"Past times" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... less often than in past times. In the coppersmith's great household she commonly had her hands full, and I felt indeed that her face was changed towards me. A kind of fear, which I had not marked in her of old, had come over her of late; meseemed she lived ever in dread of some new insult and hurt; also ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... one. It has long been a subject of thought in the minds of some Indian and European naturalists, among the former of whom I may mention my brother [Mr. Blandford] and Dr. Stoliezka, their speculations being grounded on the relationship and partial identity of the faunas and floras of past times, not less than on that existing community of forms which has led Mr. Andrew Murray, Mr. Searles, V. Wood, jun., and Professor Huxley to infer the existence of a Miocene continent occupying a part of the Indian Ocean. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... of controversy and to obtain indemnity for the wrongs which were the subjects of complaint. Our present charge d'affaires at that Court will also bring to the prosecution of these claims ability and zeal. The revolutionary and distracted condition of Portugal in past times has been represented as one of the leading causes of her delay in indemnifying our suffering citizens. But I must now say it is matter of profound regret that these claims have not yet been settled. The omission of Portugal to do justice to the American ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Zachary Taylor • Zachary Taylor
... comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponics [6] of Constantine. At his command, the historical examples of vice and virtue were methodized in fifty-three books, [7] and every citizen might apply, to his contemporaries or himself, the lesson or the warning of past times. From the august character of a legislator, the sovereign of the East descends to the more humble office of a teacher and a scribe; and if his successors and subjects were regardless of his paternal cares, we may inherit and enjoy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... great as any he had felt at the sight of Elfride. The words about shortness of time were literally true, but their tone was far from being so. He would have been gratified to talk with Knight as in past times, and saw as a dead loss to himself that, to save the woman who cared nothing for him, he was deliberately throwing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... limited patrimony and alliances of this new quasi-dynasty rendered its personal power very inferior to that of the northern branch, and consequently lessened the influence possessed by the ruling family in past times. In Ireland the connections, more or less numerous, by blood relationship with the great families, always exercised a powerful influence over the body of the nation in rendering it docile and amenable to the will of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... to sing of the things of yesterday, let us begin with what God did for us in past times. My beloved brethren, you will find it a sweet subject for song at times, to begin to sing of electing love and covenanted mercies. When thou thyself art low, it is well to sing of the fountain-head of mercy; of that blest decree wherein thou wast ordained to eternal ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... showing to the contrary, and if you look into history we've all got some discreditable forefathers. So I mean no offence when I say I don't think any great things of the part the Jewish people have played in the world. What then? I think they were iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose we don't want any men to be maltreated, white, black, brown, or yellow—I know I've just given my half-crown to the contrary. And that reminds me, I've a curious old German book—I can't read it myself, but a friend of mine was reading out of it to me the other ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... enslavement. This chorus is almost as fine as the more famous one in the Carmagnola; both are incomparably finer than anything else in the tragedies and are much more dramatic than the dialogue. It is in the emotion of a spectator belonging to our own time rather than in that of an actor of those past times that the poet shows his dramatic strength; and whenever he speaks abstractly for country and humanity he moves us in a way that permits no doubt of ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... followed at once by the family—with the solitary exception of Norah, whose incurable formality and reserve expressed themselves, not too graciously, in her distant manner toward the visitor. The rest, led by Magdalen (who had been Frank's favorite playfellow in past times) glided back into their old easy habits with him without an effort. He was "Frank" with all of them but Norah, who persisted in addressing him as "Mr. Clare." Even the account he was now encouraged to give of the reception accorded to him by his father, on the previous ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Blood-money in past times, I was assured both by Malays and Sakai, had always been paid in this manner by the semi-wild tribes of the interior. It was the custom, and Kria's relatives were eager in their prayers to me to accept the proposal. Instead, I exacted a heavy fine of jungle ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... several particulars of the Court of the late King, which have a great relation to things that are acted at present." "Far from blaming you," replied the Princess of Cleves, "for repeating the histories of past times, I lament, Madam, that you have not instructed me in those of the present, nor informed me as to the different interests and parties of the Court. I am so entirely ignorant of them, that I thought a few days ago, the Constable was very well with the Queen." "You was extremely ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... broke in with many, many questions about past times; and for her satisfaction I had to recur to gone-by troubles, to explain causes of seeming estrangement, to touch on single-handed conflict with Life, with Death, with Grief, with Fate. Dr. John listened, saying little. He and she then told me of changes ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... substance as at the time of making that statute: for at this day the dwellers and inhabitants of the same cities and boroughs are commonly bakers, vintners, fishmongers, and other victuallers, and there remain few others to bear the offices." Men have such a propensity to exalt past times above the present, that it seems dangerous to credit this reasoning of the parliament without further evidence to support it. So different are the views in which the same object appears, that some may be inclined to draw an opposite inference ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... in the line of Alexander's march. He dwelt there, at the court of the sovereign, soon after the time that Megasthenes was there; and he wrote a report of what he saw and learned. But it is sad to find, in our search for what is valuable in the history of past times, that the information gained on this interesting journey of discovery is ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... easily conceive how certain minds must be swayed and bent by some of these long, involved, but firm and vehement passages. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting one or two pages. The writer is referring to the great literary relics of past times:— ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... to be said of all the rest. Our knowledge of History, of Geography, of men of past times, of the boundaries of countries, of cities, of people, of everything, must come from ourselves. And, further yet, according as we have been careful to see in the right way and to do in the right way while we were under instruction in school, so ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... middle Tertiary times at all events, an equable temperate climate, with a luxuriant vegetation, extended to far within the arctic circle, over what are now barren wastes, covered for ten months of the year with snow and ice. The arctic zone has, therefore, been in past times capable of supporting almost all the forms of life of our temperate regions; and we must take account of this condition of things whenever we have to speculate on the possible migrations of organisms between the old and ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... prose the century began with the historical novelist, Sir Walter Scott, full of lore and knowledge, reconstructor and astonishing reviver of past times, more especially the Middle Ages, imbuing all his characters with life, and even in some measure vitalising the objects he evoked. None more than he, not even Byron, has enjoyed such continuous appreciation with both French romantic poets and also ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... manifested for the faith of the Prophet of Allah. They call themselves by the same name as the Christians of the North, yet there is as much difference between their Christianity and that of Wesley or of Channing, as between creeds that in past times have vowed mutual extermination. Still we must not call them barbarians because they cherish an institution hostile to civilization. Their highest culture stands out all the more brilliantly from the dark background of ignorance against which it is seen; but it would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... life the better for seeing the place where it had been spent—where she had loved and suffered. Mr. Bronte was a most courteous host; and when he was with us,—at breakfast in his study, or at tea in Charlotte's parlour,—he had a sort of grand and stately way of describing past times, which tallied well with his striking appearance. He never seemed quite to have lost the feeling that Charlotte was a child to be guided and ruled, when she was present; and she herself submitted to this with a quiet ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... invariable specific for shingles—a painful, dangerous malady common amongst them, and to cure it living toads are applied to the inflamed parb. I dare say learned physicians would laugh at this cure, but then, if I mistake not, the learned have in past times laughed at other specifics used by the vulgar, but which now have honourable places in the pharmacopoeia— pepsine, for example. More than two centuries ago (very ancient times for South America) the gauchos were accustomed to take the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... glorious to live! Even in one thought The wisdom of past times to fit together, And from the luminous minds of many men Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye, Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets Of the star-crowded universe, is ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... existing conditions the historical antecedents of which are to be traced. If this is done, the student forthwith secures a vital interest and feels that he is trying to understand his own rather than past times. After this preliminary the past can be traced chronologically or topically as preferred, the textbook serving as a quarry for data, the teacher seeing to it that the change or progress toward the present condition is perceived and understood, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... and natural talent, and as she was very old, and had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the least exaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures of the past age. If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting the past times, it is very much from the studies with which she presented me. She connected a long period of time with the present generation, for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person who perfectly recollected the battle of Dunbar and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent entry into Edinburgh." ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... of Revelation, as if no part of theological teaching were true which cannot bring its express text, as it is called, from Scripture, and authorities from the Fathers or profane writers,—whereas there are numberless facts in past times which we cannot deny, for they are indisputable, though history is silent about them. I suppose, on this score, we ought to deny that the round towers of this country had any origin, because history does not disclose ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... and began to walk up and down the room. Ellen soon came to his side, and leaning upon his arm, as she had been used to do in past times, walked up and down with ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... were scarce in bleeding France, and all sorts of ways were used to raise them. In the past times when Louis XIV had by relentless extravagance and wars depleted the purse, he caused the patiently wrought precious metals to be melted into bullion. Why not now resort to a similar method? So thought a minister of one of the Two Chambers, and suggested the burning of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... indeed some repetitions always lawful, because they never deceive. He that writes the history of past times, undertakes only to decorate known facts by new beauties of method or of style, or at most to illustrate them by his own reflections. The author of a system, whether moral or physical, is obliged to nothing beyond care of selection and regularity of disposition. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... greatest achievement of past times, yet found a speedy decision in two actions by sea and two by land. The Peloponnesian War was prolonged to an immense length, and, long as it was, it was short without parallel for the misfortunes that it brought upon Hellas. ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... patron, or to ask his advice and assistance in their affairs, the lad would stand by his father's chair and make acquaintance with his humble friends. When the hall was thrown open, and high festival was held, he would be present and hear the talk on public affairs or on past times. He would listen to and sometimes take part in the songs which celebrated great heroes. When the body of some famous soldier or statesman was carried outside the walls to be buried or burned, he would be taken to hear the oration pronounced over ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... come forward in his own person, when all the legal danger had long passed away, to claim a distinction that for him (among the vainest of men) must have been more precious than his heart's blood? The two questions, B and C, I have examined in past times, and I will not here repeat my explanations further than to say, with respect to the last, that the reason for the author not claiming his own property was this, because he dared not; because it would ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the old clergyman, staring strangely around him. "Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their burials, one after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... instituting these reforms? He has raised a hornets' nest about him. Those who surround the Governor-General at Calcutta say, 'We might as well have the Governors of the Presidencies independent, if they are to do as they like without consulting the Governor-General as has been done in past times' The Friend of India is a journal not particularly scrupulous in supporting the Calcutta Government, but it has a horror of any Government of India except that of the Governor-General and the few individuals who surround him. A writer in ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... time immemorial grown upon them, which have hitherto depressed their energies, and left them the sport and passive creatures of circumstance. If they have sunk into a state of listlessness, in the first place, from the oppression which their ancestors endured in past times—and if they have continued in that state, from a variety of causes, some of which are faintly shadowed forth in the preceding pages, I yet hope, and most devoutly hope, that the hour and the day are arrived for the first step towards regeneration to be taken. ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... repeated in his three sons. They told his stories precisely as he did himself, taking as long in the telling and making the points in exactly the same way. By and by they will come to think that they themselves were of those past times. Already the young ones look like contemporaries ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... a world which derived its heat wholly or chiefly from that source. Whether the high temperature which prevailed on the earth during the deposition of the coal measures was derived from internal heat it is impossible to say; it is evident that the temperature of the earth's surface has been in past times, and perhaps is now, modified by causes which no scientific research has been enabled to detect [Footnote: Since the sun's secular motion has been known, astronomers have suggested that the solar system has been ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... definition; it was not a thing of limitations and goals and ends; he could feel nothing of this—the philosophic temperament was absent in him. Life had no deep truth for him, no underlying mysteries; he did not dream of past times, and he placed few hopes in the future; life was a thing to be enjoyed in the moment of living, and the present moment was a very pleasant one. He leaned over the doors of the hansom resting his gloved hand ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... mind of our Moslem friend, from the popular belief current in India that the Feringhis are men of no caste, without religious faith or ceremonies—a belief which the conduct and demeanour of the Anglo-Indians in past times tended, in too many instances, to confirm. Off the southern extremity of Ceylon, the ship was again becalmed for several days; but the tedium of this interval was relieved, not only by the ordinary sea incidents of the capture of a shark and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... talking with me of old friends and past times, we warmed ourselves into a wish, that all who remained of the club should meet and dine at the house which once was Horseman's, in Ivy-lane. I have undertaken to solicit you, and therefore desire you to tell ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... regard to the moral and spiritual merits or demerits of Becket, as a subject of the realm and a Christian minister. It is, moreover, only by becoming familiar in all their details with some such remains of past times, that we can form any adequate idea of the great and deplorable extent to which the legends had banished the reading and expounding of Holy Scriptures from our churches; and also how much the praises of mortal man had encroached upon those ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the reader; but it may be worth while to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was opened and shut, anyone ascending was left for a moment in bewildering darkness. He had to grope the way by his feet feeling the stairs, and by his hand laid on the central stone shaft which had been polished to the smoothness of marble by countless other hands of past times. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... his fall was a suspension of the payment of the interest on the debt, which was the commencement of bankruptcy. This minister has been the most blamed because he came last. Inheriting the faults, the embarrassments of past times, he had to struggle with the difficulties of his position with insufficient means. He tried intrigue and oppression; he banished, suspended, disorganized parliament; everything was an obstacle to him, nothing aided ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... Mr. Everett has said upon this subject were true, it would amount after all only to an argument ad prejudicium, for the Jews of past times, who believed the dreams of the Rabbies, but is of no weight whatever with those who reject them, as do all the Biblical critics of ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... quite recovered enough. I want some present interest to occupy me. My thoughts are beginning to drift back to past times, and to things which are better forgotten." A sudden contraction crossed his livid face. He looked hard at his son, and entered abruptly on a new question. "Julius!" he resumed, "have you ever heard of a young woman ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... blacksmith, smiling at the curiosity he had excited, "a young lady opened the door to me, but so lovely, so beautifully and gracefully dressed, that you would have taken her for a beautiful portrait of past times. Before I could say a word, she exclaimed, 'Ah! dear me, sir, you have brought back Frisky; how happy Miss Adrienne will be! Come, pray come in instantly; she would so regret not having an opportunity to thank you in person!' And without giving me time to reply, she beckoned me to follow her. Oh, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... amount of service to be exacted with great precision, so that it was in the nature of a moderate personal tax. No Peruvian was to be required to change his place of residence, from the climate to which he had been accustomed, to another; a fruitful source of discomfort, as well as of disease, in past times. By these various regulations, the condition of the natives, though not such as had been contemplated by the sanguine philanthropy of Las Casas, was improved far more than was compatible with the craving ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the heavenly profitability was cut off by this collapse of superstition, or eclipse of faith—call it which you will—the habit of pleasurable moving remained; stronger by the force of repeated custom throughout all past times: we keep the shell, but we cunningly substitute a new kernel in the place of the exploded core ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... me where the girl is concerned. But it will go hard if I do not have her in the end, and I shall if she is to be got; for the men of my blood soon make up their minds when they want a thing, and they do not rest much until it's theirs. This peculiarity has often landed them in trouble in past times, and may land me in trouble now; but I'm ready for the risk, as ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... lands are seeking the Holy Grail, and finding it in forgetfulness of self and in sacrifice for their fellows. You and I are living to-day among the deeds of men that make the deeds of the heroes of past times pale into insignificance. Never were there bred men of such large and heroic mould as the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... yet it is this same Thou which occasions man to forget that selfish I, and in which lies his purest part; his best happiness! To be sure it may seem grand, it may be quite ecstatic, even if it be only for a moment, to fill the world with one's name; but as, in long-past times, millions and millions of men united themselves to build a temple to the Supreme, and then themselves sank silently, namelessly, to the dust, having only inscribed His name and His glory; certainly that was greater, that ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... considerations, the methods of study and recitation may be such as to emphasize appreciation rather than power, an emotional readiness to assimilate the experiences of others, rather than enlightened and trained capacity to carry forward those values which in other conditions and past times made those experiences worth having. At all events, separation between instruction and character continues in our schools (in spite of the efforts of individual teachers) as a result of divorce between ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... down the next day and writes a leader on the great shipwrecks of past times, the raft scene and the ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... whether they be printed by ALDUS or CAXTON—if a brighter lustre can thence be thrown upon the pages of modern learning! To trace genius to its source, or to see how she has been influenced or modified by the lore of past times, is both a pleasing and profitable pursuit. To see how Shakspeare, here and there, has plucked a flower from some old ballad or popular tale, to enrich his own unperishable garland;—to follow Spenser and Milton in their delightful labyrinths 'midst the splendour of Italian literature; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... extension of a temple, he was required to perform the ceremony of laying a stone with his own hand. But he always found time to hunt in the desert, to manage the affairs of state, and to visit the most interesting monuments of past times, and at Memphis especially, the city of the dead, with the Pyramids, the great Sphinx, the Serapeum and the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... across Reding whether perhaps, after all, what is called Evangelical Religion was not the true Christianity: its professors, he knew, were active and influential, and in past times had been much persecuted. Freeborn had surprised and offended him at Bateman's breakfast-party before the Vacation; yet Freeborn had a serious manner about him, and perhaps he had misunderstood him. The thought, however, passed away as suddenly as it came, and perhaps ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... He had his own good reasons for preventing any revelations as to the secret uses to which Kilgorman had been put in past times. ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... only in name; yet we visit a spot well adapted to the purposes to which it was appropriated. Sequestered, surrounded by pleasing objects, and dignified by the not uncertain evidences of history, it offers to the thinking mind all those interesting sensations which a review of past times, important events, and manners now no more, ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... Central Australian aborigines regard as sacred and to the performance of which they devote so much time and labour? At first sight they are simply commemorative services, designed to represent the ancestors as they lived and moved in the far-past times, to recall their adventures, of which legend has preserved the memory, and to set them dramatically before the eyes of their living descendants. So far, therefore, the dramas might be described as purely historical in intention, if not in reality. But there ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... her there to consult with my shister, did she think there was any thing in it, and my shister thought I was blind to be asking her the question, and I thought my shister must see more into it than I did; and recollecting all past times and every thing, I changed my mind, and came over to her way of thinking, and we settled it that Judy was very like to be my Lady Rackrent after all, if a vacancy ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... and they honored its expounders and administrators. They do not believe that the world can be made over or made better by any man or by any preaching. They are by instinct conservative, holding on with tenacity to the ideas and institutions that have grown up in past times and that are expressions of the needs of society and of its adjustment to the forces that play upon it. This is why the law, which is the embodiment of these conservative forces, meets with their respect and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... are of considerable interest when we apply them retrospectively. If it be true that the sun is at this moment shrinking, then in past times his globe must have been greater than it is at present. Assuming the figures already given, it follows that one hundred years ago the diameter of the sun must have been nearly six miles greater than it is now; one thousand years ago the diameter was fifty-seven miles ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... rejoicing everywhere in the City. Many of the electrical amusements provided appear grander from the contrast with the darkness they are made to displace—a contrast scarcely greater than that depicted by our "Nature Delineators" when, in allegory, they paint the present contrasted with past times; the later years of my reign ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... the philosophy of the Upani@sads it may be worth while to say a few words as to the reason why diverse and even contradictory explanations as to the real import of the Upani@sads had been offered by the great Indian scholars of past times. The Upani@sads, as we have seen, formed the concluding portion of the revealed Vedic literature, and were thus called the Vedanta. It was almost universally believed by the Hindus that the highest truths could only ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... of a woman who was nursing her, she sent for two men who in past times had been favoured lovers. They came to her at once, whilst her husband was gone away to fetch a doctor and an apothecary, as she had ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... legal treatment of the deaf, however, in past times has not been as severe as has been often supposed. Both the Justinian Code and the Civil Law, as well as the Common Law, granted a number of rights to the deaf, these being in some cases as far as the policy of the law would permit. In a ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... Archaeology, Sir James Simpson has indicated two lines of research, from which additional data and facts for the elucidation of past times might be expected—viz. researches beneath the surface of the earth, and researches among older works and manuscripts. By the former he meant the careful and systematised examinations in which the spade and pickaxe are so important, and have done such ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... the Rothamsted experiments that the process goes on best in fields lying in bare fallow; and in this fact lies the explanation of one of the many reasons why the practice of leaving fields in bare fallow, so common in past times, and still practised in the case of clay soils in some parts of the country, was so beneficial to the land thus treated. But despite this fact, the practice of leaving soils in bare fallow can scarcely be justified from this point of view, as the loss of nitrates through the action of rain is ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... did. But his practical mind told him that inaction could not help the world, and that to find a remedy for the nation's ills, their cause must first be learned. This could only be done by historical study. He therefore devoted himself to the study of past times, edited in later life the Book of History, and compiled the work called Spring and Autumn, a history of his native state from 722 to 481 B.C. To bring again the golden days of Yao and Shun a return must be made to ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... European scholarship, whether German, or French, or English; and it is saying much, when we say of the work before us, that it is equal to the demands of the critical age in which it appears, and that in just estimate of historical testimony, and in true appreciation of the spirit of past times, it is as superior to its predecessors as, in these very points, the nineteenth century is in advance of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... In past times, when we have visited Miss Lavinia, we have been fairly meek and decorous guests, following the programme that she planned with such infinite attention to detail that free will was impossible, and we often felt like ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... shout, and then, looking kindly at me, said, "Ay, you have done quite right—that you have, cousin, to wake me. I have had a very ugly dream, and it's all solely owing to this room and that hall, for they made me think of past times and many wonderful things that have happened here. But now let us turn to and have a good sound sleep." Therewith the old gentleman rolled himself in the bed-covering and appeared to fall asleep at once. But when I had extinguished the candles and likewise crept into bed, I heard ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... mother, of old times, and of Anne Catherick. Miss Fairlie's recollections of the little scholar at Limmeridge were, however, only of the most vague and general kind. She remembered the likeness between herself and her mother's favourite pupil, as something which had been supposed to exist in past times; but she did not refer to the gift of the white dresses, or to the singular form of words in which the child had artlessly expressed her gratitude for them. She remembered that Anne had remained at ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Kingdom depends not only upon the King and the laws and ordinances of the Kingdom, but also upon the loyal obedience of the subjects. And the subjects of "The Kingdom of Heaven" have, in past times, so far forgotten this duty, that it has come to pass that for centuries the great branches of the Church of Christ have had little, if any, outward communion or fellowship with one another. And in our ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... question will be somewhat of a staggerer to those who from distance, or from want of close observation, regard the Chinese as a down-trodden people, on a level with the Fellahin of Egypt in past times. For the answer, so far as my own experience goes, is that only so much can be got out of the Chinese people as the people themselves are ready and willing to pay. In other words, with all their show of an autocratic ruler and a paternal ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... Jackson," I gave him, at his request, my impressions as a child, of the great man, with whom we were daily and intimately associated, and now transfer those impressions from that great work, "Parton's Life of Jackson," to the pages of this unpretentious record of past times. ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... respecting the canon is given by Josephus towards the end of the first century A.D. "For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, ... but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine. And of them five belong to Moses.... But as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, the prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... the woman began to chatter something about an oracle of Apollo. There was, she said, a hole in the rock, from which in past times, perhaps more than a hundred years ago, the oracle used ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... on the unleavened bread and the roasted lamb, and they sat down to eat, in a state of contentment and with harmless talk. The old Eleazar spoke of past times, and contrasted them with them the present: "Man born of a woman lives but a short time, and is full of trouble; he cometh up like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth hence like a shadow, and continueth not. A stranger and a sojourner is he upon earth, and therefore he should be always ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... with his deceit and wrong: somehow he could not bring himself to call it by its true name, crime, and fasten it on the man there and then. There was a high-bred delicacy about David Lawrence, a little of the old knightly chivalry that in past times held a man back from striking a fallen foe. And then he was not quite sure. The dishonorable work lay between the two men, and he forbore to ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... purchased with a view of protecting the Shakespeare autograph (as I was informed in the Museum), turned out to have the autograph of Ben Jonson in the fly-leaf. Leigh Hunt relates of Lord Byron that Montaigne was the only great writer of past times whom he read with avowed satisfaction. Other coincidences, not needful to be mentioned here, concurred to