"Proverbially" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Olympic. And since this is an attempt to chronicle facts as they happened on board the Titanic, it must be recorded that there were among the passengers and such of the crew as were heard to speak on the matter, the direst misgivings at the incident we had just witnessed. Sailors are proverbially superstitious; far too many people are prone to follow their lead, or, indeed, the lead of any one who asserts a statement with an air of conviction and the opportunity of constant repetition; the sense of mystery that shrouds a prophetic utterance, particularly if it be an ominous ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... marked improvement With a mighty clout Lawson knocked a home run, and, as there was a man on third, that two. From then on the Cardinals seemed to find themselves. They began coming back in earnest, and everyone "got the habit." Even Joe, proverbially poor hitters as pitchers are supposed to be, did his share, and, by placing a neat little drive, that eluded the shortstop, he brought ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... invariably poor so far as money is concerned, owing to their love of ease, these children of nature are proverbially hospitable, and you are welcome as his guest until you eat his last bit of food unless you offer him compensation therefor; if you do that his wrath knows no bounds, as I once found to ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... conquered in the fifteenth century will continue in that most regrettable condition for the time being at least, even though we postpone discussion of that world calamity until we may attain the enchanting view of yon FELIS CARNIVORA which distance proverbially is credited ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... known that his was a divided nature, so variously endowed that complete integration was difficult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented that steady concentration of powers which poetry demands. She is proverbially the most jealous of mistresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance. At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as primarily a poet: but in the next fifteen years he had become a professor, had devoted long periods ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... bruited abroad. His worst fault was that he was a shrewd observer of men, and drew, in a memorandum book he kept, pen-portraits of the people he met. 'Dr Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and application can do. Natural parts like his are frequently to be met with; his vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance.' The Lord Advocate he pictured in ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... the causes of small-pox be removed (generally some impurity in the air or in the food), those causes will work mischief somehow. throw an eruptive disease back into the system is proverbially dangerous.... Moreover, what right has any physician to neglect the cures of small-pox, by which herbalists, hydropaths, and Turkish-bath keepers find ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the period in which it rises. The Italians proverbially observe that one half of fame depends on that cause. In dark periods, when talents appear they shine like the sun through a small hole in the window-shutter. The strong beam dazzles amid the surrounding gloom. Open the shutter, and the general ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... nineteenth century were those of Carl Maria von Weber, whose work will be considered later, and the great song writer, Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). This remarkable man was born of poor parents in Vienna, or near it, his father being a schoolmaster, earning the proverbially meager stipend of the profession in Germany at that time, amounting to no more than $100 or $200 a year. The family was musical, and the Sundays were devoted to quartette playing and other forms of music. The boy Franz early showed ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... a large party of seamen such as they had under them were thus thrown ashore with no regular duties to perform, such as they had on board ship, it was most urgently necessary that employment of some sort should be made for them; not only to keep them out of that mischief which the evil one is proverbially said to find "for idle hands to do," but also to prevent them from dwelling on the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... now dark, but a silvery gleam on the horizon gave promise of the speedy rising of a full moon. Otherwise he would not have attempted to walk over a road proverbially dark and dismal. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... States, the small black children are proverbially brighter and more forward than white ones of the same age. Repartees, by no means indicative of stupidity, have sometimes been made by negroes. A slave was suddenly roused with the exclamation, "Why don't you ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... fresh arguments by a new article, where his aversion to war seemed incidentally to condemn revolution as well. Poets are proverbially bad politicians. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... of dressing it in this country is by adding a white sauce, and parmesan or Cheshire cheese, and burning it; but this makes a dish which is proverbially unwholesome: its bad qualities arise from the oiled and burnt cheese, and the half-dressed flour and butter put ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... altogether a pose or an affectation. He sees the vastness of the British Empire and the amazing strides which have been made in the last two generations, and wonders how it all came about. He knows how proverbially blundering are British diplomacy and British administration, so he puts it all down to the luck of the nation and goes grumbling contentedly on his way. There is no country in which policies have been so haphazard and unstable, or ways of administration ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and the ancient tragedians felt so little the want of communications between a hero and his confidant, to make us acquainted with the hero's state of mind and views, that they even introduce as a mute personage so important and proverbially famous a friend as a Pylades. But whatever ridicule was cast on the confidants, and however great the reproach of being reduced to make use of them, no attempt was ever made till the time of Alfieri to get ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... discreditable to his talents. Being naturally gifted with an exuberant imagination, his descriptions partake of the inflated and bombastic; but we have reason to know, that the information which he gives is deduced from authentic sources, without the usual exaggeration proverbially belonging to travellers. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... answered Andrew, reaching for his pocketbook. When it appeared, it was fat and full, and Gavin stole a wistful glance; for, in Scotland, colonial pocketbooks are proverbially plump. "What shall it ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... chief features were the contempt for work and the passion for titles. The effect of this new influence was evident, even in the smaller towns, before the year 1500. We hear complaints from La Cava that the place had been proverbially rich, as long as it was filled with masons and weavers; whilst now, since instead of looms and trowels nothing but spurs, stirrups and gilded belts was to be seen, since everybody was trying to become Doctor of Laws or of Medicine, Notary, Officer or Knight, the most intolerable poverty ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... waiting, he amused himself as he could. In the amusements of Washington, education had no part, but the simplicity of the amusements proved the simplicity of everything else, ambitions, interests, thoughts, and knowledge. Proverbially Washington was a poor place for education, and of course young diplomats avoided or disliked it, but, as a rule, diplomats disliked every place except Paris, and the world contained only one Paris. They abused London more violently than Washington; they praised no post under the sun; ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... soul, he had best accept his fate (4) (said Socrates). Why, after all, you are only like those prophets who proverbially foretell the future for mankind, but cannot foresee ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... has got thoroughly into a woman's mind in this manner, is half way to her heart; the distance between those two stations is proverbially short. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... add, has been well served by its Curates. "Comparisons are (proverbially) odious," we will not therefore refer to any of these in recent years; but we may take three typical cases of men whose memory is still green and ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... was proverbially cautious, but it seemed to his visitor that his demeanour this morning exceeded all reasonable limits. For nearly a minute he answered absolutely nothing, and then he said very ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... himself seemed to feel that something decisive was about to be done at last. Henri did not pause, but with a flying dash he sprang like a spread eagle, arms and legs extended, right into the bear's bosom. At the same moment he sent his long hunting-knife down into its heart. But Bruin is proverbially hard to kill, and although mortally wounded, he had strength enough to open his jaws and close ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency, nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the social standing of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think we accepted it at Rattlers Ridge without question. The matter of ownership ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... strange action gaining brief eminence by their repeated statements of what they had witnessed and their varied surmises. The role of commentator, if mysterious human action be the text, is always popular, and as this explanatory class are proverbially gifted in conjecture, there were many theories of explanation. Some of the guests had already the good taste to prepare for departure, and when Dr. Mark appeared from the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... be sure, most proverbially courteous and intelligent reader, might never have guessed at first sight, from the young man's outer aspect, the nature of his occupation. The gross and clumsy male intellect, which works in accordance with the stupid laws of inductive logic, has a queer habit of requiring something or other, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... huts, the inhabitants of which labour under the most squalid poverty, owing to the extreme niggardness of the neighbouring soil, which consists almost entirely of rock from which scarcely anything can be gathered, so that the people are proverbially thieves. Only three copies of the sacred volume were purchased in this unhappy place, and only nine in the comparatively rich village of Mocejon—which, it is true, was visited on the day of a festival, when the inhabitants were too much occupied with ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... exceed all the means of human knowledge to presume to analyze the influences that govern the acts of the lower animals. On this occasion, the dam, though proverbially fierce when its young is thought to be in danger, manifested no intention to attack the girl. It quitted the honey, and advanced to a place within twenty feet of her, where it raised itself on its hind legs ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... designate first magistrates who have raised themselves from humble beginnings to that proud position, and there are times when it is proper to recall such achievements to the rising generation. But as youth is proverbially over-confident it might also be well to point out, without danger of discouraging our sanguine youngsters, that for one who has succeeded, about ten million confident American youths, full of ambition and lofty aims, have been obliged to content themselves ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... appearances. This narrowing of means was caused not a little by the want of veracity of a person whom my father had trusted with entire affection and a very considerable loan, about which we none of us ever heard again. A crust becomes more than proverbially dry ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... for national character. If all this be a truthful picture, and really we see no reason for doubt, it does but add another to the many proofs of the springing elasticity of that element of light-hearted short-sightedness which is so proverbially characteristic of the French. But we will say no more, for our paper has already exceeded the limits we had assigned to it; and the things that are must ever prevail in our pages ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... seeing others practise some form of skill-demanding amusement for its own sake, without question of pecuniary profit; and the true sport lover is not satisfied unless the best man wins, whether he be friend or foe. Sport ceases to be sport as soon as it is carried on as if it were war, where "all" is proverbially "fair." The excitement of gambling does not seem to me to be fairly covered by the phrase "love of sport," and no more does the mere desire to see one's university, state, or nation triumph over someone else's university, state, or nation. There ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Chaldees the moon was the principal deity. There were also towns such as Larsa and Sippara, where the sun was the chief god; and many of the great gods of later times were originally sun-gods. The Chaldeans, moreover, were proverbially star-watchers, and a "zigurrath" or observatory, a building of seven spheres corresponding to those of the planets as they pass through the signs of the zodiac, and like them rising up to the seat of God at the North Star, was a regular part of ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... few have been able to transfuse it into their daily consciousness. We never looked to England for the encouragement of a popular enthusiasm,—hardly, perhaps, for a cold acquiescence. John Bull, we said, is proverbially a grumbler, proverbially indifferent to all affairs but his own; he will be annoyed by tariffs, and plagued by scarcity of cotton;—what wonder, if we are a little misunderstood? The minor contributors to his daily press will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... dwell on its material and civilizing rather than its spiritual aspects. They do not, as officials, feel that the salvation of men from sin and the command of Christ to evangelize all nations are within their sphere. Moreover, diplomacy is proverbially and necessarily cautious. Its business is to avoid risks, and, of course, to advise others to avoid them. The political situation, too, was undeniably uncertain and delicate. The future was big with possibility of peril. In such circumstances, we should expect diplomacy to be ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... the Jesuits were the incarnation of religious militarism. To set up an ideal of aggrandizement, to fill a body of men with a fanatical enthusiasm for that ideal and then to provide an organization and discipline marvellously adapted to conquest, that is what the Prussian schoolmaster who {411} proverbially won Sadowa, and the Jesuits who beat back the Reformation, have known how to do better than anyone else. Their methods took account of everything except ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... rather to future possibilities. Young blood is proverbially hot, and I thought it wise to warn you ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... seizing the unfortunate trumpeter, gave him a more sublime kicking than ever fell to the lot of even piper or fiddler, whose pay[21] is proverbially oftener in that article than the coin ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... how considerable their achievement. It may not be filled in the same way, as well, as fittingly, but it will be filled, and humanity will content itself very fairly well with the substitute. This is especially true of the work of the actor. He can but live as a memory, and memory is proverbially short. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... were proverbially infamous as informers, are represented by Juvenal as dreading a still more ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... man, who judged the offence at its true computation, such knowledge would only prove disturbing and a source of insecurity to conjugal happiness. No good purpose of any kind can be served, and the ease which confession is proverbially supposed to gain for the sinner would be bought at a ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Ceylon, one of the most primitive of peoples, "are proverbially truthful."[1] The natives of Java are peculiarly free from the vice of lying, except in those districts which have had ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... human infirmity. Our trunks were put into a handbarrow, and wheeled by two men a few hundred yards, the whole occupying half an hour of time. For this service ten francs were demanded. I offered five, or double what would have been required by a drayman in New York, a place where labour is proverbially dear. This was disdainfully refused, and I was threatened with the law. Of the latter I knew nothing; but, determined not to be bullied into what I felt persuaded was an imposition, I threw down the five francs and walked away. These fellows kept prowling about the hotel the whole ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thing is proverbially spoken; but may be applied to him—as if we should say in general terms, he only is secret who never was trusted; a satirical proverb upon our sex. There's another upon yours—as she is chaste, who was never asked ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... full exercise of its constitutional powers. Each legislature, under a just sense of its responsibility, must judge for itself; and if it think proper, it may revise, or amend, or absolutely undo the work of any predecessor. The laws of the Medes and Persians are said proverbially to have been unalterable; but they stand forth in history as a single example where the true principles of all law ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... carriage that passed while the blacksmith was at work pulled up and placed a seat therein at her command. But she refused them all. It was not that she feared to desert her baggage, for Switzerland is proverbially honest. The unlucky driver had tried to be friendly; his fault was due to an excess of zeal; and each time she declined the proffered help his furrowed face brightened. If she did not reach the hotel until midnight she was determined to go there in that vehicle, and ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the city walls. St Peter's day is the great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter's was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during the night; the French shells flew in all directions; the fight raged fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of the Vascello, which had been bombarded for a week; the heroic Manara fell ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... raised there alone, within a few days' time, upwards of L.20,000! The fact (if true) is at once ludicrous and disgusting: ludicrous for its transparency of humbug—disgusting for its palpable selfishness. Will these proverbially hard-hearted men put down their L.100, L.200, L.300, L.400, L.500, for nothing? Alas, the great sums they have expended in this crusade against the Corn-laws, will have to be wrung out of their wretched and exhausted factory slaves! For how otherwise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... of David Hume, Esq., might, as bookmakers know now, be driven out to a handsome quarto. Line 1st admits of a descant upon eggs roasted, boiled or poached; 2d, a history of Carlisle Cathedral with some reasons why the choir there has been proverbially execrable; 3d, the whole history of 1745 with minute memoirs of such as mounted guard on the Scotch gate. I remember the spikes the heads stood upon; lastly, a description of Corby Castle with a plan, and the genealogy of the Howards. Gad, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... assistance gratefully but consistently. No Mussulman ever equaled his contented reliance on the resources of futurity, and his implicit belief in the same. He would anchor his hopes on some such improbability as "a long shot coming off," or "his Aunt Agnes coming down" (a proverbially awful widow, who had forgiven him seven times already; and, after each fresh offense, had sworn unrelenting enmity to him and his heirs forever). Strong in this faith, he met condoling friends with a pleasant, reassuring smile: with the same demeanor he confronted threatening creditors. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is proverbially elaborate," I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, "but in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the really excessively select (in which must ever ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... emigration from France had already commenced, the old counts and marquises were thronging to our shores: not starving and miserable, as one saw them a few years afterwards, but unmolested as yet, and bringing with them some token of their national splendour. I was walking with Lady Lyndon, who, proverbially jealous and always anxious to annoy me, spied out a foreign lady who was evidently remarking me, and of course asked who was the hideous fat Dutchwoman who was leering at me so? I knew her not in the least. I felt I had seen the lady's face somewhere ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sailed well; and as the stranger gradually edged away, the Vincejo got more and more into her wake. A stern chase is proverbially a long chase; and though it was apparent from the first that the British, though much smaller, was the faster vessel, it was many hours before she was enabled to get within range. About dusk, however, this ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... unawares, should peep through these windows into his consciousness, and make strange discoveries among the reminiscences, projects, hopes, apprehensions, weaknesses, and strong points, which he has heretofore shared with nobody. A cautious man is proverbially said to sleep with one eye open. That may be wisdom. But not with both; for this were heedlessness! No, no! Judge Pyncheon cannot ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to their house from the fire, with which we left the alarmed Elwood and his wife contending, was, indeed, easily overcome by dashing pails of water over the roof. But scarcely had they achieved this temporary triumph in one place over an element proverbially terrible when it becomes master, before it was seen kindling into flickering blazes on the roof of the barn and the locks of hay protruding from its windows and the crevices between the logs of which it was ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among the proverbially sober Quakers of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... poorer householders were frequently unable to pay their hearth money to the day. When this happened, their furniture was distrained without mercy: for the tax was farmed; and a farmer of taxes is, of all creditors, proverbially the most rapacious. The collectors were loudly accused of performing their unpopular duty with harshness and insolence. It was said that, as soon as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, the children ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... superficies. At this sad stirring is the sleeper's rest and ease disturbed and broken, whereof the first feeling and stinging smart admonisheth that he must patiently endure great pain and trouble, and thereunto provide some remedy; as when we say proverbially, to incense hornets, to move a stinking puddle, and to awake a sleeping lion, instead of these more usual expressions, and of a more familiar and plain meaning, to provoke angry persons, to make ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... reach the voting age has a period of mental weakness in his youth when he wears those pointed shoes that turn up at the ends, like sleigh runners; and spends the rest of his life regretting it. Feet are certainly ungrateful things. I might say that they are proverbially ungrateful. You do for them and they do you. You get one corn, hard or soft, cured up or removed bodily and a whole crowd of its relatives come to take its place. I imagine that Nature intended we should go barefooted ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... that these rural spectators should so have approved and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean of Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired foreigner; but, besides that Riccabocca, after all, had become one of the neighborhood, and was proverbially 'a civil-spoken gentleman,' it is generally noticeable that on wedding occasions the bride so monopolizes interest, curiosity, and admiration, that the bridegroom himself goes for little or nothing. He is merely the passive agent in the affair—the unregarded ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... him on trays, and is said to have counted them himself with the point of a dagger. But this punishment he believed to be still too lenient. A general massacre of the men was commanded, and no less than 20,000 women and children were made into slaves. To this day the proverbially easy morals of the Kerman women are attributed to the Afghan invasion, when the women became the concubines of soldiers and lost all respect for themselves; and so is the importation of the dreadful disease which in its most virulent ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Tregear's Comparative Maori-Polynesian Dictionary will satisfy any reader on that point. The Rarotongans call themselves "Maori," and can understand the New Zealand speech; so, as a rule, can the other South Sea tribes, even the distant Hawaiians. Language alone is proverbially misleading as a guide to identity of race. But in the case of the Polynesians we may add colour and features, customs, legends, and disposition. All are well though rather heavily built, active when they choose, and passionately fond ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... hand, the soil is proverbially fertile. The chief products are best exhibited in connection with the four botanical zones into which Junghuhn has divided the island according ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... azure of perfect good-breeding, flecked by little clouds of gay sayings and politenesses, whenever chance brought her under Lady Halifax's observation. A not unreasonable solution of the problem might have been found in Elfrida's instinctive objection to casting her pearls where they are proverbially unappreciated, and the necessity in her nature of pleasing herself by one form of agreeable behavior if not by another. Lady Halifax, however, ascribed it to the improving influence of insular institutions, and finally concluded that it ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... proverbially dangerous to contradict him. Dr Mortimer, head of Lincoln college, happened occasionally to interrupt him, by saying, "I deny that," while Johnson was holding forth. At length he said, "Sir, sir, you must have forgotten that an author has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... considerable extent of bog and marshy ground, in which, in the course of their progress, they were frequently plunged up to the waist. On this lake they first observed a black swan, which species, though proverbially rare in other parts of the world, is here by no means uncommon, being found on most of the lakes. This was a very noble bird, larger than the common swan, and equally beautiful in form. On being shot at, it rose and discovered that its wings were edged ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... all the events of life are proverbially very uncertain; and it may happen that you may be obliged to do without me; in which case, would it not be well for you to be ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Proverbially schools teach generalizations, abstractions, and principles. The scholar and the student are compelled to practice in this most effective form of thinking. A justifiable criticism of the schools is that they are inclined to neglect the lower forms of thinking—the dealing with the concrete—in ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... fact, however, it has played a comparatively small part in the world's annals. Almost all the great campaigns have been fought out in the lowlands. It is Belgium, for instance, and not Switzerland, that has been proverbially the battle-ground of Europe. Napoleon and Suwaroff marched armies through the Alps, but only as a means of striking unexpectedly at the enemy who occupied ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... Essays. But to the philosophical student by far the most important of Treitschke's writings are his two volumes on the Science of Politics, which are, without exception, the most fascinating and the most suggestive political treatise published in this generation. Political treatises are proverbially dull and out of touch with reality. Treitschke's treatise is a solitary exception. To him politics are not, like mathematics, an abstract or a deductive science. We cannot build an ideal political ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... people who had kept his grandchild must have done it from interested and ulterior motives. The lawyer could not see this, but he did see that if Mr. Fairfax was bent on making a contest of what might be amicably arranged, no power on earth could hinder him. For though it proverbially takes two to make a quarrel, the doctor did not look as if he would disappoint a man of sharp contention if he sought it. The soft word that turns away anger would not ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... an erroneous concept of the foibles of humanity. The greatness of others is of small importance in comparison with one's own. The one who ignores this truth is continually pulling a cat by the tail, and this is proverbially a hard task. Hartwell's plan was first to create an impression of his own importance in order that it might excite awe, and then, by gracious condescension, to arouse a loyal and respectful devotion. Considering the object of this attack, he was making ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... prefer alarming Miss Neelie by telling her in plain words that we both think her in danger? Or, suppose you send me to Miss Gwilt, with instructions to inform her that she has done her pupil a cruel injustice? Women are so proverbially ready to listen to reason; and they are so universally disposed to alter their opinions of each other on application—especially when one woman thinks that another woman has destroyed her prospect of making ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the surviving mules. But while we may congratulate ourselves on the lifting of the clouds in that direction matters in West Ham give ground for the gravest anxiety. The wood-lice of West Ham are proverbially of an irritable nature, and the attitude of the Government has been calculated for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... dagger, and it falls to earth a shrivelled nothing. And the reason that no melodrama can be great art is just that it is a compromise between tragedy and comedy, a mixture of tragedy with comedy and not comedy with tragedy. So in drama, the middle course, proverbially the safest, is in reality the most dangerous. Now I maintain that in Beau Austin we have an element of tragedy. The betrayal of a beautiful, pure and noble-minded woman is surely at once the basest act a man can be capable of, and a more tragic event than death itself to the woman. Richardson, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... it distresses me inexpressibly, and I tremble whenever she alludes to the project of a journey. In short, I wish we could gain time, and see how she gets on. If she leaves home it certainly should not be in the capricious month of May, which is proverbially trying to the weak. June would be a safer month. If we could reach June, I should have good hopes of her getting through the summer. Write such an answer to this note as I can show Anne. You can write any additional remarks to me on a separate ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his bond will not be worth a boddle against the estate, and then I had a' my dealers to settle wi' at Martinmas; and so, as he very kindly offered me this commission, and as the auld Fifteen [Footnote: The Judges of the Supreme Court of Session in Scotland are proverbially termed among the country people, The Fifteen.] wad never help me to my siller for sending out naigs against the government, why, conscience! sir, I thought my best chance for payment was e'en to GAE OUT [Footnote: See Note 28.] mysell; and ye may judge, sir, as I hae dealt a' my life in halters, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... raved at this announcement, might be too strong a word. But it is not too much to say that her springy foot (Joe had not the proverbially "little" one of the novelists, but a very well-shaped pedal of the Arab pattern, under the sole of which water could have run with as much freedom as under the Starucca Viaduct or the High Bridge), patted the hall floor with vexation, impatience and "botheration." There was not much use in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... cordial frankness stated, that the difficulty of his rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of indecency, but when the Queen of England went among them with Messire Heleigh's faded green hat she found them liberal. Even the fellow with the broken head admitted that a bargain was proverbially a bargain, and returned the locket with the addition of a coin. So for the present these two went safe, and quitted the Cat and Hautbois ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... France, food seemed plenty and we heard no complaint of shortage. The French are proverbially thrifty and can and do live comfortably upon the equivalent of what Americans waste. When a Frenchman finishes his meal there is nothing left on the plate, on dishes or in the glasses. This was particularly ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... proverbially ungrateful. The Honourable Hilary might have voiced this sentiment, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Among the finest passages of the' Christian's classic are those that represent God as personified wisdom. And here wisdom includes all knowledge and justice. That the Spirit of God breathed into man His own mental life is stated most keenly by the man who proverbially embodied in himself this quality of wisdom. "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord searching out the innermost parts." The allusion is clearly to intellectual powers. There is in man the same quality of mental keenness that searches into things as is in God. It is often dulled, gripped by ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... several great poets and dramatists, notably John Ford, William Congreve, Nicholas Rowe, Thomas Shadwell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Moore. But, as their literary remains prove, few or none of them prosecuted their legal studies with that sedulous devotion which the law, proverbially a jealous mistress, demands. Sir William Blackstone, who immortalized his name by his "Commentaries on the Laws of England," was educated in the Middle Temple, where he was entered as a student, November 20, 1741, and by which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... or any person ridiculous! To hold that ridicule is paramount to the discovery or attestation of truth, is to exalt the ape-element in man above the human and the angelic principles, which also belong to his nature, and to enthrone a Voltaire over a Newton or a Milton. Those who laugh proverbially do not always win, nor do they always deserve to win. Do we think less of "Paradise Lost," and Shakspeare, because Cobbett has derided both, or of the Old and New Testaments, because Paine has subjected parts of them to his clumsy satire? When we find, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented. Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but, in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... ambitions and ideals of the Republic. The fact that many of these gentlemen—literary and otherwise—returned to their own shores better fed and with larger balances in the banks than when they departed is neither here nor there. Egyptians are proverbially created to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of idolatry, but he utterly failed in that symmetry in which Paul makes the duties of parents and children mutual. Under his system a father might exercise his caprice almost to the power of life or death, and a Chinese mother-in-law is proverbially a tyrant. The beautiful sympathy of Christ, shown in blessing little children and in drawing lessons from their simple trust, would have been utterly out of place in the great sage of China. Confucius seems to have troubled himself but slightly, if at all, about the wants of the poor ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... hundred thousand that want those of the people who supply the matter for the teeth to work on; and for one who wants a sonnet to regale his fancy, there are a million clamouring for men to make or mend their shoes.' Aye, and this is the reason, why shoemakers are proverbially the most independent part of the people, and why they, in general, show more public spirit than any other men. He who lives by a pursuit, be it what it may, which does not require a considerable degree of bodily labour, must, from the nature of things, be, more or less, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the case of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... which has been proverbially said to lead to as much evil as any impulse that agitates the human bosom, must be held responsible for only too many of those crimes which from time to time outrage society, for, as the authors of "Guesses at Truth" have remarked, "jealousy ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... of my daily baths, and on reading over what I have written, I feel quite ashamed of the coldness of the recital of all my delight, the recollection of which makes my mouth water. The reader will observe that I am a Scotchman (proverbially a matter-of-fact race), an old fellow, my enemy would say a slow coach. I might enlarge on my ecstatic delight in my baths, my healthy glow, my light-heartedness, my feelings of elasticity, which made me fancy I could ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Wounded lions proverbially come badly off, and Fritz and Carl, who had suffered from many an act of petty tyranny on the part of the steward, thought they could not do better than follow their master's example, which they did to such good purpose, that when the unfortunate Klootz did escape from the ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... proverbially said to be more quick-{witted} than a wizard, but the reason is not told; which, now for the first time, shall be made known by ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... abuse of Milton. In the style of the most shameless Jesuit lampoon, the Amphitheatrum or the Scaliger hypobolimaeus, and with Jesuit tactics, every odious crime is imputed to the object of the satire, without regard to truth or probability. Exiles are proverbially credulous, and it is likely enough that the gossip of the English refugees at the Hague was much employed in improving or inventing stories about the man, who had dared to answer the royalist champion in Latin as good as his own. Salmasius in his Defensio ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... proverbially an unsafe one—is nevertheless one which every business man must play almost every day of his life. The merchant, the manufacturer, the publisher, the director, the manager, and even the artist, must perforce stake some portion of his success in life ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... liable. This, however, produced no effect upon the general result, except by increasing somewhat the lists of killed and wounded, through loss of advantageous offensive position, with consequent defect in mutual support. But the first broadside is proverbially half the battle. It was a saying of Collingwood to his crew, in a three-decker like the Queen Charlotte, that if they could deliver three effective fires in the first five minutes no vessel could resist them; and ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... fire, and the rain drumming on the window, I began The Sea Cook, for that was the original title. I have begun (and finished) a number of other books, but I cannot remember to have sat down to one of them with more complacency. It is not to be wondered at, for stolen waters are proverbially sweet. I am now upon a painful chapter. No doubt the parrot once belonged to Robinson Crusoe. No doubt the skeleton is conveyed from Poe. I think little of these, they are trifles and details; and no man can hope to ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an impulse closely allied to the artistic—namely, the desire for speculative truth, as manifested in the lives of scientific and philosophic thinkers. These men—such as Kant and Hegel, for example—have been proverbially, and often ludicrously, indifferent to the material details of their existence. Who can suppose that the disinterested passion for truth, which had the effect of making these men forget their dinners, will stimulate others to devote ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... yet she had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as she complained, with that kitchen-boiler gnawing at her vitals. She claimed to be set on a level with the Spartan boy, if not above him. Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound. Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who had no such ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Kiraru—Kirarawa. Now if a racial conflict is indicated by the names eaglehawk and crow, this must be either because the contending races were already known by these names, or because the two birds in question are proverbially hostile to each other. In either case we are left without any explanation of the two cockatoo phratries. It may indeed be argued that the locality in which the eaglehawk-crow phratry names are found tells strongly ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... a big man, slow of tongue, ordinarily genial, and proverbially stupid. He knew the tramp was endeavoring to anger him. The deputy turned to Louise. "Sorry, Miss Lacharme, but I got to ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... therefore no wonder that the count soon conceived an inclination to an intimacy with our young hero, whose vast abilities could not be concealed from one of the count's discernment; for though this latter was so expert at his cards that he was proverbially said to PLAY THE WHOLE GAME, he was no match for master Wild, who, inexperienced as he was, notwithstanding all the art, the dexterity, and often the fortune of his adversary, never failed to send him away from the table with less in his pocket than he ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... proverbially obstinate animals, and Mrs. Henchman's this afternoon proved no exception to the rule. He had evidently made up his mind that the road to the Landslip was not a congenial one. In vain the boy who drove him cheered him onwards, in vain Denys tugged at his ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... wealthy and strenuously opposed to progress and liberty, South America groans under the tyranny of a priesthood which, in its highest forms, is unillumined by, and incompetent to preach, the gospel of God's free gift; and in its lowest is proverbially and habitually drunken, extortionate and ignorant. The fires of her unspeakable Inquisition still burn in the hearts of her ruling clerics, and although the spirit of the age has in our nineteenth century transformed ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... industry that he granted him exemption from all taxes. And so in matters in general he burdened the people as little as possible with his government, but always cultivated peace and kept them in all quietness. Hence the tyranny of Pisistratus was often spoken of proverbially as 'the age of gold'; for when his sons succeeded him the government became much harsher. But most important of all in this respect was his popular and kindly disposition. In all things he was accustomed to observe the laws, without giving himself any exceptional ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... between the ears (see Fig. 60). Inferior animals distinguished for breadth between the ears are not only cunning and treacherous, but very excitable and irritable. The head of the Fox is remarkable for its extreme width at the region of Fear. He is proverbially crafty and treacherous, always excitable, and so variable in temper that he can never be trusted. He is a very timid thief, exceedingly suspicious, irregular in habits, and frequently driven by hunger ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... cultivated liers in bed. The proverbial shortness of the German bed (which perhaps explains the German Kultur) may have tended to discourage the art and at the same time unconsciously stimulated a hatred of England, where the beds are proverbially generous. One can at least hope, however, that all beds are alike in this matter, provided the occupant is a proper ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... and to witness the cold neglect and even disdainful suspicion with which the most useful and valuable devices are often received, or rather, we should say, haughtily disregarded and rejected. Seldom or never do we find these inventions appreciated according to their merits. The Government is proverbially slow to adopt improvements of any kind; and the army and navy, like all similar professional bodies, are averse to every important change, and wedded to the instruments and processes in the use of which they have been educated and trained. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of their neighbours. I have asked whether Henry the Eighth was an amiable character? Whether Pope Alexander the Sixth was a good man? Whether Mr. Murderer and Mrs. Murderess Manning were not both unusually stout people? Whether hired nurses, proverbially as cruel a set of women as are to be found in all England, were not, for the most part, also as fat a set of women as are to be found in all England?—and so on, through dozens of other examples, modern and ancient, native and foreign, high and low. Holding these strong opinions ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... upon a trotline. In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... par excellence, the famous partisan of that region. While Sumter stands conspicuous for bold daring, fearless intrepidity and always resolute behavior; while Lee takes eminent rank as a gallant Captain of Cavalry, the eye and the wing of the southern liberating army under Greene; Marion is proverbially the great master of strategy—the wily fox of the swamps—never to be caught, never to be followed,—yet always at hand, with unconjectured promptness, at the moment when he is least feared and is least to be expected. His pre-eminence in this peculiar and most difficult of all kinds of ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... for four months, took it by storm and left it a heap of ruins. To preserve himself from utter destruction the khan threw himself into the arms of the Afghans. The tract in which Andkhui stands is fertile, but proverbially unhealthy; the Persians account it "a hell upon earth'' by reason of its scorching sands, brackish water, flies and scorpions. The population, estimated at 15,000, consists principally of Turkmans with a mixture of Uzbegs and a few Tajiks. The district was allotted to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the solution of this problem of "hereditary disease" that my system will eventually come into its own and will ere long be recognized as the most rational and effectual therapy ever applied since the beginning of the art of healing. It may be years before it is accorded the proverbially tardy acknowledgment of the "orthodox" schools, but that it will, nay must be eventually adopted is virtually a foregone conclusion—that is, if it be indeed the function or policy of the physician of the future ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... universally to disfigure features which are none of the best or cleanest; and their whole appearance is as direct a contrast as can well be imagined, to the hale, honest Norman, or le franc Picard, as he is proverbially styled. We turned our backs upon them with pleasure, after casting back one lingering look at the noble old Circus; and soon found ourselves in the centre of the extensive plain in which Avignon stands. The forwardness of the climate, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... situation of Venice renders it impossible to bring horses into the town; accordingly, the Venetians are proverbially ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... wishing to vilipend the merits of the great Genoese, whose name will never be forgotten so long as the inspiring strains of "Hail Columbia" shall continue to be heard. Though he must be stripped also of whatever praise may belong to the experiment of the egg, which I find proverbially attributed by Castilian authours to a certain Juanito or Jack, (perhaps an offshoot of our giant-killing my thus,) his name will still remain one of the most illustrious of modern times. But the impartial historian owes a duty likewise ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... justice was unfortunate for the progress of the ceremonies, Peterchen having some such relish for the punishment of rogues, and more especially for such as seemed to be an eternal reproach to the action of the Bernese system by their incorrigible misery and poverty, as an old coachman is proverbially said to retain for the crack of the whip. All his judicial sympathies were not fully awakened, on the present occasion, however: the criminals, though far from belonging to the more lucky of their fellow-creatures, not being quite miserable enough in appearance to awaken all ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... If comparisons are proverbially odious, they must be specially so if drawn out upon insufficient data. I must not, therefore, on such a flying inspection, go very deeply into my comparative analysis. And yet, under all the circumstances, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... "Of course there is always the lady's point of view. The sex is proverbially fickle, you know. 'Woman, thy vows are traced in sand,' Lord ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... as an agreeable, well-informed man, whom I was always glad to meet in society. He had served in the navy in early life, and the polish which his manners received in his after intercourse with courts and cities had not served to obliterate that frankness of manner which belongs proverbially ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... a Potter, must temper their judgment by remembering the affection that Wilkes was able to inspire in the heart of Churchill. While the scoundrels of Medmenham were ready to betray their old associate, and, with no touch of the honor proverbially attributed to thieves, to drive him into disgrace, to exile, and if possible to death, the loyal friendship of the poet was given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a man of irreproachable character, of unimpeachable morality, or of unswerving austerity. But he was as different ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and that drapery which ever surrounds with grace those the heart loves first. I believe he never for an instant reflected on the effect his devoted attentions might produce, and, absorbed in the magic of his own rapturous thoughts, he had no time for calmer reasoning. Love is proverbially credulous; and although neither promise nor protestation had been spoken, Theresa never doubled what she hoped, and, perhaps, in her girlish faith, believed his feelings the deeper ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... far as Colonel Carteret controlled proceedings all had been marked by reverent simplicity. But where the carcass is, the eagles, proverbially, gather. And unfeathered fowl, in their own estimation eminently representative of that regal species, flocked to Deadham church and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... they could not understand each other's conversation. This is literally the case at present between the provincial inhabitants of remote parts of England. Indeed the language peculiar to the metropolis, or the cockney dialect, is proverbially ridiculous. The Londoners, who look down with contempt upon all that have not been bred and born within the sound of Bow, talk with unconscious absurdity of weal and winegar, and vine and vindors, and idears, and ask ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the same time the most elaborate and complicated. We refer to that of the Cross. The subject is sufficiently wide to occupy of itself a small volume, but even after the most careful investigation, there are many points which will for ever remain in the region of doubt and obscurity. Tradition is proverbially difficult to eradicate; and all the glamour which surrounds the history of the Cross, and which found expression in, among other popular books, the "Legenda Aurea," maintained all its pristine force and attractiveness down to the end of the sixteenth century. The invention of printing and the gradual ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... for exertion, and, as my good mother used to say, there was always life for living folk. Stern necessity gave my manhood that prudence which my youth was a stranger to. I faced danger, I endured fatigue, I sought foreign climates, and proved that I belonged to the nation which is proverbially patient of labour and prodigal of life. Independence, like liberty to Virgil's shepherd, came late, but came at last, with no great affluence in its train, but bringing enough to support a decent appearance ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... and with some warmth and show of contempt exclaimed loudly, "I dinna ken much aboot the game, but ye dinna ken a wee bit. Mon, ye're standing on the wrong side of the baw! Awa' to the other side!" Golfers at the beginning of a round are proverbially susceptible to small influences, and when a player is accustomed to lean somewhat upon his caddie, as even some of the best occasionally do, I can well imagine that such a trivial matter as this is enough to mar a ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... Seven is proverbially the perfect number. It is of a quantity sufficiently complex to stimulate the eye to resolve it, and yet so simple that it can be analyzed at a glance; as a center with two equal sides, it is possessed of symmetry, and as the sum of an odd and even number (3 and 4) it has vitality and variety. ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... sees "the doctor," who, at the moment, has stepped from within the wigwam, where he had been unperceived, there is a sudden revulsion of feeling among the savages—a return to hostility, the antipathy of all Fuegians to the African negro being proverbially bitter. Strange and unaccountable is this prejudice against the negro by a people almost the ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... irritable poet "for the mere carcass of greatness, or when his eye measured the difference of their point of elevation; I say to myself, with scarcely any emotion," (he might have added, except a good deal of painful contempt,) "what do I care for him or his pomp either?" —"Dr. Blair's vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance," adds Burns, at the moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius had entirely ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... control his temper. His incessant quarrels with Captain Lewis were one cause of the loss of the schooners off Puerto Cabello. A want of quickness and energy was felt in all his operations. Delays are proverbially dangerous, but in a coup de main fatal. The time wasted by him at Jacquemel and at Aruba was employed by the Spaniards in making preparations for defence. They had few troops, and did not dare to trust the natives with arms, but they succeeded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Hester a little about him to watch him for half an hour where he stood behind the counter of the bank: there he was the least courteous of proverbially discourteous bank-clerks, whose manners are about of the same breed with those of hotel-clerks in America. It ought to be mentioned, however, that he treated those of his own social position in precisely the same way as less distinguished callers. But he ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... proverbially a dog's berth. He is neither officer nor man. The men do not respect him as an officer, and he is obliged to go aloft to reef and furl the topsails, and to put his hands into the tar and slush, with the rest. The crew call him the "sailor's waiter," ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... long period, was your early history. You were invaded; you were pillaged and you were conquered; yet amid all these disgraces and vicissitudes there was gradually formed that English race which has brought about a very different state of affairs. Instead of being invaded, your land is proverbially the only "inviolate land"—"the inviolate land of the sage and free." Instead of being plundered, you have attracted to your shores all the capital of the world. Instead of being conquered, your flag floats on many waters, and your standard waves in either zone. It may be said that these ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... shining new silk hat was on one side of his head; and in his hand he was dangling an ebony cane. In spite, however, of all these gaudy trappings, he could not muster up an easy air; and, as he knocked, he had that look proverbially attributed to dogs who ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... clearest style, the more the lawyer sifted her testimony, the clearer and more evident its truthfulness and point became; until there seemed at length nothing to do but acquit the prisoner. But courts of law are proverbially fussy, and now the State's Attorney was doing his best to invalidate the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... observances were practised by the heathen, which ceremonies ye acknowledge to have been false and impious, yet their followers worshipped and slid their neck into the yoke as readily as thy favourite Hebrews, who are proverbially rogues and cheats in the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... looking bright but vague, turned three or four things over in her mind. She remembered that the sister of her interlocutress was the proverbially rich Mrs. Bray, a bankeress or a breweress or a builderess, who had so big a house that she couldn't fill it unless she opened her doors, or her mouth, very wide. Rose had learnt more about London society during these lonely months with ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... of the voyage with the old Galleon, and was making every preparation to fit her yet further for encountering the passage in mid-winter across the Atlantic. During this period I had not altogether an unpleasant time of it, for the merchants and planters of Kingston were proverbially hospitable, and I had many friends among them, so that every moment I could spare from my duties on board ship was occupied in receiving the attentions and civilities they showered on me. This was all very agreeable. I made haste to enjoy the moments as they passed, for I expected to be at ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the musical use he makes of the quatrain, a form of verse in which Dryden afterwards wrote his 'Annus Mirabilis,' and as one of the earliest philosophical poems in the language. It is proverbially difficult to reason in verse, but Davies reasons, if not always with conclusive result, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... wilting humanity; and of this beggarly handful two-thirds were women. Shelby assumed a cheerful front, declaring that a small audience so assembled was deserving of his best, but hewing to this line was another matter. Womankind are proverbially indifferent to politics; and a stouter resolution than his would have flagged in the presence of that preoccupied feminine two-thirds, whose eyes were centred on Mrs. Hilliard's tailor-made gown and Ruth Temple's fall hat. Used as he was to easy victory, this first disappointment ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... in the fog and darkness, is not clearly known. The British were surprised; but British soldiers are proverbially hard to drive from their own position. The Americans had the advantage of making the attack; but they were nearly all raw troops. Each side was confused and uncertain of its own and the enemy's position. Coffee, on the left, drove the British back towards the river, where they were ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... about not liking it. Of course some people won't like it. Some people never like any new way of doing things. Food habits are proverbially ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... desires me to say, that in your undisguised devotion to Uncle Orme he presumes he is completely forgotten; but consoles himself with the reflection, that from time immemorial wards have been like the Carthaginians—proverbially ungrateful." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... playing round their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art that domestic life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, and the heart the substantial form and body of existence. Persons much cultivating an abstract study are often thus; mathematicians proverbially so. When his servant ran to the celebrated French philosopher, shrieking, "The house is on fire, sir!" "Go and tell my wife then, fool!" said the wise man, settling back to his problems; "do I ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The Scotch are proverbially credulous concerning all preternatural influences; and, had Robert Maclean been cognizant of half the ghostly associations attached to the residence which he had selected in compliance with general instructions from his mistress, it is scarcely ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... clear glass, so that both sides can be inspected. The handwriting of the scrivener in the body of the instrument is quite distinct and legible, considering its antiquity. The signature of Shakespeare appears at the bottom of each sheet. The chirography of men of genius is proverbially bad, generally from its fluent facility, but the autographs of Shakespeare are clumsy, uncouth, and awkward, their disconnected and sprawling letters seeming to have been formed with difficulty by fingers unfamiliar with the use of the pen. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... chance to use it. It was in my pocket. Fifteen minutes after the fracas, Mrs. Pinkerton came to my room, completely dressed, and insisted upon coming in to hear all about it and to overwhelm me with thanks and admiration. I was as modest as heroes proverbially are, and then and there told her never to refer to the subject again unless she addressed me as ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... the isle that is called Patmos:"—but he does not say who sent him there. Historians tell us that he was banished by Domitian, the Roman emperor; others say, by Nero; but the former is more probable. This island is proverbially barren. It is situated among a number of islands in the Aegean sea, a point of the Mediterranean running northward between Europe and Asia, and not very remote from most of the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... poet, the prolific Lope de Vega, tells us to the same purport. The Homo Unius Libri is indeed proverbially formidable to all conversational figurantes: like your sharpshooter, he knows his piece, and is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... vaticination' is proverbially unsafe, and therefore to be carefully avoided by all judicious inquirers, and especially by practical statesmen, it must at the same time be admitted that some of the general laws controlling such events are well understood; and whenever all the facts of a case are known and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and the approach of winter determined the transference of British troops and ships from the continent to the Leeward Islands. Reinforcements had given the British fleet in America a numerical superiority, which for the time imposed a check upon d'Estaing; but Byron, proverbially unlucky in weather, was driven crippled to Newport, leaving the French free to quit Boston. The difficulty of provisioning so large a force as twelve ships of the line at first threatened to prevent the withdrawal, supplies being then extremely ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... 'tater-marrer' (potato-marrow?). Any help? bowyangs: ties (cord, rope, cloth) put around trouser legs below knee bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed. bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions ('mulga' and 'mallee'), and hence equivalent to "outback". Now used generally for remote rural areas ("the bush") and scrubby forest. bushfire: wild ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... by Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,—through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor thus describes the trip down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... spirit, rises AEtna. His giant form can be seen from elevated grounds in the most remote parts of the island, and the mariner can discern his snowy crown more than a hundred miles. But Sicily abounds in luxuriant plains and charming valleys, and its soil is proverbially rich: it once bore the appellation of the Granary of Rome; and it is now said that if properly tilled it would produce more grain than any country of its size in the world. Its beauty and fertility were often celebrated by ancient bards, who described the sacred flocks and herds of Apollo on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various |
