"Superficial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell you the truth, Mr Stoddart. You seem to me to have been hitherto only a dilettante or amateur in spiritual matters. Do not imagine I mean a hypocrite. Very far from it. The word amateur itself suggests a real interest, though it may be of a superficial nature. But in religion one must be all there. You seem to me to have taken much interest in unusual forms of theory, and in mystical speculations, to which in themselves I make no objection. But to be content with those, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... work which has yet appeared since Marshall wrote the Life of Washington. Guizot's Essay on Washington is exceedingly able; nor do I know any author who has so profoundly analyzed the character and greatness of the American hero. Botta's History of the Revolution is a popular but superficial and overlauded book. Mr. Hale's History of the United States is admirably adapted to the purpose for which it is designed, and is the best compendium of American history. Stedman is the standard authority in England. Belsham, in his History of George III., has written candidly and with spirit. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... over the world. During the last ten years, indeed, the amount of German scientific and semi-scientific literature, dealing with every aspect of the sexual question, and from every point of view, is altogether unparalleled. It need scarcely be said that much of this literature is superficial or worthless. But much of it is sound, and it would seem that on the whole it is this portion of it which is most popular. Thus Dr. August Forel, formerly professor of psychiatry at Zurich and a physician ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... separated from them, and this description applies to the breadth, depth and reality of his sympathy. In the meagre records of his life there is evidence that he deemed no form of suffering humanity foreign to himself. This was not a mere sentiment, nor was his sympathy superficial, for it constituted the essential characteristic of his personality—"He went about doing good." In him the will of the Father for the redemption of the race was incarnate. This led him into the society of those outcasts who were condemned and rejected by the respectable and righteous ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... flicker or candlelight or domestic lamplight but as a bright, eager fire. She loved his kisses, the clasp of his strong arms, the stability of his chest and shoulders—but sometimes his passion startled her, and she had queer, shy withdrawals. Yet these were never more than temporary and superficial; her own passions were slowly awaking, and moreover had their roots in a sweet, sane instinct of vocation ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... storm—that the torn flowers with which I strewed my path would not impede my progress. But I am only wandering round and round a flower like a bee—not a storm. So, as I was saying, the colouring of ideas which man gives himself is only superficial. The inner man remains as ordinary as ever. If someone, who could see right into me, were to write my biography, he would make me out to be no different from that lout of a Panchu, or ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... age of leaders, when individual thought has so far departed that they begin to look to others not yet as governors, but directors. This, to a superficial view the noblest age, marks the beginning of a decline. Its great power of invasion, as under Pericles or Caesar, comes from the fact that, while strength enough is left to carry out the details, there is not enough of independence in thought to mar the unity in the plan of its leader. Its ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... us in a very superficial manner, and pronounced that we should be free to-morrow. Upon this a boisterous hilarity prevailed. The prisoners rejoiced at the prospect of speedy release, and shouted, sang, and danced in the courtyard. The keepers caught the infection, and ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Nowhere!" Mr. Morris and his friends were active in the fresh dawn of a new romanticism, a mediaeval and Catholic revival, with very little Catholicism in it for the most part. This revival is more "innerly," as the Scotch say, more intimate, more "earnest" than the larger and more genial, if more superficial, restoration by Scott. The painful doubt, the scepticism of the Ages of Faith, the dark hours of that epoch, its fantasy, cruelty, luxury, no less than its colour and passion, inform Mr. Morris's ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Loire. It is popularly divided into Upper or Western, and Lower or Eastern Brittany. Its greatest length between the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean is 250 kilometres (about 155 English miles), and its superficial extent is 30,000 sq. kilometres (about 18,630 English sq. m.). It comprises two distinct zones, a maritime zone and an inland zone. In the centre there are two plateaus, partly covered with landes, unproductive moorland: the southern ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... opinion of his own abilities, stood greatly upon his dignity, and was childishly jealous of any preference shown for others before himself. Unlike Mr Dale, however, he was a man of limited education; he had read much, but his reading had been almost wholly superficial; he possessed, upon an infinite variety of subjects, that little knowledge which is a dangerous thing. There was consequently no topic of conversation upon which he had not something oracular to say; he was wont to maintain his own opinion with a very considerable amount ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... of English opinion during the war, I should add,—what, indeed, American writers have abundantly observed,—that the knowledge of American affairs possessed by the great mass of English partisans was extremely superficial. I will not now speak of our newspapers and pamphleteers; but, within my own experience, among ordinary persons, who were quite ready to take sides, and stand stubbornly to their colors, I have often found that even such rudimentary points as the distinction between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... concentrated on every word she spoke; and, though he merely glanced at her from moment to moment, she was conscious that the man now understood, and was responding more directly to her than ever before in their brief and superficial acquaintance. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... efforts at the grave and dignified were complete failures, and these were enjoyed by the peasantry and their own pupils, nearly with the sensations which the enactment of Hamlet by Liston would necessarily produce. At all events, their education, allowing for the usual exceptions, was by no means superficial; and the reader has already received a sketch of the trials which they had to undergo, before they considered themselves qualified to enter upon the duties of their calling. Their life was, in fact, a state of literary warfare; and they ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... intercourse, that many a woman's character is taken away without cause. One here and there, weighed down by her unmerited punishment, will regret that she has never known to the full the forbidden felicity for which she is suffering. The world, which blames and criticises with a superficial knowledge of the patent facts in which a long inward struggle ends, is in reality a prime agent in bringing such scandals about; and those whose voices are loudest in condemnation of the alleged misconduct of some slandered woman never give a thought to the immediate provocation of the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... your hands," said Henriette. "The superficial area of those palms of yours has been worth ten thousand dollars ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Harley. Within that cloud of smoke and flashing flame the fate of a nation hung—the South was a nation to him—and before the sun set the decree might be given. He was filled with woe to be sitting there looking on at so vast an event. Vain, selfish and superficial, depths in his nature were touched at last. This was no longer a scene set as at a theatre, upon which one might fight for the sake of ambition or a personal glory. Suddenly he sank into insignificance. The fortunes or the feelings of one man ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the point he was about to make. "Apparently it put Warrington out," he resumed. "And yet, after all, I find that it is only a very superficial flesh wound of the shoulder. Warrington's condition is really due to the contusions he received owing to his being thrown from the car. His car wasn't going very fast at the time, for it had slowed down for me. In one way that was fortunate—although ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... blessed nearness to God, which is life, are by no means such easy and simple matters as people sometimes suppose them to be. The whole drift of popular thinking to- day goes in the direction of a very superficial and easy gospel, which merely says, 'Oh, of course, of course God forgives! Is not God Love? Is not God our Father? What more do you want than that?' Ah! you want a great deal more than that, my friends. Let me press upon you two or three ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... modern thought has little to be proud of. Herodotus, however, describes the process of thought as consecrated by custom among the Egyptians. But there are many other practical ways in which the idea of supernatural power is attached to fetiches. Some fetich-stones have a superficial resemblance to other objects, and thus (on the magical system of reasoning) are thought to influence these objects. Others, again, are pointed out as worthy of regard in dreams or by the ghosts of the dead. {230} To hold these views of the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... evidence, the said evidence being the trails left by the Creator, so to speak? The Creator has—I say it in all reverence—drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows that what lies on the surface ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... will have the essence of originality in the right sense of the term, because it will have originated from the author's mind, just as the offspring originates from the parent. And the result will be, not a showy, emphatic, superficial virtue, which is indeed a vice, but a solid, genuine, substantive virtue; that is, the thing will be just what it seems, and will mean just what it says. Moreover the greatness of the work, if it have any, will be more or less hidden in the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... alike on the surface of the ocean and in its depths. It has been shown that the long skeletal processes which grow out from these organisms have significance not merely as a supporting skeleton, but also as an extension of the superficial area, which increases the contact with the water-particles, and prevents the floating organisms from sinking. It has been established that the processes are considerably shorter in the colder layers of the ocean, and that they ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: but these of the Puritan and the Southerner, though they run everywhere with the rest and seem upon a superficial view themselves the body of the cloth, in fact modify rather ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... that kind which will always he in demand, and that the supply will always meet it, suited to the age. He does not consider that it in any way goes below the surface of things; it does not reach to any intellectual or spiritual emotion; it is altogether superficial, and he felt it himself to be so. His descriptions are not true to Nature; they are addressed to the ear, not to the mind. He was a master of bodily movements in his battle-scenes; but very little productive power was exerted ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to drop in at the Davidson bungalow, but we were made to feel somehow that we were not very welcome there. Not that she ever said anything ungracious. She never had much to say for herself. I was perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons at home. What I noticed under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate forehead, and her small, red, pretty, ungenerous mouth. But then I am an observer with strong prejudices. Most of us were fetched by her white, swan-like neck, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... have been the case a year ago? She was afraid to ask herself the question, and without going deep enough into the history of her own mind to make her sorrow and shame profitable, she tried to satisfy herself with a superficial compensation, by making herself particularly agreeable to her three younger sisters, and by writing a very long and entertaining ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... himself being introduced by his first name to two highly colored queens of the ballet, and all four proceeded at once to a private supper-room. Albert found the girls bright, vivacious, and expressive, so far as a superficial use of slang goes: they ordered the choicest and highest-priced items on the bill of fare; called for champagne and drank it freely; addressed their escorts as "Cully," "Old Sport," and "Old Stocking;" smoked cigarettes; and talked about their "mashes" in ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... deceived husband killing his wife, a woman poisoning her lover, a son avenging his father, a father slaughtering his children, murdered kings, ravished virgins, imprisoned citizens—in a word all the sublimity of tradition, but alas how superficial and material! Blood, surface-tears and death! What can I learn from creatures who have but one fixed idea, who have no time to live, for that there is a rival, a mistress, whom it behoves ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose may be the communication of truths; either of truth absolute and demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts experienced ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... would call him that," said Grace, with simplicity. "The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this person is ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... hypothesis that the Echinoderms are coalesced worms, on the other hand, appears to be open to serious objection. As a matter of anatomy, it does not seem to me to correspond with fact; for there is no worm with a calcareous skeleton, nor any which has a band-like ventral nerve, superficial to which lies an ambulacral vessel. And, as a question of development, the formation of the radiate Echinoderm within its vermiform larva seems to me to be analogous to the formation of a radiate Medusa upon a Hydrozoic stock. But a Medusa is surely not the result of the coalescence ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... widespread indifference. An underlying cause of this indifference among those who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, is lack of conviction for sin, want of positive faith in the fundamental truths of the Scriptures, too little and superficial prayer, and lack of personal, soul-saving work. Is the class-meeting becoming extinct? Is the prayer-meeting lifeless? Is the revival spirit decaying? Is family worship formal, or has it ceased? However some may answer these questions, still we believe that the Church ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... give notice of approaching danger; there are courses of action which have uniformly produced the same results; and the wise politicians are those who have learnt from experience the real tendencies of things, unmisled by superficial differences, who can shun the rocks where others have been wrecked, or from foresight of what is coming can be cool when ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... at first, separation brought no progress nor shadow of change, it would have at least induced no evil, and education and enlightenment would in time have modified these caste institutions, which, to a superficial observer, seem to be ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... very indefinite, mostly second-hand; and there was such general uncertainty as to the character of this wonderland that I authorized an escort of soldiers to go that season from Fort Ellis with a small party, to make such superficial explorations as to justify my sending an engineer officer with a well-equipped expedition there next summer to scientifically examine and report upon the strange country. When the arrangements for this preliminary expedition were completed I started for Fort Benton, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... The superficial view which accounts for the pure monotheism of the Hebrews from their peculiar national character, is sufficiently refuted by their history. Notwithstanding the severe penalties with which the Mosaic code of laws visited idolatrous practices in every form, the people were perpetually ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... could not be ignored, for he was not idling away his time in lazy feeding and sleeping. He had dropped his lifelong pose of superficial complaint that the fates always gave him the dirty end of the stick, and now he spent his time preaching to the little band of colonists. Or wandering through the forests ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... The most superficial observer might have read the aristocratic pride of his soul in the haughty curl of his short upper lip,—the harshness of his domineering character in the lines that marked his forehead,—and the cruel sternness of his disposition in the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... primaeval rock rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... teachings, will go far to anticipate the penalty attaching to truth's last argument—chastisement; but imagination is fondly impatient of warning by the past, and easily avails itself of fancied or superficial differences in contemporary conditions, to justify measures which ignore, or even directly contravene, ascertained and fundamental principles ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... having perceived his sister at the door, and turning to bid us farewell, there was a broad smile, even a laugh of pleasure, which did him more credit with me than anything else; for hitherto there had been a disagreeable scornful twist upon his face, perhaps, however, merely superficial. I saw, as the stage drove off, his comely sister approaching with a lighted-up face to greet him, and one passenger on the front seat beheld them meet. "Is it an affectionate greeting?" inquired I. "Yes," said ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... colony in New York, there are no show places in Limehouse. The visitor sees nothing but mean streets and dark doorways. The superficial inquirer comes away convinced that the romance of the Asiatic district has no existence outside the imaginations of writers of fiction. Yet here lies a secret quarter, as secret and as strange, in its smaller way, as its parent in China which is ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... dimensions, and was still invisible in certain lights without wax. So far from discerning the desperate criminal who has "done time" once, and deserved it over and over again, the superior but superficial observer might have imagined that he detected a certain element of folly in ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... they are a true presentation of the essential French spirit, so recklessly gay and so daringly poignant, so happily exquisite in its methods, and so relentlessly direct in its moral. For some people, who take what they are able to receive, the French spirit seems trivial and superficial, merely wanton and gay, chiefly characterised by that Lubricity which worried the pedagogic Matthew Arnold. The French spirit is more specifically distinguished by its profundity and its seriousness. Without profundity and seriousness, indeed, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... causes their names and characters to be publicly exhibited, as a terror to others, and as a warning to His own people—(Mason). The dreadful falls and awful deaths of some professors are to put others upon their guard against superficial, slothful, and presumptuous hopes. The real occasion of turning aside lies in the concealed lusts ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a chronic disease of cattle occurring in France and the island of Guadeloupe, West Indies. It is characterized by caseating nodular swellings, first of the skin and afterwards of the superficial lymphatic vessels and glands, finally proving fatal within a year by extension to the viscera. The swellings rupture and discharge a purulent yellowish fluid, which contains the causative organism. This affection, called farcin du boeuf by the French, resembles cutaneous glanders or farcy ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... is very noble, with an organ-like roll and majesty of numbers, while it is instinct with the same joyousness which must have been the familiar mood of Spenser. It is no superficial and tiresome merriment, but a profound delight in the beauty of the universe and in that delicately surfaced nature of his which was its mirror and counterpart. Sadness was alien to him, and at funerals he was, to be sure, a decorous mourner, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... think; yet all have opinions. Hence men's opinions are superficial and confused. It is nothing strange that tenets which in themselves are ever so different, should nevertheless be confounded with each other, by those who do not consider them attentively. I shall not therefore be surprised if some ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... convenience; and the learned in their epistolary writing have adopted a sort of running hand, in which the form is so very materially altered, by rounding off the angles, connecting some parts and wholly omitting others, as to make it appear to a superficial observer a totally different language. But I may venture to observe, that it has not only not undergone any material alteration for more than two thousand years, but that it has never borrowed a character, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Norman, you will find the Dane," said the old proverb—none the less ruthless and cruel because of the gloss of a superficial civilisation. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... his friends drew all their strength from this idea. Much finer and more learned than a man like Courbet, they saw an aspect of modernity far more complex, and less limited to immediate and grossly superficial realism. Nor must it be forgotten that they were contemporaries of the realistic, anti-romantic literary movement, a movement which gave them nothing but friends. Flaubert and the Goncourts proved that Realism is not ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... remember that Kitty alluded to—any additional peculiarity of dress—Miss Abigail had made her appearance at the door of the Nutter House on the morning of my grandmother's funeral. The small amount of baggage which the lady brought with her would have led the superficial observer to infer that Miss Abigail's visit was limited to a few days. I run ahead of my story in saying she remained seventeen years! How much longer she would have remained can never be definitely known now, as she died at the expiration ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... says: "An easy talent for composition, though of no depth; a feeling for pretty forms, though they were often monotonous and empty, and for graceful movement; a coloring blooming and often warm, though occasionally crude; a superficial but agreeable execution, and especially a vapid sentimentality in harmony with the fashion of the time—all these causes sufficiently ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... groping, the awkward stumbling of the tyro. On the contrary, the composer presents himself with an ease and boldness which cannot but command admiration. The reader will remember what the Viennese critic said about Chopin's "aim"; that it was not to dazzle by the superficial means of the virtuoso, but to impress by the more legitimate ones of the genuine musician. This is true if we compare the Chopin of that day with his fellow-virtuosos Kalkbrenner, Herz, &c.; but if we compare him with his later self, or with Mozart, Beethoven, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the company of Mr Nathaniel Washington Slater on the following day before he discovered, much to his disappointment, that he was one of those superficial characters who are given largely to dealing in promises that they either have no intention of keeping when making them originally, or which they never were or would be in a position ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Although croakers, one of the bay's most abundant fish in modern times, are not mentioned, it would not be unreasonable to assume that they were included under "drummers." So with spot, a member of the drum family bearing a superficial resemblance to a bass or perch. The term "spot," as applied to a Virginia fish does not seem to have become current ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... observing that his mother had neglected her duty of presenting Helen to the ladies. He then reseated himself, and conversed with Mrs. Riccabocca; but his bright, quick eye glanced over at the two girls. They were about the same age—and youth was all that, to the superficial eye, they seemed to have in common. A greater contrast could not well be conceived; and, what is strange, both gained by it. Violante's brilliant loveliness seemed yet more dazzling, and Helen's fair, gentle face yet more winning. Neither had mixed much with ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... method of raising oneself to the ideas is what Plato termed dialectic—that is to say, the art of discernment. Dialectic differentiates between the fundamental and the superficial, the permanent and the transient, the indestructible and the destructible. This is the supreme philosophic method which contains all the others and to which all the others are reduced. Upon this metaphysic ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Concluding Remarks on the Salts of Ammonia.—We have now seen that the nine [page 168] salts of ammonia which were tried, all cause the inflection of the tentacles, and often of the blade of the leaf. As far as can be ascertained from the superficial trials with the last six salts, the citrate is the least powerful, and the phosphate certainly by far the most. The tartrate and chloride are remarkable from the short duration of their action. The relative ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... was a superficial view. A commission of investigation appointed by President Cleveland looked into the matter more deeply. Its unanimous report made important assertions: the Pullman Company, while providing a beautiful town for its employees, charged rents twenty ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the latter, we had all gone to school or college or dancing class together, and kept up a sort of superficial acquaintance ever since—that sort of relation in which people know something of one another's opinions and absolutely nothing ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... when Peregrine, begging she would spare him the mortification of considering him in such a dishonourable light, desired his valet to examine the outside of the letter, and recollect if it was the same which he had delivered to Miss Gauntlet about two years ago. Pipes, having taken a superficial view of it, pulled up his breeches, saying, "Mayhap it is, but we have made so many trips, and been in so many creeks and corners since that time, that I can't pretend to be certain; for I neither keep journal nor log-book ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... outbreak of grief. But there was a further complication. The young Duke of Longueville was also killed at the Rhine, and he, as a select circle of intimate friends were perfectly aware, was really the love-child of La Rochefoucauld. Mme de Sevigne, having given a superficial account of the incident, characteristically goes on to say, "Alas! I am telling a lie; between ourselves, my dear, he does not feel the loss of the Chevalier so much; it is that of the young man whom all the world regrets which leaves ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... they are called—though by this time they should have ceased to be revelations, and have become "recognitions" in this country—made by the newspaper clippings before me are the expected indications of the deeper, underlying causes. The superficial observer sees in them merely a corrupt council; and, from the fact that councilmen have taken bribes, he makes the daring deduction that some one gave them the bribes; he sees that councilmen have been grafting, and then ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... scarcely believe that he was listening to the young professor whose scholarly attainments seemed to him the sum of what was most desirable in life. "Our girls' colleges are very superficial," he answered; "and even if they were not, she could get no Greek in any ...
— Different Girls • Various
... far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and he taught me much. But it was his methods of thought which always impressed me chiefly; superficial brilliancy he left to others, and grasped at the solid truth." (Army Life in ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... my mother from Sinuessa: and to be easy and ready to be reconciled, and well pleased again with them that had offended me, as soon as any of them would be content to seek unto me again. To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of: whom also I must thank that ever I lighted upon Epictetus his Hypomnemata, or moral commentaries and common-factions: which also he gave me ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... and stolidity of the past are allowed the final grace of being forgotten; and omniscience is becoming at once more and more impossible and more and more fashionable. Whoever reads only the books of his own time is superficial in proportion to the thickness of the ages. But neither the genius of man, nor his length of days, has had an increase corresponding to that of the realm of knowledge, the requirements of reading, and the conditions of intelligence. The multiplied attractions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... baffling smile and she looked at him in despair. The very charm of his personal appearance awakened resentment in her; his deft and easy complaisance angered her because it could be effective. She hated the superficial excellence in him which made him a pleasant companion. He had refused to discuss her identity further, except to prevent her in her own attempts to identify herself. He did not refer to the incidents of their journey to Jerusalem, but she felt ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... opportunities necessary for the careful and searching scrutiny of institutions elsewhere. I should feel, in looking at those of America, like one who attempts to scan the stars with the naked eye. My notices can only be few, faint, and superficial; they are but an introduction to what I have to say of the land of my birth. A few sentences will ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... — N. space, extension, extent, superficial extent, expanse, stretch, hyperspace; room, scope, range, field, way, expansion, compass, sweep, swing, spread. dimension, length &c 200; distance &c 196; size &c 192; volume; hypervolume. latitude, play, leeway, purchase, tolerance, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The metal objects found consist of various coins ranging from Roman to recent times, about half a dozen in number, all coming from the surface, and none at a greater depth than ten inches. In other words, they may be classed as "superficial" finds, of very little value; the more so, as some of the more recent coins were found at a greater depth than those of earlier date. The only other trace of metal is the small green stain upon the slab of Sarsen already alluded to. This stain can only have been caused by the ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... touched a sensitive spot, but he saw that this was just the superficial cynicism of the newspaperman. He saw the respectful interest that even these hardened reporters could not disguise. They shared his genuine admiration ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... moreover, that in her musical progress the aesthetic part of her nature has not been permitted to keep in advance of technique. Heretofore she was ever gratifying herself and her friends by undertaking new and more elaborate pieces, not one of which ever became other than a mere superficial possession. Now her taste is inexorably commanded to wait for her muscles: the discipline has been useful to her. After a few more such winters she will return to Woodville a teacher, herself become a quickening influence to others. Musical thought will be truer, will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... the common wall; and when you have done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep his side in repair. The only co-operation which is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true co-operation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will co-operate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... ninety-seven—with a key which Mr. Grimm produced, and a minute or so later walked into a room where three men were sitting. One of them was of a coarse, repulsive type, large and heavy; another rather dapper, of superficial polish, evidently a foreigner, and the ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... consumed by fire in 1671, that the learned and diligent Casiri was commissioned to make a catalogue of the remainder. The result was the well-known Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, which appeared in 1760-70; and which, in the words of the present learned translator, "though hasty and superficial, and containing frequent unaccountable blunders, must, with all its imperfections, ever be valuable as affording palpable proof of the literary cultivation of the Spanish Arabs, and as containing the first glimpses of historical truth." Up to this time the only authority on Spanish history purporting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... the vague recollections of concepts, ideas, rules. Within a few hours, their phlegmatic blandness had begun to pass. They were becoming men now. Individuals. Out of a dazed and superficial conformity, sharp differences began to emerge. Character reasserted itself, and the five hundred began to discover what ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... remark that if you wish to know really any people, it is necessary to have a thorough knowledge of their history, including their mythology, legends and folk-lore: customs, habits and traits of character, which to a superficial observer of a different nationality or race may seem odd and strange, sometimes even utterly subversive of ordinary ideas of morality, but which can be explained and will appear quite reasonable when they ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Connie, and arranging by a careless movement the white fur on her cloak. His handsome wooden features possessed hardly more character than was expressed by his immaculately starched shirt front, but he was not without a certain wholly superficial attraction, half as of a sleek, well-groomed animal and half as of a masculine conceit, naked ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... here. Eleven highway surveyors were chosen annually in town-meeting, who had charge of the roads in their respective districts; and although the town appropriated money liberally for highway repairs, the roads seemed to be continually growing worse, owing to the superficial manner in which the repairs were made. In 1877 the town adopted an entirely different plan for doing the work. The plan was to choose one surveyor for the whole town, who was to have charge of all the roads, and the town to purchase suitable teams and implements to be kept at the town farm. ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... of St. Pierre was due to the new crater. The explosion had great superficial force, acting in radial directions, as is evidenced by the dismounting and carrying for yards the guns in the battery on the hill south of St. Pierre and the statue of the Virgin in the same locality, and also by the condition of the ruined houses in St. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... may be taken at about double the number. With a wise policy, therefore, the interchange should be of an active and most extensive nature betwixt two countries, reckoning together more than forty millions of inhabitants, one of which, with a superficial breadth of territory out of all proportion with a comparatively thinly-scattered community, abounding with raw products and natural riches of almost spontaneous growth; whilst the other, as densely peopled, on the contrary, in comparison with its territorial limits, is stored with all the elements, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... terms with the leading politicians of several countries. But nothing sensational was discovered among the documents which filled his drawers. As to his relations with women, they appeared to have been promiscuous but superficial. He had many acquaintances among them, but few friends, and no one whom he loved. His habits were regular, his conduct inoffensive. His death was an absolute mystery, and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... race of men. The wild, free nomad whom experience and direct contact with nature had early taught to recognize the simple underlying truths and realities of life and their relations to one another, was not to be measured by the conventions or limited standards of a tamer race of men hedged about by superficial traditions and born and reared remote from the heart of nature beneath the roofs of houses. It was the cold, hard earth and equally cold and unrelenting stars that had nurtured Chiquita from earliest childhood, and to apply the petty restraints and conventions of modern society ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... found apparently facing each other. Their present form I take to be only the skeleton outline of what they will be at the next period of Jupiter's development. They will, I predict, become more like half moons than crescents, though the profile may be much indented by gulfs and bays, their superficial area being greatly increased, and the intervening ocean correspondingly narrowed. We know that North America had a very different shape during the Cretaceous or even the Middle Tertiary period from ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... this country to-day are vegetating in luxurious homes, listless, ambitionless, living narrow, superficial, rutty lives, because the spur of necessity has been taken away from them; because their husbands, who do not want them to work, have taken them ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... circumstances was the only method of getting the stimulant in contact with any excitable nerve-substance. In other words, mere absorbent and assimulative tissue was all of him which for the purpose of receiving opium partially survived disorganization of the superficial nerves. Of that surviving tissue, one mucous patch was irredeemably gone. (This particular fact was the one which cessation from opium more distinctly unmasked.) At noon he had become tolerably comfortable; before I left (7 P.M.) he had enjoyed a single half-hour ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... gradually disappeared, the gayety of his manners was obscured, his politeness and obliging behavior were changed into sullenness and silence. And the king, whose affections had been engaged by these superficial accomplishments, began to estrange himself from a man who no longer ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... I told you a little after the beginning of this essay, touching the blue and red and yellow that may be produced upon a piece of tempered steel; for these colours, though they be very vivid, yet if you break the steel they adorn, they will appear to be but superficial.' He then describes, in phraseology which shows the delight he took in his ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... that the shoe-store proprietor below was an accomplice! The store served a most convenient purpose in every respect—as a secret means of entry into the room, as a sort of guarantee of innocence for the room itself. Why not! To the superficial observer, to the man who might by some chance blunder into the room—it was but an ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... ordinarily get into history. If he is told about the charters of the barons, he wishes to hear of the charters of the carpenters. This, he thinks, would make history popular, that word which is always used to denote something rather slight and superficial. He exclaims that the people are ignored, whereas the historian really would not be one at all if he was ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Pauline), but to the friends who knew them both well this idea was absurd. It was true they were of the same height and their hair and eyes of the same color, their noses and mouths of somewhat the same shape, but with these superficial likenesses the resemblance ended. Anybody should have been able to see that in each detail Polly was the more intense; her hair was blacker and longer, her eyes bluer, her cheek bones a little higher with brighter color and her chin and delicate ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... me abruptly, her naturally firm voice faltering as she spoke those last words. A sensitive, vehement, passionate nature—a woman of ten thousand in these trivial, superficial times. I had known her from her earliest years—I had seen her tested, as she grew up, in more than one trying family crisis, and my long experience made me attach an importance to her hesitation under the circumstances here detailed, which I should certainly not have felt in ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... may be due most of all to the impression made on our mind and heart by the sacrifice at the cost of which Jesus procured salvation for us. And here the depth or shallowness of our theology will be sure to tell. If our views are superficial either of the difference which salvation has made to ourselves or of what Christ did to constitute Himself the Saviour, the likelihood is that we shall love little. It is the man who knows that he has been forgiven much and saved at a great cost, who loves much. And the amount of ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... tall and handsome young man on the opposite side of the road cast a hasty glance at us, and then sneak round the corner hurriedly. He was a loose-limbed, languid-looking young man, with large, dreamy eyes, and a peculiarly beautiful and gentle expression; but what I noted about him most was an odd superficial air of superciliousness. He seemed always to be looking down with scorn on that foolish jumble, the universe. He darted away so rapidly, however, that I hardly discovered all this just then. I piece ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of taste or the enrichment of genius, unless the principle of these values had in a particular connection been subjected in advance to some challenge or some test. Why should it take such a flood of suggestion, such a luxury of acquaintance and contact, only to make superficial specimens? Why shouldn't the art of living inward a little more, and thereby of digging a little deeper or pressing a little further, rather modestly replace the enviable, always the enviable, young Briton's ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... say again what has been so well said. There is, however, one objection which, with your permission, I will notice. Some men, of whom I wish to speak with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge, they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... incapacity, some flagrant rusticity, be inferred from failure. These last were hasty observers, scarcely waiting to adjust the eye to the lens, fluttered, and prolific of inapt exclamations, which too often betrayed the superficial character of the investigation. To this ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... French peasant drinks wine in the place of beer, eats less than the German, is lighter in build and in wits, but apart from these superficial differences there is much similarity. Under an outside show of brains, both are often of dull and shallow intelligence. The German cracks heavy jokes and the French cynical ones: it is difficult to choose between them as both show little culture and ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... these English classics Bryda had formed hers, and thus her expressions were somewhat quaint, and yet she was free from the stilted and flowery mannerism of the women of her time who had received a superficial education. ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... these may be sufficient as characteristic illustrations of the essential trend. They show that the progress of the photoplay did not lead to a more and more perfect photographic reproduction of the theater stage, but led away from the theater altogether. Superficial impressions suggest the opposite and still leave the esthetically careless observer in the belief that the photoplay is a cheap substitute for the real drama, a theater performance as good or as bad as a photographic reproduction allows. But ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... lace corners almost to the carpet, the china was old and handsome, creamy-yellow, with a blotched pattern of harsh red and deep blue, the cups large and bell-shaped, the teapot gallant. Isabel looked at it with superficial appreciation. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... analyzing on dogmatic premises, as well as in the acceptance of hearsay truths as ultimate verities—we do not see any fundamental disparity in these regards between the mind of the Northwest and that of the Southeast; and what superficial difference exists goes to the credit of Buddhism. For if one must have dogma it is something to have system, and while precedent theosophy was based on the former it knew nothing of the latter. Moreover, in Buddhism there is a greater intellectual ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... have been our salvation did not occur to us at the moment. Hence we make it a rule to attack a counter-argument, even though to all appearances it is true and forcible, in the belief that its truth is only superficial, and that in the course of the dispute another argument will occur to us by which we may upset it, or succeed in confirming the truth of our statement. In this way we are almost compelled to become dishonest; or, at any rate, the temptation to do so is very great. Thus it is that the ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the battle of Lake George, September 8, 1755. The brilliant victory gained here was greater than is apparent at a superficial glance, for it checked the French advance upon the English colonies; it probably saved Albany and other towns from destruction; it was the means of driving the invaders back upon their defensive posts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, where they ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... fancied herself desperately fond of another, when, much to her surprise, an acute attack of toothache and dentist-fright put the "affection" quite out of her head. In this case the "love" was a nervous irritant, and the toothache a counter-irritant. Of course the sooner such superficial feeling is recognized and shaken off, the nearer we ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... with caution, partly because its analysis of the Elizabethan age is conventional, and therefore superficial, and partly because it represents a direction of thought which eyed the later work of Ibsen and Bjornson with distrust. These men had rejected the faith of their fathers, and the books that came from them were signs ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... earlier volor from Paris to Berlin; but he was not sure bow they ran. It was a pity that the German had not been able to catch the thirteen o'clock from Rome to Berlin direct. So he calculated, in a kind of superficial insensibility. ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... line from Tunguragua through Pelileo and Guano. It is a little singular, that while the late trembling at Quito seemed to come from the north, the great shock in Peru preceded that in Ecuador by three days. Though the origin of earthquakes is deep-seated, the oscillation is mostly superficial, as deep mines are little disturbed. The most damage is done where the sedimentary plains abut against the hard, upturned strata of the mountains. The shock is usually brief. That of Caracas lasted fifty ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... of tobacco in these towns," continues Mr. Pickwick, "must be very great; and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious to those who are extremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller might object to the dirt, which is their leading characteristic; but to those who view it as an indication of traffic and commercial prosperity, it ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... not so very far afield from the modern divisions into mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes. That Aristotle should have recognized the fundamental distinction between fishes and the fish-like whales, dolphins, and porpoises proves the far from superficial character of his studies. Aristotle knew that these animals breathe by means of lungs and that they produce living young. He recognized, therefore, their affinity with his first class of animals, even if he did not, like the modern naturalist, consider ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... betwixt the Collector and the people of the house, the worthy citizens of Pittenweem felt themselves no way called on to interfere in behalf of the obnoxious revenue officer; so, satisfying themselves with this very superficial account of the matter, like the Levite in the parable, they passed on the opposite side of the way. An alarm was at length given, military were called in, the depredators were pursued, the booty recovered, and Wilson and Robertson tried and condemned to death, chiefly on ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to remove the unfavorable impression of the former series. But it was only partially successful. Bok had made a mistake in recognizing the craze at all; he should have ignored it, as he had so often in the past ignored other temporary, superficial hysterics of the public. The Journal readers knew the magazine had made a mistake ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... given a dozen reasons why she liked him. There were for instance the superficial ones. She liked the way he tossed back the tawny sun-kissed hair from his eyes, the easy pantherish stride with which he covered ground so lightly, the set of his fine shoulders, the peculiar tint of his lean, bronzed cheeks. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... left for the present the, to her, perplexing and almost irritating catalogue of miracles, and had begun to perceive the strength and indomitable courage, the grand self-devotion, the all-embracing love of the man. Very superficial had been her former view. He had been to her a shadowy, unreal being, soft and gentle, even a little effeminate, speaking sometimes what seemed to her narrow words about only saving the lost sheep of the house of Israel. A character somehow wanting in that ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... cases of doubtful sex. Tattoo marks may disappear during life; the brighter colours, as vermilion, as a rule, more readily than those made with carbon, as Indian ink; after death the colouring-matter may be found in the proximal glands. If the tattooing is superficial (merely underneath the cuticle) the marks may possibly be removed by acetic acid or cantharides, or even by picking out the colouring-matter with a fine needle. With regard to scars and their permanence, it will be remembered ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... could begin as early as eleven years of age. A second-rate ship like the Ariadne carried eighteen midshipmen; and as six lieutenants were appointed from them, only twelve remained. From these twelve, in the dingy after-cockpit, where the superficial area was not more than twelve square feet; where the air was foul, and the bilges reeked with a pestilential stench; where the purser's store-room near gave out the smell of rancid butter and poisonous cheese; where the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... addition large quantities were shipped from Miramichi, St. Andrews, Richibucto and Bathurst. Up to 1825 there is scarcely any mention of Spruce lumber as an article of export. The first Spruce deals cut in New Brunswick were sawn in 1819, and the first cargo, which consisted of only 100,000 superficial feet, was shipped to ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... immediate, have ever existed between the two; the etymologist not caring to ask himself whether it was thus so much as possible that the word should have passed from the one language to the other; whether in fact the resemblance is not merely superficial and illusory, one which, so soon as they are stripped of their accidents, disappears altogether. Take a few specimens of this manner of dealing with words; and first from the earlier etymologists. Thus, what are men doing ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... power' powerful; comp. l. 677. blear illusion; deception, that which deceives by blurring the vision. Shakespeare has 'bleared thine eye' dimmed thy vision, deceived (Tam. Shrew, v. 1. 120). Comp. "This may stand for a pretty superficial argument, to blear our eyes, and lull us asleep in security" (Sir W. Raleigh). Blur ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... eminent, and secured for her one great chapter in the history of the world; but he imprinted upon her a certain narrowness uncongenial to her character and to her past, which has undervalued her to many superficial observers, and done perhaps a little, but a permanent, harm to her national ideal ever since. A small evil for so much good, but yet not to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and misshapen heads are often brilliant in certain directions, and this limited brilliancy in special lines causes them to be spoken of by superficial observers as men of great ability and apparent exceptions to the phrenological rule. The fact remains, however, that in no case is comprehensive greatness ever exhibited in a head of ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... enclosure, though it is so wide that at a superficial glance the beholder has only a sense of standing on a breezy down, the solitude is rendered yet more solitary by the knowledge that between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... direct influence of the Greek motherland, so that one passed over into the other by imperceptible gradations, but the influence of Etruria on Rome not only led to nothing but was in itself of a most superficial sort. Etruria must have had some literature, yet we search the history of Roman literature in vain for any traces of the influence of that literature on Rome, with the one exception of books on divination and the interpretation of lightning. We know ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... Gospels is sufficient to convince any unprejudiced mind that it is neither a combination of texts, nor a quotation from memory. The language throughout is markedly different, and, to present even a superficial parallel, it is necessary to take a fragment of the discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper, regarding the traitor who should deliver him up (Matt. xxvi. 24), and join it to a fragment of his remarks in connection with the little child whom he set in ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... for all. There was nothing more to be discovered, and therefore scientists took a delight in logical and dialectical speculations which to a man of our day seem senseless and childish. Far into the Renascence, natural history was a medley of ancient traditions, oriental fables and superficial observations. The strangest qualities were attributed to animals with which we come almost daily into contact. The following quotations are culled from a Provencal book on zoology: "The cricket is so pleased with its song that it forgets to feed and dies singing." "When a snake catches sight ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... sort of cleverness for which there is no market. I am fond of reading. I remember things, and do a great deal of thinking; but I am destitute of accomplishments: my knowledge of languages is purely superficial. We are equal to other girls,—just young ladies, and nothing more; but when it comes to earning our bread-and-butter——" Here Phillis paused, and threw out her hands with a little ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... public affairs for his range. He was willing at any time to discuss the tariff, internal revenue, finance, and foreign relations, and avowed himself master of all. Yet Harley saw that he was in these affairs a perfect child, shallow and superficial, and depending wholly upon a few catchwords that he had learned from others. Even the former Populists turned from him. But their sour faces when he spoke taught him nothing. He was still, to himself, the great spellbinder, and he looked forward to the day when he, too, a nominee for ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... cities yet more distant. The tendency to union and to combination of exertion thus grows with the growth of wealth. In a state of extreme poverty it cannot be developed. The insignificant tribe of savages that starves on the product of the superficial soil of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, looks with jealous eye on every intruder, knowing that each new mouth requiring to be fed tends to increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence; whereas the farmer rejoices in the arrival of the blacksmith and the shoemaker, because ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... thirteenth century extended to the island, and the Irish parliament, then growing up out of the old council, reflected in a blurred fashion the organisation of the English parliament of the three estates. But royal lieutenants and councils, shires and sheriffs, parliaments and justices had only the most superficial influence on Irish life. Real authority was divided between the Norman lords of the plain and the Celtic chieftains of the hills. Each feudal lord hated his fellows, and bitter as were the feuds of Fitzgeralds and Burghs, they were mild as ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... food in a soil which for other crops appears to be exhausted? Simply by pushing down for it into a mine that has hitherto been but little worked, though Cabbage might fail on the same plot because the superficial stratum ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... soul to be trained, carefully guided and directed to God, entered not into the calculations of this giddy, superficial woman. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... God's city has more than twelve gates; they open to all the thirty-two points of the compass, yet there is, in the religious experience of the truest saints, always something analogous to this change. And what I desire to press upon you is, that unless you are only religious people after the popular superficial fashion of the day, there will be something ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve," occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, is often quoted by superficial and unsympathetic readers as an argument that the teachings of occultism are the most concentrated form of selfishness. In order to determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the word "selfishness" ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... that of the senses, the eye is the most superficial, the ear the most arrogant, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and fickle, touch the most profound ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... knowledge, the inconsistencies, absurdities, and endless quarrels of metaphysicians might have furnished an admirable field! But wit was hardly one of his qualities, and his knowledge of these subjects was superficial. In fact, the gentle "minstrel" warring against philosophy, reminds us of a plain English scholar attacking the Talmud, or of one who had never crossed the 'Pons Asinorum' slandering ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.] |