make this old Gascon still new ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... business of the Government should have been to replace these unsecured tokens with uniform and sound media of exchange. But instead of performing that duty the Meiji statesmen saw themselves compelled to follow the evil example set by the fiefs in past times. Government notes were issued. They fell at the outset to a discount of fifty per cent, and various devices, more or less despotic, were employed to compel their circulation at par. By degrees, however, the Government's ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... is, I feel out of spirits now if I think of papa; I am not easy in my mind about him. When he is very much interested, there is a quivering in his face which I don't remember in past times. He seems to have got older and thinner, all on a sudden. He shouts (which he never used to do) when he threatens sinners at sermon-time. Being in dreadful earnest about our souls, he is of course obliged to ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... enormous area now covered by the Pacific has been deepened thousands of feet, since the present inhabitants of that sea came into existence. Thus there is not a shadow of a reason for believing that the physical changes of the globe, in past times, have been effected by other than natural causes. Is there any more reason for believing that the concomitant modifications in the forms of the living inhabitants of the globe have been brought about ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... do so. For in past times men have tried to explain the making of the world around them, its oceans, rivers, mountains, and continents, by I know not what of fancied cataclysms and convulsions of nature; explaining the unknown by the still more unknown, till some of their geological theories were ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... pursued, our duty to our fellow-men would require that we should follow in the same direction, at whatever loss or inconvenience to ourselves. Should it, however, prove that the condition of the poor negro has been impaired and not improved, it will then become proper to enquire what have been in past times the circumstances under which men have become more free, with a view to ascertain wherein lies the deficiency, and why it is that freedom now so obviously declines in various and important portions of the earth. These things ascertained, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... his prophecies are not fulfilled, and his kingdom is only that of a moral teacher and example. And all this, in spite of the fact that the Epistle to the Hebrews bears upon its front the declaration that "God, who in past times spoke to the fathers through the prophets, has in these last days spoken through his Son," whom this same Epistle then proceeds to describe as the effulgence of God's glory and the very image of his substance, the Creator, ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... intervene for a very few moments. I was moved a great deal by that sentence in the speech of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in which he said that the one bright spot in the situation was the changed feeling in Ireland. In past times, when this empire has been engaged in these terrible enterprises it is true—it would be the utmost affectation and folly on my part to deny it—the sympathy of the Nationalists of Ireland, for reasons to be found deep down in centuries of history, has been estranged from this country. But allow ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... wholesome, an inner nature which is morally diseased. In the last of these typical men, I saw reflected—Nugent. In the first—Oscar. All that was feeblest and poorest in Oscar's nature had shown itself on the surface in past times, to the concealment of its stronger and its nobler side. There had been something hidden in this supersensitive man, who had shrunk under all the small trials of his life in our village, which had proved firm enough, when the greatness ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... given me, and procure his interference. My fate is sealed, irrevocably sealed! And do you wonder that I tremble at the change I am about to undergo, the awful change, from maid to wife? Barbara, good maid, let me see no more of tears, but smiles, as in past times. And now I entreat you both, sweet friends, (for that humble girl has a heart formed by tenderness for what is more exalted—friendship,) leave me. You, my dear Lady Frances, will to-day, for my sake, and for his, be as much as possible with my father; he must grieve ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... political environment, to have some appreciation of the nature of the state and society, some sense of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, some capacity in dealing with political and governmental questions, something of the broad and tolerant spirit which is bred by the study of past times and conditions." ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... necessary, in consequence of serious disease, to remove the entire stomach or a large part of the intestines, the digestive functions have been perfectly performed. It is not that our organs are at fault, but our habits of life differ from that of our progenitors. In past times, when a simple dietary in which flesh food formed little or no part, and to-day, in those countries where one wholly or nearly all derived from vegetable sources and simply prepared is the rule, diseases of the digestive organs are rare. The Englishman going to a tropical country and partaking ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... Star-Fish closely, and they called it Asterias; but even Aristotle was ignorant of its true structural relations, and alludes only to its motion and general appearance. Some account of the gradual steps by which naturalists have deciphered the true nature of these lowest Echinoderms and their history in past times may not be without interest, and is very instructive as showing bow such problems ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... be asked, "Why should we for ever be looking back at past times? were men perfect then? is it not possible to improve on the knowledge then possessed?" Let us ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... are interested in the theatrical celebrities of past times will do well to read a brief, indeed, a too brief paper, about DOROTHY JORDAN, written by FITZGERALD MOLLOY, for The English Illustrated Magazine of this month. The Baron does not remember if THACKERAY touched on the story ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... pocket-book and read from a memorandum: 'Should M. Kostalergi refuse your offer, or think it insufficient, on no account let the negotiation take any turn of acrimony or recrimination. He has rendered me great services in past times, and it will be for himself to determine whether he should do or say what should in any way bar our future ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the manatee having in past times possessed a wider range than at present seems to have been overlooked. But as a matter of fact the probability that the manatee ever ranged, in comparatively modern times at least, as far north as Ohio without leaving other traces of its presence ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... may have been even bolder in the conception, and more brilliant in the execution. Some states have fallen after a nobler struggle, others have risen with more exalted strides. Nor are we here to look for eminent heroes, colossal talents, or those marvelous exploits which the history of past times presents in such rich abundance. Those times are gone, such men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement, we have suffered the energetic powers to become enervated which those ages called into action and rendered indispensable. With admiring awe, we wonder at these gigantic images ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... individuals who suffered. Sympathy, in its full meaning, was unknown in Old Japan. The barbarous custom of casting out the leper from the home, to wander a lonely exile, living on the charity of strangers, is not unknown even to this day. We are told that in past times the "people were governed by such strong aversion to the sight of sickness that travelers were often left to die by the roadside from thirst, hunger, or disease; and householders even went the length of thrusting out of doors and abandoning to utter ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... in the Spanish race has been shown in their mining methods, and the native population of Mexico, and in a larger scale of Peru, suffered severely at their hands. Guanajuato, one of the most famous and richest of the mining centres of Mexico—in past times as to-day—bears in its archives the stories of oppression which marked the methods of the Spaniards, and may be taken as a concrete example. It was a system of slavery under which these mines were worked—an ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... ravage it is vain to speak; my words will not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past times or not. We have no right whatever to touch them. They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their right in them: that which they laboured ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... object, then, is to bring the mind into such a condition of training and cultivation that it shall be a perfect mirror of past times, and of the present, so far as the incompleteness of the present will permit, 'in true outline and proportion.' Mommsen, Grote, Droysen, fall short of the ideal, because they drugged ancient history with modern politics. The Jesuit ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... private judgment as the standard of equity; in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion; and his laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislators of past times. Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement of antique and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first year of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Scott did not himself find the "muddling work of antiquities" dull, because he realized, emotionally as well as intellectually, the life of past times. This led him to form broader views than the ordinary student constructs out of his knowledge of special facts. An admirable illustration of this characteristic occurs in the essay on Romance, at the point where ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... accurately; but all this gossip about the Rhineland and its vineyards and the vintages there and in France, sounded fascinatingly novel. And she knew where Italy was on the map; but Italy's skies, and soft air, and mementos of past times of history and art, were unknown; and she listened with ever-quickening attention. The result of the whole at last was a mortifying sense that she knew nothing. These people, her friend and this other, lived in a world of mental impressions ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... that strange urge of the auction, to bid and to buy. A rare possession indeed, not without a high, stern kind of beauty! It would be wonderful to possess such a faith; but what had I to offer that Shadowy Auctioneer? What coin that would redeem past times and departed beliefs? ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... smock over my head, or the lord that steadieth my chair's back while I eat, or the other that looketh to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem and estate than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times, and will as safely and surely set me down among the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... given to the favored few is of a practical and useful kind, may be conjectured from the following extract from M. Jonnes's work. After speaking of the many libraries, schools, colleges, and universities, the creation of past times, but which still exist, he remarks, that "these institutions were intended for a state of society which had nothing in common with that of the present day. The kind of instruction afforded in them, confined as it is to prayer, church discipline, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the case, that, being hospitably entertained, and happening to pass the night in a stranger's house, you are so unfortunate as to detect unquestionable proofs of some dreadful crime, say murder, perpetrated in past times by one of the family. The principle at issue is the same in both cases: viz., the command resting upon the conscience to forget private consideration and personal feelings in the presence of any solemn duty; yet merely the difference of degree, and not any at all in the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... to drink whisky!" We have yet to learn that whisky-drinking among women is an element of good style in any class of English society. The idea that Spanish ladies were in the habit of smoking in past times is a mistake. If they do so now it is an instance of the race for "el high life," of which the ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... physical status of the women of Christendom has been gradually deteriorating; that their mental energies were uncertain and spasmodic; that they were prematurely care-worn, wrinkled, and enervated; that they became subject to a host of diseases scarcely ever known to the professional men of past times, but now familiar to, and the common talk of, the matrons, and often, indeed, of the youngest females ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... with a kind of savage intensity. At last he turned away and I caught the expression on his face.... With a slight shiver, I let down the flap noiselessly. There was something in that expression that for me remains unnamable; and I think now, as I look back into those past times, that of all the signs which showed me that the Sarakoff-Harden bacillus was an offence against humanity, that strange look on the nonagenarian's face was the most terrible ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... was a picturesque system, and John Randolph, poet and tory, revelled in the recollection of it. "Our Egyptian taskmasters," he would say, meaning the manufacturers of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England, "only wish to leave us the recollection of past times, and insist upon our purchasing their vile domestic stuffs; but it won't do: no ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... evening of the fifth November his thoughts of Eustacia were intense. Echoes from those past times when they had exchanged tender words all the day long came like the diffused murmur of a seashore left miles behind. "Surely," he said, "she might have brought herself to communicate with me before now, and confess honestly what Wildeve ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... In short, all the remains of animals and plants hidden in the rocks have something to tell of the climatic conditions and the general circumstances under which they lived, and the study of fossils is to the naturalist a thermometer by which he reads the variations of temperature in past times, a plummet by which he sounds the depths of the ancient oceans,—a register, in fact, of all the important physical ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... some of his own experiences and the current beliefs of the tribe. At the same time these traditional accounts doubtless exercise a potent influence on the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the people. In Tinguian society, where custom still holds undisputed sway, these well-known tales of past times must tend to cast into the same mould any new facts or experiences which come ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... another detail, we are reminded, of course, of the difference between our own and past times in mimic as in real life. For Prynne one of the great horrors of the stage was the introduction of actresses from France by Henrietta Maria, to take the place of young [84] male actors of whom Dr. Doran ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... good; which had been the object of search in all systems, the end for which all earnest spirits had ever yearned. This faculty, "the reason" or intuition, thus became the guide, by the light of which he was able to thread his way through the manifold systems of thought of past times.(977) Not content with applying it to other subjects, he carried it also into the domain of revealed religion. It was the engine by which he hoped to get a view of the truth which the ancient writers of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... continued their good work. It was one of the cardinal points of their creed, that it was not good for the criminals to have much intercourse with their friends outside. In past times unlimited beer had been carried into Newgate; at least the quantity so disposed of was only limited by the amount of ready cash or credit at the disposal of the criminals and their friends. This had been stopped with the happiest results, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, "Natura non facit saltum." This canon, if we look to the present inhabitants alone of the world, is not strictly correct; but if we include all those of past times, whether known or unknown, it must on this theory be ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... for the "country"; to Jimmie the "country" had let itself be lost, suppressed, taken over by the capitalists, the "plutes". Jimmie's sense of loyalty was not to his country, but to his class, which had been exploited, hounded, driven from pillar to post. In past times the government had allowed itself to be used by corporations; so now it was in vain that the President made appeals for justice and democracy, using the beautiful language of idealism. Jimmie did not believe that he meant it; or anyhow, Wall ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... qualify himself for the black art, and as fit and proper person to appear at the Bar. The length of time that had elapsed since our last meeting was sufficient inducement for us to crack a bottle together; 92so taking his arm, we proceeded to the place of destination, where we sat talking over past times, and indulging our humour till half-past one o'clock, when I sallied forth on my return to Long's, having altogether abandoned my original intention of calling in Golden-square. At the corner of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... any one to whom I would sooner turn for consolation in my most vapourish moments. The truth is, I have 'no lack of argument' to ponder upon of the most gloomy description, but this arises from other causes. Some day or other, when we are veterans, I may tell you a tale of present and past times; and it is not from want of confidence that I do not now,—but—but—always a but to the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the commencement of night, when seated at my fire, all my thoughts seemed riveted to the progress and success of my journey, and to the new objects we had met with during the day. I had then to compel myself to think of absent friends and past times, and the thought that they supposed me dead or unsuccessful in my enterprize, brought me back immediately to my favourite object. Much, indeed the greater portion, of my journey had been occupied in long reconnoitring rides; and he who is thus occupied is ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... house was, nor seemed built for war, But rather like the work of other days, When men, in better peace than now they are, Had leisure on the world around to gaze, And noted well the past times' changing ways; And fair with sculptured stories it was wrought, By lapse of time ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... indeed, did I experience intervals that approached madness, despair, and horror: beholding myself destitute of friend or protector, the Empress herself, for whose sake I suffered, deserting me; reflecting on past times and past prosperity; remembering how the good and virtuous, from the cruel nature of my punishment, must be obliged to conclude me a wretch and a villain, and that all means of justification were cut off: O God! How did my heart beat! with what violence! What would I not have undertaken, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... slaves or Mamlukes, trained to serve their captors in arms against their own countrymen. With forces thus constituted, did Al-mansur, in whom once more shone forth the spirit of the Arab conquerors of past times, invade the Christian territories in each spring and autumn for twenty-six successive years, carrying the Moslem arms in triumph even to the shores of the "Green Sea," (Atlantic Ocean,) and into regions which Tarik and Musa had never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... far, and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many battles and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be no wiser. Most people look at past times as princes look at foreign countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has hunted with the master of the stag-hounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and a knight ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... what she was saying," I said to myself. "Her words were not casual," but not daring to ask her if she intended to make me her happiness, I spoke about the landscape. "You ask me why I like the landscape? Because it carries me back into past times when men believed in nymphs and in satyrs. I have always thought it must be a wonderful thing to believe in the dryad. Do you know that men wandering in the woods sometimes used to catch sight of a white breast between the leaves, and henceforth they ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... there are about one hundred and twenty. The number may vary on one side or the other, but this is a fair estimate. That is the sum total of the orders of all the animals which we know now, and which have been known in past times, and left remains behind. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... to estimate the amount or direction of the movements due to volcanic power by no means renders its efficacy as a land-preserving force in past times a mere matter of conjecture. The student will see in Chapter 24 that we have proofs of Carboniferous forests hundreds of miles in extent which grew on the lowlands or deltas near the sea, and which subsided and gave place to other forests, until in some regions fluviatile ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... over them with a sense of personal disgrace in them, and to this day I have no patience with that code of the world which relaxes itself in behalf of the brilliant and gifted offender; rather he should suffer more blame. The worst of the literature of past times, before an ethical conscience began to inform it, or the advance of the race compelled it to decency, is that it leaves the mind foul with filthy images and base thoughts; but what I have been trying to say is that the boy, unless he is exceptionally depraved beforehand, is saved from these ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to ask me questions about England, Montenegro's friend in past times of trouble, and seemed surprised to hear that I had seen snow before I ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... closing passage of the "Introduction" referred to in the above letter Lord Russell gives a modest estimate of his own career: "My capacity I always felt was very inferior to that of the men who have attained in past times the foremost place in our Parliament, and in the Councils of our Sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always forbearing and ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Gilbert Blane, and others of the English navy and army, it is evident that the scorbutic condition of the system, especially in crowded ships and camps, is most favorable to the origin and spread of foul ulcers and hospital gangrene. As in the present case of Andersonville, so also in past times when medical hygiene was almost entirely neglected, those two diseases were almost universally associated in crowded ships. In many cases it was very difficult to decide at first whether the ulcer was a simple ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the roads once more available for travelling, the Fair of the locality was looked forward to with interest. Fairs were among the most important institutions of past times, and were rendered necessary by the imperfect road communications. The right of holding them was regarded as a valuable privilege, conceded by the sovereign to the lords of the manors, who adopted all manner of devices ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... voluptuous and dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise.' Johnson's Works, viii. 57. Writing to Mrs. Thrale on July 8, 1771, he says, 'I would have been glad to go to Hagley [close to Stourbridge] for I should have had the opportunity of recollecting past times, and wandering per montes notos et flumina nota, of recalling the images of sixteen, and reviewing my conversations with poor Ford.' Piozzi Letters, i. 42. See also post, May ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in flames. Were a Protestant vintner to sell his ale beneath a picture of Catholics burning in hell, I fear we should never hear the last of it. But I must say, that these pictures seemed the production of past times. They were one and all sorely faded, as if their owners were beginning to be somewhat ashamed of them, or lacked zeal to repair them. The conducteur of the stage had an Italian translation of Mr Gladstone's ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... truth—the Sequoia was a well developed race 10,000,000 of years ago. It became one of a large family, including fourteen genera. The master genus—the Sequoia—alone includes thirty extinct species. It was distributed in past times through Canada, Alaska, Greenland, British Columbia, across Siberia, and down into southern Europe. The Ice Age, and perhaps competition with other trees more successful in seeding down, are responsible ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... for themselves and afford an incontestable proof of the value of punishment as a remedial measure when other remedies have failed.[33] In the re-action which is now in full force, and rightly so, against the excessive punishments of past times, there is a marked tendency among some minds to go to the opposite extreme, and an attempt is being made to show that imprisonment has hardly any curative effect at all. Its evils, and from the very ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... walk through this Exhibition is an object-lesson in a great many things besides aesthetics; it forces one to ask a good many of Tolstoi's angriest questions; but it enables one also, if duly familiar with the art of past times, to answer them in a ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... a king, they have a president, as we have. And in past times they had brave men who fought to make their country free. One of their great men was William Tell. The Swiss love his name as strongly as we love the name of ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... of us at least, the material aspect has given place to one in which poetry and enthusiasm prevail. To such among us the associations of past times are very dear. Cheops, to me, ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... many as to need some consideration. I shall not attempt to repel the objection by decrying books. Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, as is sometimes said, but lives in them perpetually. But we need not many books to answer the great ends of reading. A few are better than many, and a little time given to a faithful study of the few will be enough to quicken thought and enrich the mind. The ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the heavenly bodies through great telescopes is so wide-spread that we are apt to forget how much can be seen and done with small ones. The fact is that a large proportion of the astronomical observations of past times have been made with what we should now regard as very small instruments, and a good deal of the solid astronomical work of the present time is done with meridian circles the apertures of which ordinarily range from four to eight inches. One of the most ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... civilisation, education, race, religion, traditions, customs, and if it be, indeed, the voice of God in man, he cannot but see—in a sense quite different from that intended by the writer—that God "in divers manners spoke in past times". Moreover he observes, as an historical fact, that some of the worst crimes which have disgraced humanity have been done in obedience to the voice of conscience. It is quite clear that Cromwell at Drogheda was ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... sadness, my dear child, did she know its cause. I was wrong to encourage it, but I could not look on these bright features," he laid his hand, which trembled, on Edward's arm, "without seeing again past times peopled with those who have passed away. Mrs. Hamilton, I thought again the merry favourite of my old friend, your father, stood before me, the gay, the thoughtless, lovely Eleanor; she was like him, in the bloom of youth and freshness, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... them to be horses at all; they seemed rather to be specimens of some attenuated heraldic animal, scarcely thick enough through the body to throw a shadow: or enlarged castings of the fire-dog of past times. These poor creatures were endeavouring to make a meal from herbage so trodden and thin that scarcely a wholesome blade remained; the little that there was consisted of the sourer sorts common on such sandy soils, mingled with tufts of heather and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Night in the Company of the first Taste, without shocking any Member of the Society, over-rating his own Part of the Conversation, but equally receiving and contributing to the Pleasure of the whole Company. When one considers such Collections of Companions in past Times, and such as one might name in the present Age, with how much Spleen must a Man needs reflect upon the aukward Gayety of those who affect the Frolick with an ill Grace? I have a Letter from a Correspondent of mine, who desires me to admonish all loud, mischievous, airy, dull ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... account of the cold in winter. Accordingly Champlain examined the whole coast round the Bay of Fundy, and down to Cape Cod, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. But in this region, already visited in past times by French, Spanish, and English ships, they found the natives treacherous and hostile. An unprovoked attack was made on the French after they landed, and several of the seamen were ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... in foreign climes Forget thy home and long past times? Dost wish to be a wand'rer's bride, And all thy thoughts in him confide? Thou canst not traverse mountain seas, Nor bear cold Lapland's freezing breeze; Thou canst not bear the torrid heats, Nor brave the toils a wand'rer meets; Thou wouldst faint, dearest, with fatigue Trav'ling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... exertion, are brought into play within the representation of a few short hours, has an extraordinary charm for every age, sex, and rank, and has ever been the favourite amusement of every cultivated people. Here, princes, statesmen, and generals, behold the great events of past times, similar to those in which they themselves are called upon to act, laid open in their inmost springs and motives; here, too, the philosopher finds subject for profoundest reflection on the nature and constitution of man; with curious eye the artist ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... garden at the farm-house, and Fanny and Mrs. Newton improved it; and Mrs. Newton would walk out, leaning on Fanny's arm, and look at the lilies and roses, and jessamine, and mignonette, and talk of past times, and of their first garden, and their first flowers, and of their first knowledge of the God who made them; who watches the opening bud, and the infant head; who sends his rain upon the plant, and the dew ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, 'Natura non facit saltum.' This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must BY MY THEORY ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... brought home to them as to no other people the tremendous influence of sea-power. Their historians have recalled to them the successive attempts which have been made in past times by German States to create a navy and to obtain colonies, attempts which to our own people are quite unknown, because they never, except in the case of the Hanseatic League, attained to such importance as to figure in the general history of Europe. In the period between 1815 and 1870, ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... blood as well as that of adventurous freemen. There they waited for the recognition they expected and deserved. But the new-born republic was too busy and breathless to seek them out or pause to listen to their voices, which were softer, less insistent than others nearer by. In those far past times the Morleys and the Hertfords were equals and the Walden Place deserved its name of the Great House. The Appointed Way was the Big Road, and was kept in good order by well-fed and contented slaves who had not ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... go back for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at Gleninch," I said. "You agree with me in believing Eustace to be absolutely innocent of the crime for which he was tried. Your evidence at ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... this been? Why is it that I may not think of past times? Why is it that all thought, all memories are denied to me? Who was it that broke the cup at the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of knowledge and the world of books are so related, that all roads cross and converge, like the paths that carry us over the surface of the globe on which we live. Many a reader has learned more of past times from good biographies, than from any formal history; and it is a fact that many owe to the plays of Shakespeare and the novels of Walter Scott nearly all the knowledge which they possess of the history ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... all the dozen cabins, and it will readily be seen that the place gave rise to no very cheerful fancies. I wondered that the Colonel did not have the houses pulled down; they were not a souvenir of past times which I myself should have ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... old age and childhood bend, with prying eyes, to glean the scattered ears. The master looks on his riches, and swells with satisfaction; the busy housewife loads the hospitable board, and hands the mantling ale around; age tells the tale of past times; and the loud laugh and rustic song burst from the lips of jocund youth. Oh! ever thus return to us, with plenty in thy ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the chief endowment of the College arises from land. The College estates lie scattered over most of the eastern side of England, from Yorkshire to Kent. There is no large block of property anywhere. The estates in past times, when means of communication were poor, must have been difficult to visit. In the leases of the more distant farms it was usual to stipulate that the tenant should provide "horse meat and man's meat" for the Master and Bursar and their servants while on a tour of inspection. ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... period of advanced physical knowledge, the reference to what was believed in past times, if at variance with principles now acknowledged, could afford little ground of appeal: in fact, would damage the argument rather ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon |
