interference with politics, and its far greater power for evil than for good, either in regard to the local institutions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... remember'—the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new proposition. 'She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.' ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... distracted their minds from all serious pursuits, including soldiering, and prevented their ever being dangerous to the Romans? I have not a doubt that the British officers in the Boer War had their efficiency partly reduced because they had sacrificed their legitimate duties to an inordinate and ridiculous love of sports. A man must develop his physical prowess up to a certain point; but after he has reached that point there are other things that count more. In my regiment nine-tenths of the men were better horsemen than I was, and probably ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... not good for metre. Even when an actress speaks her lines as lines, and does not drop into prose by slipping here and there a syllable, she spoils the tempo by inordinate length of pronunciation. Verse cannot keep upon the wing without a certain measure in the movement of the ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... his ambitious and immoderate thoughts.... His usurp power and disposition of all things, both in Courts, Parliaments, and Sessions, at the appetite of himself and his good lady, with many other things do bewray matter enough to suspect the fruits of ambition and inordinate thirst for rule'; and he adds, 'I find infinite appearances that the young King's course ... doth carry him headlong to his own danger and hazard of his estate. He hath, since the change at St. Andrews, continually followed forth implacable hatred and pursuit against ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... he took care that they should be), made it impossible that he should ever think of her; and therefore she held herself excused for thinking of him, without any fear of that "self-seeking," and "inordinate affection," and "unsanctified passions," which her religious books had taught her to dread. Besides, he was not "a Christian." That five minutes on the shore had told her that; and even if her station had been the same as his, she must not be "unequally yoked with ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the basis of natural power upon which the Roman throne reposed. The military force which put Rome in possession of this inordinate power, was certainly in some respects artificial; but the power itself was natural, and not subject to the ebbs and flows which attend the commercial empires of our days, (for all are in part commercial.) ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... jaw showed strength and decision, the weak mouth and large protuberant lips indicated that his senses ruled what he himself styled 'the fair habitation of an immortal soul.' His eyes were small, and seemed to express inordinate greed, when they were not, as was usually the case, lifted to the sky in pious self-assurance, yet with feigned humility. Pastor Mueller was at once unctuous and insolent, a combination of contending characteristics ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the hopelessness of their position grew upon the minds of all. Their ammunition was almost gone—each man had but a few rounds remaining—and it was evident that Pesita, through an inordinate desire for revenge, would persist until he had reduced their fortress and claimed the last of them as ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Jerusalem, the barons took the matter into their own hands. Their work of selection was not an easy one. Randolph of Chester was by far the most powerful of the royalist lords, but his turbulence and purely personal policy, not less than his excessive possessions and inordinate palatine jurisdictions, made him unsuitable for the regency. Yet had he raised any sort of claim, it would have been hardly possible to resist his pretensions.[1] Luckily, Randolph stood aside, and ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... goodness upon a stretch, if not beyond all human power, certainly beyond his own. For "admiration" (as it is well said somewhere) "is a kind of superstition which expects miracles." From nature this gentleman had received an inordinate share of animal propensities: he had strong passions, he was by temperament a sensualist. He loved good eating and good wine—he loved women. The two former blessings of the carnal life are not incompatible with canonisation; but St. Anthony has shown that women, however angelic, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... jumbled together; the very olla-podrida of moral and mental combination. They were chiefly those to whom the ordinary operations of human trade or labor had proved tedious or unproductive—with whom the toils, aims, and impulses of society were deficient of interest; or, upon whom, an inordinate desire of a sudden to acquire wealth had exercised a sufficiently active influence to impel to the novel employment of gold-finding—or rather gold-seeking, for it was not always that the search was successful—the very name of such a pursuit carrying with it to many no small degree of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... will not say, but the best men may die of a consumption, a dropsie, or a surfeit; yea, that these may meet upon a man to end him: yet I will say again, that many times these diseases come through mans inordinate use of things. Much drinking brings dropsies, consumptions, surfeits, and many other diseases; and I doubt, that Mr. Badman's death did come by his abuse of himself in the use of lawfull and unlawfull things. I ground this my ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... present time, we must call to mind this severe school through which it has passed, and we must also take into consideration the spirit which has been for centuries predominant in the Eastern Church—I mean the strong tendency both in the clergy and in the laity to attribute an inordinate importance to the ceremonial element of religion. Primitive mankind is everywhere and always disposed to regard religion as simply a mass of mysterious