"Superfluity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not present myself at a hotel, and many of the humbler hostelries refused me admittance, believing, no doubt, either that the seeds of pestilence were in my rags, or not a copper in my pocket. Indeed, to no brain but that of a very imaginative genius would the possibility of such a superfluity as a pocket suggest itself. All the beds were "full." At last I thought me of an expedient. I called for a glass of ale, for which payment in advance was duly demanded. I handed a sovereign, which at once emptied a bed, provided I slept in a room with another person ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... are crowned with vases and beset with jewels: the interior of their houses corresponds with the beauty of their outward appearance, and all the riches of other countries are here exhibited in a variety of profusion. Such a nation, and so abounding in superfluity, owes its independence to its distance from Europe; for their luxurious manners would soon render them a prey to the European sovereigns, who have always troops on foot prepared for any conquest; and who, if they could find the means of invasion, would soon reduce ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Further, when there is too much of anything, nothing should be added to it. But the Jews observed a superfluity of baptisms; for it is written (Mk. 7:3, 4) that "the Pharisees and all the Jews eat not without often washing their hands . . . and when they come from the market, unless they be washed, they eat not; and many other things there are that have been ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... hypocritical enemy of the body. Simeon Pauli (a learned Dane) thinks sugar to be one cause of our English consumption, and Dr. Willis blames it as one of our universal scurvies: therefore, when chocolate produces any ill effects, they may be often imputed to the great superfluity of ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... more; in short, sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... (canalis), and the presence of buckets (Kuebeln), bags (Bulgen), pockets (Taschen), or cans (Kannen) as components of three of Agricola's four categories of hauling machines are reasons enough for the apparent superfluity of German names, if not for his decision to avoid the use of German names. But it should also be noted that the names sometimes refer to a pump and its prime mover considered as a single machine. Such is the case with the Kehrrad, a bucket windlass driven by a reversible waterwheel ...
— Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later • Robert P. Multhauf
... divined them, from the way the girl moved, from the look in her gray-blue eyes, from the carriage of her head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little prettiness matters, beside the other thing!—the indefinable, irresistible something—which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's occasional words, Victoria Tatham ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... African reaches a plantation for the first time, he fancies himself in paradise. He is amazed by the generosity with which he is fed with fruit and fresh provisions. His new clothes, red cap, and roasting blanket (a civilized superfluity he never dreamed of), strike him dumb with delight, and, in his savage joy, he not only forgets country, relations, and friends, but skips about like a monkey, while he dons his garments wrongside ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of Europe the Italians had never understood or practised chivalry, save in such select and exotic schools as the Casa Gioiosa under Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua. The oath of Arthur's knights would have seemed to them mere superfluity of silliness. Onore connoted credit, reputation, and prowess. Virtu, which may be roughly translated as mental ability combined with personal daring, set the standard and ruled opinion. 'Honour in the North was subjective: ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... this town are kept as clean as a floor, by sweepers watching the streets all day long, collecting and carrying away all the refuse matter. One day, I felt ill at ease about a small piece of paper that had become a superfluity in my pocket, but which I was afraid to throw upon the street, as it would there seem as much out of place as if I should drop it upon the carpet in a parlor. I passed along the pavement with it, until I met a street-sweeper, and there threw ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... matter of discernment; for every superfluous word prevents its purpose being carried out. Voltaire means this when he says: l'adjectif est l'ennemi du substantif. (But, truly, many authors try to hide their poverty of thought under a superfluity of words.) ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... twenty-four centuries by its connection with Pythagoras. I looked with astonishment upon a country renowned for its fertility, and in which, in spite of nature's prodigality, my eyes met everywhere the aspect of terrible misery, the complete absence of that pleasant superfluity which helps man to enjoy life, and the degradation of the inhabitants sparsely scattered on a soil where they ought to be so numerous; I felt ashamed to acknowledge them as originating from the same stock as myself. Such is, however the Terra di Lavoro where labour seems to be execrated, where everything ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... imparted a certain wild look that contrasted with his speech. Christina forgot that the man was a labourer like any other, but noted that he did not manifest the least embarrassment in their presence, or any consciousness of a superfluity of favour in their approach: she did not know that neither would his hired servant, or the poorest member of his clan. It was said of a certain Sutherland clan that they were all gentlemen, and of a certain Argyll clan that they were all ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and no bounds to my task. No display of a scene like this could be chargeable with redundancy or superfluity. Even the colour of a shoe, the knot of a ribband, or your attitude in plucking a rose, were of moment to be recorded. Even the arrangements of your breakfast-table and your toilet ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... Close-curled, now on his bared and brawny chest, Now on his flexile, vine-like veined limbs, With iron network of strong muscle thewed, And godlike brows and proud mouth unrelaxed. Firm was his step; no superfluity Of indolent flesh impeded this man's strength. Slender and supple every perfect limb, Beautiful with the glory of a man. No weapons bare he, neither shield: his hands Folded upon his breast, his movements free Of all incumbrance. When his mighty strides Had brought him ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from the inner circle of advanced intellectuals. Too much occupied with the obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche in the temple of fame. 'A wish to epater le bourgeois,' says Mr. Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.' I do not think so; at least, in an artist. Now much of Beardsley's work shows the eblouissement of the burgess on arriving at Montmartre for the first ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... passion, and tried to speak calmly and logically that I might correct this impression. I told them that I had not meant to accuse them, as if they, or the rich in general, were responsible for the misery of the world. True indeed it was, that the superfluity which they wasted would, otherwise bestowed, relieve much bitter suffering. These costly viands, these rich wines, these gorgeous fabrics and glistening jewels represented the ransom of many lives. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... was now talking decently!—about matters he understood; Burne-Jones, Rossetti—some French pictures in Bond Street—and so forth. The ruffled host was half appeased, half wroth. For if he could make this agreeable impression, why such a superfluity of naughtiness downstairs? And the fellow had really some general cultivation; nothing like Welby, of course—where would you find another Arthur Welby?—but enough to lift him above the mere journeyman. After all, one must be indulgent to these novices—with no traditions behind ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... result of this plan perhaps, but more as a result of great natural facility in writing, his manuscripts were often without a single erasure for many pages; and a typewriter was really a superfluity. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... me of the cow that the man wanted to train so as to consider eating a superfluity—she was coming on admirably, but unfortunately for the full success of the experiment, she perversely died, the very day her owner had reduced her to ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... "feast of fat things" from my friends, and just as I was in the act of tasting, in came this talker and substituted his fiddle-faddle of saws and stories, which he had repeated, perhaps, a hundred times. We were jaded with his superfluity of loquaciousness, and were not sorry when the time of departure arrived. He was last of the company to retire, and he did so with much self-complacency, doubtless thinking to himself, as he walked ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... not belong to this particular class of correspondents, but she could not resist the law of her sex, whose thoughts naturally surround themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their persons float in a wide superfluity of woven tissues. Was she indeed writing to this unknown gentleman? Euthymia ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... soft stones to leeward And make up our bed. Eat our bread and bacon, Smoke the pipe of peace, And, ere we be drowsy, Give our boots a grease. Homer's heroes did so, Why not such as we? What are sheets and servants? Superfluity! Pray for wives and children Safe in slumber curled, Then to chat till midnight O'er this babbling world— Of the workmen's college, Of the price of grain, Of the tree of knowledge, Of the chance of rain; If Sir A. goes Romeward, If Miss B. sings true, If the fleet comes ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... delicate subject of dress. He was more tolerant in answering them than when he denounced "the stinking pride of women" at Mary Stuart's Court; admitting that "in clothes, silks, velvets, gold, and other such, there is no uncleanness," yet "I cannot praise the common superfluity which women now use in their apparel." He was quite opposed, however, to what he pleasingly calls "correcting natural beauty" (as by dyeing the hair), and held that "farthingales cannot ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... state of society in which it prevails, its signification will, of course, be different. The effect of civilization is to increase the number of our wants. The same degree of education which, during the last century, was considered, even by the upper classes, a superfluity, is now a necessary for the middling class, and will soon become a necessary for the lowest, or all but the lowest, members of society. Most of our readers are acquainted with the story of the Highland chief who rebuked his son indignantly for making a pillow of a snowball. Sumptuary laws ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... remarkable general capacity, made her a most taking, provoking creature. Mrs. Thornburgh—much recovered in mind since Dr. Baker had praised the pancakes by which Sarah had sought to prove to her mistress the superfluity of naughtiness involved in her recourse to foreign cooks—watched the young man and maiden with a face which grew more and more radiant. The conversation in the garden had not pleased her. Why should ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... your fine style have deemed that a superfluity; but you might find use for one now. A very advantageous character that, I assure you—saves much time and trouble—diminishes the chances of failure too. It's not too late. I advise you to try one. If that fails, you have still another string ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... exochas aristinden ekkatherantes. aristinden ekkatherantes appears to be a condensed phrase for aristinden eklexantes kai ekkatherantes. "Having chosen the most striking circumstances par excellence, and having relieved them of all superfluity," would perhaps give the literal meaning. Longinus seems conscious of some strangeness in his language, making a quasi-apology in hos an ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... state of the law parents may still christen a child Rollo—was a youth to whom Nature had given a cheerful disposition not marred by any superfluity of brain. Everyone liked Rollo—the great majority on sight, the rest as soon as they heard that he would be a millionaire on the death of his Uncle Andrew. There is a subtle something, a sort of nebulous charm, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... unearthed a time-honoured tea-pot—we had of course taken the precaution of carrying tea with us—one by one milk and sugar were forthcoming in what may be called wholesale fashion, milk-jugs and sugar-basins being apparently articles of superfluity, and in company of a charming old dog and irresistible kitten, also of some quiet wayfarers, we ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... held in these log huts were as rude as might be expected; yet there is evidence that although there was no superfluity of law or of learning, justice was substantially administered. The lawyers came mostly from Kentucky, though an occasional New Englander confronted and lived down the general prejudice against his region and obtained preferment. The ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... ought never to be called a street, this most magnificent of terraces, and the world has cause to bless that interdict of the Court of Sessions in 1774, which prevented the Gradgrinds of the day from erecting buildings along its south side,—a sordid scheme that would have been the very superfluity of naughtiness. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... toward the last. Nevertheless, they reveal, if not a great aesthetic feeling, at least that yearning for elegance which entered so profoundly into the manners of the ancients. With us, in fine, art is never anything but a superfluity—something unfamiliar and foreign that comes in to us from the outside when we are wealthy. Our paintings and our sculptures do not make part and parcel of our houses. If we have a Venus of Milo on our mantel-clock, it is not ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... soul, or vice versa, and compared matter and spirit to two clocks so accurately regulated to keep time with one another, that the one struck when ever the other pointed to the hour; or, with Berkeley, they abolished the "substance" of matter altogether, as a superfluity, though they failed to see that the same arguments equally justified the abolition of soul as another superfluity, and the reduction of the universe to a series of events or phenomena; or, finally, with Spinoza, to whom Berkeley makes a perilously close approach, they asserted ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... suggest, where she spoke out broad words, frank and free; the motif is one and the same. If we judge Mrs. Behn's dramatic output in the only fair way by comparing it legitimately with the theatre of her age, we simply shall not find that superfluity of naughtiness the critics lead us to expect and deplore. There are not infrequent scenes of Dryden, of Wycherley, of Vanbrugh, Southerne, Otway, Ravenscroft, Shadwell, D'Urfey, Crowne, full as daring as anything Aphra wrote; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of vanished Byzantium, will find a common topic with the spiritual advisers of the kingdoms of the East in this difficult theme,—the theme of the concessions permissible and expedient to earnest believers encumbered with leisure and a superfluity of power.... It is not necessary to discuss religious development, therefore, before deciding this issue. We are dealing now with things deeper and forces infinitely more powerful than the mere convictions ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a pair of Mexican tapaderas—deep hooded stirrups with a great superfluity of leather extending below as if they were wings for ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... of them, tho' they have the Name, yet Nature has not refus'd them the Advantage to make use of their Genital Parts, and to Engender as others. The Male Hermaphrodite may get Children, and the Female conceive; so that neither the one nor the other differ from Men or Women, but only by a superfluity or a deficiency of Parts, and such as does not disturb ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... Nature that his form, so literally corpulent, should be so inadequate. However, there it was. And Nature, seeming to realize the anachronism, had done her best to repair her blunder. If he were laboring under a superfluity of adipose, she had equipped him with muscles of steel and lungs of tremendous expansion, a fierce courage, and nerves of a tempering ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... eighteen inches of the spike have already blossomed, none of the ovaries have been fertilized; they are dropping off, but I am rather sanguine regarding those about the middle of the spike. So great is the superfluity of nectar contained in the flowers, that on the afternoon of the second day it often drops from the cups, and the least shake to the scape brings it down in a shower. The main beauty of the inflorescence consists in the dense bottle-brush-like mass of bright yellow anthers. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... to the lowest possible point of sustenance. Population, within certain limits, may doubtless constitute the strength of a nation; but who will contend, that a nation of beggars, a nation overflowing with a starved miserable superfluity, is in a condition ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... savage tribes, tugging and tearing, and kicking and biting, and gnashing, foaming, grinning, and gouging, in all the poetry of martial nature, unencumbered with gross, prosaic, artificial arms; an equal superfluity to the natural warrior and his natural poet? Is there anything unpoetical in Ulysses striking the horses of Rhesus with his bow (having forgotten his thong), or would Mr. Bowles have had him kick them with his foot, or smack them with his hand, as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... heart that I bade farewell to my Vienna friends, my musical comrades, the Legation hospitalities, and my faithful little Israelite. But the colt frisks over the pasture from sheer superfluity of energy; and between one's second and third decades instinctive restlessness - spontaneous movement - is the law of one's being. 'Tis then that 'Hope builds as fast as knowledge can destroy.' The ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... received these remarks with very boisterous mirth, whilst Mr. O'Connor simply shook his head and looked sadly upon his limbs, now shrouded in a superfluity of garments, somewhat resembling a slender thread of water in a shallow summer stream nearly wasted away and surrounded by an ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... of a maid, but no one seemed to realise what this entailed on the small boy immediately concerned. The house had evidently been built by some malevolent architect with the sole object of terrifying little boys. Never, surely, had such a prodigious length of twisting, winding passages and such a superfluity of staircases been crammed into one building, and as in the early "sixties" electric light had not been thought of, and there was no gas in the house, these endless passages were only sparingly lit with dim colza-oil lamps. From his nursery the little boy had to make his way ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... are the principles of Neo-conservatism, our case is made out with a superfluity of proof. Of course there is a pretence of acting on these principles already. When a measure is before Parliament it is assumed that the sole issue in dispute is its utility. The Conservative debater recognizes the decisiveness of this test just ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... incline my heart, O bitter fate; but thou didst turn it against the noblest heroes of our land, and towards a stranger, towards our enemy. O most holy mother of God! for what sin dost thou so pitilessly, mercilessly, persecute me? In abundance and superfluity of luxury my days were passed, the richest dishes and the sweetest wine were my food. And to what end was it all? What was it all for? In order that I might at last die a death more cruel than that of the meanest beggar in the kingdom? ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... been exercised in its adornment. There are many good paintings, including portraits of the various presidents of the club, which adorn the entrance hall. After books, perhaps the most distinctive feature of the club is our collection of pipes. In a large rack in the smoking-room—really a superfluity, since smoking is permitted all over the house—is as complete an assortment of pipes as perhaps exists in the civilized world. Indeed, it is an unwritten rule of the club that no one is eligible for membership who cannot produce a new variety of pipe, which is ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the following form—'be so and so my heir after five years from my decease,' or 'after the calends of such a month,' or 'up to and until such calends'; for a time limitation in a will is considered a superfluity, and an heir instituted subject to such a time limitation is ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... fellow-citizens the faithful Vindex, who had revealed the conspiracy of the Tarquins. The public festival was continued during several days in all the principal cities in Rome, from custom; in Constantinople, from imitation in Carthage, Antioch, and Alexandria, from the love of pleasure, and the superfluity of wealth. In the two capitals of the empire the annual games of the theatre, the circus, and the amphitheatre, cost four thousand pounds of gold, (about) one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling: and if so heavy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... groups, Antonio, Shylock, and Portia are respectively the centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems nevertheless to grow forth as an element of the original germ; a sort of inherent superfluity, and as such essential to the well-being of the piece. But perhaps it may be better described as a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts; itself in perfect harmony with them, and therefore perfecting ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... NATUR'!' Now that clock is sold for forty dollars—it cost me just six dollars and fifty cents. Mrs. Flint will never let Mrs. Steel have the refusal—nor will the deacon learn until I call for the clock, that having once indulged in the use of a superfluity, how difficult it is to give it up. We can do without any article of luxury we have never had, but when once obtained, it is not in 'HUMAN NATUR'' to surrender it voluntarily. Of fifteen thousand sold by myself and partners ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... thing respectable about them is their venerable antiquity. A startling contrast is produced by the copies of them made by the students. If the colours in the old pictures are faded, in the modern ones they blaze with a superfluity of vividness; red, yellow, green, etc., are there in all their force; such a thing as mixing, softening, or blending them, has evidently never been thought of. Even at the present moment, I really am at a loss to determine ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... and out by the gate in the old wall, up Myasnitzkaya Street, and round to the right to a building that used to be the Grand Hotel of Siberia, a loathsome place where I once stayed. Here in the old days provincial merchants put up, who did not mind high prices and a superfluity of bugs. It has now been turned into a hive of office work, and is the headquarters of the Supreme Council of Public Economy, which, controlling production and distribution alike, is the centre of the constructive work going ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... he were a painter, that he might perpetuate her graces through a few favored generations who might behold and adore her dimly as he beheld and adored her clearly, in her riding-dress of Lincoln green, whose voluminous superfluity she held gathered to her girdle as she moved. No painter could have scanned her more closely, noted more minutely the buckle of brilliants that captured the plume in her hat, the lace about her throat, the curious work ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... surfaces, like the inside of our own lungs, can act only when they are relaxed and moist. That is the reason why a frog's skin is always moist, and why a frog requires moist air. It does not need this constantly, because, when moisture is abundant, there is a bag in which it stores up superfluity of water, to be used in any day of need. It is this water—pure and clear—which frogs or toads expel when they are alarmed by being handled. Is not enough said here, to rescue frogs from our contempt? We may add, that they are capable of understanding kindness—can ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the winning post for quality. I like to think of Stanford being that university. Geniuses are sensitive plants, in some respects like prima donnas. They have to be treated tenderly. They don't need to live in superfluity; but they need freedom from harassing care; they need books and instruments; they are always overworking, so they need generous vacations; and above all things they need occasionally to travel far and wide in the interests of their souls' development. Where quality is ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... shall have money enough for two. What I want is that you should kindly relieve me of my superfluity and make it over to Isabel. Divide my inheritance into two equal halves and give her ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... and higher destinies,—how will it be possible (without raising new ghosts, in a sense) to give readers any intelligible notion?—Here, flickering on the edge of conflagration after duty done, is a poor Note which perhaps the reader had better, at the risk of superfluity, still in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... thrilling pleasures there are in store for us in literature when once we have cut ourselves adrift from all this superfluity of cultured opinion, and have given ourselves complete leave to love what we like and hate what we like and be indifferent to what we like, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... good young friend, love is natural; but you must love within bounds. Divide your time: devote a portion to business, and give the hours of recreation to your mistress. Calculate your fortune; and out of the superfluity you may make her a present, only not too often,—on her birthday, and such occasions." Pursuing this advice, he may become a useful member of society, and I should advise every prince to give him an appointment; but it is all up with his love, and with his genius if he ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... farmers who tilled their own grounds and were equal strangers to [v]opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniences of life within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of [v]superfluity. Remote from the polite, they still retained the [v]primeval simplicity of manners; and, frugal by habit, they scarce knew that temperance was a virtue. They wrought with cheerfulness on days of labor, but observed festivals as intervals ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... just wants what Christianity brings; and Christianity just brings what my soul requires. It answers to my soul, as light and beauty answer to the eye, and as sound and music answer to the ear, and the whole of nature to the whole of man. There is neither want, nor superfluity, nor disagreement. Christianity and my soul, like nature and my physical being, are a glorious match. They are one: as I and my life are one. Christ is my life. Christ is my all. And He is all that my soul requires ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... hundred thousand more before morning, we should probably petition Government to receive the importing vessels with chain-shot. Not even Milton or Shakespeare could make head against such a Lopez de Vega principle of ruinous superfluity. Allowing for this one case of preternatural excess, assuming only that degree of limitation which any absolute past must almost always create up to that point, we say that there is no conceivable composition, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... disposed, with sufficient coherence, so as that they cannot change their places without injury to the general design. His images are displayed with such luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by a "Veil of Light;" they are forms fantastically lost under superfluity of dress. Pars minima est ipsa puella sui. The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. The reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed, and sometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... books, instead of living healthfully in the open air, and among his fellow-beings. Still he felt the pleasure of being warmed through by this natural heat, and, though blinking a little from its superfluity, could not but confess an enjoyment and cheerfulness in this flood of morning light that came aslant the hill-side. While he thus stood, he felt a friendly hand laid upon his shoulder, and, looking up, there was ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... made up of song, and dance, and merriment, with our so many cheerful neighbours; with the most accomplished of whom we got up enthusiasms for music and literature. We considered ourselves to be virtuous, because we loved those who loved us, and because we gave of our superfluity to those who needed it. Friendship was our passion. We were ready to die for friendship, but towards love we had hearts of stone. How we jested over our lovers, and thought what fun it would be to act ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Money could never compensate for the loss of your love. You are my life, and from you alone can I receive happiness or unhappiness. At your side I am rich and joyous, though we may outwardly need; without you I should be poor with superfluity. I am proud that we in spirit have freed ourselves from those fictitious externals with which the foolish burden themselves. Oh, my beloved Philip, my whole soul is exultant that we are never more to part—no, not even ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Engineers directs his men. He can tie up any railroad with a snap of his finger if his men are not treated squarely. In such a literary dreamland an author might do one-third of his present work and get far more pay than now. Publishers and editors would not then have a superfluity of matter. They would then have to bow to the authors' trust before the desired material ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... how the latter tapers to the waist, which the young dandies compress within the smallest compass. In addition to the cloth, there is always round the waist a girdle of cords made of tasar-silk or of cane. This is now a superfluity, but it is no doubt the remnant of a more primitive costume, perhaps the support ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... it is permitted to behold them, and surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. We see laws which never fail, of whose failure we never conceived; and their lamps burn all the night, too, as well as all day,— so rich and lavish is that nature which can afford this superfluity of light. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... 'Life's Superfluities' (Des Lebens Uberfluss), wherein he shows that with health, a cheerful disposition, and sympathetic companionship, we may do without anything in the way of an extra at all. Shelter, covering, bed—beyond these all is mere superfluity. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... will conscionably, quietly and patiently, trauell in your Orchard, God shall crowne the labours of his hands with ioyfulnesse, and make the clouds drop fatnesse vpon your trees, he will prouoke your loue, and earne his wages, and fees belonging to his place: The house being serued, fallen fruite, superfluity of herbes, and flowers, seedes, grasses, sets, and besides all other of that fruit which your bountifull hand shall reward him withall, will much augment his wages, and the profit of your bees will pay ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... in the wind of a civil d—-, started back also, sobbing more than ever. It was a little too much that the first result of his discovery of the mistake should be absolute repulse. She leant against the mantelpiece, when Julian, much bewildered at her superfluity of emotion, assisted her to a seat in sheer humanity. But Christopher was by no means pleased when he again thought round the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... materials found in the earth, on the one hand, and the quantity which is supposed necessary for hardening and consolidating strata, on the other. If this earth has been consolidated by the burning of combustible materials, there must have been a superfluity, so far as there is a certain quantity of these actually found unconsumed in the strata of the earth. Our author's conclusion is the very opposite; let us then see how he is to form his argument, by which he proves that the supposition ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... between them, some being very wide. Two more horses died during the day from the effects of the poison, and the Leader owns that he was beginning to be at his wits end as to how they were to get along. Every superfluity and been abandoned, and, with the exception of a few light things, such as clothes and blankets, of too trifling weight to make it worth while to leave, and only what was absolutely necessary, retained; yet there were barely sufficient horses ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... built to shelter a family of boys, and steps being a superfluity scorned by their agile legs, there was a sheer drop of three feet to the ground upon that side. Evadna made it in a jump, just as the boys did, and landed ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... later, Alice, having completed dressing, leaned out of her bedroom window to drink in the soft air of evening. She had not brought a maid, and had refused her hostess's offer to lend her her own on the ground that maids were a superfluity. It was her desire to be a very practical young person, a scorner of modes and trivialities, and yet she had taken unusual care with her toilet this evening, and had spent many minutes before the glass. Looking at herself carefully, a growing conviction ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... before them, and they take the hint. You feel so grateful, too, for the hospitality of the log-cabin; such gratitude as the hospitality of the rich, however generous, cannot inspire; for these wait on you with their domestics and money, and give of their superfluity only; but here the Master gives you his bed, his horse, his lamp, his grain from the field, his all, in short; and you see that he enjoys doing so thoroughly, and takes no thought for the morrow; so that you seem in fields full of lilies perfumed with pure kindness; ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... unnecessary thing he would be likely to repeat." He cast the subject aside as if it were a worthless superfluity and went on: "When you say there is no one suitable, you surely forget ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... deplores the fashions of his day, alluding to the "sinful costly array of clothing, namely, in too much superfluity or else indisordinate scantiness!" Changing fashions have always been the despair of writers who have tried to lay down rules for aesthetic effect in dress. "An Englishman," says Harrison, "endeavouring some ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... little out of winter until we can bear the blazing heat of summer, and out of heat back again into the depths of winter. So should we follow God, and take one step after another until we reach our goal. [30] What you might spend on heavy rugs and coverlets spend rather on food: any superfluity there will not be wasted: and you will not sleep less soundly for lack of bedclothes; if you do, I give you leave to blame me. But with clothing the case is different: a man can hardly have too much of that in sickness or in health. [31] And for ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... criticisms are excellent; none more so than the following:—"Bouffe's gaiety is frank and communicative, his pathos simple, yet inexpressibly touching; the foundation of his character is sensibility; he feels all he says. He never employs any superfluity of action for the purpose of producing effect, nor does he seek, by first raising his voice almost to a shriek, and then lowering it to a whisper, to startle his audience into a fit of enthusiasm; on the contrary, a studied sobriety, both of speech ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... agricultural development; and he was bound in return to perform arduous and complicated duties. How far he performed them well is another question. At least, he did whatever was done in the way of governing, and therefore did not sink into a mere excrescence or superfluity. I must try to point out certain results which had a material effect upon English opinion in general and, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... luxury of the Pompadour. Hence the machine-made frivolities of the most respectable homes, the hair-brushes with backs of stamped silver, the scent-bottles of imitation cut-glass, the draperies with printed rose-buds on them, the general artificial-floweriness and flimsiness and superfluity of naughtiness of our domestic art. It expresses a feminine romance to which the male indulgently consents, as if he were really the voluptuous monarch whose mistress the female, aesthetically, pretends ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... Ursula Drew for some time, was quite aware that superfluity of meekness did not rank among that ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... public, if the charity of well-disposed persons were not intercepted by those common strollers, who are most importunate, and who least deserve it. These, indeed, are properly and justly called the poor, whom it should be our study to find out and distinguish, by making them partake, of our superfluity and abundance. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... precisely, the Dorian manner everywhere, in possession of the whole of life. Compare it, for further vividness of effect, to Gothic building, to the Cistercian Gothic, if you will, when Saint Bernard had purged it of a still barbaric superfluity of ornament. It seems a long way from the Parthenon to Saint Ouen "of the aisles and arches," or Notre-Dame de Bourges; yet they illustrate almost equally the direction of the Platonic aesthetics. Those churches of the Middle ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... around its jaws—"how can you, Mr. Lackobreath, be so infernally cruel as to pinch me in that manner by the nose? Did you not see how they had fastened up my mouth—and you must know—if you know any thing—how vast a superfluity of breath I have to dispose of! If you do not know, however, sit down and you shall see. In my situation it is really a great relief to be able to open ones mouth—to be able to expatiate—to be able to communicate with a person like yourself, who do not think yourself called upon at every ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... through the law we obtain salvation, but through the gospel. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Rom. 1:16. "Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls." Jas. 1:21. "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... consisting of farmers, who tilled their own grounds, and were equal strangers to opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniences of life within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of superfluity. Remote from the polite, they still retained the primeval simplicity of manners; and frugal by habit, they scarcely knew that temperance ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... his hands, however, are well defended by a pair of gauntlets that reach his elbows; and on his head he wears a cap richly ornamented with bear's and eagle's claws. His long thick hair, however, renders the head-gear an article of superfluity,—but it is the fashion. The dress of the women consists of a square piece of dressed deer-skin, girt round them by a cloth or worsted belt, and fastened over their shoulders by leather straps; a jacket of leather, and cloth leggings. I have also observed ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... to-day had become a vision almost as fantastic as the cupolas and chimneys that rose before me. I thought, while I lingered there, of all the fine things it takes to make up such a monarchy; and how one of them is a superfluity of mouldering, empty palaces. Chambord is touching—that is the best word for it; and if the hopes of another restoration are in the follies of the Republic, a little reflection on that eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard. A sentimental ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... travelling from the Capital towards Kien-fi. A day's journey from that place he will encounter obstacles and fall into the hands of those who will take away his robes and papers. About the same place you will meet one with a bowl on the roadside who will hail you, saying, 'Charity, out of your superfluity, noble mandarin coming from the north!' To him you will reply, 'Do mandarins garb thus and thus and go afoot? It is I who need a change of raiment and a chair; aye, by the token of the Locust's Head!' He will then lead ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... acts of previous self-denial, and I wish you to be persuaded, that unless these are practised habitually and incessantly you can never be truly generous. A readiness to give that which costs you nothing, that which is so truly a superfluity that it involves no sacrifice, is a mere animal instinct, as selfish perhaps, though more refinedly so than any other species of self-indulgence. Generosity is a nobler quality, and one that can have no real existence without economy ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... and tramped on in silence. Pelle stepped forward carelessly, drinking in the fresh air. He was conscious of a superfluity of strength and well-being; otherwise he thought of nothing, but merely rejoiced unconsciously over his visit to his home. At every moment he had to moderate his steps, so that Sort should ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... marriage was a silly love match and a failure, I have always admitted to myself that I should marry again. A bachelor is a man who shirks responsibilities and duties; I seek them, and consider it my duty, with my monstrous superfluity of means, not to let the individualists outbreed me. Still, I was in no hurry, having other things to occupy me, and being fond of my bachelor freedom, and doubtful sometimes whether I had any right ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... frivolous ignoramuses who have no soul for anything but debauchery; the sophistical theologian, to whom Helicon, the Castalian fountain, and the grove of Apollo were foolishness; the greedy lawyers, to whom poetry was a superfluity, since no money was to be made by it; finally the mendicant friars, described periphrastically, but clearly enough, who made free with their charges of paganism and immorality. Then follows the defence of poetry, the praise of it, and especially of the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... girls tripped gayly along the streets, merry and uncomplaining; and, surrounded by velvet, silver, and marble, by every superfluity of luxury, Cornelia Graham, with a bitter heart and hopeless soul, shivered in her easy-chair before a glowing fire. The Christmas sunlight crept in through the heavy crimson curtains and made gorgeous fret-work on the walls, but its cheering ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... healthy school-girl, for the morning pistolets or rolls, which were new-baked and very good, and of which a certain allowance was served to each. This allowance being more than I needed, I gave half to Ginevra; never varying in my preference, though many others used to covet the superfluity; and she in return would sometimes give me a portion of her coffee. This morning I was glad of the draught; hunger I had none, and with thirst I was parched. I don't know why I chose to give my bread rather to Ginevra than to another; nor why, if two had to share the convenience ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... withal a good leader in a frolic. 'You follow me and do as I tell you, and I don't believe old "Tushy" will follow us far.' By general consent he led them to the dry, sandy shore, and such as had them filled their handkerchiefs, and such as could not boast of that superfluity filled their caps, with sand. 'Now,' says Phil, 'when he comes back, and it won't be long, we'll form a line and wait till he gets his skates on, when he'll put chase for some of us. If he gets near any of us, some one sing out "Bully," ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have trampled down secession, and sent cotton to your marts, even to superfluity. Or, were you so minded, and could 'worry through' a single year, you might raise in your own colonies cotton enough, and be forever free ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... youth whom she loves, enjoying all the comforts of life with a moderate fortune, which it will always be in your own power to improve, or tied for life to a monied man whom she detests, cursing her hard fate, and despising that superfluity of wealth, in spite of which she finds ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Prophet, recognising in the youth a literary sense that instinctively rejected superfluity. "He does call. May ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... I will take the freedom to repeat to Colonel Everard," said Bletson; "but which would be as bad as Greek to thee, Desborough. Old Geoffrey lays the whole blame of our nocturnal disturbance on superfluity of humours, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... it be that the multitude, feeling the pangs of poverty, sympathise with the daring and ingenious depredators who take away the rich man's superfluity, or whether it be the interest that mankind in general feel for the records of perilous adventures, it is certain that the populace of all countries look with admiration upon great and successful thieves. Perhaps both these causes combine to invest their career ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... mater at whose plentiful breast all mankind are nourished. It is true, like other parents, she is not always equally indulgent to all her children, but, though she gives to her favorites a vast proportion of redundancy and superfluity, there are very few whom she refuses to supply with the conveniences, and none with ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... As we had no superfluity of servants, our children were early obliged to acquire habits of independence; and my little girl, then just nine years of age, was frequently consigned with no other care than that of her own good sense, to the companionship of a little band of playmates, pretty similarly circumstanced, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... necessary to work to find the means of indulging in them. Remunerative labor is eagerly sought after. The magnificent road now building through the island and traversing the parish of Metcalfe, has a superfluity of workmen, notwithstanding the shameful unfairness with which they have often been treated by the superintendents. I have known the people go in numbers to an estate ten miles distant, and remain there ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bitterness, which he was infallible in distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was entirely forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting in the stamina of self-support. It was a plant that would twine beautifully round ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in order better to make him known).... On shaving days he used the same vessel to lather his chin in. This, according to him, was a simplicity of manner worthy of the ancient Romans, and which condemned the splendour and superfluity of the others. When all was over, he dressed; then played high at piquet or hombre; or rode out, if it was absolutely necessary. All was now over for the day. He supped copiously with his familiars: was a great eater, of wonderful gluttony; a connoisseur in no dish, liked fish much, but the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... conquest there has been no such process of selection in operation amongst the Indians. The most indolent can obtain enough food, whilst the climate makes clothing almost a superfluity. The idle and improvident live their natural terms of years, and increase their kind even faster than the provident and industrious. The tribal feeling is destroyed; the selfish and sensual instincts are developed, and year by year the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... fortunately, at that moment the order to pipe to dinner was given. The boatswain's call came into requisition, and all hands, except the watch on deck, were soon busily employed in discussing the contents of a cask of beef, boasting of but a small proportion of fat or lean and a considerable superfluity ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... a sough o' cholera Or typhus, wha sae gleg as she! She buys up baths, an' drugs, an' a', In siccan superfluity! She doesna need—she's fever proof— The pest walked o'er her very roof; She tauld me sae, and then her loof Held out for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Safety refused to listen to Ferney's explanations. The Scarlet Pimpernel was only an ordinary mortal—an exceedingly cunning and meddlesome personage it is true, and endowed with a superfluity of wealth which enabled him to break the thin crust of patriotism that overlay the natural cupidity of many Captains of the Town Guard—but still an ordinary man for all that! and no true lover of the Republic should allow either superstitious terror or ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... were worth looking at. He was clad in tightfitting sage-green felt, so it appeared, with a superfluity of straps, buttons, lacings, and harness of all sorts. A conical Tyrol hat garnished with a cock's plume and faded violets was crushed between his back and that of the chair. As his large nervous feet reached for the chairlegs below, one could see an expanse ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... no superfluity of servants. The old fellow said that food was ready, and without more ado we went into the dining-room—another vast chamber with rough stone walls above the panelling—and found some cold meats on the table beside a big fire. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... cotton bale. We are indeed about to demand corn, but the answer of the foreigner will be this,—"You want grain, for your population is increasing, your land has gone out of cultivation, and you cannot support yourselves. Well, we have a superfluity of grain which we can give you—in fact we have grown it for you—but then it is for us to select the equivalent. We shall not take those goods which you offer in exchange. Twelve years ago we set up cotton manufactories. We had ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... we place ourselves as strangers over against nature, in order to comprehend it objectively, we find that from the grade of organized life upwards it has only one intention—that of the maintenance of the species. To this end it works, through the immense superfluity of germs, through the urgent vehemence of the sexual instinct, through its willingness to adapt itself to all circumstances and opportunities, even to the production of bastards, and through the instinctive maternal affection, the strength ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to cherish only those which conduce to the welfare of society; and in which every man's native intellect shall be sufficiently strong, and his culture sufficiently extensive, to enable him to know what he ought to do and to seek after. And, in that blessed State, police will be as much a superfluity as every ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... till our journey, properly so called, had terminated. For our course lay down a very steep street, and across the bridge into the Alt Stadt, where at a hotel, rich in all the essentials of food, and wine, and couches, though somewhat deficient in the superfluity of cleanliness, we established our head-quarters ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... by compassion for his fellow-creatures. His sympathy was excited by the misery with which the world is burning. He witnessed the sufferings of the poor, and was aware of the evils of ignorance. He desired to induce every rich man to despoil himself of superfluity, and to create a brotherhood of property and service, and was ready to be the first to lay down the advantages of his birth. He was of too uncompromising a disposition to join any party. He did not in his youth look forward to gradual improvement: ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... incarnation of this picture, usually wore footed trousers, shoes with thick soles to them, an overcoat of coarse cloth, a black cravat, a waistcoat of some gray-and-white material buttoned to the chin, and a cheap hat. Contempt for superfluity in dress was visible in his whole person. Lucien also discovered that the mysterious stranger with that unmistakable stamp which genius sets upon the forehead of its slaves was one of Flicoteaux's most regular customers; he ate to live, careless of the fare which appeared ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... for a day, a week, or a month, or a year; but from antiquity to posterity, for many ages; there I found entertainment beyond my expectation or merit, and there is fish, flesh, bread and fruit, in such variety, that I think I may offenceless call it superfluity, or satiety. The worst was, that wine and ale was so scarce, and the people there such misers of it, that every night before I went to bed, if any man had asked me a civil question, all the wit in my head could not have made him a ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... books and treatises of many a noble history, as well in metre as in rhyme and prose; and them so craftily made that he comprehended his matters in short, quick, and high sentences, eschewing prolixity, casting away the chaff of superfluity, and shewing the picked grain of sentence uttered by crafty and sugared eloquence; of whom among all others of his books I purpose to print, by the grace of God, the book of the tales of Canterbury, in which I find many ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... belle of the season. Even the most ardent of worshippers at such a shrine must, one would think, desire in their deity a little more sweetness and light. But the beauty of eighteen summers is trained to look on worship as simply her due, and to regard amiability as a mere superfluity. She knows she can summon an adorer by one beckon of her fan, and dismiss him by another. A bow will repay the most finished of pretty speeches, and conversation can be conducted at the least possible expense by the slight trouble of recollecting who was at Lady ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... a shining name in political life, his object now was to find a sufficient sphere for the exercise of all his powers in the Church. It was no fault of his that he was unwilling to settle as curate and have no aim beyond his parish except to go to heaven at last. With his superfluity of human nature, for him to become a saint was out of the question. What then? Should he enter the realm of dogmatics, and become a learned and redoubted champion of the faith, passing his life amid exegesis? Should he renounce thorough thinking, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... astronomer doubts the solar motion, though both doubt the sufficiency of present means to determine its amount and direction. This is implied in the omitted words, which Mr. Reddie—whose omission would have been dishonest if he had seen their meaning—no doubt took for pleonasm, superfluity, overmuchness. The rashness which pushed him headlong {350} into the quillet that his thunderbolt had stopped the chariot of the Sun and knocked the Greenwich Phaeton off the box, is the same which betrayed him into yet grander error—which deserves the full word, quidlibet—about ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... desire will have been enough to make my talents useless, and to neutralize my powers. Unproductive nature that I am, tortured by the belief that production was required of me, may not my very remorse be a mistake and a superfluity? ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shall so will, you may obtain from her liberality a shirt for this worthless tabernacle, and also a pair of hose; for I am unsavory to myself and to others, and of such luxuries none here has superfluity; for all live in holy poverty, except the fleas, who have that consolation in this world for which this unhappy nation, and those who labor among them, must wait till the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and freedom—now that he was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is, of his way of life—now that that was so restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... were young and healthy; half a dozen times they had each declared the other more than common good-looking; they both had, and never knew what it was not to have, money enough for comfort and, in addition that divine little superfluity wherefrom joys are born. The house was good to look at and good to live in; there were horses to ride, the river to go a-rowing on, and a big box from Mudie's every week. No one worried them; Miss Bussey was generally visiting the poor; or, as was the case at this moment, asleep ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... him here," said Hedwig, shyly, "and he would not even glance at me until I positively insisted upon it." Nino laughed, as he would have laughed at most things in that moment, for sheer superfluity of happiness. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... he himself, having made a discovery of a public-house in the neighbourhood, went thither every evening and enjoyed his pipe and can; being very well satisfied with the behaviour of the landlord, whose communicative temper was a great comfort to his own taciturnity; for he shunned all superfluity of speech, as much as he avoided any ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... houses comes, even when they have not fallen into decay, from their look of having outlived their original use. Their extraordinary largeness and massiveness are a satire on their present fate. They weren't built with such a thickness of wall and depth of embrasure, such a solidity of staircase and superfluity of stone, simply to afford an economical winter residence to English and American families. I don't know whether it was the appearance of these stony old villas, which seemed so dumbly conscious of a change of manners, that threw a tinge of melancholy over the general prospect; ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... tiptoe. The entertainment over, Heliodora was carried home in her litter, no friend accompanying her. Few nowadays were the persons in Rome who bade guests to their table; even the richest had no great superfluity of viands. After sunset, the city became a dark and silent desert, save when watch-fires glared and soldiers guarded ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... of gift is it that thou desirest?" said Eocho. "Nothing less than a gift of milking-kine," said Ailill. "There is no superfluity of these in my land," said Eocho; "I have forty fosterlings, sons of the kings of Munster, to bring them up (to manhood); they are here in my company, there are forty cows to supply the needs of these, to supply my own needs are seven times twenty milch-cows [there are fifty men ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... clerk quickly learns all the essential portion of the code-book by heart. The book then lies in the drawer a superfluity. It is claimed for Chiang, the second Chinese clerk in Yunnan, that he knows all the 10,000 numbers and their ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Wilson, there are six Missionaries in Tahaiti alone, and only four among all the other Society Islands. Each Missionary possesses a piece of land, cultivated by the natives, which produces him in superfluity all that he requires, and he also receives an annual allowance of fifty pounds from the London Missionary Society. This Society has also sent Missionaries to Tongatabu, one of the Friendly Islands, and to Nukashiva, lately made known to us ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... your dress, upon a more grave and composed fashion; wear your cloak on both shoulders, and your falling band unrumpled and well starched. You must enlarge the brim of your beaver, and diminish the superfluity of your trunk-hose; go to church, or, which will be better, to meeting, at least once a month; protest only upon your faith and conscience; lay aside your swashing look, and never touch the hilt of your sword but when you would draw the carnal ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott |
