"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against the tyranny of home had long since passed into a mere withholding of assent. She went about her daily task more dutifully than ever. She had always been the household drudge: but now she not only took over all the clerical work upon the Dissertationes in Librum Jobi (for the Rector's ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... look back on the paper read at this meeting by Mr. J—— in his uncouth manner, I think when a man is thoroughly in earnest, how careless he is of mere words!" ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... realize what it means, Olivetta?" she concluded in a benumbed voice. "It means that, except for less than a thousand which I have on hand,—a mere nothing,—I am penniless until more dividends are due—perhaps months! I cannot go to Europe! I cannot ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... could not call at her home. He knew well that it would only provoke a storm; nor did Amy ask him to. They met only at church or at the Mission; and nothing but the common greetings passed between them. No one ever dreamed that they were more than mere acquaintances. But they each felt that the other understood, and so were happy; content to wait until God, in his own way, should unite ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... before. Cattle were roasted whole and eagerly devoured, with dances and with shouts which made the welkin ring. With wastefulness characteristic of the Indians, they took no thought for the morrow, but slaughtered the animals around them in mere recklessness, and, when utterly satiated with the banquet, the ground was left strewed with smoking and savory viands sufficient to ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... when, as a mere boy, he received his baptism of fire upon this battle-ground. When the clatter of the musketry fell upon his ears, his heart jumped and an indescribable fear seemed to take possession of him. His limbs trembled, and in despair he looked for something to steady him in the ordeal. ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... whisper stirring round the silent place, No foot of guest across the startled halls, No rustling robes about the corridors, No voices floating on the waveless air, No laughters, no sweet songs like angel dreams On silver wings among the arched domes,— No swans upon the mere—no golden prow, Parting the crystal tide to Pleasure's breeze,— No flapping sail before the idle wind,— No music pulsing out its great wild heart In sweetest passion-beats the noontide through,— No lovers gliding down sun-chequer'd glades, In dreams that open ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... represents about 2 per cent. of the world's production. The return per acre is low, but as has been pointed out, the cost of production is likewise low, and it is doubtful if in any other country the business of growing wheat is more profitable. The area now cultivated is but a mere percentage of what could be put under wheat profitably. The exact area is almost impossible to arrive at, for the simple reason that with improved methods and better varieties of wheat, the extent of country in which the cereal can be successfully ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs
... normal a tendency as to move; and it actually happens, when nothing ideal has been attained, that not to be thus is the whole law of being. There is then a nameless satisfaction in passing on; which is the virtual ideal of pain and mere willing. Death and change acquire a tragic character when they invade a mind which is not ready for them in all its parts, so that those elements in it which are still vigorous, and would maintain somewhat longer ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... who is my true son,' exclaimed the old man; 'the others are mere cowards. And as you have shown me that you are brave, I will satisfy your curiosity. My right eye laughs because I am glad to have a son like you; my left eye weeps because a precious treasure has been stolen from me. I had in my garden a vine that ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... Catholic church is no marriage at all, but simply concubinage born of lust and wickedly sanctioned by human law. He forbade Catholics, under pain of his dire displeasure, even witnessing Protestant marriages or attending as mere spectators at Protestant funerals. Archbishop Cleary has flagrantly insulted every non-Catholic wife in the world. He cast the baleful bar-sinister on the escutcheon of every child born of non-Catholic parents. With all due respect to his holy office, Archbishop ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... said calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a noxious drug'—that is the terminology which describes the offence—will be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened and removed the straps ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the expression, though in a somewhat grotesque form, of a widespread popular feeling that nothing is worthy of the name of education which does not fit a man to earn his bread rapidly and dexterously. Considering with how large a proportion of the human race the mere feeding and clothing of the body is the first and hardest of tasks, there is nothing at all surprising in this view. But the preservation and growth of civilization in any country depends much on ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... in an ordinary standing posture. It gratifies curiosity, but raises no particular moral emotion. Compared with the statue by Greenough, it presents a good example of the difference between the work of a mere sculptor—skillful indeed, but still a mere sculptor—and the work of a ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... of such extreme delicacy, in fact, that anything in the shape of rude or harsh sounds caused him positive distress. On one occasion Schachtner, at the request of Leopold Mozart, who imagined that Wolfgang's aversion to loud sounds was a mere childish fancy, blew a blast upon the trumpet towards the child, but he regretted it the next moment, for the boy nearly fainted away at ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... said Ted, nodding toward a yellow car that had been in evidence oftener than mere ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... buffalo dance, however, that I propose to treat in this chapter, and of which I will try to give the reader as clear an idea as is possible from a mere description; but no words of mine can enable you to fully realize the strange tumult, scampering, grunting and bellowing with which my ears have been ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Berwick streets, walking very fast with his eyes on the ground, as if, as the youngsters say, he was seeking sixpences; and I should not have thought him likely to be attracted to an affair of that sort by mere curiosity. And, whatever he might be in his pulpit, he looked very nervous and shy as he stood up between the coroner and the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with mere merchants." ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... "A mere trifle. I had arrived late at a small ale-house, had put up my pack, which was in a painted deal box, on the table in the tap-room, and was very busy, after reading a paragraph in the newspaper, making a ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... each window had a small plant stand, but there was no connection between them. I have no theory to explain these things. I have tried to find out how they are done, but the more I studied them, the more satisfied was I that they could not be explained by mere ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... the Congo scandal, in the House of Lords: "a marvellous performance, nothing said which should not have been said, everything said which required saying; the speech of a great statesman." Bishop —— followed him with a mere piece of missionary claptrap. In the Commons on the same occasion our charming friend Hugh Law distinguished himself, silencing some of his compatriots, the Irish Roman Catholics, whose line was to support Leopold because the Protestant missionaries abused him. Leopold II. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... murderous ruffians, because of his sympathy with law enforcement, and the promotion of the moral welfare of his community. But the Assistant Superintendent of the C. P. R., under whom Mr. Smith worked, was not moved by such consideration, a mere sentimental consideration he would probably call it. He preferred to cooeperate with the rum ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... strange to her to have a mere acquaintance spoken of as "her countryman"—not the first time nor the last time in her career. As there appeared no trace or sign of jealousy in her questioner's manner, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... only a village street, shares with Chichester the distinction of possessing a market cross. Alfriston's specimen is, however, sadly mutilated, a mere relic, whereas Chichester's is being made more splendid as I write. Alfriston also has one of the oldest inns in the county—the "Star"—(finer far in its way than any of Chichester's seventy and more); but Ainsworth was wrong in sending Charles II. thither, in Ovingdean ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... obscured by the fact that in most cases what is in form a mere part of the demonstrative gesture is in fact a part of the proposition which it is desired directly to convey. In such a case we will call the phraseology of the proposition elliptical. In ordinary intercourse the phraseology ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... exchange of messages between King George and Prince Hussein—one promising unfailing support, and the other unfailing allegiance—completed the transaction, one of the greatest triumphs of British statesmanship, compared with which the recent statecraft of the Germans is mere amateur bungling. Marshal von der Goltz Pasha, who has now exchanged his Governorship of Belgium for the position of chief military counsellor on the Bosphorus, will find it harder than ever—with his rabble army under Djemal Pasha—to "liberate" from the British yoke ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... feeling of friendship for his antagonist. There was that in Baron Petrescu which he had received no credit for, even from his friends. What contempt he had had for Ellerey disappeared, and a desire to win for the mere sake of winning took possession of him. All the thoughts which had prompted him to this duel were forgotten; he was no longer intent on killing his adversary. Now to verify his superiority and to prove it to this worthy foeman was his ambition, and it was in this ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... of the very earliest of his writings upon the subject, some comments upon the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, and intended to form the basis of a separate work, we find Marx insisting that man is not a mere automaton, driven irresistibly by blind economic forces. He says: "The materialistic doctrine, that men are the products of conditions and education, different men, therefore, the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... shortly after birth. The colour varies from brown to black, according to the amount of melanin pigment present. The lesion consists in an overgrowth of epidermis which often presents an alveolar arrangement. Moles vary greatly in size: some are mere dots, others are as large as the palm of the hand, and occasionally a mole covers half the face. In addition to being unsightly, they bleed freely when abraded, are liable to ulcerate from friction and pressure, and occasionally become the starting-point of melanotic ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... seemed that oath to him, yet at that moment he wished he had made it greater, and made all the kindred, yea and the Bride herself, sure of the meaning of the words of it: and he deemed himself a dastard that he had not done so. Then he looked round him and beheld the winter, and he fell into mere longing that the spring were come and the token from the Mountain. Things seemed too hard for him to deal with, and he between a mighty folk and two wayward women; and he went nigh to wish that he had taken his father's offer ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... of acuteness of intellect and precision of language, as indicate a genius of the highest rank[854]. This it is which marks the superiour excellence of Johnson's Dictionary over others equally or even more voluminous, and must have made it a work of much greater mental labour than mere Lexicons, or Word-books, as the Dutch call them. They, who will make the experiment of trying how they can define a few words of whatever nature, will soon be satisfied of the unquestionable justice of this observation, which I can assure my ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... disposition to abandon this section was shown by opening new stores in Cedar street, which soon became so popular as a jobbing resort that its rents quadrupled. The Cedar street jobbers would in the present day be considered mere Liliputians, since many of their stores measured less than eighteen by thirty feet. They were occupied by a class of active men, who bought of importers and sold to country dealers on the principle of the nimble sixpence. Of this class (now about extinct) a few built up large concerns, while ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Arthur Dalrymple's version of the Yarmouth escapade is wrong in making his brother John a partner in the transaction. John had quite too much sense for that; the only victims of Borrow's romance were two or three silly boys—mere lackeys of Borrow's commanding will—who helped him to make up a kit for the common knapsack by pilferings out of their ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... plate be enlarged to about 1-1/2 or 2 inches in diameter, C (fig. 108.), then no charge will be given to the carrier at f, though when applied nearer to the edge at g, or even above the middle at h, a charge will be obtained; and this is true though the plate may be a mere thin film of gold-leaf. Hence it is clear that the induction is not through the metal, but through the surrounding air or dielectric, and ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends its graceful head in the lake and the wild duck dwells amidst the rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When the winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... keen-sighted hawks hover about, picking up those which, failing to obey the first law of nature, reveal themselves by movement. If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, what is the provision of Nature which enables so tender a thing as a young bird, a mere helpless ball of creamy fluff, to withstand the frizzling heat with which the sun bleaches the broken coral? Many do avail themselves of the meagre shadow of shells and lumps of coral, but the majority are exposed to the direct rays of the sun, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in the literary and artistic world enabled them to draw together not only the best-known people of this country, but to a degree greater than any, as far as I know, the most distinguished visitors from abroad, beyond the ranks of mere title or fashion. No home, I think, in all the land compared with theirs in the number and character of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... constitution.—3. That this meeting, having unanimously agreed to the preceding two resolutions, the following humble address to her most excellent majesty the queen, embodying them, be adopted, and that such address be signed by the chairman on behalf of the meeting. [The address was a mere transcription of the resolutions, placed in the ordinary form.]—4. That, considering the discourtesy shown by his excellency the governor to the former meeting, and to its deputation, this meeting abstains ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his heart, he regards them not as the productions of his own soul, but as emanations from the Spirit of God which dwells in him, and pervades all his being. Such a mode of viewing things is, after all, not a mere effect of his imagination, but a true reflex of the influence that actuates this man, an influence springing from the fact already stated, that his will has identified itself with the will of God. Hence the prophet is called a man inspired by God, for it is the Divine Spirit that pervades, agitates, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... are mere savages," said Sir Humphrey, who ceased to watch the retreating Indians, to sweep the front of the towering cliffs with his glass. "This palace must have been the work of a ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... foolish as old Johnny!" exclaimed Judith. "You were in almost as bad shape as I was, and two hours' sleep would have been a mere aggravation to me. Will you let me have enough grub to see me down to the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... religious, and courageous divine, during whose life our factions were oft qualified, our wants and greatest extremities so comforted that they seemed easy in comparison of what we endured after his memorable death." When, in 1609, in a nobler spirit than that of mere commercial enterprise, the reorganized Company, under the new charter, was preparing the great reinforcement of five hundred to go out under Lord de la Warr as governor of the colony, counsel was taken with Abbot, the Puritan Bishop of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... exclusive privileges of a private trading company. D'Ogeron first established himself at Port Margot on the coast of Hispaniola opposite Tortuga in the early part of 1665; and here the adventurers at once gave him to understand that they would never submit to any mere company, much less suffer an interruption of their trade with the Dutch, who had supplied them with necessities at a time when it was not even known in France that there were Frenchmen in that region. D'Ogeron pretended to subscribe to these conditions, passed ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... "Freedom! or learn to die!" Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us 'tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the glory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the lips of death, Praying—alas! in vain!— ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... mentions GAYETY as the third clement of satisfying discourse, I fancy he does not mean mere fun, though that has its value at the right time and place. But there is another quality which is far more valuable and always fit. Indeed it underlies the best fun and makes it wholesome. It is cheerfulness, the temper which makes the best of things and squeezes ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... vary from mere appendages of skin to fully developed toes (Fig. 163); if they interfere with the wearing of boots ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... well up in the firing trench. Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting shrapnel, each shell ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... mentioned on p. 144 in connection with the Army Council stood on an entirely different footing. When a body of officials resign, or threaten to resign, their action cannot be ignored; in the second case mentioned the mere threat sufficed. Lord Fisher paid me one of his meteoric visits on the morning that he submitted his resignation to Mr. Asquith, and he confided his reasons to me; the reasons were good, but it seemed doubtful whether they ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... deserted, being populous in the morning only, because they are so many short-cuts or direct thoroughfares from the suburbs to the city. The morning sweeper is generally a lively and active young fellow; often a mere child, who is versed in the ways of London life, and who, knowing well the value of money from the frequent want of it, is anxious to earn a penny by any honest means. Ten to one, he has been brought up in the country, and has been tutored by hard ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... met in conference at London and the whole vast and complex problem of federal empire has come under discussion. The problem is still far from solution, but that the relation has passed beyond the stage of mere sentiment is shown in many ways. The joy of the colonies over the diamond jubilee (1897), their united grief at Victoria's passing (1901), their welcome to the son of Edward VII., upon his progress ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... stimulated American shipping more than the restrictive decrees growing out of them retarded it, for they at least kept England and France (with her allies) out of the active encouragement of maritime enterprise. But the vessels of that day were mere pigmies, and the extent of the trade carried on in them would at this time seem trifling. The gross exports and imports of the United States in 1800 were about $75,000,000 each. The vessels that carried them were of about ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... he was so high above the earth that to fall off would mean the end of him. And far beneath him he saw the green fields and the white road, which now seemed like a mere thread. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... Nazareth, so the new world is coming out of the multitude, amid the toil and sweat and anguish of the mills, mines, and factories of the world. It has endured much; suffered ages long of slavery and serfdom. From being mere animals of production, the workers have become the "hands" of production; and they are now reaching out to become the masters of production. And, while in other periods of the world their intolerable misery led them again and again to strike out in a kind of torrential anarchy ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... a leaf in the book of life," his friend made answer, "and on the new page which now lies before us, we find it written, that in wise dispensation, not in mere getting and hoarding, lies the secret of happiness. The lake must have an outlet, and give forth its crystal waters in full measure, if it would keep them pure and wholesome, or, as the Dead Sea, it will be full of bitterness, and hold no life in ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... than I need at the moment. Even if I succeeded in getting away from the inn, what could I do at Brede with no money at all?—for in that part of the country they would certainly look upon the Earl of Westport as the real owner of the property, and on me as a mere interloper; and if I could not get money on the documents in London, there was little chance of getting credit even for food ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the republic were extended, its dogeship became a mere figurehead. All real power was lodged in the dread and secret council of three.[11] Genoa was defeated and crushed in a great naval contest with her rival, Venice.[12] Everywhere tyrannies stood out triumphant. The first ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... mentioned in this report, but, knowing you as I believe I do, I am satisfied that you did your full duty in that terrible affair; although, in your report to me by Oneida runner, you record the action as though you yourself were a mere spectator. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... is but 1640 miles distant from Ireland. Its population in 1881 was 161,384, and its area was estimated at 42,006 square miles; but, strange as it seems, up to the present time the interior is almost unknown, while the mere existence of certain splendid fertile valleys in portions of the island has only been discovered in quite recent times. The appearance of the coast is rocky and forbidding, but there are a great number of deep bays and fiords, containing magnificent ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... and went into the thicket, near a stream of water, where she could die in peace. I don't know whether I hit her or not. I didn't look to see, but ran home as fast as my legs would carry me. Thus ended the first hunting excursion in which I ever engaged; and though I was a mere boy then, and am approaching the meridian of life now, it proved to ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... regular fraternisation had gone on between the crews, and after a mere glance at the three masts of the schooner, which were standing out of the water about a couple of hundred yards away, the skipper's whole attention was directed to their own vessel, whose keel was now fast in the mud, and which was beginning to ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... cause for rejoicing in ourselves. . . . We are paltry, poor-spirited, useless people . . . a mean lot. . . . We are only gentry in name, but in a material sense we are the same as peasants, only worse. . . . We live in stone houses, but it's a mere make-believe . . . for the roof leaks. And there is no money to buy wood to mend ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wasn't I shouldn't be here, working for thirty pounds a year, when there's gold to be dug for the mere paying of a license. No, no, just wait till I can call myself my own master, and then the sheep and stock may go to the devil, for ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a mere periwig-makerHad I asked Ochiltree the question, he would have had a legend ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lie down on the bed by her side, on condition that she should be awakened in an hour. In this manner she obtained a few hours' sleep during the night; but these severe labors were a fearful task to be imposed upon a mere child. ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... a good deed in helping to console a little child, and no kindness ever goes without this reward. Besides, she had met a young, strange man, a country boy, it was true, and very plainly dressed, but with the manner and tone of a gentleman, quite good-looking, and very strong. Strength, mere physical strength, appeals to all girls at certain ages, and Miss Alice Yorke's thoughts quite softened toward the stranger. Why, he as good as picked her up! He must be as strong as Norman Wentworth, who stroked his crew. She recalled with approval ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... as something which in a living body was united with physical matter and forces in the same way that the force of a magnet unites itself with iron. Then came the time when vital force was banished from the domain of science. Mere physical and chemical causes were ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... where she had pawned the plate, her tale being that she and the man Evans had gone down to Whitechapel together and pawned it in the Mile End Road. But she did not know the number of the pawnbroker's, nor could she give any indications as to its whereabouts—beyond the mere fact that it was in the Mile End Road she could say nothing. All the pawnbrokers in the Mile End Road had been searched, but no plate answering to the description furnished by the ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... had taught her the sanctity of parenthood, also that women are not always the weaker sex. There are times when they must show their superiority to "mere man" in being the stronger of the two, mentally if not physically, and Ralph Jackson knew when he called Mary "wife" she would endow him with all the wealth of her pure womanhood, sacredly kept for the clean-souled young man, whose devotion she finally rewarded by promising to marry him the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... loop is horizontal and the wire vertical and axial, 20f and 20g, there will be rotation, and the figures are mere ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... principles, have in the history of the Church not unfrequently broken into small controversies, involving narrow principles; just as in the history of the world mighty empires like that of Alexander the Great have broken up into petty provinces, headed by mere satraps and captains, when the master-mind that formed their uniting bond has been removed. Independently of that stability which the legalized framework of a rightly-constituted Establishment is almost sure to impart to its distinctive doctrines, the influence of its temporalities has in one special ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... theology, to his great irritation; and once, Hareton, I came upon a secret stock in your room—some Latin and Greek, and some tales and poetry: all old friends. I brought the last here—and you gathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love of stealing! They are of no use to you; or else you concealed them in the bad spirit that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall. Perhaps your envy counselled Mr. Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures? But I've most of them ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... an errand, and Pluto had shown her the road. After all the others were done she picked up again the communication she had shown to Mrs. McVeigh—the report from the yacht master, and from the same envelope extracted a soft silken slip of paper with marks peculiar—apparently mere senseless scratches of a thoughtless pen, but it was over that paper and the reply most of the evening was spent. It was the most ancient method of secret writing known to history, yet, apparently, so meaningless that it might pass ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Mere, or Meri, n. (pronounced merry), a Maori war-club; a casse-te^te, or a war-axe, from a foot to eighteen inches in length, and made of any suitable hard material—stone, hard wood, whalebone. To many people out of New Zealand the word is only known as the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... A debate is in the nature of a contest, and is quite as interesting as any other contest. The desire to win should never lead you to take any unfair advantage or to descend to mere quibbling over the statement of the proposition or the meanings of the terms. Win fairly ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... put himself under the protection of Marguerite d'Angoulme, queen of Navarre, who made him her valet-de-chambre. He acted as the queen's secretary, and transcribed the Heptamron for her. It is probable that his duties extended beyond those of a mere copyist, and some writers have gone so far as to say that the Heptamron was his work. The free discussions permitted at Marguerite's court encouraged a licence of thought as displeasing to the Calvinists ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... "A mere trifle," added he, seeing that Nais was startled. "For five hundred francs a month you can have a carriage from a livery stable; fifty louis in all. You need only think of your dress. A woman moving in good society could not well ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... gracious he is, and how good. Of course, there has been money spent, but he can afford it without hurting the children. It has been so necessary that with a Coalition people should know each other! There was some little absurd row here. A man who was a mere nobody, one of the travelling butterfly men that fill up spaces and talk to girls, got hold of him and was impertinent. He is so thin-skinned that he could not shake the creature into the dust as you would have done. It annoyed him,—that, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water... How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Jane. "I do not desire a mere soldier's glory for any one I love, since it is bought by violence, and must therefore harden the heart: and honour of a better kind may be had, as far as ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... forty mills were debasing the immemorial and gigantic sequoia into mere timber in its last refuge in California. But even the general public sees now that this was a barbarous and idiotic perversion of relative values. What is a little perishable timber, for which substitutes can be found elsewhere, compared with a grove ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... have been too early instructed, and too long habituated to believe, that the only firm seat of all authority is in the minds, affections, and interests of the people, to change our opinions on the theoretic reasonings of speculative men, or for the convenience of a mere temporary arrangement of state. It is not consistent with equity or wisdom to set at defiance the general feelings of great communities, and of all