rites which have a secret magical power of averting ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... At this inordinate flouting the patience of the new knight, growing more and more angry at each word, came quickly to the breaking point; for his nerves were jarred and jangled by the excitement of the day. He gave vent to a short sharp cry, and started up the steps ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... period of the Middle Ages, when the Church was virtually the State, to the later period of the Middle Ages, when the authority of the Church in secular matters was beginning to weaken, modern nations were beginning to form, and an interest in worldly affairs was beginning to replace the previous inordinate interest ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... to the rescue. She slid into the silence with a technicality, asking if John still took his old inordinate amount of sugar. Thence it was but a step to the burning question of the day; and in tones a little shaken, she commented on the interval since she had last made tea for the prodigal, and congratulated him on his return. And then addressing Mr. Nicholson, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cultivate the soil, nor rear any domestic animal save wretched dogs. They are so intimately acquainted with the habits of the game that they follow them in their migrations, and prey upon them from place to place, and thus prove as complete a check upon their inordinate increase as the other carnivora. The chief subsistence of the Bushmen is the flesh of game, but that is eked out by what the women collect of roots and beans, and fruits of the Desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy plains of the Desert possess generally thin, wiry ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... be shewn to such conduct, and the offenders know that in a longer or shorter time they shall be received as well as if they had not contaminated their blood by a base alliance, the great check upon that inordinate caprice which generally occasions low marriages will be removed, and the fair and comfortable order of improved life will be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... inordinate amount of superintending. The other soldier detailed by Lieutenant Ames, an ordinary young man with a sensible face and eyes that saw only hammer and nails, got along very well by himself. But the handsome youth, called Buddy Gillian, required supervision on every point. He first consulted ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... game—wrestling, racing, pitching the bar, or the like. At a period somewhat later, these boisterous pastimes began to degenerate; and the Welsh squire became more polished, but not, perhaps, more happy. Still the custom of inordinate potation fondly clung to him. Immediately contiguous to every mansion of any magnitude was erected a summerhouse, usually situated in a spot, selected for the beauty of the scene which it commanded; and to this sanctum did the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... place to place,—a disproportionate reward of physical over intellectual science, an intense desire to be rich, which is strong enough to compel even education to grind in the mill of the Philistines, and an inordinate elevation in public consideration of rich men simply because they are rich, are characteristics of this little point of time on which we stand. They are not the only characteristics; in a reasonably optimistic view, the age is distinguished for unexampled achievements, and for ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... the case of a man of 32, a big, stalwart fellow, who came to me about two years ago with a very severe case of combined stammering and stuttering. He made his plans to place himself under my care but before getting back, fell a victim to his inordinate appetite for drink and was laid up for a week. His wife wrote me the circumstances, told me it had been going on for nine years and that all efforts to eradicate the appetite had failed. I immediately advised her that I considered his case incurable and could not accept him for treatment. ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... to admit that the conception may have been Giorgione's, although even then it would stand alone as evidence of an imagination almost Michelangelesque in its terribilita. Zanetti (1760) was the first to connect Giorgione's name with this canvas, Vasari bestowing inordinate praise upon it as the work of Palma Vecchio! It only remains to add that this is the companion piece to the well-known "Fisherman presenting the Ring to the Doge," by Paris Bordone, which also hangs in the Venice Academy. Both illustrate the same legend, and both originally ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... Sultan of Tajura, a slave-port, with a miserable old man for its master, the mission once more set forth for Shoa; yet even here we glean a specimen of Arab speech. "Trees attain not to their growth in a single day," said an Arab, when remonstrating with the sultan on his inordinate love of lucre. "Take the tree as your text, and learn that property is to be gathered only by slow degrees." "True," said the old miser; "but, sheik, you must have lost sight of the fact, that my leaves are already withered, and that, if I would be rich, I have not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... punishment drastic, Give, Fortune, a son who is nimble and keen; A bright-hearted sample of human elastic, As fast as an antelope, supple and clean; Far other than he in whose dimples there lodge Significant signs of inordinate stodge. ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... fluid which accompanied it, but by degrees the liquor encroached on and superseded the viands, until his tavern bills took the shape of the one purloined by Prince Henry, in which there was but one halfpenny-worth of bread to an intolerable deal of sack. It was this inordinate consumption of sack (and not sighing and grief, as he suggests) which blew him up like a bladder. A life of leisure in London always had, and still has, its temptations. Falstaff's means were described by the Chief Justice of Henry IV. as very slender, but this was ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... said to himself, that possibly she had returned. Yes, she had returned! Why not? He had stupidly lost his head, without cause, carried away by his fears, by the inordinate suspicions which had ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... him. The scene was Cranmer's degradation at Oxford, with which solemn and painful act Bonner was charged; but the strongest words used by the bishop in answer to Cranmer's continued protests and recriminations were, according to Foxe himself, merely that " for his inordinate contumacy, he denied him to speak any more, saying that he had used himself ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... spoke jauntily, with hungry, unquiet, seeking eyes that would not meet Rosalind's. She was afraid that Rosalind would find out that she wanted to be cured of being miserable, of being jealous, of having inordinate passions about so little. Rosalind, in some ways a great stupid cow, was uncannily clever when it came to being spiteful and knowing about you the things you didn't want known. It must be horrible to be psycho-analysed by Rosalind, who had no pity and no reticence. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... 'The inordinate power of these island princes was gradually broken down by the Scottish monarchs in the course of the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth century. On the death of John, Lord of the Isles and Earl of Ross, grandson ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers of thought, that the character of your composition will be determined. Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will make you enjoy coarse colours and affected forms. Habits of patient comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they will make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in your living spirit ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the troops in that quarter during the prevalence of that disorder was simply so bad and repulsive that any detailed description thereof will be passed over. I never saw the like before, and never have seen it since. I always thought that one thing which aggravated this trouble was the inordinate quantity of sugar some of the men would consume. They would not only use it to excess in their coffee and rice, but would frequently eat it raw, by handfuls. I happen to think, right now, of an incident that illustrates the unnatural appetite of some of the ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... means of satisfying my taste for romantic reading was by stealth. Although novels were proscribed, no other books were placed in my hands; there were then scarcely any children's books published, and consumed as I was by an inordinate passion for reading, was determined to indulge it without being very particular about the means. How often have I watched my opportunity when my grandmother had left her apartment for an afternoon visit or drive, and then drawn forth the cherished volume ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... Pollicipes; and this latter genus has an equal right with Scalpellum, to be divided into sub-genera, three in number. Hence, no less than eight genera might be made out of the twelve recent species of Scalpellum and Pollicipes, and their formation, in some degree, be justified; but, in my opinion, this inordinate multiplication of genera destroys the main advantages of classification. At one time, I even thought that it would be best to follow Lamarck, and keep the twelve recent species in one genus; but considering the number of fossil species, I believe the more prudent ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... present is an infinitesimal between two infinites. 'T is a line (a thing without breadth or thickness) moving across the surface of Eternity. The present is no more, by the time you have said, This is present. So, then, it were inordinate to hope to fall in with her again to-day, and you and I must face an anti-climax. Be thankful we have the memories of the morning to feed upon. And, if you desire a subject for meditation, observe how appetites are created. If we had not met her at ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Page arrayed against each other once more. Everybody, of course, still remembers the sudden rivalry between these two American citizens, which sprang up in June of that year, for the gem's possession. The complexity of causes which simultaneously inspired them with an inordinate desire for the Paternoster ruby—a desire which seemingly could be appeased only by possession, regardless of cost—was much of a mystery, and afforded the energetic correspondents a fruitful text for many a day. Both, as is ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... him, tended his geraniums and smoked his pipe on that warm July evening as indifferently as if nothing were afoot. One other thing he did. He flung after those war-fevered enthusiasts a line of Horace—a poet for whose work he had early conceived an inordinate affection: ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... fortune, it makes him easy under them. It has indeed a kindly influence on the soul of man, in respect of every thing to whom he stands related. It extinguishes all murmur, repining and ingratitude towards that Being who has allotted him his part to act in this world. It destroys all inordinate ambition, and every tendency to corruption, with regard to the community wherein he is placed. It gives sweetness to his conversation, and a perpetual serenity to ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... of inordinate ambition, or acts of injustice, is far from being the only instance of such conduct in men thus raised from humble situations. The officers of government in general, though intended by the constitution as a kind of barrier between the prince and the people, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... point I feel myself obliged to acknowledge that the great confusion which now began to prevail in my life, and particularly in my studies, was due to the inordinate effect this artistic interpretation had upon me. I did not know where to turn, or how to set about producing something myself which might place me in direct contact with the impression I had received, while everything that could not be brought into touch with it seemed to me so shallow and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... impression of Chicago, and the last, is of an unfinished monstrosity. It might be a vast railway station, built for men and women twenty feet high. The sky-scrapers, in which it cherishes an inordinate pride, shut out the few rays of sunlight which penetrate its dusky atmosphere. They have not the excuse of narrow space which their rivals in New York may plead. They are built in mere wantonness, for within the City Limits, whose ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... under the skin" of it, as the saying is, unless you have stopped sometime in your busy going, to consider, aside and with understanding, the pathos of the old actor. It is a curiously poignant human thing, written about by a few, suffered by many, and ignored by the loud, inordinate world. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... contracted it from the oysters, or from food on the steamer? But I had been saved. Miss Spurgeon had refused to let the doctor bleed me. She believed that careful nursing would suffice, and she had brought me through. But I had a relapse. I was allowed to eat what I craved. I indulged my inordinate hunger, and came nearer to death than with the fever itself. But from this I rallied by the strength of my youth and a great vitality. All the while Zoe and Miss Spurgeon watched over me with the most tender care. And one day I came out of a sleep ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... it is a notorious fact that Nancy submitted without a murmur to five Uhlans, and that Bar-le-Duc was occupied by two. When the Uhlan arrives in a conquered city, he visits the mayor, and makes his usual inordinate demands for meat, drink, and cigars. If his demands are acceded to, he accepts everything with a grin. If he is refused, he remarks, likewise with a grin, that he will come again to-morrow with three thousand ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... of the Governor (Balmaceda), in progress at the High Court of Charcas, which court, as in the case of Cardenas, acted most cautiously, both on account of its position, so far from Paraguay, and on account of the inordinate procrastination of everything connected with the Spanish law. If Balmaceda were condemned, then Antequera would step into his shoes at once. If, on the other hand, he were acquitted, Antequera would have to wait until the legal ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... true, more laden with riches and honours than Feng was, but when we bear in mind what kind of man he is he certainly, with his large bevy of handmaids, and his licentious and inordinate habits, cannot ever be held equal to Feng Yan, who had set his heart upon one person! This may appositely be termed a fantastic sentimental destiny, which, by a strange coincidence, befell a couple consisting of an ill-fated young fellow and girl! But why discuss third ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that quality which is most easily developed, especially in young persons. It is also its most showy quality, and the temptation to give it an inordinate development is strong. The habit of getting things by rote, is easily acquired by practice. It is astonishing what masses of Scripture texts young children will get by heart, when under some special stimulus ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect— Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread— Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed: In each, the uncouth individual soul Looms forth and glooms Essential, and, their bodily presences Touched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like the livery Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood—they menace—they appal: Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring Wild hands of warning in the face Of some inevitable ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... that alchymy had become a mere covert for secret and deadly sins. That the practisers of it were apt to scruple at no means to satisfy their inordinate greediness of gold. Some had been known to use spells and impious ceremonies; to conjure the aid of evil spirits; nay, even to sell their souls to the enemy of mankind, so that they might riot in boundless wealth ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... MAGLIABECCHI, an inordinate bookworm, born in Florence; became librarian of the Grand-Duke; his book-knowledge was as unbounded as his avidity for knowledge; his memory was extraordinary; he carried in his head the page of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... selfishness were screamingly alive within him. To these was added the inordinate conceit of the habitual libertine, a combination than which there is nothing more sensitive in ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... God has given it a watch, the liver, which is dense, smooth, and shining, and, containing in combination both bitter and sweet, is fitted to receive and reflect, as a mirror, the images of thoughts. Whenever the Reason disapproves, it checks inordinate desires by its bitterness, and, on the other hand, when it approves, all is soothed into gentle repose by its sweetness; moreover, in sleep, in sickness, or in inspiration it becomes prophetic, so that even the vilest portion of the body is in a certain degree participant ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... smell. | | | | 13. It creates a craving for Alcoholic drinks, it prostrates the | | system to such an extent that nature calls for aid by stimulants, | | hence the craving for drinks, peppers, mustards, &c., &c. | | | | 14. It creates an inordinate desire for excitement such as Noose and | | Novel reading, and a loathing of Science and Philosophy. | | | | 15. The smoke has a wonderful tendency to weaken and impair the | | eye-sight. | | | | 16. Its use is an evil example to the young who look to us for advice | | and protection ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... home, which, however, was scrupulously clean, and we drank tea and discussed people and events in distant Europe far into the night. And Madame sang Polish love-songs in a sweet, pathetic voice, and