"Present moment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her own bedroom, which, from the Aubusson carpet to the Dresden and ormolu appliques, might have arrived in a bonbon box direct from the avenue de l'Opera in Paris. At the present moment two steamer trunks stood gaping in the middle of the floor, tissue paper was scattered about on various chairs, the dressing-table was bare of silver, and a traveling bag displayed a row of gold bottle and brush tops. Nina threw her packages on a couch already littered with empty ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... when it became the English to watch continental intrigues more circumspectly than at the present moment, and to distinguish the politics of the Electorate from the politics of the Nation. The Revolution of France has entirely changed the ground with respect to England and France, as nations; but the German despots, with Prussia at their head, are combining against liberty; and the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... For at the present moment, I will not deny it, the gladness of my heart is too loud for my eloquence, I cannot think for pleasure, delight is master of my soul and bids me rejoice rather than speak. What shall I do? I wish to show my gratitude, but my joy is such that ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... was still smarting from the burden of that information and wondering what spot of the globe would be most endurable at the present moment, Courtney came through the hall ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Faversham, during the last few weeks that you have at the present moment no immediate ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... driven, by necessity, to ask her to relieve it; that he was yet a novice in the arts of solicitation; that he could not possibly think her more worthy of his affection, after a month's service, than at the present moment; and that he entreated her to cast away an occasional thought upon him when her leisure admitted. The Marchioness was not offended, she saw very well that she must require an implicit conformity to the established rule of decorum, when ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the way of the world. Edith had seemed to think that the man was entitled to have a lady of his own to love; and if so, Ada seemed to think that the place would be one very well suited to herself. Therefore she was anxious for the ball; and at the present moment thought only of the difficulties to be incurred by Edith in discussing ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections of their author. To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. He that waits for an opportunity to do much at once, may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... eastward through the storm, Jim Dent was mentally reconstructing all that had led up to the present moment. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... and legs," agreed Sybil. "I shall enjoy thinking it over when I'm home, but I'm ready to drop at the present moment." ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... something certainly interesting at the present moment. Here is the Morning Herald. This is the item: 'Our correspondent at Canterbury states that much excitement has been lately caused in military circles there by an affair of honour—'" "Oh, that is too bad!" ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... reply to Bandrist's observations. Weather conditions meant very little to him at the present moment. His mind was occupied with matters of far ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the last five years in which he has had an account with us he has caused us considerable trouble with regard to his payments. At the present moment he owes us $240 for purchases made approximately six months ago, to recover which amount we have instructed our attorneys to institute ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... if not irretrievably, into the haunts of the barbarous and savage occupants of the country. As the day drew nigher to a close, however, his mind, which was, perhaps, incapable of maturing any connected system of forethought, beyond that which related to the interests of the present moment, became, in some slight degree, troubled with the care of providing for the wants of the hours ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... producing mutations by physico-chemical means. It is true that certain authors claim to have succeeded in this, but the writer wishes to apologise to these authors for his inability to convince himself of the validity of their claims at the present moment. He thinks that only continued breeding of these apparent mutants through several generations can afford convincing evidence that we are here dealing with mutants rather than with ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... insubordination of raw, inexperienced levies. It was in vain, that Alonso de Aguilar reminded them, that their wily enemy was still unconquered; or that he endeavored to force them into the ranks again, and restore order. No one heeded his call, or thought of anything beyond the present moment, and of securing as much booty to himself ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... cultivate with reverence and love, let us betake ourselves to the hanging gardens on our roof. The suns will cake the insufficient earth and parch the delicate roots; the storms will batter and tear the frail creepers. No doubt. But at this present moment all is fair and fragrant. And when the storms have done their wicked worst, and the sun and the frosts—nay, when that roof on which we perch is pulled to pieces, tiles and bricks, and the whole block goes—may there not be, for those caring enough, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... insidious suggestions and allusions, derogatory to their character, contained in the Regulations of Government framed at Manila in the year 1758, and which although modified by orders of the king, are at the present moment still in force, owing to the want of others, and found in a printed form in the hands of every one. Granting that in some particular instances, real causes of complaint might have existed, yet in the end, what does ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... who have tasted disappointments, who have known the pressure of grinding toil for a great many years, whose hearts have been gnawed by harassments and anxieties of different kinds, whose lives are apparently drawing nearer their end than the present moment is to their beginning, the thought, 'Thou shalt rest,' comes with a very different appeal from that which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... parliamentary debate, who was destined to share in proclaiming the dynasty of the house of Orleans had a terrible influence on Pierrette's fate. At the present moment he was bent on making for himself a weapon by founding a newspaper at Provins. After studying the Rogrons at a distance (the colonel aiding him) he had come to the conclusion that the brother might be made useful. This time he was not mistaken; his days of poverty were over, after ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... selected Wallace for the subject of conversation. She descanted with enthusiasm on the rare perfection of his character; told her all that Edwin had related of his actions from the taking of Dumbarton to the present moment; and then bade Helen remark the miracle of such wisdom, valor, and goodness being found in one ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... narrow chance once, and had not our captain been a smart fellow I and many more would have been serving the King at this present moment." ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... gesture of impatience, and her daughter, watching him closely, tried to remember something she had once read about detecting insanity by the expression of the eyes. Those of Mr. Catesby were blue, and the only expression in them at the present moment was one of tender ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... soul were turned upon Nisida, whose birth had caused her mother's death; he loved her with that immoderate love that old people have for the youngest of their children. At the present moment he was gazing upon her with an air of profound rapture, and watching her come and go, as she now joined the groups of children and scolded them for games too dangerous or too noisy; now seated herself on the grass beside their mothers ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pleased to say in regard to sales of bonds during the present month. With the price of bonds at the present moment they cannot of course be sold. The parties will find it necessary to use great caution as well as care in managing the market, so as to get control of it. Any attempt to force the sale of the bonds during this, and, I think, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... once have laid his lenient hand on the passions and pursuits of the present moment, they too shall lose that imaginary value which heated fancy ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... trouble. The word itself is not mentioned in the Constitution. It speaks not of a slave, but of a "person held to service or labor." It neither sanctions nor forbids slavery. It assumes no power in the matter of slavery; and under it, at the present moment, all Congress voting together, with the full consent of the legislatures of thirty-three States, could not constitutionally put down slavery in the remaining thirty-fourth State. In fact ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... the indication that she was looking for as to his attitude towards the fait accompli. Without asking a question she had discovered that husband and wife were divided on the fundamental issue that underlay all others at the present moment. Cicely was weaving social schemes for the future, Yeovil had come home in a frame of mind that threatened the destruction of those schemes, or at any rate a serious hindrance to their execution. The situation presented itself to Joan's ...
— When William Came • Saki
... 4l. 17s. 10 23d. a ton, have been put through for a saving of 1l. 9s. 1 23d. only; or in other words over two-thirds of the gold has gone to waste (for the time being) in the tailings, and in the tailings at the present moment lie the dividends that should have ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... idea of a settlement, our conversation dwelt a good deal. I expressed my opinion that it would be, in many points of view, a measure of dignity and weight, and particularly advantageous to both countries, as it would leave no ground of contest unexplained. But at the same time I thought the present moment unfavourable for such a step, because it ought not to be taken till Government in Ireland recovered its energy; otherwise, I stated that the wildest idea that could be broached in a newspaper would be adopted by those in whom the ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... The administration of justice in France is the most perfect of criminal procedures. No traps are set, for justice proceeds, acts, and speaks with open face, for she is solely intent upon her mission, which is, the discovery of the truth. At the present moment, you are merely inculpated, and in me you must see your protector. But tell the truth, whatever it may be; the final result will be decided at ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... men, yet they were one and all guilty of that prime political blunder, in common with our Whig friends at home, of expecting a set of semi—barbarians to see the beauty of, and to conform to, their newfangled codes of free institutions, for which they were as ready as I am to die at this present moment. Bolivar, in his early fever of patriotism, made the same mistake, although his shrewd mind, in his later career, saw that a despotism, pure or impure—I will not qualify it—was your only government for the savages he had at one time dignified with the name ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... dear heart, that it has been useful up to the present moment, and I have explained to you how it will be continuously useful after he gets ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... not exceed, our modern experience in England and Belgium. It is at all events certain that the vacant spaces available for colonization were very much larger in that age than in ours, while the total population of the world, which at the present moment is probably not more than twelve hundred to fifteen hundred millions, amounted in those days to the big figure ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... acting upon our instructions, offered him a sum of money to betray certain plans of the defences of Grodno, agents of secret police being concealed during the interview. At first he stoutly refused, but next day he met her again and succumbed to the temptation, so at the present moment he is preparing the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... but a looker-on, with certain business interests which politics might affect, and therefore I take some notice of politics. Perhaps I see more clearly than some, my lord—the lookers-on often do; and I am convinced that British policy is at the present moment the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... constrain his thoughts to the present moment. They would go back to the fateful afternoon when he ran across the fields to ask Nora if what Mrs. O'Mara had said of her were true. If he had only waited! If she had come to him to confession on Saturday, as ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... glories of my career as general, nor upon the hope which this enthusiasm of yours inspires. For the whole of what has already been accomplished by us in this war must of necessity be judged in accordance with the issue of the present day. And I see that the present moment is also in our favour, for it will, in all probability, make it easier for us to gain the mastery over the enemy, because their spirit has been enslaved by what has gone before. For when men have often met with misfortune, their ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... general destruction of the margin of energy, one special thing that the new form of city life does to injure poetry is to keep uppermost in men's consciousness a feverish sense of the importance of the present moment. We might call this sense the journalistic spirit of the city. How many typical metropolitans one knows who are forever in a small flutter of excitement over whatever is just happening, like a cub reporter on the way to his first fire, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... natural hypothesis would be to consider the rays as ultra-violet radiations of very short wave-length, or radiations which are in a manner ultra-ultra-violet. This interpretation can still, at this present moment, be maintained, and the researches of MM. Buisson, Righi, Lenard, and Merrit Stewart have even established that rays of very short wave-lengths produce on metallic conductors, from the point of view of electrical phenomena, effects quite analogous to ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... rouse the empire to a sense of its own dignity and its own high mission as the regulator of the affairs of Europe. He spoke earnestly of their duty to combine and chastise the insolence of the Turks; but waiving that for the present moment, he unfolded to them the danger to which Europe was immediately and imminently exposed by the encroachments of France. To add to the force of his words, he introduced ambassadors from the King of Naples, who informed the assembly of the conquests of the French, of their haughty ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hands of astrology, geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since then, as far as to the present moment, she has never ceased to grow. Progressive and durable, science may be called the first-born of the spirit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... present moment, face to face with their anxious expectation and timorous desires, they felt the imperative necessity of closing their eyes, and of dreaming of a future full of amorous felicity and peaceful enjoyment. The more they trembled one before the other, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... of other British classes than their own? But of my elbowing neighbours with their crush hats, I usually imagine that the most distinguished among them have probably had a far more instructive journey into manhood than mine. Here, perhaps, is a thought-worn physiognomy, seeming at the present moment to be classed as a mere species of white cravat and swallow-tail, which may once, like Faraday's, have shown itself in curiously dubious embryonic form leaning against a cottage lintel in small corduroys, and hungrily eating a bit of brown bread and bacon; there is a pair ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... is wisdom {indeed},— not only to look at the present moment, but also to look forward to what's ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... men are of infinite value to Him." And then his wonderful memory came to his aid in an appeal such as no one on earth among men could make under such circumstances. He had remembered the man's name in spite of the wonderfully busy years that lay between his coming to the house and the present moment. ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... the street, remembering in a flash a skiff he had seen tethered to a scow moored to the pier which stretched like a pointer finger from the little Square. As yet he had no plan beyond the necessity of the present moment, which was flight. Could he but make that skiff unseen and cast off, he would have time, in the brief sanctuary which the black river would afford him, to formulate the wisest procedure ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... popularity, by defending one who denies me even the right to do so. And since I cannot trust myself to enjoy the dangerous privilege of your friendship, I shall find consolation in the ambition that has engrossed me in the past, and rendered me, until the present moment, invulnerable to the charms of the fairer portion ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... could do something at the present moment to help you, Sheming," said Mr. Tingley, his expression very angry. "But don't be afraid. You have friends. I shall come right over to Keller's court, and I shall hire a ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... into blue-green and the first stars are twinkling. And around this arch was chalked a kind of heavy festoon of drooping ostrich feathers. The picture when finished was certainly very beautiful, and I have it in my possession at the present moment. But it conveyed absolutely nothing to me, and certainly brought back no recollection to my memory of a previous life whatsoever. But the "medium" so thoroughly believed in his "power to convey" that I felt ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... to learn your decision, Mr Frobisher," he said, bowing courteously; "and I feel sure you will never have cause to regret it. For such a man as yourself, the Chinese Naval service, at the present moment, offers almost unlimited scope; and there is no reason at all why you should not, in the course of a few years, rise to the highest position in it. We urgently need good men just now, for I am sorry to say that bribery, corruption, and treachery are frightfully prevalent in both the Army ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... he is the leader of our party, and before very long will be the leader of the whole Labour Party, although he could be Prime Minister to-morrow if he cared about it; he is one of the most retiring men whom I ever knew. At the present moment I believe that he would have preferred to have remained living his hermit's life, a writer and a dilettante, if circumstances had not dragged him into politics. He lives in the simplest way and hates all society save the company of a ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "He is at the present moment under the idea that he has killed me. Now what I want is, to make him thoroughly understand that he does not get out of his difficulty by getting me out of the way, not by any manner ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... conversion, which is the main thing, seems to us to be sadly and sorely overlooked. That the immediate gathering of the children to Christ is the teacher's work, is recognised, we fear, in very few schools. It is not the aim of the present moment; and, consequently, little effort is made to bring it about. Feeling all this, we resolved that, if ever opportunity offered, we would try services as much adapted for the conversion and instruction of children as our other ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... blockaded ports, privateering, ships and men and goods contraband of war, and all those semi-nautical, semi-military rules and axioms which it is necessary that all attorneys-general and such like should, at the present moment, have at their fingers' end. But it must be evident to the most ignorant in those matters, among which large crowd I certainly include myself, that it was essentially necessary that Lord John Russell ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... things are real? You do not see me with your eyes, or feel me with your hands, as you think you do. The impression which you have of my presence is born of the influence which my mind is exerting in an invisible way on your mind. Can't you understand? It is a kind of hypnotism. At the present moment, as I have said, I am lying asleep on Mars, but my spirit is in direct communication with yours. The form you see sitting beside you on this parapet is only an illusion of your senses. My soul is speaking ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... incapacity for action. Then I put to myself the question: "Is there any sign of insanity in me, and is it indeed true that I could have had Aniela forever?" It must be true, for how could I otherwise recall all the incidents from the time I met her first up to the present moment? And to think that she might have been mine, and as faithful and loyal to me as she is to that other one!—a hundred times more faithful, because she would love me from her whole soul. Innate incapacity?—yes, that is it. But even if it justifies me in my own eyes, what matters ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... our presence those whom we have pleased to call to attend us. This is neither right nor seemly, nor is it our pleasure that this same Hereward—or Edward— or whatever be his name—either leave us at this present moment, or do at any time hereafter regulate himself by any commands save our own, or those of our Follower, Achilles Tatius. And now, allowing this foolish affair, which I think was blown among us by ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... praise may be, Hooker nevertheless deserves high encomiums on his management of the campaign so far. Leaving Stoneman's delay out of the question, nothing had gone wrong or been mismanaged up to the present moment. But soon Hooker makes his ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... present moment even the least conscientious citizens agree that, first and foremost, the organized traffic in what has come to be called white slaves must be suppressed and that those traffickers who procure their victims for purely ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... she has not seen the Chateaugay since we put out the lights," said the captain. "At the present moment we must be off Absecum; but we cannot see the light. She is far off her ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... the fullest sense of the word. How can those who preach to the soul hope to be heard by those who do not even make the best of their bodies? but alas, the convenience and easiness, or pleasure, of the present moment is allowed to become the cause of an endless series of terrible effects, which go down into the distance of the future, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... We have since, from the labours of the immense tribe of his followers and imitators of different degrees of merit, "supped so full of horrors," that we are become more fastidious upon these points; and even, perhaps, unfairly so, as at the present moment the style of supernatural romances in general is rather fallen again Into neglect and disfavour. "If," concludes Walter Scott, in his criticism on this work, (and the sentiments expressed by him are so fair and just, that it is impossible to forbear quoting them,) "Horace ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... engage in deteckative exertions at the present moment on account of that ruby," said Philo Gubb slowly, "because when I want it, all I got to do is to ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... stake everything I hope for in the future, as well as everything I possess at the present moment, that he is though," returned the detective with conviction. "But we must not waste time. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... was as steep. But Danny solved the mystery by pointing upwards, and showing them how he had been used to climb to a projecting rock over their heads, and from thence creep round by certain vantages of the stone till he was able to let himself down into the aperture. But now, at the present moment, he was unwilling to make essay of his prowess as a cragsman. He had, he said, been up on that projecting rock thrice, and there had seen the eyes moving in the cavern. He was quite sure of that fact of the pair of eyes, and declined to ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... am up there I'll wave my handkerchief to you, Miss Swancourt,' said Stephen. 'In twelve minutes from this present moment,' he added, looking at his watch, 'I'll be at the summit ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... being inconceivably rich and brilliant. Glass filigrees, engraved glass, cut glass, soldered glass, glass imitations of wood, of straw, and of string, were all known to the Egyptians of old. I have under my hand at this present moment a square rod formed of innumerable threads of coloured glass fused into one solid body, which gives the royal oval of one of the Amenemhats at the part where it is cut through. The design is carried through the whole length of the rod, and wherever that rod may be cut, the royal oval reappears.[59] ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... then, there was not a shadow of doubt that her mother had loved him. Horrible thought! and she shook like an aspen, beneath it. For a time it seemed that she loathed him,—that she despised the woman who had given him regard. The present moment was a point of dreadful isolation; there was no past to remember, no future to expect; she herself was alone and forsaken, the whole world dark, and heaven blank. But that could not be forever. As she sat with her face ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... boat to be built, but did not progress far in his undertaking,—a sickness came upon him, he was carried to Jerusalem, and died soon after he had made the experiment. It is rather a remarkable fact that, up to the present moment, no Englishman has been found who was sufficiently weary of his life to imitate his ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... not wrote to you. There is no accounting for that or for him but by one circumstance, and that is, that the gratification of the present moment is the God of his Idolatry. You mention his credit with Lord North.(96) I know for a certainty that Lord North disavows that which I know he once gave him. "He will," they say, "manage this, and will settle that, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... that I am indebted to you for the circumstance that I am alive at the present moment," commented Miss Trevor. "I suppose I ought to be profoundly ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and I pray the Lord fervently, from a heart untainted by sin, not to turn away His countenance in wrath from our unhappy country. Even here, at the seat of my cousin, the Marchioness K———de C———, where I am at the present moment, I can discover nothing but frivolity among the men, and dangerous coquetry among the women. The pernicious atmosphere of the period seems to pervade even the highest rank of the French aristocracy. Sometimes discussions occur on matters ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... persons now on earth, he is absolutely the one best able, and the only one fully able, to judge how accurate your portrayal of nineteenth-century conditions has been. Lest the knowledge should disturb your equanimity, I have refrained from telling you, until the present moment, that we have present with us this afternoon a no less distinguished visitor than Julian West, and that with great kindness he has consented to permit me to ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... I shall not despair. You are somewhat out of it At the present moment. And I am not sure— Not gorged with certainty— That Mr. G. would be Inclined to make amends. He is old; he is aged. Prejudice lurks amid His scant white locks, And forbids the stretch- Ing forth of generous hand in whose Recesses coyly glint ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... touched by your letter and all the warmth and kindness you have shown to ourselves and Mary and Herbert. How can I thank you enough? I see in your letter all the memories of the past, and that you can throw your kind heart into the present moment lovingly. The old precious memories only make you more alive to what is going on, as you think of him who had gone before and shown so noble an example to my husband. No doubt it did not escape you, words ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... returned promptly. "I regard you as the most valuable member of the household at the present moment. Miss Moore, will ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... included not only Miss Hazel Sleighter, but also her big brother Tom, who, being temporarily in the high school, more perhaps because of his size and the maturity of his bearing than by virtue of his educational qualifications, was at the present moment most chiefly concerned in getting into form his baseball team for the match the following Saturday in which the High School was to meet All Comers under eighteen. The freight shed being on his way to the practice ground, Tom deigned to ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... never risen again since he was taken prisoner, and he was thus but ill able to combat with the baneful effects of the climate and the irksomeness of imprisonment. Just then, however, few of our party were thinking about anything but the present moment and the unusually good dinner we had been enjoying, when who should make his appearance near the head of the table but Monsieur Roquion our purveyor, with a smiling countenance and a long bill ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... worse, have jumped ashore up to my very ears in love into the bargain. However," added he, after some pause, stretching himself and turning himself in bed, "I'm in good quarters for the present, at least; so I'll e'en enjoy the present moment, and let the next take care of itself; I dare say all will work out, 'some hew ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the difference between mental and material wealth more forcibly expressed than by an old Perthshire shoemaker. "Supposing," said he, "that I had fifty pounds in my pocket at the present moment. What a wild supposition, but good enough for an illustration! What inference would you draw from me having that sum of money? This, namely, that no other person in the universe has the same fifty pounds. The same pair of boots cannot be worn by two persons at the same ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes, head or neck, and it is an idea containing the awareness of that lifting or raising. But it is far more than the idea merely of that lifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present moment and in connexion with this particular mountain. That present and particular raising and lifting is merely the nucleus to which gravitates our remembrance of all similar acts of raising, or rising. which we have ever accomplished ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... to know it, for your father was interested in the matter, and to-day it is a pressing question, and for this reason. Since the downfall of the Empire, calico has come more and more into use, because it is so much cheaper than linen. At the present moment, paper is made of a mixture of hemp and linen rags, but the raw material is dear, and the expense naturally retards the great advance which the French press is bound to make. Now you cannot increase the output of linen rags, a given population gives a pretty constant result, and it only increases ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... exceeded 250 copies, and that L1 was the selling price. Its rarity ten or a dozen years after its first appearance may be gauged by the fact that Charles I. was obliged to content himself with a copy of the Second Folio; its rarity at the present moment will be readily comprehended when it is stated that during the past ninety years only five or six irreproachable examples have occurred for sale. The copy for which the Duke of Roxburghe gave 34 guineas, realized at his sale L100, and passed into the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... black hair, eyes intensely black and piercingly lustrous, retreating chin, and retreating narrow forehead. In that face, with its intense eyes, there was the possibility of rare charm and fascination, and beauty of a very unusual kind; but at the present moment, as she looked carelessly and almost sullenly at her visitor, there ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... for the prosecution of the war make the speedy occupation of East Tennessee and its lines of railway matters of absolute necessity. Bowling Green and Nashville are in that connection of very secondary importance at the present moment." General Grant wrote no reasoned speculations about it, but throughout January pressed Halleck for permission to ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... Mrs. Yorke's "sabbath bonnet;" and it was the recollection of that appalling article of attire which at the present moment was weighing ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... had opportunities of observing, that there are men who are wholly engrossed by the present moment, and who, if they can procure immoderate profit, or escape any impending danger, are without the least solicitude with regard to futurity, and who, therefore, live only by the hour, without any general ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... and involve the new data of an inevitable philosophy. The criticism of religious opinions makes us smile today both at ourselves and at religions; and yet the resume of this criticism is but a reproduction of the problem. The human race, at the present moment, is on the eve of recognizing and affirming something equivalent to the old notion of Divinity; and this, not by a spontaneous movement as before, but through reflection and by means of irresistible logic. I will try, in a few words, to ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... have it, never think they have—even to the last they are hopeful—and sure they will be better tomorrow. No, I am afraid I am not mistaken. You know yourself the theory Clay, of the two sets of microbes, the builders and the destroyers. Just at the present moment, the destroyers have the best of it—they have put one over on the builders—but that does not say that the good microbes are not working—and may yet win. You are young, buoyant, happy, hopeful, ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... to pave the way for an immediate occupation and settlement of the country. Thus a plan for the establishment of an English colonial empire on the banks of the St. Lawrence had been deliberately formed, and down to the present moment offered every prospect of a brilliant success. But a cloud had now swept along the horizon and suddenly obscured the last ray of hope. The proceeds of their two years of incessant labor, and the large sums which they had risked in the enterprise, had vanished like a mist in the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... not allow retaliation in kind for the Sepoy atrocities. He did the most and the best with his opportunities. His policy was always to develop and sustain English character. "There is no country," he said in a remarkable warning to the House, "at the present moment that exists under the same circumstances and under the same conditions as the people of this realm. You have an ancient, powerful, and richly endowed Church, and perfect religious liberty. You have unbroken order and complete freedom. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Hospital for Children, is the only one of its kind in this part of London and serves a poor district with a population of half-a-million. Its claim upon the generosity of more favoured Londoners is as strong as its lack of funds at the present moment is serious. It has one hundred-and-seventy beds, and during the last year has cared for eighteen hundred in-patients and sixty thousand out-patients. Mr. Punch is certain that, if the children of the West-end understood the suffering and needs of these other children of Bethnal Green, they would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... At the present moment, Messrs. Tata are making a truly gigantic endeavour to acclimatize the iron and steel industry in India by the erection of immense works at Sakti in Bengal, where they have within easy reach a practically unlimited supply of the four necessary raw materials iron ore, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... deaths and funerals, I have seen and attended more than enough of them out here. At this present moment a friend, a New Zealander, is in parlous plight. He was shot in the right shoulder, the wound soon healed, but the arm was almost useless, so the massage fiend here used to come and give him terrible gip. Then doctor ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... "Indeed at the present moment the latter is our greatest difficulty, hampering everything we would wish to do. And transport we cannot put right without help from abroad. Therefore we do everything we can to use local resources, and ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... what I can only call a shoddy bishop or pope or two, I forget which, have got in among the circle of Tabachetti's saints and angels that still remains. These are many of them portraits full of serious dignity and unspotted by the world of barocco with which Tabachetti was surrounded. At the present moment they have been partly scraped and show as terra-cotta; no doubt they have suffered not a little in the scraping and will do so still further when they are repainted, but there is no help for it. Great works of art have got to die like ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... it is that the names of Captain Kirby and Curtis Fakenham are alive to the present moment in the district. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the first moment I became acquainted with his Lordship in Naples, he has uniformly treated me with a degree of affability as flattering to me as it was kind in him; besides honouring me, up to the present moment, with a confidence which, in general, is the result only of long tried and intimate friendship. This is the more gratifying, because he has always been surrounded by young men in every respect as worthy of ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... themselves so naturally, that they need no further thought. In point of fact, the patriotism of the Jews for the lands in which they live has been demonstrated on so many occasions that only blind ignorance or wilful misrepresentation can call it into question. At the present moment, in all the armies that are at the front, our brethren are doing service even beyond ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the manner in which those who attack interest ignore the element of time, and contemplate the present moment only. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... of their talents, had been such an immense change from the placid, humdrum existence which had preceded it, that it still held for her an almost dreamlike charm of novelty, and this was intensified at the present moment by her return to Crailing to find everything going on just in the same old way, precisely as though there had ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... hardihood when things go wrong. There were times when Valdemar Svensen secretly quailed at the mere thought of the wrath of Odin,—there were others when he was ready to pluck the great god by the beard and beat him with the flat of his own drawn sword. This was his humor at the present moment, as he averted his gaze from the pitiful sight of his "King's" fair daughter all desolate and woe-begone, her lovely face pale with anguish,—her sweet wits wandering, and her whole demeanor that of one who is lost in some dark forest, and is weary unto death. She studied Ulrika's rough ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... we and the Roman people shall often have an opportunity of complimenting and honouring this young man. But at the present moment I give my vote that we should pass a decree in ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... said earnestly, "you can help me very much. You know the cruel position in which my brother and I are placed through no fault of our own: our old home is sold, our fortunes have gone utterly, and our honourable name is tarnished. At the present moment I have nothing left in the world except the sum of two hundred pounds which I had saved for a purpose of my own out of my allowance. I have no profession and cannot even take my degree, because I am unable to afford the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... sir,' he said, 'if you are going to talk in this strain, you will have to excuse me. We were sent by the London Syndicate to do a certain thing. We did it, and did it thoroughly. After it was done the time was our own, as much as it is at the present moment. We were not hired by the day, but took a stated sum for doing a certain piece of work. I may go further and say that the time was our own at any period of our visit, so long as we fulfilled what the London Syndicate ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... you—excuse my asking the question," and he tried, walking at his side though he was, to mark closely whether the question produced any effect on the face of the other—"but the truth is, Ralston, that I scarcely expected to meet you in the North at the present moment. I thought you so incarnate a Southerner, as well as a slaveholder, that you would have been likely to join in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... now in possession of Dunkirk, the great object of his foreign policy for the last two years, the opening through which he was to accomplish the designs of Providence on the continent. The real fact, however, was that his authority in England never rested on a more precarious footing than at the present moment; while, on the other hand, the cares and anxieties of government, joined to his apprehensions of personal violence, and the pressure of ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... belongs more to its moral, and mirth to its animal part. The creatures destitute of reason are incapable either of earnest or of sport. Animals seem indeed at times to labour as if they were earnestly intent upon some aim, and as if they made the present moment subordinate to the future; at other times they seem to sport, that is, they give themselves up without object or purpose to the pleasure of existence: but they do not possess consciousness, which alone can ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... in the chain of dramatic development, which binds the "singing room of Powles" to the Lyceum of Irving? And it is interesting to notice that the principle which he was the first to express shows at the present moment evident signs of exhaustion; for its future developments seem to be limited to that narrow strip of social melodrama, which lies between the devil of the comic opera and the deep sea of the Ibsenic problem play. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... that had puzzled me that day at Epsom. In a flash I remembered him and all the scenes in which he had played a humble part. Far back from the dimness of some of my earliest theatrical experiences, up to the present moment, I followed him on his career, simulating joint merriment, bearing one of many banners, carrying a pike or a halberd in an army similarly armed, conspiring in a mantle, draining a brimming goblet, but never—at least within my recollection—taking a part of any individuality, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... the present moment each officer had carried his carbine, taken apart and wrapped in a bundle, to avoid the remark of chance observers by the way. Now each put his weapon together, ready for use. They compared their watches, setting them to the second. They ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various |