the orders which compose them. Much power is tolerated, and passes unquestioned, where much is yielded ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... are dressed as women, living in the Sadow and possessing all the privileges of the other sex. Small-pox is never mentioned by its proper name of "char-char" by the Dyaks, but always spoken of as "he," "she," or "it;" for they imagine the mere mention of its name may attract, and ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... what was going on behind him, had to carry the whole tree, and the little tailor into the bargain. There he sat behind in the best of spirits, lustily whistling a tune, as if carrying the tree were mere sport. The giant, after dragging the heavy weight for some time, could get on no further, and shouted out: "Hi! I must let the tree fall." The tailor sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with both hands as if he had carried it the whole way and said to the giant: "Fancy a big lout ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... equally true assertion that their physical strength is not equal to the performance of the work of an ordinary day-laborer. Under the pressure of necessity, both moral and physical strength might be forced and kept up to the required standard; but the mere conviction of expediency is not enough to secure its development, unless enforced by such laws as will insure universal and systematic action. A voluntary association for military instruction may be commenced with a zeal which will carry its members for a time through the daily routine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... trifling question. And the arguments put forward for their several views by the two champions are not strikingly convincing. Sir Edward wants only one account, because he thinks the consequence would be a stronger reserve and fewer changes in bank rate. But a mere change of bookkeeping such as the amalgamation of the two accounts would not make a half-pennyworth of difference to the extent of the Bank's responsibilities and its ability to meet them, and it is on variations in these factors that movements in bank rate ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... when he addresseth thee, and then thy words shall be acceptable. When a man hath wealth he ordereth his actions according to his own dictates. He doeth what he willeth.... The great man can effect by the mere lifting up of his hand what a [poor] man cannot. Since the eating of bread is according to the dispensation of God, a man cannot ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... attracted the eye. Everybody greeted her; evidently all except Thaddeus were acquainted with her. Her figure was fine and elegant, her bosom charming; her gown was of pink silk, low cut, and with short sleeves, the collar of lace. In her hands she twirled a fan for mere pastime, for it was not hot; the gilded fan as it waved spread around it a dense shower of sparks. Her head was like a milliner's model; the hair was frizzled and curled and intertwined with pink ribbons; amid them a diamond, half ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... verses by fashionable people, which were put into her vase at Batheaston, in competition for honourary prizes being mentioned, Dr. Johnson held them very cheap: 'Bouts-rim'es,' said be, 'is a mere conceit, and an old conceit; I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady.' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase. Johnson—'He was a blockhead for his pains!' Boswell. 'The Duchess of Northumberland ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Statisticians tell us that Americans have been consuming meat at the rate of 171 pounds per capita per year, which means nearly half a pound apiece every day for each man, woman, child, and infant in arms. Now, as mere infants and some older folk have not had any, it follows that many of us have had a great deal more. Did we need it? Shall we be worse off without it? Meat is undeniably popular. In spite of the rising ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... ejaculated Dave. "I s'pose that's the feminine of 'lunch.' I could eat a stack of pancakes and a whole can of beans right now. I'm too hungry for any mere 'luncheon.'" ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... have sent innumerable substance— By what means got, I leave to your own conscience— To furnish Rome, and to prepare the ways You have for dignities; to the mere undoing Of all the kingdom. Many more there are; Which, since they are of you, and odious, I will not taint ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... but was not connected with the egg. But they may once have been connected, and if so, there may be a common foundation both for the Greek and the Celtic conceptions in a Celtic element in Thrace.[712] The resemblances, however, may be mere coincidences, and horned serpents are known in other mythologies—the horn being perhaps a symbol of divinity. The horned serpent sometimes accompanies a god who has horns, possibly Cernunnos, the underworld ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... assembled in such space as the tent left on the lawn, or thickly filled the walks immediately adjoining it. The gay dresses of the ladies, the joyous laughter heard everywhere, and the brilliant sunlight over all, conveyed even to Leonard the notion, not of mere hypocritical pleasure, but actual healthful happiness. He was attracted from his revery, and timidly mingled with the groups. But Richard Avenel, with the fair Mrs. M'Catchley—her complexion more vivid, and her eyes more dazzling, and her step more elastic than usual—had turned ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... really pretty," thought Sara, "but how thin and blue. And what mere claws her hands are!" looking at the one clutching a corner of the sheet. "Poor girl! I don't believe she is much older than I, but she looks as if she had suffered enough for an old ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... credit affirm, that the king entered into an agreement with Bartholomew, and sent him to invite his brother to England; and that the nation in general were fond of the project, either from motives of mere curiosity ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... and the Spanish missionaries, on their arrival in the country, found men dressed as women and assuming their part. They were trained to this from youth, and often publicly married to the chiefs. Nero was evidently a mere plagiarist. The existence of analogous customs has been proved against the Guyacurus of La Plata, the natives of the Isthmus of Darien, the tribes of Louisiana, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... a little stir of excitement in the small country church when Seth Winters and his following of young folks entered it, and by mere force of numbers so impressing the ushers that the very front pews were vacated in their behalf, although the farrier protested against this. However, he wasn't sorry to have his company all together, and motioned ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... hopes, however, were but faint and weakly; for they could not repose any extraordinary confidence in his good faith—not only because in all cases he conducted his affairs in a disinterested spirit, and with a perverse obstinacy of moral principle, whereas his seven relatives were mere novices, and young beginners in the trade of morality,—but also because, in all these moral extravagances of his (so distressing to the feelings of the sincere rascal), he thought proper to be very satirical, and had his heart so full of odd caprices, tricks, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... EST'MERE (2 syl.), king of England. He went with his younger brother Adler to the court of King Adlands, to crave his daughter in marriage; but King Adlands replied that Bremor, the sowdan, or sultan of Spain, had forestalled ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... in some secluded spot, and the calves soon begin to follow their mother about, and they follow her, too, into their second year. Horns begin to grow on the young bull before he is a year old, but they are mere knobs until he is a year and a half old, when spikes form; by the third year he is supplied with antlers. The perfect antlers of a big bull sometimes measure seventy inches across, yet every winter—in January or February—the horns ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... Naylor, or the Cheltenham Bell-man, or the Shep-herd of the Fleece, will be sure to prepare for your morning mastication. Fashion always requires some talismanic power to draw her votaries together, beyond the mere healthful attractions of salubrious air, pleasant rides, romantic scenery, and cheerful society; and this magnet the Chelts possess in the acknowledged medicinal properties of their numerous spas, the superior qualities of which ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... which their Republic wrote up on the walls of their buildings. Now for the first time he began to grasp the meaning of the bellicose Liberty which they adored as the terrible sword of Reason. No: it was not for them, as he had thought, mere sounding rhetoric and vague ideology. Among a people for whom the demands of reason transcend all others the fight for reason dominated every other. What did it matter whether the fight appeared absurd to nations who called themselves practical? To eyes ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... indomitable courage and resource of Haco. But it was not in this clumsy fashion that her genius moulded the materials at her command. She now controlled, as she believed, the mainspring of the resistance, which would probably cease with the death of Jean. But her aim went far beyond the mere submission of her antagonists; she wished that the blow should be struck in such a manner as to stamp out the false creed which had held the islanders in thrall, to prove to all sceptics the powers of her own Gods and the impotence of those of her opponents, and to commit ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... postponed until the arrival of Parker's counsel, O'Connell & Kilpatrick, of Grass Valley, and after they reached Cape Horn not a single word could be extracted from the prisoner. It is said that the inquisition was a mere farce; there being no witnesses present except one lady passenger, who, with commendable spirit, volunteered to lay over one day, to give in her testimony. We also learn that, after the trial, the justice, together with the prisoner and his counsel, were closeted ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... school were young men. On the word they went. Each knew what he had to do. Each had his little book of instructions. He needed no orders. The mere fact that mobilization had been ordered was all he needed to know. He knew already where he must report, where his uniform and his equipment would be given to him, and which regiment he was to join. He was a soldier by virtue of the three years, or ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... than to suffer me to take the least honor to myself, of anything which He has been pleased to do by me for the good of others. I am only a poor nothing. God is all-powerful. He delights to operate, and exercise His power by mere nothings. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... sound rule that, before you determine to write a tragedy, you should make sure that you have a really tragic theme: that you can place your hero at such odds with life that reconciliation, or mere endurance, would be morally base or psychologically improbable. Moreover, you must strike deep into character before you are justified in passing capital sentence on your personages. Death is a disproportionate close for ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... said, approaching the bed. "The more you weep the sooner God will pardon you. Hold the sorrow of repentance as better than that of mere penitence. Weep, daughter, weep! You don't know how much I enjoy seeing you weep. Beat yourself on the breast also, but not hard, for you're ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... lately the invention of the spectroscope has informed us of the very elements which go to the composition of these numberless stars, and we can distinguish those which are in a similar condition to our sun from those differing from him. And photography has recorded for us objects too faint for mere sight to detect, even when aided by the most powerful telescope; too detailed and intricate for the most ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself; while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of London [154] and Horace. We don't wish you dead to enjoy your seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in the way you 'were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not turn to any Profession, would you receive ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... objection, then, to the organization against Mr. Lincoln is, that it is a mere party organization, arrayed under an old party name, and marching under an old party banner. In the midst of a great contest like this, when all old party names and prejudices should be forgotten, and when Democrats and Republicans should be united ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... incredible chance she was not dead (lo! the human heart), could he kill Ravengar? This question had presented itself to him as he sat in the dome listening to Ravengar's asseverations that Camilla lived. And the mere ridiculous, groundless suspicion that she lived, the mere fanciful dream that she lived, had quite changed and softened Hugo's mood. He had struggled hard to keep his resolution to kill Ravengar, but it had melted away; he had ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... perhaps, freed it from foreign oppressors. In their grateful admiration for these heroes, whose doings naturally became more and more marvellous with each generation that told of them, men could not believe that they should have been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but insisted on considering them as directly inspired by the deity in some one of the thousand shapes they invested it with, or as half-divine of their own nature. The consciousness of the imperfection inherent to ordinary humanity, and the limited powers awarded ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... his solicitor—"has left two illegitimate children, both of them young women who are of an age to earn their own livelihood. Be so good as to tell them that neither you nor I have anything to do with questions of mere sentiment. Let them understand that Providence has restored to me the inheritance that ought always to have been mine, and I will not invite retribution on my own head by assisting those children to continue the imposition which their parents practised, and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Through all his hurt he had clung, not only to the picture, but also to some fond belief that Ailsa loved him still; that the words she had spoken and the things she had done, in the days of their courtship, had not been mere idle falsehoods. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... reflection." She quotes a "wonderfully just" passage from Milton, calls a licentious speech from Dryden's "State of Innocence" an "odious thing," and says "a thousand good things at random, but so strangely mixed, that you would be apt to say, all her wit is mere good luck, and not the effect of reason and judgment." In the second paper Sappho quotes examples of generous love from Suckling and Milton, but takes offence at a letter containing some sarcastic remarks on married women. We know that Steele was personally acquainted ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... first, and the resumed relationship of commander and subordinate was inexpressibly dear to him. It was something to see Adler waiting on the table in the "glass-room" in his blue jersey, standing at attention at the door, happy in the mere sight of Bennett at his meals. In the mornings, as soon as breakfast was ready, it was Adler's privilege to announce the fact to Bennett, whom he usually found already at work upon his writing. Returning thence to the dining-room, Adler waited for his ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... fingering his cylinder; his gaze roved me as I sat docile on my bunk. "Did you think George Prince was a leader of this? A mere boy. I engaged him a year ago—his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... and motion of the head. When he speaks, there is a strange peculiarity in his argument and expression; when he holds his tongue, his imagination teems with some extravagant reverie; his sobriety of demeanour is no other than a lucid interval, and his passion mere delirium. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... sung his own sonnets of true love, and it is perhaps on this account that William Smith finds him in a mood favourable to the defence of a young aspirant. At any rate, the language of the dedication rings with something more than mere desire for distinguished patronage. The youth looks with a beautiful humility upward toward the greater but "dear and most entire beloved" poet. His own sonnets, he says, are "of my study the budding springs"; they are but "young-hatched orphan things." He nowhere boasts that they will ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... obligations to foreign settlers; and therefore (without additional but doubtful arguments from any imaginary traces of Eastern, Egyptian, Phoenician rites and fables in the religion or the legends of Greece in her remoter age) I see sufficient ground for inclining to the less modern, but mere popular belief, which ascribes a foreign extraction to the early civilizers of Greece: nor am I convinced by the reasonings of those who exclude the Egyptians from the list ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with comparatively few exceptions, indolent; but they had naturally lapsed into the easy, slovenly methods, or rather want of method of the old slave life, and a few were doing the greater part of what was done. They were mere children in capacity, will and perseverance. Mrs. Griffin, with her intensely energetic nature, soon effected a change. Order took the place of disorder, under her direction; new cabins were built, neatness and system maintained, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Heartsease, looking just as she looked when I parted with her long, long years before. Ellen had not changed with time: she had written me the same sweet, placid, sympathetic letters from the beginning, and the beginning was when, a mere child, I had worn out my heart with longing for home, and had at last been welcomed back over the two seas and across the slender chain of flowers that binds the two Americas together—back to the land I love, California. Ellen would lead me in all the old paths; we would see the garden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... idea of sharks, however, haunted me more than any other thought, for I knew that there were plenty of these sea monsters in the Mozambique Channel, and I dreaded more being caught by one of them than the mere fear of drowning, which now seemed to lose all its terrors, although I still swam on mechanically. Every time a wave broke over me, or when I splashed up the water with my own feet, the haunting horror seized me that ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... befell that, when Richard of Gloucester reached the first house of Shoreby, he was met in the mouth of the street by a mere handful of lances, whom he swept before his onset as the storm chases ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... toad's appearance does really deter its enemies. Such an hypothesis resembles an Empirical Law in its need of derivation (chap. xix. Sec.Sec. 1, 2). If underivable from, or irreconcilable with, known laws, it is a mere conjecture or prejudice. The absolute leviation of phlogiston, in contrast with the gravitation of all other forms of matter, discredited that supposed agent. That Macpherson should have found the Ossianic poems extant in the Gaelic memory, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... respectfully believe that from ancient times decisions upon important questions concerning the welfare of the empire were arrived at after consideration of the actual political condition and its necessities, and that thus results were obtained, not of mere temporary brilliancy, but which bore good fruits in ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... men ever were more long-suffering, or showed more unwillingness to rise in arms against their domestic tyrants, than the much-calumniated Huguenots of France. When we read the hideous edicts that were promulgated against them, and which were not mere empty threats, but were carried into execution throughout the land with unrelenting and strenuous ferocity, we feel that if ever the right of self-defence can make an appeal to arms justifiable, it was so in their instance. Extermination or apostasy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... usually able to assign a nationality to each member of a mixed assembly; but there was a subtle resemblance to each other in these diners, which would have made the task a hard one. These were citizens of the world, and their likeness lay deeper than a mere accident of dress. In fact, the most remarkable thing about them was that they ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... lay in the Wharfe Valley above Skipton, and, though its acreage was large, a good deal was made up of mere moorland sheep pasture. Luckily he recognized that a poetical taste for a rural life might not necessarily imply the whole mystery of stock rearing and agriculture, and so he hired a capable foreman as philosopher and guide. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... both failed at lighting it. I, too, redressed when very close to the bag, and made a steep bank in order to escape the burst of flame from the ignited gas. The rockets leaped out, with a fine, blood-stirring roar. The mere sound ought to have been enough to make any balloon collapse. But when I turned, there it was, intact, a super-Brobdingnagian pumpkin, seen at close view, and still ripe, still ready for plucking. If I live to one hundred ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... never for the whole day came higher up than east by north. The consequence was, that we proceeded into a deep bight, and made no progress northwards up the river. At our camp it had dwindled to a mere thread, so narrow was the line of water in its bed. Its banks were as even and as smooth as those of a fortification, and covered with a thick, even sward. There was no perceptible current and the water was all muddy; but the scenery in ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... life: what do you know of necessity or hunger? I know both, and I tell you necessity and hunger are two gods before whom all who meet them bow down. Better a live jackal than a dead poet. Besides, is he not the greatest of kings? Bishop Thibault had me in gaol for a mere slip of the fingers and talked of a judicial noose—the third I've looked through—but the King fetched me out—God ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... been more than mere pleasant acquaintanceship between him and Miss Wynn? Rightly or wrongly, Sam Holt fancied it the case. He heard many allusions to former times and incidents, not knowing that as children they had been playmates. The gallant ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Her only distinct recollection of her native home was, that every morning early her mother poured out water before the rising sun. Her growing intelligence and keen appreciation of the blessings of civilization overreached mere animal grief at the separation from her mother. And as she knew more of the word of God, she became more deeply interested in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... theory is that in terms of soil organic matter, vegetables grow quite well at the humus level that would peak naturally on a virgin site. In semi-arid areas I'd modify the theory to include an increase as a result of necessary irrigation. Expressed as a rough rule of thumb, a mere 2 percent organic matter in hot climates increasing to 5 percent in cool ones will supply sufficient biological soil activities to grow healthy vegetables if the mineral nutrient levels are high ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... of the matter was that the child was half-starved. Still the doctor insisted that she should have nothing but mutton or rice gruel, and those only in very small quantities. Under such treatment she wasted to a mere shadow of her ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness, while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly: and they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me, then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic, which could ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... consideration would be, the effect produced upon the national character, by the mere circumstance of the modes of preparing the different beverages of different countries. Much of the acknowledged inferiority of the inhabitants of wine countries, arises from the circumstance of having their liquor prepared to their hand. There is no stretch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... But the mere name system calls up the static idea of a finished building. Here there is nothing of the kind. The new philosophy desires to be a proceeding as much as, and even more than, to be a system. It insists on being lived as well as thought. It demands ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... was so surprised that for a moment he could not collect his wits. Erick's grandfather! There stood the man bodily before him, whose existence had been to him a mere fairy tale, and the man looked so stately and so commanding, that everyone who beheld him must be inspired with respect. But at the same time there was something winning in his expression, which was familiar to the reverend gentleman ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... other proposal could have fitted in so well with his scheme. The mere fact that Dick was away would start people at the pleasant business of conjecturing mishaps and quarrels. Perhaps indeed the lovers had quarrelled. Perhaps Richard had taken his advice and was off to consult ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... * * * I can remember when mere living was delightful. I didn't envy the birds. That sounds sentimental to a man, doesn't it? But then that is the way a happy girl—a child—feels. I do not envy the birds now, though I suppose it is silly for a worldly woman to ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... his sword the sunbeams. The youthful year grows up in the dark days of winder. When its time has come, it goes forth triumphantly and destroys the darkness and the cold of winter. Through the symbolization the abstractions gain form and become persons; the saga is thus not a mere allegory, but a personification of nature's forces. The treasure may have entered the saga through the widespread idea of the dragon as the guardian of treasure, or it may represent the beauty of nature which unfolds ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... indisposition to the incurring of a similar expense again, unless it can be shown to promise, upon good probable grounds, a much better return than we have had; and, generally speaking, I cannot but fear that the mere difference in point of exertion which we can hope from this country, may not turn out to be worth the purchase-money in the estimation of the country at large, though I should hope they might easily acquiesce in a very considerable exertion, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... chiefly literary and poetic merits, some persons in France have been astonished that the obsequies of Beranger should have been so magnificently celebrated, while, but a few months before, the coffin of another poet, M. Alfred de Musset, had been followed by a mere handful of mourners; yet M. de Musset was capable of tones and flights which in inspiration and ardor surpassed the habitual range of Beranger. Without attempting here to institute a comparison, there is one thing essential to be remarked: in Beranger there was not only a poet, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published this very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and privacy to which they were both equally attached; and confesses that the whole must be considered as a mere sportive effusion, requesting that Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his Theodicee, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in earnest; that a philosopher is not always obliged ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... by their crestfallen demeanor with the inclemencies of the season, were peasants. The one was an old man, gray-haired, stooping, and apparently sixty years of age: the other, his son, as I afterward found out, was a mere youth of, at the most, twenty. They were strikingly alike in physiognomy, notwithstanding the difference in their years, but neither had anything at all remarkable either in his looks or general appearance: both were small, clumsy-limbed, somewhat simple-faced, rather ugly; and on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the way, is not a moral tale. Virtue does not triumph, nor will vice be crushed. It is the mere record of a few mistakes, culminating in Mark Ruthine's blunder—a little note on human nature without vice in it; for there is little vice in human nature if one takes the trouble to sift that which ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... At first a mere thread of a footpath half blotted out by the grasses Sweeping triumphant across it, it wound between hedges of roses Whose blossoms were poised above leaves as pond lilies float on the water, While hidden by bloom ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... happened in cities and among crowds. I like to forget them. They smack of that slavery of the spirit which is so much worse than any mere slavery of the body. ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... always foists its egg upon other birds; or whether, on the other hand, it is not mending its manners in this respect. It has but little to unlearn or to forget in the one case, but great progress to make in the other. How far is its rudimentary nest—a mere platform of coarse twigs and dry stalks of weeds—from the deep, compact, finely woven and finely modeled nest of the goldfinch or king-bird, and what a gulf between its indifference toward its young and ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... me that you can not always out-plan, the other person. That is a lack, but it is not fatal. Are you great enough to run fast and far when it is a straight-away race depending only upon mere man-strength and indomitable determination?" ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... could be kidnaped, in broad daylight, in the heart of London, and be sent home, as it were, in pieces? Had sacrilegious hands already been playing pranks with that great lady's hair? Certainly, that hair was so like her hair that the mere resemblance made his grace's blood run cold. He turned on Messrs. Barnes and Moysey as though he would have liked to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... fish with that, using but a dozen inches of line, and not letting so much as your eyebrows show above the bank. Is it a becoming attitude for a middle-aged citizen of the world? That depends upon how the fish are biting. Holing a put looks rather ridiculous also, to the mere observer, but it requires, like brook-fishing with a tip only, a very delicate wrist, perfect tactile sense, and a ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... advantage which Richard had gained over his great enemy; but the battle was a mere skirmish with the outposts of the potent foe. It was a victory, however, and it strengthened him. It improved the morale of his ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... mortals, thus overwhelmed with terror, form to themselves of the irresistible cause that could produce such extended effects? Without doubt they did not attribute these wide spreading calamities to nature; neither did they conceive they were mere physical causes; they could not suspect she was the author, the accomplice of the confusion she herself experienced; they did not see that these tremendous revolutions, these overpowering disorders, were the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach |
