"Rarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sometimes find during work, and will wish to preserve. These foetal specimens, however, let it be remembered, are of the greatest consequence in the study of embryology, and should always be preserved intact in a fluid medium of some kind. Sometimes the operator comes across a foetus of some rarity, which, if not large, can be preserved in a small "preparation" jar, filled with best rectified spirits of wine, as being not too expensive ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... give rarity and splendour to his thanks. Janie pondered over them a little, but when Crayshaw added, "Quite parenthetical," she gave it up. That was a word she could not hope to understand. When a difficulty is once confessed to be unconquerable, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... saves the race from ruin through passion is the rarity of those by nature or by art expert in using it. Norman felt that he was paying the penalty for his persistent search for this rarity; one of the basest tricks of destiny upon man is to give him what he wants—wealth, or fame, or power, or the woman ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... to harmless merriment in the cricket-field or on the friendly country roads, and his evening is spent without any vain gossip in the happy companionship of his books. That young man loses no day; but unhappily he represents a type which is but too rare. The steady man, economic of time, is a rarity; but the wild youth who is always going to do something to-morrow is one of a class that numbers only too many on its rolls. To-morrow! The young fellow passes to-day on the river, or spends it in lounging or in active dissipation. He feels that he is doing wrong; but the gaunt spectres ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... seldom met with in its perfection that its manifestation is a matter of greatest interest to those who make a study of the subject. It occasionally occurs in flashes, and can not be produced at will by the ordinary clairvoyant. Unfortunately, its very rarity and uncommonness cause it to be counterfeited and ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... expand itself in tender expressions or caresses even to those who were dearest to him. On the contrary, he used to censure this as a degree of weakness in several of his neighbours, and particularly in poor widow Butler. It followed, however, from the rarity of such emotions in this self-denied and reserved man, that his children attached to occasional marks of his affection and approbation a degree of high interest and solemnity; well considering them as evidences of feelings which were only expressed when ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... alabaster vase with the name of Naramsin, and a mace-head of exquisitely veined marble, dedicated by Shargani-shar-ali to the sun-god of Sippara, are valued only on account of the beauty of the material and the rarity of the inscription; but a porphyry cylinder, which belonged to Ibnishar, scribe of the above-named Shargani, must be ranked among the masterpieces of Oriental engraving. It represents the hero Gilgames, kneeling and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... malicious imagination. For example, go to a friend whose sense of humour is notoriously imperfect, and say gently to him: "Your sense of humour is imperfect, my friend," and see how he will receive the information! So much for the rarity of self-knowledge. ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... common at the extreme limits of its range, and so this warbler has a reputation for rarity among the New England ornithologists that would surprise people in the middle South and Southwest. After all that may be said in the books, a bird is either common or rare to the individual who may or may not have ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... which they say St. Patrick used to carry in, his hand. Here also was laid a certain knotty bone of some bigness, hollow in the midst like the nave of a wheel, and out of which issue, as it were, natural spokes: this was: shown as a great rarity, being part of a great, serpent's tail—one of those monsters the blessed Patrick ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... into the kaleidoscopic divergencies of adult standards was given Sylvia during the visits of her Aunt Victoria. These visits were angelic in their extreme rarity, and for Sylvia were always a mixture of the beatific and the distressing. Only to look at Aunt Victoria was a bright revelation of elegance and grace. And yet the talk around table and hearth on the two or three occasions when the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... replied the mischievous boy, "but it's no rarity to me. I 'm used to it, you know. But you would delight in it, especially with bare feet. That way it is jolly, better than wading in a brook. Suppose you try ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... twitterings might inspire the competing minstrels. Bermondsey and Walworth alone occupied the nails. Scarcely any bets were made. They seemed an impecunious assemblage, gathered for mere sport. One gentleman did, indeed, offer to stake "that 'ere blowsy bob," as though a shilling in his possession were a rarity of which his friends must be certainly aware. What was the occult meaning of the epithet "Blowsy" I could not fathom, but there were no takers; and, after the windows had been opened for a few minutes to clear the atmosphere, they were closed again; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... and Achang was appointed to be the bearer of them, with the compliments of the Americans, to the gentlemen who were to receive them. Two native porters were to carry them; and the party knew that the fish were a rarity in the town, and they were in season for the dinner of ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... seems to be aware that etchings are usually sought as much for their rarity as their excellence, and to have determined that his own ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... remembers meeting, a few years since, the (at that time) parliamentary logician, with his trousers turned up out of the mud, and armed with the tin insignia of his craft, busily occupied in the search after a marsh-loving rarity in a typical spongy wood on the clay to ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... regards the second line he stretches it a little. If Nilakantha be right, K.P. Singha must be wrong. Generally, however, it is the known incapacity of the ocean to transgress its continents that supplies poets with illustrations. Here, however, possibly, the rarity of the phenomenon, viz., the ocean's transgressing its continents, is used to illustrate the rare fact of the intelligence, succeeding by yoga power, in transcending the attributes of Rajas, Tamas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... pair of pattens, a toasting-fork, a kettle, a pap-boat, a spoon for the administration of medicine to the refractory, and lastly, Mrs Gamp's umbrella, which as something of great price and rarity, was displayed with particular ostentation, completed the decorations of the chimney-piece and adjacent wall. Towards these objects Mrs Gamp raised her eyes in satisfaction when she had arranged the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the relation of such institutions to human powers, balancing advantages and injuries, and studying the past for the laws of the future? What inquiry has been made as to the condition of exceptional men, who, by some fatal chance, knew human sciences before their time? Has the rarity of such cases been reckoned—the result examined? Has any enquiry been made as to the means by which such men were enabled to endure the perpetual strain of thought? How many, like Pascal, died prematurely, worn-out ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... their quaint, and necessarily exaggerated way. It is quite true, and very sad to say, that if any one nowadays wants a piece of ordinary work done by gardener, carpenter, mason, dyer, weaver, smith, what you will, he will be a lucky rarity if he get it well done. He will, on the contrary, meet on every side with evasion of plain duties, and disregard of other men's rights; yet I cannot see how the 'British Working Man' is to be made to bear the whole burden of this blame, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... carver and intarsiatori were often, like other craftsmen, content to do the work without caring about the reputation of doing it; but the cases in which facts of the lives or work of these men have been preserved are so much the more interesting from their rarity, and certainly do not show them to any disadvantage compared with other artists, or those among ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... artist, and it was worn by a lady. It did not pine, it did not droop; there was no more an atom of hanging too much than there was a portion inflated by flamboyancy; it did not assert itself; it bore notice without seeking it. Plain but exquisite, it was that great rarity—goodness made charming. ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... the Thames, and not till 1860, as will be seen in the next chapter, that the same quadruped was proved to have co-existed in France with the mammoth. The same theory which will explain the comparative rarity of such species would no doubt account for the still greater scarcity of human bones, as well as for our general ignorance of the Pleistocene terrestrial fauna, with the exception of that part of it which is revealed ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... colour of the lower parts, which are a blackish-grey. The upper parts are sometimes as black as a mole, sometimes grizzled with brown" ('Mammiferes,' p. 284). The brown specimen with the dark belly is evidently a rarity. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... fallen leaflets of the white ash, remarkable for their rich olive-purple color, forming a beautiful contrast with some of the lighter-hued leaves. It so happened that this particular tree, the white ash, did not grow upon The Mountain, and the leaflets were more welcome for their comparative rarity. So the girls made their basket, and the floor of it they covered with the rich olive-purple leaflets. Such late flowers as they could lay their hands upon served to fill it, and with many kindly messages they sent it to Miss Elsie Venner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... to the commissioner nominated by the National Assembly to place them with the Crown diamonds. After giving them to him, she offered him a row of pearls of great beauty, saying to him that it had been brought into France by Anne of Austria; that it was invaluable, on account of its rarity; that, having been appropriated by that Princess to the use of the Queens and Dauphinesses, Louis XV. had placed it in her hands on her arrival in France; but that she considered it national property. "That is an open question, Madame," ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Allan, the Historian of "The Old Parishes of Maryland," to have been more of the student than the preacher. He was the author of a pamphlet published in Elkton in 1795, entitled "Observations on the Present State of Religion in Maryland," which is now of great rarity and value. He also published a small volume entitled "Hymns and Poems on Various Occasions," which was printed by Samuel and John Adams, of Baltimore, in 1790; and several other poems of considerable length, the most popular of which was entitled "A View of the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... specimens of English fiction are of a character or a rarity which makes any acquaintance with them difficult to the general public, I have endeavored so to describe their style and contents that the reader may obtain, to some degree, a personal ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the sunset which he has just seen. If he seriously tries to comply with your request, you will probably be surprised both by the difficulty he has in his attempt, and the little that he really can say upon these familiar subjects. The interesting story teller is a rarity, which is only another way of saying that the ability to narrate and describe needs cultivation. There is no better opportunity possible than that of ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... has a much larger bloom, varies in hue from purest white to deepest red, and flowers in May or June. The most glorious of these things, however, is O. vex. superbum, a plant of the greatest rarity, conspicuous for its blotch of deep purple in the centre of the lip, and its little dot of the same on each wing. Doubtless this is a natural hybrid betwixt the Antioquia form and Odontoglossum Roezlii, which is its neighbour. The chance of finding a bit of superbum in a ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Ethica, 1675, by Bontekoe, under the pseudonym Philaretus. The Physics, 1688, the Metaphysics, 1691, and the Annotata Majora in Cartesii Principia Philosophiae, 1691, were also posthumous publications, from the notes of his pupils. In view of the rarity of these volumes, and the importance of the philosopher, it is welcome news that J.P.N. Land has undertaken an edition of the collected works, in three volumes, of which the first two have already appeared.[1] The ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... so fortunate as to discover two other poems on the same subject, in a little collection in my possession entitled Martini Theodorici Bellovaci Epigrammata (Parisiis, 1539), which seems to be of such rarity that these pieces may almost be viewed in the light of inedited documents. They are of special interest because of the singular circumstance that this collection of extremely "Catholic" effusions is dedicated to Odet de Coligny, Cardinal of Chatillon, Archbishop of Toulouse, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... It was confidently asserted in Si-chow that he possessed every manner of printed leaf which had been composed in whatsoever language, and all the most precious charms, including many snake-skins of more than ordinary rarity, and the fang of a black wolf which had been stung ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... like gnats flying in the air; in liquids, distant as men passing in a busy street; in solids, as men in a congregation, so sparse that each can easily move about. The congregation can easily disperse to the rarity of those walking in the street, and the men in the street condense to the density of the congregation. So, matter can change in going from solids to liquids and gases, or vice versa. The behavior of atoms in the process ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... Ah, it is a rarity to shed tears of joy! The thing is familiarly spoken of, but the truth is that many pass through this world of tears and never shed one such tear. The few who have shed them can congratulate William Hope for ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis, Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity, He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. Now he may overcharge his American pictures, But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth in his strictures; And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... of the obedience of the new-married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio), is a very happy one.—In some parts of this play there is a little too much about music-masters and masters of philosophy. They were things of greater rarity in those days than they are now. Nothing, however, can be better than the advice which Tranio gives his master for the ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... would never abandon his master (a thing which is rarely wont to happen), and was content to work with him for meagre gains and praise, rather than labour by himself for greater profit and credit. For this gratitude, in view of its rarity among the men of to-day, all the more praise is due to Ercole, who, knowing himself to be indebted to Lorenzo, put aside all thought of his own interest in favour of his master's wishes, and was like a brother or a son to him up to the end ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... two beverages are considerable. Tea is used advantageously in inflammatory diseases and as a cure for the headache. Coffee is supposed to act as a preventative of gravel and gout, and to its influence is ascribed the rarity of those diseases in Prance and Turkey. Both tea and coffee powerfully counteract the effects of opium and intoxicating liquors: though, when taken in excess, and without nourishing food, they themselves produce, temporarily at least, some of the more disagreeable consequences incident to ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... women, to follow him. There was a grand collation for the Princesses, his daughters, who took their friends there, and indeed all the women went to it if they pleased. One day the Duchesse de Gesvres took it into her head to go to Trianon and partake of this meal; her age, her rarity at Court, her accoutrements, and her face, provoked the Princesses to make fun of her in whispers with their fair visitors. She perceived this, and without being embarrassed, took them up so sharply, that they were silenced, and looked down. But this was ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... time forth," said Frederick, "let no man dare to say that battles are in vain. The bloody field of Leuthen produced a flute from Quantz; and by Heaven, that is a greater rarity than the most complete victory in ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... produced changes in the population. Little things like tougher epidermis and depilation of body hair—little things that held alarming implications to Beta's scientists, and to Beta's people. Not too many generations hence a Betan outside his home system would be a rarity, and in a few millennia the Betan system itself would be a closed enclave peopled by humans who had deviated too far from the basic stock to mingle ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... matters masculine ideals of Girls, sex education of their need of sexual knowledge Gnostic elements in early Christian literature Goddesses in forefront of primitive pantheons Gonorrhoea, nature and results of And see Venereal Diseases. Goutte de Lait Greeks, origin of their drama prudery among rarity of ideal sexual love among their attitude towards nakedness their conception of the orgy their erotic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... an alarm for Henry; his interest was yet safe; and she led off the dance with genuine spirit and enjoyment. Not more than five couple could be mustered; but the rarity and the suddenness of it made it very delightful, and she found herself well matched in a partner. They were a ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... out of it. This was so, partly because he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight. He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... so truly interpreted the Indian mind—no one, transcribing Indian thought into our literature, has retained so high and serious a level, and quite apart from the rarity of themes and setting—the verses ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... he who had in a manner invented the wonderful creature—through having seen her first, caught her in her native jungle? Hadn't he more or less paved the way for her by his prompt recognition of her rarity, by preceding her, in a friendly spirit—as he had the "ear" of society—with ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... he is about to return to Rome from his province (Cilicia), she is still the most amiable, the dearest of women. Then we begin to see signs of coolness, yet nothing that would strike us did we not know what was afterwards to happen. He excuses the rarity of his letters. There is no one by whom to send them. If there were, he was willing to write. The greetings became formal, the superlatives "dearest," "fondest," "best," are dropped. "You are glad," he writes after the battle of Pharsalia ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... into their ideas, and making himself their rival. If life was laborious under his ferula, it was also merry. The best proof of this is the fact that of all his colleagues at the lyce he was the only one who had no nickname, a rarity ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... on horseback," master of the situation and moulder of the destinies of Japan, Hideyoshi (1536-1598), was afterward known as the Taik[o], or Retired Regent. The rarity of the title makes it applicable in common speech to this one person. Greater than his dead master, Nobunaga, and ingenious in the arts of war and peace, Hideyoshi compelled the warring daimi[o]s, even the proud lord of Satsuma,[10] to yield to his power, until the civil minister of ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel—the axe was a rarity—Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at his ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... los Indios del Peru), by the brother Domingo de San Thomas, published in Valladolid in 1560, and republished in the same year with an appendix, being a Vocabulary of the Quichua. The demand for the first edition appears to have been considerable; or, what is more likely, from the extreme rarity of the work, the careful author {195} suppressed or called in the first edition, in order to add, for the benefit of his purchasers, the vocabulary which he had found time to prepare ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... our hunger in thankfulness for fire and shelter such as it was. But still better was in store for us. One of our tired forage trains had gone into park near us, and the teamsters offered to share their supper with us. They had corn "pone," some salt pork, and for a rarity some newly arrived coffee. We sat on the corn-stalks around the fire with an iron camp-kettle in the midst containing the black coffee which we dipped out with battered tin cups, and we held in our hands pieces of the corn-pone and slices of fried pork, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... they must be regarded as 'Medici books,' having been inherited at one time by a nephew of Leo X. On her death in 1589 she was found to have been possessed of about eight hundred Greek manuscripts, all of the highest rarity and value. There was some danger that they would be seized by her creditors; but the King was advised that such an assemblage could not be got together again in any country or at any cost. The library was made an heir-loom of the Crown: and at De ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... Street, Covent Garden) General Catalogue of the most extensive Collection of Curious Books on Sale in this or any other country, in most Languages and classes of Literature, and including many hundred Articles of the utmost rarity; William Brown's (46. High Holborn) Catalogue of Second-hand English and Foreign Books; Cole's (15. Great Turnstile, Holborn) List No. XXX. of Miscellaneous Second-hand Books; Reeves' and Turner's (98. Chancery Lane) Catalogue No. 14. of Cheap Books, many Rare and Curious; John ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... we were independent. We got jobs in offices, at forty kroner a month. Because now there was no longer anything in the least extraordinary about us students—we were no rarity, there were hundreds of us—forty kroner was the most they gave us. Thirty went to Father and Mother for our keep, and ten for ourselves. It wasn't enough. We had to have pretty clothes for the office, and we were young, we liked to walk out; but everything ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... pictures, while the long coat which has displaced the cloak still retains a smack of it in the way they disregard the sleeves and hang it from their shoulders. These men are decidedly not so ugly as the women, and vary wonderfully in size, colour and complexion, though a big Portuguese is a rarity. The strong point in both sexes is their natural gift for wearing colour, for choosing and ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... shift; no more did Bagshaw; no more did any of the others. There was nothing else to be done; so where is Miss Snubbleston's basket? And where is Master Charles? gracious! Don't be alarmed, the precious rarity is in no danger. He was soon discovered behind a tree, whither he had dragged the fruit and cakes, and was engaged with all his might and main, in an endeavor, with a piece of stick, to force out an apple. In this attempt, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... formed of him. He took, from the first, that station in the House which it requires tact to establish, and great knowledge of the world to free from the charge of impracticability and crotchet, but which, once established, is peculiarly imposing from the rarity of its independence; that is to say, the station of the moderate man who belongs sufficiently to a party to obtain its support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged from a party to make his vote and word, on certain questions, matter ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The rarity of covered passageways in this village is noteworthy, and emphasizes the marked difference in the character of the Tusayan and Zuni ground plans. The close crowding of rooms in the latter has made ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... tallow—examines, covertly, the proposed article from the opposite side of the house, and approves her—is introduced to her, and, on closer inspection, approves her still more—receives an invitation to visit—visits frequently, and each time is more satisfied of the rarity, serviceableness, ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... the one fundamental rule of decency, the caller could make himself comfortable in his own way. He could lounge, pound the piano, joke, play games, smoke where he pleased, and enjoy what was then a rarity—the company and conversation of nimble-witted, well-dressed, beautiful women whose ideas were not narrow. Ultimate possibilities were always kept very much in the background, but that there were possibilities made for present relaxation ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... reserves his laurels for posterity (Who does not often claim the bright reversion) Has generally no great crop to spare it, he Being only injured by his own assertion; And although here and there some glorious rarity Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion, The major part of such appellants go To—God knows where—for no one else ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... this conduct on the relations between Columbus and the natives, was soon apparent. The trinkets and beads, which had once been so precious in their eyes, had first lost the charm of novelty, then the value of rarity. The circulating medium became so depreciated that provisions were scarcely procurable. And, similarly, the personal veneration which the natives had first evinced for the white men, had given way to contempt and to hatred, when familiarity had shown how worthless were these "superior beings." ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... strewed with lilies and roses. Apicius, in the time of Trajan, spent one hundred millions of sesterces in debauchery and gluttony; having only ten millions left, he ended his life with poison, thinking he might die of hunger. Things were valued for their cost and rarity rather than their real value. Enormous prices were paid for carp, the favorite dish of the Romans as of the Chinese. Drusillus, a freedman of Claudius, caused a dish to be made of five hundred pounds weight of silver. Vitellius had one made of such prodigious ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... people feed on heartily. These whales I have known so large, that a man could hardly carry one upon his shoulders; and sometimes, for curiosity, they are brought in hampers to Lorbrulgrud; I saw one of them in a dish at the king's table, which passed for a rarity, but I did not observe he was fond of it; for I think, indeed, the bigness disgusted him, although I have seen one somewhat larger ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... I?" she added, as a continuation of the same cry, and sobbing pitifully: and the rarity with her of such abandonment only made the condition ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... theological prepossessions of the age, the Discours was widely read, and passed through many editions. On the other hand, the Hydrogeologie died stillborn, with scarcely a friend or a reader, never reaching a second edition, and is now, like most of his works, a bibliographical rarity. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... at four o'clock I dined with the landlord, in company with a commercial traveller. The dinner was good, though plain, consisting of boiled mackerel—rather a rarity in those parts at that time—with fennel sauce, a prime baron of roast beef after the mackerel, then a tart and noble Cheshire cheese; we had prime sherry at dinner, and whilst eating the cheese prime porter, that of Barclay, the only good porter in the world. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Roach, Cousin Trout, or whatever else it is called, Leuciscus pulchellus, white and red, always an unexpected prize, which, however, any angler is glad to hook for its rarity. A name that reminds us of many an unsuccessful ramble by swift streams, when the wind rose to disappoint the fisher. It is commonly a silvery soft-scaled fish, of graceful, scholarlike, and classical look, like many a picture in an English book. It loves a swift current and a sandy bottom, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... to anticipate a little—and from this point of view it cannot be denied that they have a special interest. But they seem to me to have no significance as far as the transformation of species is concerned, if only because of the extreme rarity of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun! O, it was pitiful! Near a whole city full, Home ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... who was, or who seemed to be, taller than he; a slim man, having but one thing in common with the detective: his black morning-coat fitted him as perfectly as the dress-coat had fitted the inspector. An irreproachably attired man is a greater rarity than most people realise; and Zoe Oppner wondered why, even in that moment of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... to be dressed and to sit up. He was pale and weak, and his head was still bound up, but he welcomed the girl affectionately, though with a mild reproach as to the rarity of her visits. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Bishop Kennett's library contained a most valuable collection of tracts and pamphlets published in the latter part of the seventeenth century. There are also some books of much earlier date, a few of great rarity. A memorandum written in the Book of Swapham above mentioned tells us that the Precentor, Humphrey Austin, had hidden it in 1642 in anticipation of coming troubles. But Cromwell's soldiers found ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... alarming prosperity, who advised him to inflict some deliberate loss or sacrifice upon himself; so Polycrates drew from his finger and flung into the sea a signet-ring which he possessed, with a jewel of great rarity and beauty in it. Soon afterwards a fish was caught by the royal fisherman, and was served up at the king's table—there, inside the body of the fish, was the ring; and when Polycrates saw that, he felt that the gods had restored him his gift, and that his destruction was determined ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... added in the era of the new red sandstone, when the earth had become suited for such a creature, so may these creatures have been added when media suitable for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take place any day, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the rarity of the rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems to have already undergone the principal part of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Thorndyke's eve—"and the caretaker says that a few days ago Isaac brought home several parcels, which were put away temporarily in a strong cupboard. He seemed to be very pleased with his new acquisitions, and gave the caretaker to understand that they were of extraordinary rarity ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... a Spaniard you have certainly acquired a rare suit of manners. But may I suggest that their rarity will scarcely prove worth the cost when your answer comes ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... of Asuncion had good and sufficient causes of complaint against the Jesuits. On several occasions the efforts of the Jesuits and their Indians alone had saved the capital from the wild Indians, and benefits are hard to bear, if only from their rarity. ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... is Doddiscombsleigh, whose chief feature is its church. The chancel is early Decorated, the nave and north aisle Perpendicular, and in the windows of this aisle, and more especially in the east window, is some good stained glass—a rarity in the churches in this neighbourhood. The subject, a rather uncommon one in England, is the Seven Sacraments, and, as the old glass was no longer intact, the window has been ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... answered, "Yes;" others resolutely, "No." But the general opinion was on the negative side. Hence I concluded that although there are few duels in Holland, this does not arise, as I thought, from a universal and absolute contempt for the "ferocious prejudice," but rather from the rarity of the cases in which two citizens allow themselves to be carried by passion to the point of having recourse to arms; which is a result of nature rather than of education. In public controversies and private discussions, however violent, personal insults ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... bowly legs. It was, however, a tractable and homely beast; and after some confabulation, as my lady herself told Mrs Balwhidder, it was received into fellowship by her other ducks and poultry. It is not, however, so much on account of the rarity of the creature, that I have introduced it here, as for the purpose of relating a wonderful operation that was performed on it by Miss ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... says, "I s'pose so. I s'pose such things will spread, bein' a sort of a rarity. I'd heard that it had got out, way ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... however, inserted in the fifth volume of the small edition, 4to., of 1812, and is here transposed to that part of the Voyages relating to the Canaries, etc. Originally printed for "W. Apsley, dwelling in. Paules Church-Yard, at the signe of the Tygers Head" in 1599, it is of the utmost rarity, and for that reason I have thought it right to give the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... away the fact, which implies so many others, that not one of these objects is otherwise than expensive; expensive, necessarily and intentionally, from the rarity both of the kind of skill and of the kind of material; these things are reserved by their price as well as their uselessness, for a small number of idle persons. They have no connection with life, either by penetrating, by serviceableness, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... the richly furnished conservatory in which a splendid snow-white dahlia with a scarce perceptible rosy tinge in its innermost petals was just then beginning to bloom. It was a great rarity in Europe at that time. Rudolf thought this specimen very beautiful, and maintained that only at Schoenbrunn was a more beautiful one ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... sins heteroclital, and such as want name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their history. We do desire no record of enormities: sins should he accounted new. They omit of their monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society.... In things of this nature, silence commendeth history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... looked. On every side I beheld beautiful inorganic forms, of unknown texture, and colored with the most enchanting hues. These forms presented the appearance of what might be called, for want of a more specific definition, foliated clouds of the highest rarity; that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the gilding of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away into the illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous forests, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... envy in the heart of many a European beauty. The features had nothing in common with the coarse negro type which prevailed in the forest and over the grass-lands, but rather inclined towards a Semitic type. Thick lips were the exception, not the rule, and a broad flat nose was also a rarity. The only sign of barbarity was in the hair which, when the head was not clean shaven, was allowed to grow straight out in every direction, giving a very wild appearance to its owner. The hair of some, however, seemed to be softer, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... are, so to say, never out of our eyes; they let themselves be seen of us continually; but a vulture is a very rare sight, and you can seldom meet with a man that has seen their young; their rarity and infrequency has raised a strange opinion in some, that they come to us from some other world; as soothsayers ascribe a divine origination to all things not produced either of nature ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the book called, 'Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar school, chap. 8.'" Notwithstanding a title so pretentious, it contains a translation of no more than the first 567 lines of the first Book, executed in a fanciful and pedantic manner; and its rarity is now the only merit of the volume. A literal interlinear translation of the first Book "on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke," was published in 1839, which had been already preceded by "a selection from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, adapted to the Hamiltonian system, by a literal ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... concluding words that he thought he could by saying everything, and, saying everything twenty times over, for ever render impossible the rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth—one verse is better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is better than the word, but the truth ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... differently colored. Its beauty is of a different nature from that of clear crystals, which it can never rival in brilliancy. Stones like the agate are generally classed apart as semi-precious stones, and their interest depends upon beauty of structure or color, or possibly to a large extent upon their rarity. The turquois, for example, is a very rare stone, which is apparently absolutely uncrystallized, but possesses great beauty of color, and is therefore much prized. The same is true of carnelian. On the present occasion we are not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... rule, but at the same time it must not be forgotten that it may be one in which several interacting factors are concerned, and that the pure white and the pure black are the result of combinations which from their rarity are apt to be overlooked. But until we are in possession of accurate information it is impossible to pronounce definitely upon the nature of the inheritance ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... would be incomparable, imperative. The question is now as to its status as a means of realizing something else, which is then the invaluable of that situation. If a man has just eaten, or if he is well fed generally and the opportunity to hear music is a rarity, he will probably prefer the music to eating. In the given situation that will render the greater contribution. If he is starving, or if he is satiated with music for the time being, he will naturally judge food to have the greater ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... exchange is great, because their beauty, which consists in their luster and their sonorous ring,(722) gives them great value in use; and because, at the same time, their rarity in nature makes the supply of them relatively small,(723) and not susceptible of increase at pleasure.(724) As they contain so large a value in so small a volume, they are adapted to transportation from one ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... to prevent dislocation of certain joints—for example, fracture of the clavicle prevents an impinging force expending itself on the shoulder-joint; and the frequency of Colles' fracture of the radius, and of Pott's fracture of the fibula, doubtless accounts to some extent for the rarity of dislocation of the wrist and ankle-joints respectively. The immunity from dislocation which the joints of young subjects enjoy is partly due to the ease with which an ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... through Bareilly, and followed Webb's route as far as Djosimath, which place they left on the 26th of May, 1812. They soon had to cross the last chain of the Himalayas, with increasing difficulties, owing to the rarity of the villages, which caused a scarcity of provisions and service, and the bad roads, at so great a height above ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... we observed our animals. They did not appear to suffer from the rarity of the air, yet the barometer was at twenty inches eight lines.. We were much surprised that we did not suffer from the cold; on the contrary, the sun warmed us much. We had thrown aside the gloves which had been put on board, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... to bodily pleasures and conveniences, without directly tending to sustain life; perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to destroy it. All dainty (as distinguished from nourishing) food, and means of producing it; all scents not needed for health; substances valued only for their appearance and rarity (as gold and jewels); flowers of difficult culture; animals used for delight (as horses for racing), and such like, form property of this class; to which the term 'luxury,' or ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... children, and for this difference he was doubly precious to her. For, the first beams of daylight falling upon his glossy fur revealed the fact that he was black. Instead of being a miniature replica of his mother with her lovely markings he shone with a satiny lustre the tone of jet. A rarity indeed was Warruk, and because of his color, destined to grow into the largest and most ferocious of his species. Had the Indians on the Ichilo River known of the birth of the black cub they would have beaten their breasts and wailed, ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... to make anything beautiful by contrast; her mind was of beauty itself, and anything beautiful was to her but in the order and law of things—what was to be expected. Nothing struck her because of its rarity; the rare was at home in her country, and she was at home with it. When, for instance, he read: "Father of lights, what sunny seeds," she took it up at once and understood it, felt that the good man had ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... spins a robe which it covers with its own excrement, and does no little injury." Again, "I have often observed the caterpillar of a little moth that takes its station in damp old books, and there commits great ravages, and many a black-letter rarity, which in these days of bibliomania would have been valued at its weight in gold, has been snatched by these ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... Prynne wrote, compiled, and printed about eight quarto pages for every working-day of his life, from his reaching man's estate to the day of his death. Though his books were for the most part appropriated by the trunkmakers, they now command almost fabulous prices, chiefly because of their rarity.] ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... thou know The rarity Of Charity? Thyself forego! Then will the field, To God inviting, To man requiting, Sweet ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... certain of the dogs, and now they were offered an opportunity of deciding which was the stronger, and they seized upon it with avidity. But after a time their manners improved, and a regular fight became a rarity. There were, of course, a few who could never see each other without flying at one another's throats, like Lassesen and Hans, for instance; but we knew their ways, and could keep an eye on them. The dogs soon knew their respective tents, and their places in them. They were let ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... a bee for honey, not, like Coleridge, a browsing ox. To him the essence of delight was choice; and choice, with him, was readier when the prize was far-fetched and dear bought: a rarity of manners, books, pictures, or whatever was human or touched humanity. 'Opinion,' he said, 'is a species of property; and though I am always desirous to share with my friends to a certain extent, I shall ever like to keep some tenets and some property ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... that there are men whose whole course of life is determined by such baseless and centrifugal ideas. Such a species of human ambition is certainly a great rarity. It resembles that cryptogram which goes by the name of "star-ashes," whose tremulous spray-like masses only appear in rare seasons and odd places after the warm summer rains. No ordinary soil ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Affront imaginable to call a Woman Mistress, though but a retail Brandy-monger. Adieu.—One thing more, to morrow is our Country-Court, pray do not fail to be there, for the rarity of the Entertainment: but I shall see you anon at Surelove's, where I'll salute thee as my first meeting, and as an old Acquaintance in England—here's Company, farewel. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the shadow of the marvellous to be heightened without becoming offensive—sounds, like other things, tolerably easy when it is explained; and yet the difficulty is enormous, as may appear on reflection as well as from the extreme rarity of any satisfactory work in the same style by other artists. With the exception of a touch or two in Scott's stories, such as the impressive Bodach Glas, in 'Waverley,' and the apparition in the exquisite 'Bride ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... as to think of me," answered Beauty, "be so kind as to bring me a rose; for as none grow hereabouts, they are a kind of rarity." ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... are its basis, should not, like other practical values, heighten the tone of consciousness, and add to the pleasure with which we view an object. In fact, such is our daily experience; for great as is the sensuous beauty of gems, their rarity and price adds an expression of distinction to them, which they would never have if ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... a long time before Master Bumpkin's mandate was obeyed; the value of a policeman, like that of every other commodity, depends upon his rarity. There was no policeman to be found. There was a fire escape in the middle of the street, but that was of no use to Master Bumpkin. Away went thief, and away went Bumpkin, who could "foot it," as he said, "pooty well, old ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... some time was curate of Binsey, near Oxford, but he did not seek any preferment in the Church. On the death of his father he inherited a fortune of about three thousand pounds a year, which enabled him to acquire a library of not less than four thousand five hundred volumes, remarkable for their rarity and beauty; seven portfolios of drawings by the great masters, and a hundred portfolios of prints, many of which were almost priceless; and in addition to these a splendid collection of coins and gems, and a cabinet of minerals. Mr. Cracherode, who never married, was a shy, retiring man, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... the main question, and to assist us in arriving at some sort of verdict, we will hear several authorities on both sides of the case. The evidence being cumulative, we pursue the chronological order, and begin with La Place. He writes: "The lunar atmosphere, if any such exists, is of an extreme rarity, greater even than that which can be produced on the surface of the earth by the best constructed air-pumps. It may be inferred from this that no terrestrial animal could live or respire at the surface of the moon, and that if the moon be inhabited, it must be by ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... men have much more to say for themselves, than the others commonly Plead, and therefore did deservedly look upon Mr. Clayton's Diamond as a great Rarity. For not only Boetius de Boot, who is judg'd the best Author on this Subject, ascribes no such Virtue to Diamonds, but begins what he delivers of Carbuncles, with this passage.[26] Magna fama est Carbunculi. Is vulgo putatur in tenebris Carbonis ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... my attention was attracted by an article in one of the leading magazines. It was an article of more than ordinary merit, possessing that rarity, even then, a plot dramatically conceived and executed. The scene was laid in a part of the world the truthful picturing of which showed the writer to be a person who had travelled much and observed keenly; the diction ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... this yere reason,' expounds Boggs, once when he ondertakes to explain the public attitoode towards water to some inquirin' tenderfoot—'an' for this partic'lar reason: Arizona is a dry an' arid clime; an' water drinkers bein' a cur'ous rarity, we admires to keep a spec'men or two buck-jumpin' about, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Outside and inside the window, flowers and green things were so arranged that the room itself almost looked as though it were a bower in a garden. And everything in that bower was rich and rare; and there was nothing there which annoyed by its rarity or was distasteful by its richness. The seats, though they were costly as money could buy, were meant for sitting, and were comfortable as seats. There were books for reading, and the means of reading ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... now progressing easily along over fields, hesitating not at small or big ditches, flow going uphill and now down, across a stretch of country thinly settled, where even fences were a rarity. When they came to wooden ones Tom had the workmen get out and take down the bars. Of course the tank could have crushed them like toothpicks, but Tom was mindful of the rights of farmers, and a broken fence might mean strayed cows, or ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... did save the corn, and sell it too at a good price, the hotels in the neighborhood being glad to get possession of the rarity. Hope was radiant at the result of her determination: the Pessimist smiled a grim approval when she counted up and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... insignificant aside, according to the delicate politeness of bygone French taste; flanked by duplicate continuations of the same idyl in companion candelabra, also under glass; Sevres, or imitation Sevres vases, and a crowd of smaller objects to which age and rarity were slowly contributing an artistic value. An oval mirror behind threw replicas of them into another mirror, receiving in exchange the reflected portrait of madame in her youth, and in the partial nudity in ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... different magnitudes and different degrees of glory. They are also of different colours. Most, indeed, are white, but some reddish, some ruddy, some intensely red; others, but fewer, green, blue, or violet. It is possible that the comparative rarity of these colours is due to the fact that our atmosphere especially absorbs green and blue, and it is remarkable that almost all of the green, blue, or violet stars are one of the pairs of a Double Star, and in every case the smaller one of the two, the larger being red, orange, or yellow. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Christianity." This he did with great tenderness and love; and being so much affected, he cut off the bush and took it with him in remembrance of his feelings and the outpouring of his heart to God, more than for the rarity of the figure in which it had grown. This stick or bush we have seen ourselves and had in our hands. He presented it to Robert Sanders, who carried it ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... Any decent Greek scholar when he opens one of his ancient poets feels at once the presence of something lofty and rare—something like the atmosphere of Paradise Lost. But the language of Paradise Lost is elaborately twisted and embellished into loftiness and rarity; the language of the Greek poem is simple and ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... has earned—in all, enough to make life comfortable—and if upon this foundation rests also the pleasant superstructure of a literary success? The success is deserved, I think: certainly it was not lightly-gained. Yet even with this I fully appreciate its rarity. Thus, I find myself very well entertained in life: I have all I wish in the way of society, and a deep, though of course carefully concealed, satisfaction in my own little fame; which fame I foster by a gentle system of non-interference. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... great wit and discernment.' In 1873 he had printed, for private circulation, a small volume of Pensees, Maximes et Reflexions, a copy of which he gave Reeve, who 'highly valued it for its intrinsic merit and its rarity.'] Back to ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... consistency, this quality so jewel-like in its rarity, she would have realized that, having voluntarily stepped aside from woman's natural destiny, she should also have ceased to trouble herself with those feminine doubts and hopes which are peculiar to it. She would have known that the position of secretary to a professional ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... coffee and cigars and a liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... his skin is not enumerated by Othere among the products of Finmark. It thus appears to have become known in Europe first after the Norwegians' discovery of Iceland and Greenland, and was at first considered an extraordinary rarity. A Norwegian of importance, who had emigrated to Iceland, and there succeeded in getting hold of a female bear with two young, sent them in 880 to the King of Norway, and got in return a small vessel laden with wood. This animal had not then been seen in Norway before. The ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... 1539, the final suppression of all the monasteries in England was decreed. Then followed the seizure of all the church property in England connected with monasteries—shrines, relics, gold and silver vessels of immense value and rarity, lands, and churches. Canterbury, Bath, Merton, Stratford, Bury St. Edmonds, Glastonbury, and St. Albans, suffered most, and many of those beautiful monuments of Gothic architecture were levelled with the dust. Their destruction deprived ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... unknown to the luxury of a people whose conquests and whose wealth commanded whatever the habitable world could contribute to augment the material splendor of their social life—were scarcely native to the territory of the empire; but the comparative rarity of these gems in Europe, at somewhat earlier periods, was, perhaps, the very circumstance that led the cunning artists of classic antiquity to enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest the common onyx and cornelian with a worth surpassing, in ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... company were to sleep in the tent and the out houses. Posters were scattered over the country, announcing that a performance would be given there the next day, the agent thinking that, as a show was a rarity in that region, a considerable number of small farmers would be glad ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... conceive of an ugly woman with such eyes as they all possess in Cuba,—the Moorish, Andalusian eye. The Cuban women have also been justly famed for their graceful carriage, and it is indeed the poetry of motion, singular as it may appear, when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not the simple progressive motion alone, but also the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and the modulation of voice, that ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... where the ardent sun embrowns the children of the soil, fair locks and eyes of azure are prized in proportion to their rarity. No wonder, then, that Federico found favour in the sight of the dark-browed and inflammable Madrilenas. Many were the tender glances darted at him from beneath veil and mantilla, as he took his evening stroll ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... oldest rocks in the Catoctin Belt and occupy most of its area. They are also prominent from their unusual character and rarity. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... the spring of 1801—a pleasant beginning of the new century for them—that the Lambs, after having had all too frequently to change their lodgings owing to the "rarity of Christian charity," which objected to housing a quiet couple because of their affliction, at length found pleasant residence in 16, Mitre Court Buildings. Writing to his friend, Thomas Manning—one of the correspondents with ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... matter, such as clothing, is greatly affected by color, black being the most powerful absorbent, then blue, red, yellow, and lastly white. We have here a physical cause for the sense inferiority of totally white animals which may account for their rarity in nature. For few, if any, wild animals are wholly white. The head, the face, or at least the muzzle or the nose, are generally black. The ears and eyes are also often black; and there is reason to believe that dark pigment is essential to good hearing, as it certainly is to perfect ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... afloat, a case we are not now considering—any provision for the slinging of hammocks, or the spreading of bedding they did not possess, came to be looked upon as a superfluous and uncalled-for proceeding. Even the press-room was a rarity, save in tenders that had been long in the service. Down in the hold of the vessel, whither the men were turned like so many sheep as soon as they arrived on board, they perhaps found a rough platform of deal planks ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... and it is not mere intellect, it is a sympathetic intellect; or else it is an intellect in perfect accord with an intensely sympathetic disposition;—the rarity of it makes it too precious to be parted with when once we have met it. I prize it the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... old carpet, wondrously darned and skilfully patched, with all its colours faded into a sweet faint ghost-like harmony. Several spider-legged, inlaid tables stood about the room, but most of the chairs were of a sturdier make, one or two of rich carved work of India, no doubt a great rarity when first brought to Glenwarlock. The walls had once had colour, but it was so retiring and indistinct in the little light that came through the one small deep-set window whose shutter had been opened, that you could not have said ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... food, and treated with the greatest kindness by the Count; every day I used to ride out alone along the seashore, where I dismounted, and filled my pockets with all sorts of pebbles, snail shells, and sea shells of great rarity and beauty. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... "epidexioi", dexterous Men, and "eutropoi", Men of facile or versatile Manners, who can easily turn themselves to all Things, or turn all Things to themselves.) It also procureth Delight, by gratifying Curiosity with its Rareness, or Semblance of Difficulty. (As Monsters, not for their Beauty, but their Rarity; as juggling Tricks, not for their Use, but their Abstruseness, are beheld with Pleasure;) by diverting the Mind from its Road of serious Thoughts, by instilling Gaiety, and Airiness of Spirit; by provoking to such Disposition of Spirit in Way of Emulation, or Complaisance; and by seasoning ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... every remaining poem which appeared to me of conspicuous beauty or interest. I have also inserted the very remarkable prose preface which Whitman printed in the original edition of Leaves of Grass, an edition that has become a literary rarity. This preface has not been reproduced in any later publication, although its materials have to some extent been worked up into poems of a subsequent date.[6] From this prose composition, contrary to what has been my rule with any of the poems, it has appeared ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart as freely unto my friends as to myself. They are but self-extended; but pardon me if I stop somewhere—where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity—there my friends (or any good man) may command me; but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who bestowed such a boon upon ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... at the civic festival, it was not an objection to which the course of events had suddenly given birth within the last two or three days. Every one must have known that such an event as the visit of his majesty to the city of London must, from its rarity, collect thousands, if not myriads, to witness it; so that any accident to which the metropolis was exposed at present, from the collection of a large mass of people together, must have been as palpable a month ago as at the present moment. In the course ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