I recounted one or two American yarns in Yankee vernacular which excited inordinate gaiety, so easily amused were these poor souls with minds dulled by long years of lethargy and despair. And I wondered, as I glanced around the squalid room, how many years had elapsed since its mud-walls had last echoed to the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... ill act up to that fearless line of duty my sacred calling prescribes, were I not, as a friend, to urge you to reflect on your present line of conduct, and ask you to pause on it, ere you wreck, not only the happiness of others but your own, at the shrine of inordinate vanity. Shall I honestly own, that mine has narrowly escaped being wrecked; and that, from your own lips, I learnt such was the case. Believing you good and amiable, as you seemed, I was fascinated, and allowed my feelings to outrun my judgment, and yet I can hardly ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterward you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... beautiful thoughts suggested by his visits to the place. I will conclude our survey of the tombs with a few of his words:—"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I read the epitaph of the beautiful every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... slippery night-life of the Gipsy; his familiarity with deep ravine and lonely wood-path, moonlight and field-lairs; his use of a secret language, and his constant habit of concealing everything from everybody; his private superstitions, and his inordinate love of humbugging and selling friend and foe, tend to produce in him that goblin, elfin, boyish-mischievous, out-of-the-age state of mind which is utterly indescribable to a prosaic modern-souled man, but which is delightfully piquant to others. Many a time among Gipsies I have felt, I confess with ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... of the other. Miss Milner observed, but observed with indifference, the sensations of both—there was but one passion which then held a place in her bosom, and that was vanity; vanity defined into all the species of pride, vain-glory, self-approbation—an inordinate desire of admiration, and an immoderate enjoyment of the art of pleasing, for her own individual happiness, and not for the happiness of others. Still had she a heart inclined, and oftentimes affected by tendencies ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... habits of mind, and in sooth forming part of them, we find a reverence for antiquity, and an inordinate tenacity of old opinion, old beliefs, and old habits, which remind us of those tropical civilizations which formerly flourished. Such prejudices were once universal, even in Europe; but they began to die out in the sixteenth century, and are ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much in love with him that she betrayed her feelings to her countess-mother, and the lessons were of course put an end to. I suspect he did not escape heart-whole himself; for he immediately dropped ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... that my play is a pamphleteering attack on a certain individual. That is a deliberate lie. I have studied the journalist type, which is here represented, in many other countries besides my own. The chief characteristic of this type is to be actuated by an inordinate egotism that is perpetually being inflamed by passion; that makes use of bogeys to frighten people, and does this in such a way that, while it makes all its honest contemporaries afraid of any freedom of thought, it ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... he set them in their ancient order of battle used by their forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other officers, and dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those that had newly gained possessions, that they might not fight in a cowardly manner, out of an inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy those blessings. When he had thus disposed his soldiers, he encouraged them to fight by the following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... that the Indian trade, as it is now carried on, will involve us in some fatal quarrel with the Indians. Our traders, in defiance of the laws, carry spirituous liquors among them, and take advantage of their inordinate appetite for it, to cheat them of their skins, and their wampum, which is their money." In 1753 governor Hamilton appointed Richard Peters, Isaac Norris and Benjamin Franklin, to hold a treaty with the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In the report of these commissioners ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... have us believe is a sort of premature senescence and decay. The New World is pitied for her failure to know without illusion the futility of the hurried pursuit of wealth, of the passion for extravagant opulence and inordinate display, of all the hostages youth in America eternally gives to old age. "America has produced great artists," admits Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. Yet he maintains that "that fact most certainly proves that she is full of a fine futility and the end of all things. Whatever the American men of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... fellows to know intimately, mainly I think, on account of their self-consciousness and an inordinate fear of ridicule. With our brigade we had been good "cobbers" since the second show at Gaza, where we were able to help them out of a nasty hole, and once their confidence was gained the Australians were very stout allies. But they were drawn more to ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... individuals, but organised companies of men, are parties, they are in the highest degree ceremonious; they require a variety of symbolical acts and words intended to impress the business on the memory of all who take part in it; and they demand the presence of an inordinate number of witnesses. From these peculiarities, and others allied to them, springs the universally unmalleable character of the ancient forms of property. Sometimes the patrimony of the family is absolutely inalienable, as was the case with the Sclavonians, and still oftener, though ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine |
