"Slowness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brilliant, he had several which have a peculiarly impressive effect when displayed in an exalted station. He was indefatigably industrious; worked on an average eight hours a day for fifty-four years; had great tenacity of will; that kind of solid judgment which comes of slowness of brain, and withal a most majestic port and great dignity of manners. He had also as much kindliness of nature as the very great can be expected to have; his temper was under severe control; and, in his earlier ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the will Always to strive for wisdom; opened hand And governed appetites; and piety, And love of lonely study; humbleness, Uprightness, heed to injure nought which lives, Truthfulness, slowness unto wrath, a mind That lightly letteth go what others prize; And equanimity, and charity Which spieth no man's faults; and tenderness Towards all that suffer; a contented heart, Fluttered by no desires; a bearing mild, Modest, and grave, with manhood nobly mixed, With patience, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... advantages of a cautious circumspection in our intercourse with the world. Slowness of belief, and a proper distrust are essential ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... and internal communications left her. Slowness of motion brought her to the plain piece of work she had to do, on a colourless earth, that seemed foggy; but one could see one's way. Resolution is a form of light, our native light ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for a string in her brain seemed to be pulled by a persistent knocking at the door. With great slowness the door opened and a tall human being came towards her, holding out her arm ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... books, Benjy. It's in 'em if you only have the patience to stick at 'em till you get it out. I never had on o'count of my eyes and my slowness, but you're young an' peart an' you don't get confused by ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... A little more light has trickled through the mists that enclose the earth. But the sky has remained overcast, and now it dissolves in rain; With a slowness which itself disheartens, the wind brings back its great wet void upon us. The rain-haze makes everything clammy and dull—even the Turkey red of Lamuse's cheeks, and even the orange armor that caparisons Tulacque. The water ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... singing without knowing it. "'Ye shepherds, tell me, ha-ve you seen my Flora pass this way?'" he murmured. Then a thought struck him. "Hello, kid!" he called out. There was no answer. "Of course," said Jones. "Now he's ashamed to hev me see him come out of there." He walked with elaborate slowness round the corral and behind a shed. "Hello, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton, no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him. He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... cold dejection, my lords, arises that despair which so many lords have expressed, of prevailing upon the Dutch to unite with us. The determinations of that people are, indeed, always slow, and the reason of their slowness has been already given; but I am informed, that the general spirit which now reigns among them, is likely soon to overrule the particular interests of single provinces, and can produce letters by which it will appear, that had only one town opposed those ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... at other times more favourable to mankind than to think them blind to the beauties of his works, and imputed the slowness of their sale to other causes; either they were published at a time when the town was empty, or when the attention of the publick was engrossed by some struggle in the parliament, or some other object of general ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... once Vaniman beheld the van. It was holding a place in the parade and was moving with the decorous slowness of the other vehicles. On the driver's seat with Wagg were the two convicts. The comrade whom they had deserted waited until it had passed; then he ran out into the road and ducked along close ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... sail upon his ship, and sailed round and round the anchored vessel, so as to give her two broadsides to her one, and from the slowness with which she worked at her springs upon her cables, it was evident that she must be now very weak-handed. Still the pertinacity and decided courage of the Russian captain convinced Captain Wilson that, in all probability, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... goodness to keep your observashuns to yourself, Sir, I beg,' said Mrs. Raddle, suddenly arresting the rapid torrent of her speech, and addressing the third party with impressive slowness and solemnity. 'I am not aweer, Sir, that you have any right to address your conversation to me. I don't think I let these apartments ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a glacier is potent to remove anything against which it can fairly abut; and this power, notwithstanding the slowness of the motion, manifests itself at the end of the Morteratsch glacier. A hillock, bearing pine-trees, was in front of the glacier when Mr. Hirst and myself inspected its end; and this hillock is being bodily removed by the thrust of the ice. Several of the trees are overturned; ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... cheek muscles, pendulous lips, inability to grasp the feed, often a slow and weak movement in chewing, and difficulty and slowness in drinking. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... first day as one in charge of three or four tables Herbert made some very serious mistakes. He was complained of for slowness, he turned over a sauce-boat, he broke a glass, and he forgot to charge for the cigar which the portly gentleman in the corner had taken after his lunch. And this cigar was a half-crown Corona, for the portly gentleman either had not yet grasped the full meaning of War economy or was enjoying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... question, that was uttered by an old woman in rags, the whole crowd laughed uproariously. Marianne even then took no notice. She only thought that her carriage was a good while coming up, and the supposed slowness of her footman was the sole cause of the frown which now commenced clouding her brow. When the crowd ceased laughing, a woman, a Jewess, in a dirty and ragged dress, stepped forth and placed herself close ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But even from hence, that is, from the smoothness of the tongue, and the slowness of the stomach to digest, Nature seems to disclaim all pretence to fleshy victuals. But if you will contend that yourself was born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... seriousness of the panic. They thought that, in a week or so, its effect would pass and that Illinois would then resume its triumphal march toward its high destiny. Not even Samson Traylor had a correct notion of the slowness of Time. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... be none the less very deeply disturbed. We shall have to abandon the idea so instinctively dear to us that matter is the most stable thing in the universe, and to admit, on the contrary, that all bodies whatever are a kind of explosive decomposing with extreme slowness. There is in this, whatever may have been said, nothing contrary to any of the principles on which the science of energetics rests; but an hypothesis of this nature carries with it consequences which ought ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... are sent to her, that is to say, all who die through sickness or old age. Here she possesses a habitation protected by exceedingly high walls and strongly barred gates. Her hall is called Elvidnir; Hunger is her table; Starvation, her knife; Delay, her man; Slowness, her maid; Precipice, her threshold; Care, her bed; and Burning Anguish forms the hangings of her apartments. The one half of her body is livid, the other half the colour of human flesh. She may therefore easily be recognized; the more ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... of Mexico; but there was a time when the delta of that river was at St. Louis, more than seven hundred miles from its present position. In Egypt and in America—in fact, in all countries—the rivers have been inch by inch prolonging the land into the sea; the slowness of their work and the vastness of its extent satisfy us that we must concede for the operation ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... daybreak on the following day, they pushed on with pain and difficulty, harassed at every step by the galling attacks of the Syracusan troops. [Footnote: Thucydides, with characteristic brevity, leaves this to be inferred from the slowness of their progress.] A march of two miles and a half brought them to a village, situated on a level plain, and here they halted, wishing to supply themselves with food, and replenish their water-vessels; for the country which ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... confine themselves to boycotting the offenders and hoping that this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the world to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment. The Chinese as a people may be very irritating in the slowness with which they do certain things—though they are as quick in business as the quickest Anglo-Saxon—but that is no excuse why men who call themselves superior should treat them with contempt. The Chinese ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... luminous, strangely-quiet, gray eyes and because of the ethereal look given to her face by a floating mass of hair, pale-gold and tendrilly. And yet I think you would have known that she was a sick little girl at the first glance. When she moved, it was with a great slowness as if everything tired her. She was so thin that her hands were like claws and her cheeks scooped in instead of out. She was pale, too, and somehow her eyes looked too big. Perhaps this was because her little heart-shaped face seemed ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... twelve hours dragged with terrible slowness. Sleep was impossible and eating was difficult, even though all knew that they would have need of the full measure of their strength. Seaton set up various combinations of switching devices connected to ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... very pale. He was scrutinizing everything around him in the den, like a man who understands what he has fallen into, and his head, directed in turn toward all the heads which surrounded him, moved on his neck with an astonished and attentive slowness, but there was nothing in his air which resembled fear. He had improvised an intrenchment out of the table; and the man, who but an instant previously, had borne merely the appearance of a kindly old man, had suddenly become a sort of athlete, and placed his robust fist on the back ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of their own time, and was perhaps in their case, the best that could be adopted; for slowness of progress, which is its greatest objection, was rather desirable in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... certain unwritten laws which have more influence in some cases as to the guilt of a murderer than any on the statute books," said the Gouverneur Faulkner with a very great slowness, so that the poor human dog might comprehend him. "If you killed your brother to save—save Mary Brown from worse than death, then you have not the right to demand execution from your State to shelter her from publicity when she is no longer in danger of anything worse. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... suppose it is possible for a man ever to thoroughly understand a woman?" he asked, with a retrospective slowness, directed, I was sure, towards that ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... a few stops judiciously through his copy, and having done so began to upbraid his partners for their slowness. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... taught the ant to bite every grain of corn that she burieth in her hill, lest it should take root and grow? Add then the word extundere, which importeth the extreme difficulty, and the word paulatim, which importeth the extreme slowness, and we are where we were, even amongst the Egyptians' gods; there being little left to the faculty of reason, and nothing to the duty or art, for ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... at the last moment that it is not after all the train he wants. In nine cases out of ten there is really no need for such frantic hurry. Even express trains take their time about it whenever they do stop, and ordinary trains have a reputation for slowness and unpunctuality to which they seldom fail to live up. But, as if to make up for the long hours of patient waiting, the struggling and the shouting go on crescendo till the train is at last under way again. For, besides the actual passengers ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... close in her husband's arms; she clung to him; whatever of strangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none of that mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, run her fingers over the warm smoothness of the satin back of his waistcoat, seem almost to creep into his body, find in him strength, find in the courage and kindness ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... for security; which will be a thousand times more dangerous. And there can never be a commonwealth otherwise than by the order in debate wrought up to that perfection; but this necessity must sometimes happen in regard of her natural slowness and openness, and the suddenness of assaults that may be made upon her, as also the secrecy which in some cases may be of absolute necessity to her affairs. Whence Machiavel concludes it positively, that a commonwealth unprovided of such a refuge, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... had hitherto appeared endless, they now crept on with quite intolerable slowness. He scarcely heard or saw anything that was taking place about him. The rajah who had the next place to him tried in vain to open a conversation in his broken English, and at last, shaking his head, abandoned the silent stranger to his musings, which in the middle of this riotous festivity must ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... whose strongest recommendation is that he is a skilled and untiring dancer. The business of the spieler is to look after the wall-flowers. He seeks the girl who sits alone against the wall; he dances with her and brings other partners to her. It would not do for a place to get the reputation of slowness. The girls go back to those dance halls where they ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... garroted or even sentenced. Some go so far as to say that the Virgin had nothing to do with their escape from punishment, alleging that the officers of the law had conspired with them, and that the Spanish courts were even worse than those of a land that shall be nameless in respect of their slowness and the facilities they offered for adjournments, retrials, and appeals on grounds that if presented in any other cause than that of a breaker of the law would be laughed to scorn. Filipino bandits often wear medals ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... be fine, so we all turned out. The night was uncertain: sometimes entirely clouded, sometimes partially, but objects were pretty well seen when the sky was clear: the latter part was much steadier. From the interruption by clouds, the slowness of finding with and managing a large instrument (especially as their finding apparatus is not perfectly arranged) and the desire of looking well at an object when we had got it, we did not look at many objects. The principal were, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... The celebrated FABIUS MAXIMUS in his boyhood was called in derision "the little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his disposition. His sedateness and taciturnity, his indifference to juvenile amusements, his slowness and difficulty in learning, and his ready submission to his equals, induced them to consider him as one irrecoverably stupid. The greatness of mind, unalterable courage, and invincible character, which Fabius afterwards displayed, they then imagined had lain concealed ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... recommending herself to him, took an opportunity of stepping aside to say something agreeable of Fanny. Her praise was warm, and he received it as she could wish, joining in it as far as discretion, and politeness, and slowness of speech would allow, and certainly appearing to greater advantage on the subject than his lady did soon afterwards, when Mary, perceiving her on a sofa very near, turned round before she began to dance, to compliment ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... hanging lazily by their claws to boughs, I was surprised at the rapidity of their movements. I have often heard people assert that the sloth spends his torpid existence in a perpetual state of pain, from the peculiar sighing noise he makes, and the slowness of his movements when placed on the ground. In the first place, I cannot believe that God has created any animal to pass an existence of pain. The fact is, that the sloth is formed to live in trees, to climb, and to feed on leaves, and not to walk on the ground. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... growling. At the first, like the crying, it came from far inland; but was caught up speedily on all sides of us, and presently the dark was full of it. And it increased in volume, and strange trumpetings fled across it. Then, though with slowness, it fell away to a low, continuous growling, and in it there was that which I can only describe as an insistent, hungry snarl. Aye! no other word of which I have knowledge so well describes it as that—a note of ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... at Leland. He is in perpetual motion. Reading, writing, walking the streets, he is always fast, in dead earnest. Somewhat too fast. There is a certain slowness about your strong man. You never associate the idea of mental depth and power with your quick-stepping man. You cannot conceive of a Roman emperor or a Daniel Webster as a slight, swift man. The bearing of a man's body is the outward emblem of the bearing of his soul. Leland is rather slight, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... principles of all things, whereof one is the father and the other the mother; the former, Light, and the latter, Darkness. Pythagoras thought that the Dependencies on Light were warmth, dryness, lightness, swiftness; and those of Darkness, cold, wet, weight, and slowness; and that the world derived its existence from these two principles, as from the male and the female. According to Porphyry, he conceived two opposing powers, one good, which he termed Unity, the Light, Right, the Equal, the Stable, the Straight; the other evil, which he termed ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... regarded as the chief of the modern romantic school, inspired by the love of beauty for its own sake; his poetry is rich and musical, and he has a power of description which makes his pictures live and glow, but his narratives sometimes suffer from length and slowness of movement. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... necessary. The commander still had the difficult task of harmonizing the provincial governors and legislatures, and he also made many presents to the Indians to bind them to the cause. Five of the Six Nations, alarmed by the French successes and the slowness of the Americans and English, still held neutral, but the Mohawks were full of zeal, and the best of their young chiefs and warriors stood by Johnson, ready to march when he marched, and to cover his van ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Eve he put up the greens that decorated the parlour and dining-room—a ceremony that required large preparations with a step-ladder, a hammer, tacks, and string, the removal of his coat, and a lighted pipe in one corner of his mouth; and which proceeded with such painstaking slowness on account of his coming down from the ladder every other moment to view the artistic effect of the arrangements, that it was only by sticking the last branches up any old way at Clytie's wild appeal that he ever got ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... slightness stood her in good stead, for being united with extreme suppleness, it gave her a grace of movement resembling that of some skimming mountain bird or sea- swallow, which flies with amazing swiftness yet seeming slowness. Angela never moved quickly,—no one had ever seen her in what is termed a "rush," or a vulgar hurry. She did everything she had to do without haste, without noise, without announcement or assertion ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the vegetable matters, and thereby hinder the full access of air. Saturation with water also has the effect to maintain the decaying matters at a low temperature, and by these two causes in combination, the process of decay is made to proceed with great slowness, and the solid products of such slow decay, are compounds that themselves resist decay, ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... dash between words or phrases to indicate slowness or hesitancy in speech. Thus: "These, he ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... continued to proceed slowly till early on the morning of the 14th; the breeze having freshened from the northwest, another floe broke away from the fixed ice, allowing us to gain about half a mile more to the westward; such was the vexatious slowness with which we were permitted to advance towards the object ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Blotting it from the region of the eye, Though still it tossed within the haunted brain, Entering by the portals of the ears,— She step by step withdrew; like dreaming man, Who, power of motion all but paralysed, With an eternity of slowness, drags His earth-bound, lead-like, irresponsive feet Back from a living corpse's staring eyes; Till on the narrow beach she turned her round. Then, clothed in all the might of the Unseen, Terror grew ghostly; ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... furniture removing among the poor is done by hand. Two or four men load up a kind of flat hand-barrow without wheels till it is pyramidal and colossal with piled gear. Then passing poles through the loop of ropes, with a slow effort they raise it up and advance at a funereal and solemn pace. The slowness with which they move is pathetic. It is suggestive of a dead burden or of some street accident. But of these latter there must be very few; there is not much vehicular traffic in Lisbon. It is comparatively rare to see anything ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... the street, and indistinct talking. Savva turns around. Stooping more than usually, he takes a turn around the room with peculiar slowness. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... cork-trees, and came straight towards me; and I stood up and waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire and lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly. Her energy was in the slowness; but for inimitable strength, I felt she would have run, she would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept her eyes lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it was without one glance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... units the battleship Canopus. But her speed was not up to that of the other ships, and she fell far to their stern. By the time the action was on she was too distant to take part in it. No attempt was made to go together owing to the slowness of the battleship. The Canopus was never in the action at all, being 150 miles astern. Had Cradock not desired to he need not have taken on the action but retired in the Canopus. The setting of the sun also played its part; if daylight had continued some hours more the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... defence of the town until his troops were beaten back into it, we see always the same evidence of a man who habitually hopes that all will go well, and is in consequence remiss in making preparations for their going ill. But unhappily in every one of these instances they did go ill, though the slowness of the Boers enabled us, both at Dundee and at Ladysmith, to escape ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... evening when the badly lighted streets did not invite further political and economic dispute, the Troubadours and Minnesingers told their stories and sang their songs of romance and adventure and heroism and loyalty to all fair women. Meanwhile youth, impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the universities, and thereby hangs ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... sound nor sufficient. Judge, then, how bad must be the consequences when to a growing body the weakened stomach supplies blood that is deficient in quantity and poor in quality; while the debilitated heart propels this poor and scanty blood with unnatural slowness. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... that she behaved just as usual; she did not shun anybody, though her mother shunned her. A glove covered her right hand, yet Daisy persisted in using that hand rather than attract notice, though from the slowness of her movements it was plain it cost her some trouble. Gary McFarlane asked why she had a glove on, and Mr. Randolph heard Daisy's perfectly quiet and true answer, that "her hand was wounded, and had to wear a glove," given without any confusion or evasion. He called his little daughter ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... her brother astir. She wondered sleepily at his sprightliness, for as she remembered him at home he had been a confirmed lie-abed. She herself responded none too quickly to the breakfast gong, as a result of which slowness the crew had filed away to the day's work, her brother striding in the lead, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... always appear the most patient and kindly of leaders. He would have been the first to admit how he wounded tender hearts, and, perhaps, even repulsed some who could have been of greater helpfulness to him had he been able to endure more patiently their slowness ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... usual slowness in realising the gravity of the situation; yet it may be excused for believing that it had only to deal with local tumults such as those which had been so easily suppressed in Italy. The force of eight thousand men which it put into the field under the praetor ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... reflections, which were favored by the slowness of our march, the report of firearms was all at once heard: the column halted. Its last horses were still crossing the fields; its centre was in one of the longest streets of the city; its head ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... on, he began to descend the staircase again, with the slowness which he had observed in the spectre, believing himself to be a spectre too, haggard, with hair on end, his extinguished lamp still in his hand; and as he descended the spiral steps, he distinctly heard in his ear ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... is—a certain density in me, a slowness of intuition and perception, but it is the fact that at this time and for some minutes later, I had not the faintest suspicion that we had accidentally lighted upon something connected with the mystery of Salter Quick. All I thought of, I think, just then was ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... take the burden of a peasant woman on her back. That was the first time Swan knocked her senseless. When she recovered, the sheep-wagon was rocking her in its uneasy journey to the distant range. Swan's cruelties multiplied with his impatience at her slowness to master the shepherd's art. The dogs were sullen creatures, unused to a woman's voice, unfriendly to a woman's presence. Swan insisted that she lay aside her woman's attire and dress as a man to gain the good-will of ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... were walking; others, with the white on feet and legs, limped and hobbled painfully, leaning on the parapet or using their rifles crutch-wise; and others lay on the stretchers that moved with desperate slowness towards safety. The line appeared unending; the dim figures could be seen trickling along the parapets as far as the eye could distinguish them; the white dots of the bandages were visible moving as far along the parapet as the sight could ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... through the stillness, seeming to fill with its infinite melancholy the great vault of moonlit heaven. In Marcian it produced a sudden, unaccountable fear. Leaping on to his horse, he cursed the driver for slowness. Another minute, and they were ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... the foremost, he guessed was Clavering, and he fancied he recognized the Sheriff in another; but he could not discern Torrance anywhere. He turned his eyes ahead and watched the bluff rise higher, though the white levels seemed to flit back to him with an exasperating slowness. Beyond it a faint grey smear rose towards the blue; but the jaded horse demanded most of his attention, for the sod was slippery here and there where the snow had lain in a hollow, and the beast ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... and Joan,' in a sweet contralto, but with a doleful slowness which hung heavily upon the spirits of the company, and a duly dismal effect having been produced, the young ladies ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... few sentences, all felt they were in the presence of one accustomed to command attention, and to give to opinions the weight of recognized authority. The slowness of the measured accents, the composure of the manly aspect, the decorum of the simple gestures,—all bespoke and all became the minister of a great empire, who had less agitated assemblies by impassioned eloquence, than compelled their silent ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... next morning, and, dressing with comfortable slowness, noticed with pleasure that the sun was shining. Visions of a good breakfast and a digestive pipe, followed by a walk in the fresh air, passed before his eyes as he laced his boots. Whistling ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... not answer for a minute; then he said, with painful slowness: "Christ laid hands on his apostles and sent them forth; and they in turn, and so ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... returned to the Fort, Estenega excused himself and left for his home. The day passed with maddening slowness to Natalie. She spent the greater part of it walking up and down the immediate cliffs, idly watching the men capturing the seals and otters, the ship-builders across the gulch. As she returned at sunset to the enclosure, she saw the miller's son standing by the gates, gazing at her with hungry ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... with a slowness that only increased its threatening aspect, the cloud to the northward joined the vast overhanging canopy that had been seen earlier in the day. By half-past six in the evening it was black as the densest night, the murk only being lighted by the constant flashes of lightning. The air ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to sign a paper to save a fellow man's life, may see him again under awkward circumstances, and be asked to explain. Justice, after all, is an Immortal, and belongs to eternity. We should beware of measuring, by the apparent slowness of her movements on this lower plane, the likelihood ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... I alluded to the length of time it had taken the Land League agitation to make itself felt in Kerry, and to the swiftness with which, when once ignited, the far south-west of Ireland blazed into open disaffection. The causes of this slowness to light up, immediately followed by a fierce and sudden flame, are by no means obscure. Kerry has always been the last place to follow a popular movement, and the last to ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... his face without believing him to be an honest and well-intentioned man. An unprincipled but clever writer has said of him, that he has no great capacity or superior genius; but that, whether from reflection or from slowness of comprehension, he is always extremely calm in his determinations: that, before entering into any project, he inquires and considers deeply as to whether it be just or not; but that once convinced that it is or appears to be so, he sustains his ground with firmness and constancy. He adds, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness and slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. Instantly she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that he shrank down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across his leering features. And all sounds ceased, as when ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... sweetness, and she seemed at once proud, happy, delighted—but, as she turned over the last page, her countenance expressed disappointment and chagrin. Then she recommenced this reading, which had occasioned her such sweet emotion, and this time she read with the most deliberate slowness, going over each page twice, and spelling, as it were, every line, every word. From time to time, she paused, and in a pensive mood, with her forehead leaning on her fair hand, she seemed to reflect, in a deep reverie, on the passages she had read with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... fly, going at a one-horse fly pace, had made its way with comfortable jaunting slowness from Riversford to St. Rest, its stout, heavy-faced driver being altogether unconscious that his fare was no less a personage than Miss Vancourt, the lady of the Manor. When a small, girlish person, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... coat, which excludes the air. Complete air-slaking would not reduce ability to correct soil acidity, the total amount of calcium and magnesium remaining constant, but weight would be added in the slaking, and therefore the value per ton would be reduced. The slowness with which air-slaking proceeds gives reason to expect that any bulk of old lime may contain a considerable percentage of the hydrate, and therefore have greater strength than a true carbonate like limestone. This is a consideration of value to ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... man did not answer till he came up, and then, with his usual slowness of delivery, he replied to his master's repeated enquiries, "Na, I haena fund Miss Clara, but I hae fund something ye wad be ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... has become a sort of butt with those who shoot their arrows at what is called slowness, and who delight to transfix old generals. Since Bonaparte, in less than a year, tumbled over Beaulieu, Wurmser, and Alvinczy, (whose united ages exceeded two hundred years,) it has been taken for granted that the Austrians never have generals under threescore-and-ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... expressed by the election of November 2 that it was bound to be mitigated soon after, and this natural reaction was aided by the failure of the Republican Congress to accomplish anything in the short session and by President-elect Harding's slowness in deciding among candidates offered for the Cabinet and policies put forward for his attention. As President Wilson prepared to turn over the executive duties to his successor there was already evidence that the American public was returning to a greater appreciation of his services. As a ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... inexplicable noises a great wood gives forth. She suffered, indeed, intensely; yet Prosper never knew it. He played upon her, quite unconsciously, by wondering over the difficulties of the road, the slowness of their going, the probable speed of the Abbot's dogs and foresters, and so on. Her meekness and cheerful diligence delighted him. The nuns of Gracedieu, he promised himself, should know what a likely novice he was bringing them. He should miss her, pardieu! after two ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... coolness and slowness—for he knows the curiosity of the Charmer to be always devouring—Eugene makes a pretence of getting out an eyeglass, polishing it, and reading the paper with difficulty, long after he has seen what is written on it. What is written on it in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... easel, was copying one of the Gorgon-heads that stood out on the faded tapestry. She had dismissed us wholly from her thoughts, and, giving play to her native fun and coquetry, was taunting the youth with the slowness of his labors and the little progress he had made since she last inspected his work. No wonder that she laughed at the taste of the boy or his employer. Graver heads than hers might question the motive which had set ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... know that in all volcanic, and the greater part of all subterranean, action, temperatures are continually changing, and therefore masses of rock must be expanding or contracting, with infinite slowness, but with infinite force. This pressure must result in mechanical strain somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of the rocks surrounding them; and we can form no conception of the result of irresistible pressure, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... nevertheless when every coach gets discouraged; times when there is no response from the men he is coaching—when their slowness of mind and body seem to justify the despair of Charlie Daly who said to ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Colonel McCloud and his daughter left the cafe. The half-hour after that passed with leaden slowness to Philip. The fortunate arrival of two or three friends of Barrow gave him an opportunity to excuse himself on the plea of an important engagement, and he bade the Mica King good-night. Colonel McCloud was waiting ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... because of the extreme severity of the winter. After the initial difficulties had been passed supplies of this kind were furnished in profusion; but lack of preparation on the part of the War Department and the slowness of Congress to appropriate promptly produced a temporary situation of extreme discomfort and worse. The provision of food supplies was arranged more successfully. Soldiers would not be soldiers if they did not complain of their "chow." But the quality and variety of the food given ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... 179. "We will begin, therefore, with this precept, according to the ancient opinion, that the sinews of wisdom are slowness of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... Tagus against England. The piratical exploits of Hawkins and Drake against the Spanish settlements in America, the barbarous execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the open alliance of Elizabeth with the Dutch insurgents, all acted as stimulants to the habitual slowness of the Spanish sovereign. Another event, though of minor importance, added intensity to the national quarrel. Sir William Stanley, whose account of the battle of Glenmalure we lately quoted, went over to Philip with 1,300 English ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... harvest, when not a single drop of rain had fallen on the Port Jackson side of the mountains. Another great cause of the inundations, which take place in this and the other rivers in the colony, is the small fall that is in them, and the consequent slowness of their currents. The current in the Hawkesbury, even when the tide is in full ebb, does not exceed two miles an hour. The water, therefore, which during the rains, rushes in torrents from the mountains cannot escape with sufficient rapidity; ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... though at first sight it may appear impossible to form a correct estimate of the pace at which a pen has travelled, the student will, if observant, soon learn to detect the difference between a swiftly formed stroke and one written with slowness and deliberation. By making a number of each kind of stroke and carefully examining them through a glass, the student will learn in an hour more than can be taught by means of verbal description. The ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... Schwarzenberg burned his ships; he said to himself that if his action were disavowed, he could go and raise cabbages on his estate; but if it were approved, he would be at the top of the wave. Abandoning then the customary slowness and scruples of diplomacy, he answered without hesitation that he was ready, and made an engagement with the Duke of Cadore, Minister of Foreign Affairs, for the next day, at the Tuileries, to sign the marriage contract of the Emperor of the French, King of Italy, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... have sixty men and St. Denis to command. To-morrow may bring you your opportunity;" and again with the same slowness, Geoffrey ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... hurried attempt to get up the anchor; but this was abandoned as being already too late; and conceiving themselves on the point of being boarded, the Spaniards stood to arms to ward off the onslaught. Its slowness in coming intrigued them, being so different from the usual tactics of the buccaneers. Further intrigued were they by the sight of the gigantic Wolverstone speeding naked along his deck with a great ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... assent with eyes glued to the floor. Their appearance alone would have served to distinguish them from the other dwellers in the village, but as they spoke the gap widened, and the words that fell from their lips had a foreign ring. There was none of the slowness of the Canadian speech, nor of that indefinable accent found in no comer of France, which is only a peasant blend of the different pronunciations of former emigrants. They used words and turns of phrase one never hears in Quebec, even in the towns, and which to these simple ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... have been to return to France, make my way to Brest and embark from there to New York, and that would have been my course had I had any conception of the slowness of the Spanish officials and of the fierce storms and snows that dominate the passes of the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... inch by inch, almost imperceptibly. The conquest was by no means bloodless. Towns were sacked and men were slain; here was an explosion, there an outbreak of lawlessness; but for the most part the change was wrought with deadly slowness and a ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... when assent is freely given in theory to its utility. The second is peculiar to Esperanto, and consists in the discrediting of the cause of international language through the failure of Volapk. Good examples of its operation are afforded by the slowness of Germany to recognize Esperanto, and by the criticism of Prof. Mnsterberg (formerly of Freiburg, Germany) in America, based as it is on an old German criticism of Volapk, and transferred ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... less vivacity and charm of bearing than the gay Venetians,—but they are the descendants of those island tribes from which the commerce and greatness of Venice issued; there is almost a show of stateliness in the aggravating slowness with which their heavily freighted barks proceed, serenely occupying the best of the narrow waterway. They are not envious of the hangers-on of those palaces of the nobles, these free fisherfolk of the islands; they have only haughty stares for the servile set of gondoliers ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare's skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor's conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... impatiently toward the house, muttering something about the slowness of "them women," avoiding Frances' eyes. For she did not believe Saul Chadron, and her distrust ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it is early on my list; and when once I get to it, three weeks should see the last bloodstain - maybe a fortnight. For I am beginning to combine an extraordinary laborious slowness while at work, with the most surprisingly quick results in the way of finished manuscripts. How goes Gray? Colvin is to do Keats. My wife is still not well. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were intolerable and I knew that I would rather face whatever problems my recovery involved than to continue in this monotonous and meaningless existence. So I convalesced by degrees and got about the hospital, and was permitted to wait on myself. But I cultivated a slowness and brevity of speech. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... The slowness of its growth requires patience. But when once established, the tea-nuts will supply the means of extending cultivation, and the duration of the plant for twenty years diminishes the expense of labor. To illustrate the hardihood of the plant, I may observe, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... in which I found myself was in itself sufficient to cause the cheek of the bravest man to pale, for from that box there slowly issued forth a large, hideous cobra, which, coiling with sinuous slowness in front of my face held its hooded head erect, ready ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... qualities which have made them masters of a vast and still expanding Empire. But these qualities have their defects as well as their merits, and one of the defects is a certain insularity of thought, or narrow-mindedness—a slowness to recognize that institutions which are perfectly suitable and right for us may be quite unsuited, if not injurious, to other races, and that what may not be right for us to do is not necessarily wrong for people of a different belief, and with ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts |
