"Centred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... labourers who worked on the railroad; the people going to the station; and the girls out calling in the afternoons in their pretty white gowns. There was no Jerome Park for stylish driving. Indeed, it was a plain little country village, and most of the life centred about the corner grocery and the blacksmith shop, where men talked politics and the discovery of California, and discussed the merits of the ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... pointed arches constructed from almost every radius are to be found, the complex four-centred arch, commonly called the Tudor arch, was almost peculiar to it; and the cavetto or wide and rather shallow hollow moulding, a characteristic feature of this style, often appears in the architrave ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... character was stamped on her face as well as on her hand. If, however, I had said to her, "Yours is a flaccid repressed disposition you have a lack of imagination and a total absence of humour; your life is too narrow and self-centred to be of the least interest to anyone," she might not have liked it. You see, with even a slight knowledge of palmistry you soon find out when reading hands that it's no use telling people the truth. They want a version which I can only describe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... of the assembly were very interesting in that wonderful year when everything was being discussed. All public interest of course was centred in Versailles, where the National Assembly was trying to establish some sort of stable government. There were endless discussions and speeches and very violent language in the Chambers. Gambetta made some bitter attacks on the Royalists, accusing them of mauvaise foi and want ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... America were in large measure self-governing. This is notably true in their local affairs. The Spanish colonists were governed almost absolutely by the mother-country. A United States official publication reports that "all government control centred in the Council of the Indies and the King, and local self government, which was developed at an early stage in the English colonies, became practically impossible in the Spanish colonies, no matter to what ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... order to enter by it. For everything in our old self-confident, self-centred nature is up in arms against the conditions of entrance. We are not saved by effort, but we shall not believe without effort. The main struggle of our whole lives should be to cultivate self-humbling trust ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tour occasionally read aloud some affecting history of the Old or New Testament. Her auditors reasoned but little upon these sacred volumes, for their theology centred in a feeling of devotion towards the Supreme Being, like that of nature: and their morality was an active principle, like that of the Gospel. These families had no particular days devoted to pleasure, and others ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... which hung several pails, kettles, and pots. An injured-looking, chubby man in a battered brown derby hat moved here and there. He divided his time between the utensils and an indifferent youth—his "cookee." The other, and larger, fire centred a rectangle composed of tall racks, built of saplings and intended for the drying of clothes. Two large tents gleamed white among ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... long as any one port upon their lines remained unblockaded. For reasons such as these, in this belt of land, from Havana to Sagua and Cienfuegos, lay the chief strength of the Spanish tenure, which centred upon Havana; and in it the greatest part of the Spanish army was massed. Until, therefore, we were ready to invade, which should not have been before the close of the rainy season, the one obvious course open to us was to isolate the capital and the army from the sea, through ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... is unutterable, and yet the people hope for speedy deliverance. The eyes of all are turning with tears, it is true, but with love and hope, to Memel, the heart of the Prussian monarchy. All the hopes of your subjects are centred in the king and the queen; to you they ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... not untruthful. Where his affections are centred he is always generous; where they should be centred he is merely thoughtless, not ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... at the fence, her elbows on the top rail, gazing pensively at the light in Kenny's window. A clump of honeysuckle bushes was between her and the unsuspecting servants. At first she had paid little or no attention to the gabble of the darkies, her thoughts being centred on her own serious affairs. She had been considerably shaken and distressed by the unpleasant experience of the early afternoon. Somehow she longed to take her troubles to Kenneth, to rid herself of them in the comfort of his approbation, to be reassured by his brotherly counsel. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... confess I played a very poor part. Kaye never noticed anything, and had no curiosity, and Raven had no suspicion of anything unusual. I slept ill that night, and found myself in a very much depressed mood on the following morning. I realised at every moment how entirely everything at Aveley was centred upon Father Payne, and how he was both in the foreground as well as in the background of all that we did or thought. Our journey passed almost in silence, and we drove straight to the nursing home in Mayfair. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... morrow. All was not well. He had a dream which drew all the apprehensions and suspicions of the day into one head. The hidden things were made plain, and the crooked things straight; for the first time, it seemed, he was to see openly—when his eyes were shut. He had, in spite of himself, centred them one by one in Isoult, and now he dreamed of her as she was, and of them as they were. This was his dream. He and she were together, lying under the stars in the open wood with his drawn sword between them, set edgeways as it had ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... into my boy mind. I saw that suffering was real and pressing, and so many suffered resignedly; and that imagery and my companionship with a God (I was highly "religious" then) worked in a self-centred circle. I never strayed from the deadly taint of some gentle form of egotism. I was then truly in a "vault." I did things for a system of ethics, not because of a fine rush of social brotherly intuition. My imagination ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... have said above, there is no reason why this principle should not be recognised as expanding from the individual until it embraces the entire universe. Each man, as the centre of his own world, is himself centred in a higher system in which he is only one of innumerable similar atoms, and this system again in a higher until we reach the supreme centre of all things; intelligence and power increase from centre to centre in a ratio rising with inconceivable ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... died out in his ears; in hers it grew, increasing, louder, louder. A dim scene rose unbidden before her eyes—the high gloom of a cathedral, the great organ's first unsteady throbbing—her wedding-march! No, not that; for while she stood, coldly transfixed in centred self-absorption, she seemed to see a shapeless mass of wreaths piled in the twilight of an altar—the dreadful pomp and panoply and circumstance ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the Portico And live without desire, fear and pain, Or nurture that wise calm which long ago The grave Athenian master taught to men, Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted, To watch the world's vain phantasies go by with ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... he had chosen a sheltered area where the birch, poplar, and cherry, his favorite forage, were abundant, and there had trodden out a maze of deep paths which led to all the choicest browsing, and centred about a cluster of ancient firs so thick as to afford covert from the fiercest storms. The news was what the wise old woodsman had been waiting for. With three of his men, a pair of horses, a logging-sled, axes, and an unlimited supply of rope, he ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... for the practice of kindness and the development of brotherly love. For without brotherly love and kindly human interest, laws are but cast-iron rules, and life but a living death. What is life worth? What can life be worth if it be only self-centred? To love is to live! to feel and take an interest in others is to be happy indeed, and to feel the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... windy platform, with her hand to her hat, he felt more powerfully than he had ever felt it, his old love for her surging through him. Nothing could ever divert him from her for very long ... inevitably he would return to her ... whatever of permanence there was in his life was centred in her. He led her out of the station and they walked along the road at the top of the shingle ... and as they walked, suddenly he turned to her and, drawing her arm in his, told ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... dreams I wandered far across the ocean's breast, In search of some bright earthly star, some happy isle of rest; I little thought the bliss I sought in roaming far and wide Was sweetly centred all ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... the rare purple moments which had enlivened it in the past the calling of a cop had been the unfailing preliminary. The loafer nudged a fellow-loafer, sunning himself against the same wall. The children, abandoning the meat-tin round which their game had centred, drew closer. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... father's idol—her father's bane. All the love he had to bestow was centred in her. She returned it not. She fled from his caresses. With all her mother's beauty, she had all her father's pride. Sir Reginald's every thought was for his daughter—for her aggrandizement. In vain. She seemed only to endure him, and while his affection waxed stronger, and entwined itself round ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... by Nashe and Greene as those who chose, purchased, and reconstructed the plays used by Strange's company, included others beside Shakespeare in their satirical intention, this phase of their attacks upon the Theatre and its leading figures became centred upon Shakespeare as his importance in the conduct of its business increased, and his ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... life, to bind together the several families composing the community. But without pretending to come to a final decision on this the main tendency of social development, surely something may yet be said in favour of the contrary theory; that the reverence that centred in the hearth was in effect the expression of the sanctity of the tie of blood, as felt by all members of the house, and that this feeling drew its real importance for the community, not from the founding ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... of his life centred; and as a river is swollen by divers rills, and tributary streams, so all the thoughts and passions of his soul hurried with a pure and rapid tide to mingle and be lost in one. But illness, and the long looking at death, and above all, the Christian's hope, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... that when my great-grandfather began to write this book, his thoughts were centred on the objective which he describes in his own Preface—the diversion to Australia of some part of the stream of emigration then running from the British Isles to North America. Perhaps, even more urgently, he may have wanted ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... will fail, to do justice to that sublimely grand mountain scenery. Not quite three years ago, an iron old man, who perished with the heroism of a Spartan, or rather, to be just, the faith of a Christian; but little more than a year in advance of the dawn of the day of his hope, centred upon this spot the eyes of a continent. A crazy fanatic, was the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... to the distant land, her husband's home, and every hope was centred in the one intense desire to join him there. The means were wanting, she had none from whom she could solicit assistance, but her determination did not fail. She advertized for a situation as companion to an invalid, or nurse to young children, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... Mr. Herbert Samuel says, "for the local affairs of Irishmen," there are other and more powerful agencies that no measure of conciliation within the Empire can permanently win to that system of world exploitation centred ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... to them. The points in which the staging differed from our modern methods were in favour of greater realism. Daylight is more truthful than foot-lights are; and if there was any poverty in the setting, so much the more was attention centred upon the actors, who are declared, by the authors themselves, to have attained a high level of excellence. Fame has not yet forgotten the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... One was old; the other more than middle-aged. Both were in evening-dress,—both smoked idly, and apparently not so much for the pleasure of smoking as for lack of something better to do, and both seemed self-centred and absorbed in thought. They had been conversing for some time, but now silence had fallen between them, and neither seemed disposed to break the heavy spell. The distant roar of constant traffic in the busy thoroughfares ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... interest in the contest, and described to me the build and sailing qualities of the different yachts entered, and expressed his opinion as to which would win, and why. From this he passed to the city government and the recent election—like a true New Yorker, his chief interest centred in the city politics and not in the national elections. Without the least unbending from his dignity, he told me many anecdotes about city politicians, which would have been amusing if I had not been ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and the prosecutor, judge, jury, and audience were impressed with a feeling (as the lawyers for the defence had foreseen) that the guilt of the servant carried with it that of the masters. So the vital interest centred on all that concerned Michu. His bearing was noble. He showed in his answers the sagacity with which nature had endowed him; and the public, seeing him on his mettle, recognized his superiority. And yet, strange to say, the more they understood him the more certainty they ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... husband made money. I centred my energies upon getting school-time for my children; and because I had resolved that they should not grow ahead of me, I sat up at night, and studied their books. When the oldest boy was ready for high-school, we moved to a town, where my husband had bought a granary business. By that time ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... fish that might come along. I put on my shoes and stockings, and Rectus his; he'd had enough glory for one day. Old Menendez wound up his line, too, but that girl saw nothing of all this. She just kept her eyes and her whole mind centred on her line. At first, she talked right straight ahead, asking what she should do when it bit; how big we thought it would be; why we didn't have a cork, and fifty other things, but all without turning her head to the right or the left. ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... centred on Newmark and Kincaid, as those who had made straight scores on the singles now dropped one or more. Both the contestants named broke their nine pair straight. Bobby sent strong little waves of hope for a miss after each of Mr. Newmark's targets, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the old warrior felt a pang of genuine compassion. All his affection for the regiment—that body of men which he held in his hand to launch forward and draw back, who ministered to his pride and commanded all his thoughts—seemed centred for a moment on the person of the most promising subaltern. He cleared his throat in a threatening manner, and frowned terribly. "You must understand," he began, "that I don't care a rap for the life of a single man ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Penn at that moment would have supposed, however, that he was a man of indomitable energy and courage. Downcast and sad, he gazed on the shores of the land he was leaving, which, notwithstanding his general philanthropy, contained those he loved best on earth, where all his tender affections were centred. The Isle of Wight was soon passed. The Land's End faded in the distance, and the stout ship stood across the Atlantic. William Penn soon recovered his energy and spirits, and the captain promised a speedy and prosperous voyage. The governor was walking the deck, talking earnestly ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... hearing a contradiction or a series of saving clauses. She never spoke of it to any one. She had grown up with it, and as it was beyond doubt, so was it outside discussion. All her femininity seemed to be concentrated, all her vanity centred, on her hair. It was her one pride, perhaps her one hope. Women have been loved for their voices. Catrina's voice was musical enough, but it was deep and strong. It was passionate, tender if she wished, fascinating; but it was not lovable. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the war that was waged in the domain of theology proper, between opinions claiming to be sound and opinions claiming to be true, a contest no less fierce centred for long round the very organisation of the Church; and between the Establishment and Dissent that hostile condition of thrust and parry, which has since become chronic, and is so detrimental to the cause professed by both alike, is no less visible in the field ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the RISE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS—that is, the coming of the mind to a more or less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of the Self-centred attitude in human ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... matters) mere pious frauds; they may well have come into existence in the folk-consciousness automatically, before they received their present literary form. But such a development could hardly have centred in an unworthy subject; there must have been a well-established tradition of a Christ-likeness of character in the man, for such parallels in detail to ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... the household in a Connecticut village in the middle of the eighteenth century was very self-centred. Remote from towns,—for Hartford was only a village then,—the demands of farming life determined the round of days. Every one from childhood fell of necessity into his or her place as one of the workers, out doors and in, and ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... traders, small farmers, and poor men. The lower edge of this class touches the slave, and the upper edge reaches up to the third and ruling class. This class was a small minority in numbers, but in practical ability they had centred in their hands the whole government of the South, and had mainly governed the country. Upon this polished, cultured, exceedingly capable, and wholly unprincipled class, rests the whole burden of this war. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... repentance can be evoked in the soul. Of all terms in the vocabulary of religion, repentance is probably the one which is most frequently misused. It is habitually applied to experiences which are not even remotely akin to true penitence. The self-centred regret which a man feels when his sin has found him out—the wish, compounded of pride, shame, and anger at his own inconceivable folly, that he had not done it: these are spoken of as repentance. But they are not repentance at all. They have no relation to God. They constitute no ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... separate from Jerusalem, though standing on the same "mountain" as the great fortress. If so, we might identify Jerusalem with the city on Mount Zion, the Jebusite stronghold of a later date, while "the city of Beth-Nin-ip" would be that which centred ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... mud-caked uniforms and dented helmets, and through the front door flowed an endless stream of staff-officers, orderlies, messengers, and mud-spattered despatch riders. In this village mairie, a score of miles behind the firing-line, were centred the nerve and vascular systems of an army of half a million men; here was planned and directed the greatest battle of all time. On the upper floor, in a large, light, scantily furnished room, a man with a great silver star on the breast of his light-blue ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... his thoughts were drifting, Lennon wrenched his mental focus back to Elsie. What concern could the fate of Carmena be to him? She belonged with her drunken, criminal father in Dead Hole. All thought and effort must be centred on ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... got ready for his departure. But there was so much to be done that he felt that he could not finish it, however much time he might have. It was quite different now from what it had been. Formerly he used to be obliged to look for an occupation, the interest of which always centred in one person, i.e., Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, and yet, though every interest of his life was thus centred, all these occupations were very wearisome. Now all his occupations related to other people and not to Dmitri Ivanovitch, and they were all interesting and attractive, and there ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... or to Kamchatka, or to Ecuador, or anywhere, on unavoidable business. No, it is not because I loathe the sight of you or for any melodramatic reason of that sort. It is because, I think, I had fancied you to be not completely self-centred, after all, and I cannot bear to face my own idiocy. Why, don't you realize it was only yesterday you borrowed money from Jasper Hardress—some ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... example, certain disqualifications inherent in the profession of certain opinions. It is not illiberal to recognize such disqualifications. It is not illiberal for a Protestant in choosing a tutor for his son to reject a conscientious Roman Catholic who avows that all his teaching is centred on the doctrine of his Church. It would be illiberal to reject the same man for the specific purpose of teaching arithmetic, if he avowed that he had no intention of using his position for the purpose of religious propagandism. For the former purpose the divergence of religious opinion ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... seventy—persons had been invited, and the stately young stranger from Benjamin, with his servant (a trait of the simple manners of these days), is set in the place of honour, where wondering eyes fasten on him. Attention is still more emphatically centred on him when Samuel bids 'the cook' bring a part of the sacrifice which he had been ordered to set aside. It proves to be the 'shoulder' or 'thigh,' the priest's perquisite, and therefore probably Samuel's. To give this to another was equivalent to putting him in Samuel's place; and Samuel's words ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... centred down to business, though Guggenhammer had first to say his say about the forthcoming international yacht race and about his own palatial steam yacht, the Electra, whose recent engines were already antiquated. Dowsett broached the plan, aided by an occasional remark from the other ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... portico of a temple. The temple door is in the middle of the portico. A veiled and robed woman of majestic carriage passes along behind the columns towards the entrance. From the opposite direction a man of compact figure, clean-shaven, saturnine, and self-centred: in short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps; places his hand in his lapel in the traditional manner; and fixes the woman with his eye. She stops, her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... bereaved, with the result that the whole life has been palsied and struck into desolation by the loss. I am thinking now of two instances which I have known; one was a wife, who was childless, and whose whole nature, every motive and every faculty, became centred upon her husband, a man most worthy of love. He died suddenly, and his wife lost everything at one blow; not only her lover and comrade, but every occupation as well which might have helped to distract her, because her whole life had been entirely ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... change de role'. Alice is subdued; she laughs feebly, is becoming conscious—a fact to be regretted, if I desired to check the creature's growth. There is vast capacity in the girl. She has plainly not centred her affections upon Charles, so that a man's conscience might be at ease if—if he chose to disregard what is due to decency. But, why, when I contest it, do I bow to the world's opinion concerning disparity of years between husband and wife? I know innumerable cases of an old husband ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tears dropping down her face. Love, either of God or man, had been no important factor in her life. She had married for money, and such love as she could give had been centred on her one beautiful daughter; but even with her, her ambition was stronger than her love, and it received its deathblow with May's unaccountable choice of a husband. Further opposition she saw to be useless, so she surrendered with as good ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... at the north-eastern corner of the close is a fine specimen of architecture. In the spandrels above the great four-centred arch are two coats of arms, one with the keys and crosslets, the other with swords and crosses. These are now the arms of the See and the Cathedral respectively: but it is difficult to say what was their special ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... extravagances; while Robert, her only son, was growing up a shy, awkward lad, who hated society, and asked nothing better than to be left in the country alone with his frogs and his beetles. Ambition after ambition had failed her, until now all her hopes were centred in Rosalind, the beautiful daughter, in whom she saw a reproduction of herself in the days of her girlhood. She had had a dull and obscure youth; Rosalind should be the belle of society. Her own marriage had been a disappointment; Rosalind should make a brilliant alliance. She had failed to gain ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... been drawn at last into a dissertation. He said that hitherto all temples and places of worship had been conditioned by orientation due to the seasonal aspects of religion, they pointed to the west or—as in the case of the Egyptian temples—to some particular star, and by sacramentalism, which centred everything on a highly lit sacrificial altar. It was almost impossible to think of a church built upon other lines than that. The architect ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... that I said in last night's letter. I am as interested as ever and indeed, after this evening's dinner more interested. The odd thing about it all is that Peter is so completely oblivious to any change that may be going on in Clare. His whole mind is centred now on the baby, he cannot have enough of it and it was he, and not Clare, who took me up after dinner ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... an air of cheerfulness. Manoeel knew the errand which had brought Corporal St. George (and incidentally himself) to Djazerta at this eleventh hour, but Max and he had never spoken together of Colonel DeLisle's daughter Sanda except casually, as Ourieda's guest. Manoeel, his thoughts centred upon his own affairs, had no idea that Mademoiselle DeLisle was personally of importance in St. George's life. If he had seen that Max was anxious, he would have taken the anxiety for sympathy with him, or else the nervousness of a keen soldier ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... the Duke's arm. They were promenading through the rooms. The music, soft and low, continued, but the groups of dancers broke up, the loiterers in the gallery came in, and as the sun draws his fifty, perhaps his hundreds of planets, circling around and near him, this noble luminary centred in himself the attention of all. If they could not speak with him, they could at least speak of him. If they could not touch his hand, they could pass before him and give one glance at his eyes. The less aristocratic were even satisfied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... it took time; but a beginning was made in those halcyon, summer days, and the art of working by the hand gradually brought to some perfection. No little of this dog's gladness in life was centred eventually in this accomplishment, and he was never happier than when at practice. The education began by teaching him to lie down at the command—"Stop there," and then in leaving him behind for gradually lengthening ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... during half of Fidelis we are given occasional impressive and delightful glimpses of Nature under southern skies, the principal characters are English, and in England is centred first and last the dominant pathos of the story. A complete absence of dialect from the novels helps to emphasise the author's slender use of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... would flash, and her sensitive mouth would quiver as the vision of fame like a mystical rainbow circled the heaven of her youthful imagination—while Miss Leigh would sigh, and listen and wonder,—she, whose simple hope and faith had been centred in a love which had proved false and vain,—praying that the girl might realise her ambition without the wreckage ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... for the gray silhouette of the Ariani. A colourless canopy surrounded him, centred by a tiny pool of ocean. Overhead through the vanishing blue, hundreds of wild duck were stringing out to sea; under his tent of fog the tarnished silver of the water ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the radius of Apache wandering centred in the mountains of what is now southeastern Arizona; this was their stronghold, their lair, whence they raided to the south, well down into Sonora and Chihuahua, westward to the Colorado river, northward into the Hopi ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... jealousy. She had never from her birth until now felt love for any one. She had never been awakened. Even her affection for her father had been dutiful rather than instinctive. She had provoked love, but had never given it. She had been self-centred, compulsive, unrelenting. She had unmoved seen and let her husband go to his doom— it was his doom and death ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... calculation of the ratio of diminution flashed through my mind during that awful descent. My whole soul was centred upon one point. When would this support end? When ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... Jewel from Quintana's very fingers he had diverted that vindictive bandit's fury from Eve, from Clinch, from Stormont, and had centred it upon himself. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... loopholes and gateways. Some traces of the architecture of the period may still be discerned in the archway and machecoulis of the principal gateway adjoining the Round Tower; the basement chamber of the Devil Tower, or Edward the Third's Tower; and in the range of groined and four-centred vaulting, extending along the north side of the upper quadrangle, from the kitchen gateway to King ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... guineas. Thence they had come south at a sharp pace, and with little said. Wilding was moody and thoughtful, filled with chagrin at this unconscionable rashness of the man upon whom all his hopes were centred. As they cantered briskly across Uplyme Common in the twilight they passed several bodies of countrymen, all heading for the town, and one group sent up a shout of "God save the Protestant Duke!" as they ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... everything to make my life happy and peaceful—the best of wives, a well-ordered farm, and no thought or care as to my worldly affairs—and since it has been God's will that such should be my life, my interest will be wholly centred in you; and I hope to see your children playing round me or, for ought I know, your grandchildren, for ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... run about without a sign of unfriendliness. Their chief interest seems to be centred in two large black mounds that are visible in the foreground of the camp; what they are I am unable to make out — there is not light enough for that — but I am probably not far wrong in guessing that they are seals. They are rather hard eating, anyhow, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... herself would ordinarily have paused to bend her head and listen to an unaccustomed sound, but in her as well as in him the close-centred ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... immediately began to look at those of his own works that adorned them. He lost himself in silent contemplation. Mrs. Hudson had evidently armed herself with dignity, and, so far as she might, she meant to be impressive. Her success may be measured by the fact that Rowland's whole attention centred in the fear of seeing her begin to weep. She told him that she had come to him for practical advice; she begged to remind him that she was a stranger in the land. Where were they to go, please? what were they to do? Rowland glanced at Roderick, but Roderick had his ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... upon which the story was thus centred, and where it was written, had been a farm-house, bought and for a time occupied by Hawthorne previous to his departure for Europe. On coming back to it, he made some additions to the old wooden structure, and caused to be built a ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... towns, the moors of Cornwall, and the collieries of Bristol, at length London fashionable chapels. The scene of this new movement was as like as it could be in our modern world to a Greek polis, or an Italian self-centred city of the Middle Ages. Oxford stood by itself in its meadows by the rivers, having its relations with all England, but, like its sister at Cambridge, living a life of its own, unlike that of any other spot in England, with its privileged powers, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... three types of group composition; first, where the subject's interest is centred upon an object or idea within the picture as in "The Cabaret" or Rembrandt's "Doctors" surrounding a dissecting table; second, where the attraction lies outside the picture as in the "Syndics" or the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... per cent for the sixty thousand invested in the foundry, besides an equal division of profits. The Saillards were therefore enjoying an income of not less than seventeen thousand francs a year. The whole ambition of the good man now centred on obtaining the cross of the Legion ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... in range,—limited, one may say, by its regard for the importance of the facts with which it had to deal. The thought of the period was certainly not without controversy; it was indeed controversial almost to a fault. But the controversies of the time centred almost exclusively round two questions: the question of the origin of moral ideas, and the question of the criterion of moral value. These questions were of course traditional in the schools of philosophy; and for more than a century English moralists were mainly occupied with inherited topics ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... Kearney's fine temper and genial disposition would have broken down by daily dealing with this cross-grained, wrong-headed, and obstinate old fellow, whose ideas of management all centred in craft and subtlety—outwitting this man, forestalling that—doing everything by halves, so that no boon came unassociated with some contingency or other by which he secured to himself unlimited ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Elspie's mind, while she sat with little Olive at the window, where, a few years ago, she had stood rocking the new-born babe in her arms, and pondering drearily on its future. That future seemed still as dark in all outward circumstances—but there was one ray of hope, which centred in the little one herself. There was something in Olive which passed Elspie's comprehension. At times she looked almost with an uneasy awe on the gentle, silent child who rarely played, who wanted no amusing, but would sit for hours watching the sky from the window, or the grass and waving ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... fig-leaves to hide his transgressions before, but that being found too scanty and short, he now trieth what he can do with arguments. Indeed he acknowledgeth that he did eat of the tree of which he was forbidden; but mark where he layeth the reason: Not in any infection which was centred in him by reason of his listening to the discourse which was between the woman and the serpent; but because God had given him a woman to be with him: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree." The woman was given ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... patience, and needful to him are also Calmness and clearness of mind, and a pure and right understanding. Few are the seeds he intrusts to earth's all-nourishing bosom; Few are the creatures he knows how to raise and bring to perfection. Centred are all his thoughts alone on that which is useful. Happy to whom by nature a mind of such temper is given, For he supports us all! And hail, to the man whose abode is Where in a town the country pursuits ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... after generation must have loved the gentle dignified house, with its narrow casements, its high rooms. Though the name of the house, though the tale of its dwellers was unknown to me, I felt the appeal of the old associations that must have centred about it. The whole air, that quiet afternoon, seemed full of the calling of forgotten voices, and dead faces looked out from the closed lattices. So near to my heart came the spirit of the ancient house, that, as I mused, I felt as though ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in it. The green darkness was continually a-tremble with flame, through which broke greater illuminations of forked lightning. These became more violent as the rain lessened, and, so absolutely were we centred in this electrical maelstrom, there was no connecting any chain or flash or fork of lightning with any particular thunder-clap. The atmosphere all about us paled and flamed. Such a crashing and smashing! We looked every moment for the Elsinore to be ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... empire political power had centred in the district between the Humber and the Roman wall; York was the capital of Roman Britain; villas of rich land-owners studded the valley of the Ouse; and the bulk of the garrison maintained in the island lay camped ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... whole world. This process has formed a very important element in the history of the last four centuries, and it has been strangely undervalued by most historians, whose attention has been too exclusively centred upon the domestic politics, diplomacies, and wars of Europe. It has been brought about by the creation of a succession of 'Empires' by the European nations, some of which have broken up, while others survive, but all of which have contributed their share to the ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... had been the hero of the moment; now attention centred on our own hero. Ginx hurried off again, but as the crowd opened before him, he was met, and his mad career stayed, by a slight figure, feminine, draped in black to the feet, wearing a curiously framed white-winged hood above her pale face, and ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... of influence and interest in China is centred in Tibet and the Yangtsze Valley. Therefore if Japan can come to some satisfactory arrangement with China in regard to Tibet and also give certain privileges to Great Britain in the Yangtsze Valley, with an assurance to protect those privileges, no matter how powerful Great Britain might ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... place, with an agreeable society, centred in Government House, and composed of diverse elements, for the ministers of state and other officials, the clergy, the judges, and the officers of the garrison, furnish a number, considerable for so small ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... not go with him. His work for Roger was not yet done, and warmly attached as he was to John, his heart was still more centred upon Father Paul. Besides, no mention was made of him in the letter that accompanied the summons home. His brother was he knew not where, and his duty lay with Roger, who looked to him as to ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... one exteriorly, for, no doubt, the one was in proportion to the other! This faithful Servant having embraced the cross from the very commencement of his conversion, he carried it in his heart, in his mind, in his body, and in all his senses; all his love, all his desires, were centred in the cross, it was the standard of his militia. Therefore did Jesus Christ, whose goodness appears with magnificence towards those who love Him, after having honored the zeal of Francis by various apparitions in His crucified state, choose, as a crowning of all His favors, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... no warmer tint on the ideal future toward which his eyes of late had so fondly turned themselves. To live for others and not for himself—this was to extinguish his very life. What were others to him? All of his world was centred in his little home-circle. Alas! that its power to fill the measure of his desires was gone—its brightness dimmed—its attraction ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Racine successfully competes with Corneille, is no doubt logically interwoven in the general plan; but still it is unsuitable to the tone of the whole, and the impression which it is intended to produce. All the interest is centred in Monime: she is one of Racine's most amiable creations, and excites in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... trade surpassing that of any city on the China coast. It has, from its proximity to the tea district, and easy communication with the vast country watered by the Yang-tze river, taken almost without an effort the great trade that once centred in Canton, and every year shows a greater amount of tonnage in the Woosung river, and larger exports of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... irretrievably. Now, when his one chance lay in playing the repentant and tearful adorer of a mistress cruel and fair if somewhat mature—a very familiar role for him—his cry was all for the restoration of lost pecuniary privileges; and his mistress would naturally have none of a lover so self-centred. Despairing of the Queen's favour, he was rash enough to pose as a popular champion, declaiming against the intriguers who were selling England to the Infanta, and drawing round him the young hot-heads and scape-graces of the nobility, in the insane belief that their swords and the cheers ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... in human life. It is the poise of a great nature, in harmony with itself and its ideals. It is the moral atmosphere of a life self-centred, self-reliant, and self-controlled. Calmness is singleness of purpose, absolute confidence, and conscious power,—ready to be focused in an instant to meet ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... nation; and the only light which shone upon the darkness, the only hope that cheered the universal despondency, the dependence of all real patriots, the trust of all friends of truth, and the pride of all free and honorable men were centred in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... fellow-men he had forged a self-centred, confident way to the front; and had met there not ultimate achievement, but a young girl, Valerie West. Through her, somehow, already was coming into his life and into his work that indefinite, elusive quality—that something, the existence of which, until the last winter, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... recognized the old established laws which have been accepted as regulating both. In short, with all his originality, he worked in Old World harness, and cannot be considered as the creator of a truly American, self-governed, self-centred, absolutely independent style of thinking and writing, knowing no law but its own sovereign ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Donald stood rooted to the spot by the suddenness and awfulness of the fate that had overtaken his enemy. Then like a flash it came to him that, even while his attention was wholly centred on the tragedy just enacted, he had been aware of another man ascending the pathway who had turned and fled. Was he then to be robbed of the fruits of his arduous journeyings? Was Edith again to be snatched from him when almost within his reach? No, not if he, alone and unarmed, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... supposed, centred the interest of the others upon the two. The quarrel started as suddenly as it sometimes does among a group of fowl, and, before it was understood, the combatants, with drawn knives were facing each other. Few sights are more entertaining ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... chagrin of a self-centred life can be removed at once by learning Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He who learns them is forever proof against it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. Pax ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... court and regime, as we imagine it with the Round Table, is already constituted. It is to be observed that in the earlier versions there is even a sharp rivalry between the "Round Table" proper and the "Queen's" or younger knights. But this subsides, and the whole is centred at Camelot, with the realm (until Mordred's treachery) well under control, and with a constant succession of adventures, culminating in the greatest of all, the Quest of the Graal or Sangreal itself. Although there are passages ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... sub-arches in the tracery, and the mullions are carried up through the head. The easternmost of these windows is of two lights, and has a transom in the tracery, and the westernmost is shortened to allow of a doorway of four-centred form beneath. Below the sills runs a string-course, which rises to pass over the door. The parapet is battlemented, not for military purposes but for ornament, and at intervals are the beginnings of panelled pinnacles, set diagonally ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world. There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song, Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... three soon centred upon one—the leader, and a fairer object none of them had ever beheld. Basil, who loved a fine horse more than any living thing, was in an ecstasy as he gazed upon this beautiful creature. It was no wonder, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive, colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible—a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... any one of its members whether teacher or student. In a small family at home conditions have been more or less made for her, just as they are for other girls. Yet she knows that the school life is complicated and complex, and it is impossible for her to feel neglected where a more self-centred or spoiled girl fails to see that in this new life she is called upon to play a minor part but nevertheless a part upon which the school must rely for its esprit de corps. She goes with ease from the somewhat unmethodical life of the home to the highly organized routine ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... two sons of Madri, are well. I hope princess Krishna also, the daughter of Drupada, is well,—she who never swerves from the path of truth, that lady of great energy, that wife of heroes. I hope she is well with her sons,—she in whom are centred all your dearest joys and whose ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of 1817 was the forerunner of an embryological period in which men's hopes and interest centred round the study of development. "With bewilderment we saw ourselves transported to the strange soil of a new world," wrote Pander, and many shared his hopeful enthusiasm. K. E. von Baer's Entwickelungsgeschichte was by far the greatest product of this ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... example of one that leaped with repetitions; or the chanting of one that uttered, explosively and regularly, with inflection that rose and fell, "A-bang, a-bang! A-bang, a-bang!" One after another of the self-centred Folk would yield to it, and soon all would be dancing or chanting in chorus. "Ha-ah, ha-ah, ha-ah-ha!" was one of our favorite choruses, and another was, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... golden centred, 1 to 1-1/2 in. across, solitary, at end of a smooth, naked scape 6 to 14 in. tall. Calyx of 2 short-lived sepals; corolla of 8 to 12 oblong petals, early falling; stamens numerous; 1 short pistil composed of 2 carpels. Leaves: Rounded, deeply and palmately lobed, the 5 to ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... rank of antiquarians. To-day, well-off, owning this shop, "The Mercury," you attribute the success of your undertakings to that clasp. To lose it would to your eyes spell bankruptcy and poverty. Your whole life has been centred upon it. It is your fetish. It is the little household god who watches over you and guides your steps. It is there, somewhere, hidden in this jungle; and no one of course would ever have suspected anything—for ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... and curves into roundness. It is by such simple means as this that the painter gives pleasure to the eye. The harmony of the lines of the composition makes a perfect expression of the peaceful group centred ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... her eyes, with its oaken frame with fillets of gold, its pediment in the shape of a winged angel's head, its green curtain with the motionless folds, and the mysterious darkness on both sides. It seemed to her that now her whole life centred there, and that every hour tended thither. She lived through the week looking forward to that longed-for, prayed-for, promised day. On Thursday, she began to be impatient; she felt, in the redoubling of her blissful agony, the material drawing near, as it were, of the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... prohibitive service, there was nothing for it, in the case of rendezvous lying so far afield as to render land transport impracticable, but to forward the harvest of the gangs by water. In this way there grew up a system of sea transport that centred from many distant and widely separated points of the kingdom upon those great entrepots for pressed men, the Hamoaze, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... opinions, religious interest, and social instincts which characterised the English yeoman of the preceding century. The social life which these communities built up, as soon as their economic position was assured, was a reflection of the best English traditions—it centred round the churches and the Sunday-school. There was a growing distribution of literature as well as organisation for intellectual, educational and social purposes. Mr. Ross notes the winter excursions to Florida and California, the adornment ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... of glass and iron. He was still pursuing his passion, for he associated the being he loved with all manifestations of art and luxury. He made for the park and went straight to the Egyptian pavilion. Egypt had filled his dreams from the day when all his thoughts had been centred on one woman. In the avenue of sphinxes and before the painted temple he fell under the glamour that women of olden days and strange lands exercise on the senses,—on those of lovers with especial force. The sanctuary ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France |
