"Vein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Uncertain, prone to tears and childish ire,— The wavering hours that drift like any cloud At whim of winds or fortunate or dire,— The feeble shapes that any chance expells; Their wisdom useless, lacking the blood that swells The tensed vein: the hot, swift tide that stings With life. Ah, wise! but naked to the slings Of fate, and plagued of youthful memory! A cracked voice broke upon my pityings: "Lo, I am Age; ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... their only, these their most desirable riches. Silver and gold the Gods have denied them, whether in mercy or in wrath, I am unable to determine. Yet I would not venture to aver that in Germany no vein of gold or silver is produced; for who has ever searched? For the use and possession, it is certain they care not. Amongst them indeed are to be seen vessels of silver, such as have been presented to their Princes and Ambassadors, but ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... of John Bunyan's ingenious book is his strong sense and his sarcastic and humorous vein better displayed than just in his description of By-ends, and in the full and particular account he gives of the kinsfolk and affinity of By-ends. Is there another single stroke in all sacred literature better fitted at once ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... amused me more than the gentleman's anecdotes. To be ill at ease is discouraging to any one, but it was peculiarly fatal with the captain. This arch-aristocrat dazzled him. When he attempted to follow in the same vein he would get lost. And his really considerable learning counted for nothing. He reached the height of his mortification when the slim gentleman dropped his eyelids and began to yawn. I was wickedly delighted. He could not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as a conqueror in triumphant vein Ride through the thundering ways of risen Rome, Anticipating ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... shall not thy sacred vein Afford a present to the infant God? Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain To welcome him to this his new abode, Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host keep watch ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... engineer discussed in a lighter vein. "It pains me dreadfully to see that young man working with the common laborers and giving himself no rest, just because he says he wants to know exactly 'how the thing is done' and why the old works failed," she remarked sadly. "When Mr. Windibrook knew he was the son ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... softly blooming." When she had finished, Elinor asked for some old melodies, knowing that Marian liked these best. So she began gaily with The Oak and the Ash and Robin Adair. After that, finding both herself and the others in a more pathetic vein, she sang them The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington, and The Banks of Allan Water, at the end of which Marmaduke's eyes were full of tears, and the rest sat quite still. She paused for a minute, and then broke the silence ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... emotional woman with a touch of second class drama in her nature. She had thought of it all, and she had made her choice. The easier course was the course for meaner souls, and she had not one vein of thin blood nor a small idea in her whole nature. She had a heart and mind for great issues. She believed that Jim had a great brain, and would and could accomplish great things. She knew that he had in him the strain of hereditary instinct—his mother's father ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the utmost peak, A while we do remain, Amongst the mountains bleak, Expos'd to sleet and rain, No sport our hours shall break, To exercise our vein. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... add—for I feel I have drifted into far too serious a vein for a preface to a fairy-tale—the deliciously naive remark of a very dear child-friend, whom I asked, after an acquaintance of two or three days, if she had read 'Alice' and the 'Looking-Glass.' "Oh yes," she replied ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... wealthy creditor. Passionate was his homage to the wine-cup, still more passionate to women; even in his later years he was no longer the regent, when after the business of the day was finished he took his place at table. A vein of irony—we might perhaps say of buffoonery—pervaded his whole nature. Even when regent he gave orders, while conducting the public sale of the property of the proscribed, that a donation from the spoil should be given to the author of a wretched ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... what the old man tells you, mistress. He means—he must mean—somewhere on your property lies a vein of this metal. The dead master thought the coal was fine already. Ay, so, so. But copper! Mistress Trent, when this vein is mined, what Pedro says—yes, yes. In all this big country is not one so rich as he who owns a copper mine. Ach, himmel! ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... also Ch. Muller, for his life and works. He wrote (1) a history on Persian affairs in three parts—Assyrian, Median, Persian—with a chapter "On Tributes;" (2) a history of Indian affairs (written in the vein of Sir John Maundeville, Kt.); (3) a Periplus; (4) a treatise on Mountains; (5) a treatise ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... in a dry and barren spot, and happen to strike a vein of living water, it bubbles up, overflows, and moistens the surrounding earth, clothing it with beautiful verdure and smiling flowers. So it is in the resurrection. The life which had been concentrated in the soul alone, overflows to the body, giving to it life, beauty, and glory, and causing ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... sends the Baron a seasonable present of a small volume of poems, published by HOLDEN, of St. Andrew's, N.B. (Quoth Mr. WAGG, "quite a new 'un, published by a hold 'un"—passons), entitled The Scarlet Gown, written by Mr. R.F. MURRAY. His verses are in the Calverley vein, the rhyming and rhythm easy, the jingle pleasant, the lines witty, and the subjects fresh. The local hits will be specially appreciated by St. Andrew's men. Everyone will enjoy "The City of Golf, the Adventures of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 26, 1891 • Various
... ought to find the difference between saltness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... will place Richardson's works on the same shelf with those of Moses, Homer, Euripides, and other favourite writers; he even goes so far as to excuse Clarissa's belief in Christianity on the ground of her youthful innocence. To continue in the paradoxical vein, we might ask how the quiet tradesman could create the character which has stood ever since for a type of the fine gentleman of the period; or how from the most prosaic of centuries should spring one ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... for my children to be brought to them. On seeing these, they prostrated themselves. The little Comte de Vein, profiting by their attitude, began to ride pick-a-back on one of them, who did not seem offended at this, but carried the child about for a ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... are, I should like to kill your husband. Are you? Tell me. Put me out of suspense. Let me go home and open a vein.' ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... of two months samples of blood may be collected from the posterior auricular vein and the serum tested for ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... Your kind thought you impart, When your love runs in blushes through every vein; When it darts from your eyes, when it pants in your heart, Then I know you're a ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... of network of capillaries between a very small artery and a very small vein. Shading indicates the change of color of the blood as it passes through the capillaries. S. Places between capillaries occupied ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... before marriage, "the Bridegroom is running up and down like a dog." But, on the other hand, the spirit manifests itself sometimes in exuberance, as when Urquhart and Motteux metagrobolized Rabelais into something almost more tumescent and overwhelming than the original. In that vein of humour the present work frequently runs. The author is as ready to pile up his epithets as Urquhart himself. Let the Nurse go, he says, "for then you'll have an Eater, a Stroy-good, a Stufgut, a Spoil-all, and Prittle-pratler, less than you ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... tell of the older artist—not so vigorous, a vein of tenderness beginning to show instead of his youthful blazing optimism. Claude Monet must have had a happy life—he is still a robust man painting daily in the fields, leading the glorious life of a landscapist, one of the few romantic professions in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... enduring in their fluctuations and recurrences like the sea, beating with the same force upon the hearts of every new generation. Carroll, as he sat there idly smoking, fell to thinking abstractedly in that vein. He had a conception of a possible ocean of elemental emotion, of joy and passion, of crime and agony and greed, ever swelling and ebbing upon the shores of humanity. He had a mind of psychological cast, although it had been turned of a necessity into ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... treachery at this spot. Here behind the Ko[u]raiji near Oiso is a very shabby and tiny shrine nestled at the foot of the cliff. This had better be avoided. It is dedicated to the smallpox god. But more than history is neglected in the indifference and contempt shown these minor miya. A vein of thought inwoven into the minds of this strange people is instanced by this modest shrine of the Tamiya Inari. Wandering along the amusement quarter of some great city, a theatre is seen with a torii gorgeous in its red paint standing before the entrance. Within ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... that she had bought a piece of land and built a pretty house upon it; and then he added the strangely unpoetic reason—'because the value of the property will be doubled in ten years.' Her poetic neighbour gave her a characteristic piece of advice in the same prudential vein. He warned her that she would find visitors a great expense. 'When you have a visitor,' he said, 'you must do as we did; you must say: "If you like to have a cup of tea with us, you are very welcome; but if you want any meat, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... a rich vein of ore, a falling stream which supplies power, may give the possessor advantages [176] equivalent to the possession of capital; but to class such things as capital would be to put an end to the distinction between land ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... outstretch'd from small but well-earned store Yield succour to the destitute no more. Yet art thou not all lost: through many an age, With sterling sense and humour, shall thy page Win many an English bosom, pleased to see That old and happier vein revived in thee. This for our earth; and if with friends we share Our joys in heaven, we hope to ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... being admired and then overhears strangers making fun of it. For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was telling about the time that Samson tied the torches to the foxes' tails and set them loose in the Philistines' corn, and Samson sitting ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Kossuth Rode Up Broadway"; the triumphant tour "When General Grant Went Round the World"; the forgotten story of "When an Actress Was the Lady of the White House"; the sensational striking of the rich silver vein "When Mackay Struck the Great Bonanza"; the hitherto little-known instance "When Louis Philippe Taught School in Philadelphia"; and even the lesser-known fact of the residence of the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte in America, ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... to a power which sacrifices, as it has always sacrificed, the interest of its dependencies to its own. The blood runs freely through every vein and artery of the American body corporate. Every single citizen feels his share in the life of his nation. Great Britain leaves her Colonies to take care of themselves, refuses what they ask, and forces on them what they ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... high explosive stuff Across the intervening seas of space Bang into Luna's unoffending face. Meanwhile our own alert star-gazing chief, DYSON (Sir FRANK), is rather moved to grief Than anger by the astronomic pranks Played by unbalanced professorial cranks, Who study science in the wild-cat vein And "ruin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... lashes,— That can't bear gashes Thro' any horse's side, must ache to spy That horrid window fronting Fetter-lane,— For there's a nag the crows have pick'd for victual, Or some man painted in a bloody vein— Gods! is there no Horse-spital! That such raw shows must sicken the humane! Sure Mr. Whittle Loves thee but little, To let that poor horse linger in ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... capped his sentiment frankly. Now isn't it a comfort to your old bones to have written such a book, and a comfort to see that fellows are in a humour to take it in? So far from finding men of our rank in a bad vein, or sighing over the times and prospects of the rising generation, I can't help thinking they are very teachable, humble, honest fellows, who want to know what's right, and if they don't go and do it, still think the worst of themselves therefor. I remark ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... I was an exile then. This stirring Burgos has revived my vein. Yea, as I glanced from off the Citadel This very morn, and at my feet outspread Its amphitheatre of solemn towers And groves of golden pinnacles, and marked Turrets of friends and foes; or traced the range, Spread since ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... solicitor, the dentist, the barrister, the soldier. Nothing but nature can give the aptitude; diligence must improve it, and experience may direct it. It is not enough to wait for the spark from heaven to fall; the spark must be caught, and tended, and cherished. A man must labour till he finds his vein, and himself. Again, if literature is an art, it is also a profession. A man's very first duty is to support himself and those, if any, who are dependent on him. If he cannot do it by epics, tragedies, lyrics, he must do it by articles, ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... sufficient momentum was gained the ship rode upon the thicker floes, rising up upon it and pressing it down beneath her, until suddenly, perhaps when its nearest edge was almost amidships, the weight became too great and the ice split beneath us. At other times a tiny crack, no larger than a vein, would run shivering from our bows, which widened and widened until the whole ship passed through without difficulty. Always when below one heard the grumbling of the ice as it passed along the side. But it was slow work, and hard on the engines. There were days ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... reputation; a sort of strolling bards or rhapsodists, who went about the courts of princes and noblemen, entertaining them at festivals with music and poetry. They attempted both the epic, ode, and satire; and abounded in a wild and fantastic vein of fable, partly allegorical, and partly founded on traditionary legends of the Saracen wars. These were the rudiments of Italian poetry. But their taste and composition must have been extremely barbarous, as we may judge by those who followed the turn of their fable in much politer times; ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... and the romance. But these were large and important matters. Moreover, to all that he wrote in connection with the Middle Ages there attaches a special interest; for with that work he made his real start in literature; and it reflected the peculiarly delightful vein in his own nature which was constant from youth to age, and which gave to his poems and novels some of ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... old Egoism built the House. It would appear that ever finer essences of it are demanded to sustain the structure; but especially would it appear that a reversion to the gross original, beneath a mask and in a vein of fineness, is an earthquake at the foundations of the House. Better that it should not have consented to motion, and have held stubbornly to all ancestral ways, than have bred that anachronic spectre. The sight, however, is one to make our squatting imps in circle grow restless ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I wanted to see you about, Jack, is this:" here he settled his fat back into the chair. "All the ore in that section of the county,—so our experts say, dips to the east. They've located the vein and they think a horizontal shaft and gravity will get the stuff to tide water much cheaper than a vertical shaft and hoist. Now if the ore should peter out—and the devil himself can't tell always about that—we've ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fondness for the Arab, Sidi Hamet, who was kind to Captain Riley and kept his brother Seid from ill-treating him whenever he could. Probably the boy liked him better because the Arab was more picturesque than the Englishman. The whole narrative was very interesting; it had a vein of sincere and earnest piety in it which was not its least charm, and it was written in a style of old-fashioned stateliness which was not without its effect ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... this time striking him in the face, and passing out, just missing the jugular vein. Falling, he lay unconscious with his face in his cap, into which poured the blood from his wound until it threatened to smother him. It might have done so but for still another ball, which pierced the cap and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... detective, and flicked his cigarette over the veranda rail. "Reminded him that Rome wasn't built in a day and that murderers aren't always caught in a night, that the darkest hour is just before the dawn, and dropped a few other comforting thoughts in similar vein. I also mentioned that one never knew in a case of this kind ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... faithful to their king. It is very possible we might claim the title of a Scotch Peer." Mrs. Hilson had read too many English novels, not to have a supply of such phrases at command. "If you could only find the right vein, I would insist upon your taking away ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... course, when he was roused. As occasion for being roused was not wanting in the South Seas in those days, Jo's amiability was frequently put to the test. He sojourned, while there, in a condition of alternate calm and storm; but riotous joviality ran, like a rich vein, through all his chequered life, and lit up its most sombre phases like gleams of light on an ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... you, but when you step on this peaty edge you go down into the liquid mud beneath. Here you have reproduced in fragile miniature the same result as happened at the Giant's Causeway on the sea margin at the northeast corner of Ireland. There a long vein of once liquid basalt, freezing suddenly ages ago, left a great ridge of close-packed, vertical rock crystals running out an unknown distance ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... In a more serious vein he wrote in a previous letter: "I wonder you do not go to see the Queen. I was as disloyal as others when in England, for though I might have seen her in London, I never went. Do you ever pray for her?" This letter is dated 5th February, 1850, and must have ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... writing there are passages of a large historical understanding. Of all modern writers he is foremost Latin, in knowledge, in instinct for beauty and form, in love of tradition. Even in his erotic and mystical passages this vein of purest gold may be seen, this understanding of the potential greatness of the tradition into which he was born. What wonder, then, that the first fundamental passion of the mature man's soul should ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... were as magnificent as his virtues, and infinitely more picturesque. Large as was his income, and it was the third largest of all professional men in London, it was far beneath the luxury of his living. Deep in his complex nature lay a rich vein of sensualism, at the sport of which he placed all the prizes of his life. The eye, the ear, the touch, the palate—all were his masters. The bouquet of old vintages, the scent of rare exotics, the curves and tints of the daintiest potteries ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... powerless weight pressed upon it. And that is the word that is used here. 'We lean on Thee' as the wounded Saul leaned upon his spear. Is that a picture of your faith, my friend? Do you lean upon God like that, laying your hand upon Him till every vein on your hand stands out with the force and tension of the grasp? Or do you lean lightly, as a man that does not feel much the need of a support? Lean hard if you wish God to come quickly. 'We rest on Thee; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of speech, and when he saw that I was ill-pleased and grieved, instead of falling in with his merry mood, he took up a more earnest vein and said: "Never mind, Margery. Only one tall tree of love grows in my breast, and the name of it is Ann; the little flowers that may have come up round it when I was far away have but a short and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... also two others afterward, in the jubilate vein; but I spare my reader, albeit they are curiously prophetic of the wide ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... nobler qualifications than the capacity of pleasing Princes. He was able to excite and to retain the love and admiration of his equals. This was due to the warmth of his attachments, the unselfishness of his devotion to his friends, and to a vein of gaiety and good-humour which pervaded ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Midsummer Eve. Thus in Bohemia it is said that "on St. John's Day fern-seed blooms with golden blossoms that gleam like fire." Now it is a property of this mythical fern-seed that whoever has it, or will ascend a mountain holding it in his hand on Midsummer Eve, will discover a vein of gold or will see the treasures of the earth shining with a bluish flame. In Russia they say that if you succeed in catching the wondrous bloom of the fern at midnight on Midsummer Eve, you have only to throw it up into the air, and it will fall ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... seemed possessed of devils. A rippling hot gash of blood fired his every vein and ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... by one of the masters of the craft. A letter written in this vein annihilates distance; it continues the personal gossip, the intimate communion, that has been interrupted by separation; it preserves one's presence in absence. It cannot be too simple, too commonplace, too colloquial. Its familiarity is not its weakness, but its supreme virtue. If it attempts ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... vein of superstition: he knew no lips so pure as this girl's, and he wanted them to wish him good-luck that night. She did it, looking up laughing and growing red: riddles of life did not trouble her childish fancy long. And so he left ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and Belle Isoult drink the love potion] Now immediately Sir Tristram had drunk that elixir he felt it run like fire through every vein in his body. Thereupon he cried out, "Lady, what is this you have given me to drink?" She said: "Tristram, that was a powerful love potion intended for King Mark and me. But now thou and I have drunk of it and never henceforth can ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... understood each other. They asked for nothing, nor did they show any covetousness, although surrounded by articles, the smallest of which might have been of use to them. There must be an original vein of mind in these aboriginal men of the land. O that philosophy or philanthropy could but find it out and work it! Yuranigh plied them with all my questions, but to little purpose; for although he could understand ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... He, like a fop and an ass, must be making himself a public laughingstock, and have no thank for his labour; where other Magisterii, whose invention is far more exquisite, are content to sit still and do nothing. I'll show you what a scurvy Prologue he had made me, in an old vein of similitudes: if you be good fellows, give it the hearing, that you may ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... athwartships; dipping, rising, skipping, swaying, bridling, like a mocking-bird on a garden wall. It made Ned and Watson themselves worth seeing. Professional dignity set their faces like granite though every vein seethed with a riot of laughter. But the laughter's ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... writer was greater than ever. The publication in the Revista Europea (1874) of a short story, El Sombrero de tres picos, a most ingenious resetting of an old popular tale, made him almost as well known out of Spain as in it. This remarkable triumph in the picturesque vein encouraged him to produce other works of the same kind; yet though his Cuentos amatorios (1881), his Historietas nacionales (1881) and his Narracionies inverosimiles (1882) are pleasing, they have not the delightful ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I felt myself to be, I still had my reward. People who had read the book wrote to me in enthusiastic terms, and they were not all Americans who did so. I speedily became aware that I had, almost by accident, tapped a vein of pure and rich sentiment. Best of all was the fact that my kind friend, Lord Houghton, forwarded to me a letter he had received from Mr. Swinburne which contained the following passage: "Has anyone told you I am just about to publish a 'Study' ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... mad wooing, she laughs in a "wild transport of passion," calls him a "high-minded boy," likewise "a blossoming hero," also "a babe of prowess;" all which epithets, styles and titles, are in quite the vein of Falstaff addressing Prince Hal. Then, in return, Siegfried can hit on no better compliment than to style her "a Sun" and "a Star." Having thus exhausted their joint-stock of complimentary endearments, they throw themselves into each other's arms. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... anything under heaven; since a remarkable appointment for raising the general tenor of moral existence, has with these persons the effect of sinking it. There is interposed, at frequent regular intervals throughout the series of their days, a richer vein, as it were, of time. The improvement of this, in a manner by no means strained to the austerity of exercise prescribed in the Puritan rules, might diffuse a worth and a grace over all the time between, and assist ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... some skilful doctors. I knew an old Egyptian doctor in Duma named Haj Ibrahim, who was a conceited fellow. He used to bleed for every kind of disease. An old man eighty years of age was dying of consumption, and the Haj opened a vein and let him bleed to death. When the man died, he said if he had only taken a little more blood, the old man would have recovered. I was surprised by his coming to me one day and asking for some American newspapers. I supposed he wished them to wrap medicines ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like the parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy. Her physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of her spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful and charming vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently admire the elasticity of his companion's nature. "Let me forget," she had said, "for one half-hour, let me forget"; and sure enough, with the very word, her sorrows ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mighty blast upon his horn,—so mighty that a vein in his temple burst with the effort, and the bright blood flowed from his lips. But the powerful strain, echoing and re-echoing along the hollow pass of Roncesvalles, came faintly to the ear of Karl, and told its tale ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... extravagant purpose. He was really a scientific man, and already in the time of Cromwell (about 1657), had projected that Royal Society of London, which was afterward realized and presided over by Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. He was also a learned man, but still with a vein of romance about him, as may be seen in his most elaborate work—"The Essay toward a Philosophic or ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Paradise Lost had exercised such splendid rule, and setting free the saints and prophets and kings of the Old Testament. But it is possible, as Sir Walter Raleigh has suggested, that Milton was no longer in the vein for grandiose themes of external majesty and might such as this story would have afforded. "His interest was now centred rather in the sayings of the wise than in the deeds of the mighty." That {199} may be so: though his Samson which was ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... of this humorous vein, so dear to his people, with its trenchant sketches from the life and somewhat rough jests, is wonderful, when his courtly breeding and long separation even from such knowledge of rustic existence as a ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... hand with a grasp that left every vein bloodless. "As I hold fast to you, Bigot, and hold you to your engagements, thank God that you are not a woman! If you were, I think I should kill you. But as you are a man, I forgive, and take your promise of amendment. It is what foolish ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was, in his person, a fair[1], slender, genteel man, but spoiled his countenance with drinking, and other habits of intemperance. In his deportment he was very affable and courteous, of a generous disposition, which, with his free, lively, and natural vein of writing, acquired him the general character of gentle George, and easy Etherege, in respect of which qualities, we often find him compared to Sir Charles Sedley. His courtly and easy behaviour so recommended him to the Duchess of York, that when on the accession of King ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... too long, and it is often a serious consideration with the designer how to break up the surfaces to be covered so that only shortish stitches need be used. You might follow the veining of a leaf, for example, and work from vein to vein. But all leaves are not naturally veined in the most accommodating manner. Treatment is accordingly necessary, and so we arrive at a convention appropriate to embroidery of this kind. It takes a draughtsman properly to express ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... recovered and again the baptism was deferred. In Milan he was attracted by St. Ambrose's eloquent discourses on the Christian religion; and their simple and earnest character, their strong and convincing argument, their fervid and impassioned vein appealed to the young man's mind. His heart was touched by the manifest holiness of the good bishop's life and conduct, especially when he contrasted them with those of the Manicheans with whom he had so long been associated. The study of Platonic philosophy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... these gave him some recognition in Anglo-Indian society. He and his wife occasionally enjoyed English hospitality at tea, dinner, sports and other entertainments. Such good luck intoxicated him, and began to produce a tingling sensation in every vein of ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... name to hide and a memory to weep! And her future held forth but the felon's lot,— To live forsaken, to die forgot! She could not weep, and she could not pray, But she wasted and withered from day to day, Till you might have counted each sunken vein, When her wrist was prest by the iron chain; And sometimes I thought her large dark eye Had the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... justification; there is a great deal of the cross in that: a man is forced to suffer the destruction of his own righteousness for the righteousness of another. This is no easy matter for a man to do; I assure to you it stretcheth every vein in his heart before he will be brought to yield to it. What, for a man to deny, reject, abhor, and throw away all his prayers, tears, alms, keeping of sabbaths, hearing, reading, with the rest, in the point of justification, and to count ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... delicate in her person as a white cat, as everlastingly busy as a bee; and all the most needful faculties of time, weight, measure, and proportion out to be fully developed in her skull, if there is any truth in phrenology. Besides all this, she has a sort of hard-grained little vein of common sense, against which my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as she grows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... on the platform, listening intently. A stiff breeze from the Sound flung the voices clearly to my hiding-place, and I became aware that Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth were holding a colloquy in what seemed to be the vein of their whimsical make-believe. That they should be doing this in the depth of the woodland merely for their own amusement did not surprise me—nothing they could have done would have astonished me—but the tone ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... reminder. But if, giving to the inevitable the sigh that is its due, you pursue the vein of thought, it may further occur to you that the plot before you is in a sense a summary of the aspirations of humanity. It marks the realization of human hopes, it is the crown of human ambitions, the grave of human failures. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... is well for thee that thou art not a young beagle instead of a grey-headed bookman, or that rambling vein of thine would often bring thee under the lash of the whipper-in! Off thou art and away in pursuit of the smallest game ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... advice which he was particularly anxious to insist on. Often it was made the vehicle for special appeal to the sympathetic consideration of the spectators for the play and its merits. These 'parabases,' so characteristic of the Aristophanic comedy, are conceived in the brightest and wittiest vein, and abound in topical allusions and personal hits that must have constituted them perhaps the most telling part of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... faith that in the competition of opinions, the truest will win because there is a peculiar strength in the truth. This is probably sound if you allow the competition to extend over a sufficiently long time. When men argue in this vein they have in mind the verdict of history, and they think specifically of heretics persecuted when they lived, canonized after they were dead. Milton's question rests also on a belief that the capacity to recognize truth is inherent ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... According to tradition, one learns that cats were occasionally made use of in medicine; to cure peasants of skin diseases, French sorcerers sprinkling the afflicted parts with three drops of blood drawn from the vein under a cat's tail; whilst blindness was treated by blowing into the patient's eyes, three times a day, the dust made from ashes of the head of a black cat ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Squire, taking up his friend's vein of humour, "if the young lady be as insensible to the flames of Cupid as she is to those of Vulcan, she might still be highly useful in a national point of view, and well worthy the attention of the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... I was a babe in arms, I have been but once in that land; and then only during two changes of the moon or so. Nevertheless, I will not deny that there is indeed a vein of the Norse blood in me, and for that reason I should be well enough pleased to hear from you some news of what has been happening in Norway these few ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... dooce,' she said, the moment she had shaken hands with them, with her cold hands, so clean and soft and smooth. With a volcanic heart of love, her outside was always so still and cold!—snow on the mountain sides, hot vein-coursing lava within. For her highest duty was submission to the will of God. Ah! if she had only known the God who claimed her submission! But there is time enough for ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to you again, in the strength of that Constitution under which we live, and which no where countenances slavery, you shall not bring that foul thing here. You shall not force the corrupted and corrupting blood of that system into every vein and artery of our body politic. You shall not have the controlling power in all the departments of our government at home and abroad. You shall not so negotiate with foreign powers, as to open markets for the products of slave labor alone. You shall not ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... journalism, and American speech are so coloured by pleasantries, so accentuated by ridicule, that the silent and stodgy men, who are apt to represent a nation's real strength, hardly know where to turn for a little saving dulness. A deep vein of irony runs through every grade of society, making it possible for us to laugh at our own bitter discomfiture, and to scoff with startling distinctness at the evils which we passively permit. Just as the French monarchy under Louis the Fourteenth was wittily defined as despotism tempered ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... studio. By no means a perspicuous man, and to be approached perhaps charily; yet Rainham, as his acquaintance progressed, found himself from time to time brought up with a certain surprise, as he discovered, under all his savage cynicism, his overweening devotion to a depressing theory, a very real vein of refinement, of delicate mundane sensibility, revealed perhaps in a chance phrase or diffidence, or more often in some curiously fine touch to canvas of his rare, audacious brush. The incongruities of the man, his malice, his coarseness, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... scandals happenings with less reason were going on unrebuked. The pages of "Dapitan", which some have considered to be the first chapter of an unfinished novel, may reasonably be considered no more than Rizal's rejoinder to Father Obach, written in sarcastic vein and primarily for Carnicero's amusement, unless some date of writing earlier than this should ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... His manner of dealing with the ball was that of one playing croquet. He patted it gingerly back to the bowler when it was straight, and left it icily alone when it was off the wicket. Mike, still in the brilliant vein, clumped a half-volley past point to the boundary, and with highly scientific late cuts and glides brought his score to ninety-eight. With Mike's score at this, the total at a hundred and thirty, and the hands of the clock at five minutes to six, the yellow-haired croquet ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... sway to the despotism of science, had sent for a surgeon, and they were going to bleed me against my will. I was half-dead; I do not know by what strange inspiration I opened my eyes, and I saw a man, standing lancet in hand and preparing to open the vein. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... contrary to the general vein of his countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantick absurdity, or incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of probability, has a right to demand ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Crimson Sigh; Leave the gay Epithets that Beauty crown, White [2] Whitylinda, and Brownissa Brown; Forget awhile (i) Belinda and the Sun; Forget the Fights of Stand, and Flights of Run: No more let Ombre's Play inspire thy Vein, Nor strow with Captive Kings the [3] Velvet Plain; Omit awhile the Silver Peal to ring, } Nor talk dulcissant, nor mellifluous sing, } Nor hang suspended, nor adherent cling. } But haste to mount Immortal Envy's ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... her, for the doctor had laid it down that light conversation would assist the cure of traumatic neurasthenia. She would not be asleep, and even if she were asleep she would be glad to awaken, because she admired his style of gossip when both of them were in the vein for it. He would describe for her the evening at the studio humorously, in such a fashion as to confirm her in her righteous belief that the misguided Sissie had seen the maternal wisdom ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... strains that ever fell from him—the lines on The Mountain Daisy, The Lament, the Odes to Despondency and to Ruin. And yet so various were his moods, so versatile his powers, that it was during that same interval that he composed, in a very different vein, The Twa Dogs, and probably also his satire of The Holy Fair. The following is the account the poet gives of these transactions in the autobiographical sketch of himself which he ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... a man placed a ring on the finger of the lady whom he betrothed. In olden times the delivery of a signet-ring was a sign of confidence. The ring is a symbol of eternity and constancy. That it was placed on the woman's left hand denotes her subjection, and on the ring finger because it pressed a vein which communicates directly with the heart. So universal is the custom of wearing the wedding ring among Jews and Christians that no married woman is ever seen without her plain gold circlet, and she regards the loss of it as a sinister omen; and many women never remove it. This is, however, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... forward the skilled physician and said to her, 'We have done with theology and come now to physiology. Tell me, therefore, how is man made, how many veins, bones and vertebrae are there in his body, which is the chief vein and why Adam was named Adam?' 'Adam was called Adam,' answered she, 'because of the udmeh, to wit, the tawny colour of his complexion and also (it is said) because he was created of the adim of the earth, that is to say, of the soil ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... a mother to be parted from her infant: it is like tearing the cords of life asunder. Oh could you see the horrid sight which I now behold—there there stands my dear mother, her poor bosom bleeding at every vein, her gentle, affectionate heart torn in a thousand pieces, and all for the loss of a ruined, ungrateful child. Save me save me—from her frown. I dare not—indeed I ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... coincidence with another of the sacraments of the Church.34 The good fathers were fond of tracing such coincidences, which they considered as the contrivance of Satan, who thus endeavored to delude his victims by counterfeiting the blessed rites of Christianity.35 Others, in a different vein, imagined that they saw in such analogies the evidence, that some of the primitive teachers of the Gospel, perhaps an apostle himself, had paid a visit to these distant regions, and scattered over them the seeds of religious truth.36 But it seems hardly ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... had gone to fetch boiling water and provisions, were away; most of the political prisoners were gathered together in the small room. There was Nekhludoff's old acquaintance, Vera Doukhova, with her large, frightened eyes, and the swollen vein on her forehead, in a grey jacket with short hair, and thinner and yellower than ever.. She had a newspaper spread out in front of her, and sat rolling cigarettes with a jerky movement of ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... have fallen upon this personal, biographical vein, and as the best key to a man's poetry is to know the man and what he may have encountered, we may cite the poem entitled "The Pearl." It is compact of life and experience: we see the courtier and the scholar ripening into the saint; the world not forgotten or ignored, but its best pursuits ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... vein, and no doubt comes naturally to rustic aphorists. A man may plow in the spring, too; and if Zeus should happen to send rain on the third day, after the cuckoo's first call, "As much as hides an ox-hoof, and no more," he may ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... enthusiasm of its heroes was raised to the highest pitch, and attended with no secret misgivings. We are also to consider that, in all operations of a magical nature, there is a wonderful mixture of frankness and bonhommie with a strong vein of cunning and craft. Man in every age is full of incongruous and incompatible principles; and, when we shall cease to be inconsistent, we shall cease ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... is, that in the life of every one, there exists a vein of romance which justifies the adage that "Truth ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... vein that he ever wrote and spoke: The Netherlands were to rely upon their own exertions, and to procure the best alliance, together with the most efficient protection possible. They were not strong enough to cope singlehanded with their powerful tyrant, but they were strong ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a parallel in wild unearthliness and terror; and we know not if sentiments more spiritual or sublime are to be found in any poetry than in some passages of "The Pilgrims of the Sun." His ballads, generally in his peculiar vein of the romantic and supernatural, are all indicative of power; his songs are exquisitely sweet and musical, and replete with pathos and pastoral dignity. Though he had written only "When the kye comes hame," and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... facetiousness was not very amusing. It consisted in the wearisome repetition of descriptive phrases applied to people with a burst of laughter. "Desperate butterfly-slayer. Ha, ha, ha!" was one sample of his peculiar wit which he himself enjoyed so much. And in the same vein of exquisite humour he called my attention to the engineer of the steam-launch, one day, as we strolled on the path by the side of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... slate rock, or into pools of water that oozed through from above. An old miner whose way lay past the fork in the tunnel where our lead began showed us how to use our picks and the timbers to brace the slate that roofed over the vein, and left us to ourselves in a chamber perhaps ten feet wide and the height ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Each vein to every joint the lively blood shall spread Which now for want of thy glad sight doth show full pale and dead. But if thou slip thy troth, and do not come at all, As minutes in the clock do strike so call for death I shall: To please both thy false heart and rid myself from woe, That ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy |
