"Devoid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judge no man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envy him this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completely and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... of the skiff was utterly devoid of comfort; it was narrow and damp, tiny cold drops of rain dribbled through the damaged bottom; gusts of wind penetrated it. We sat in silence and shivered with cold. I remembered that I wanted to go to sleep. Natasha leaned her back against the hull of the boat and curled herself up into a ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... drawn away the thoughts from the color, and prevented the mind from fixing upon it or enjoying it, by the degree of attention which the sculpture would have required. So they left their purple capitals full broad masses of color; and sculptured the white ones, which would otherwise have been devoid of interest. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the Heart of Mid-Lothian, succeeded in some degree in awakening an interest in behalf of one devoid of those accomplishments which belong to a heroine almost by right, I was next tempted to choose a hero upon the same unpromising plan; and as worth of character, goodness of heart, and rectitude of principle, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... backward it may wish to be, is taking a step forward. The Dominicans themselves do not escape the operation of this law, but are imitating the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies. They hold fiestas in their cloisters, they erect little theaters, they compose poems, because, as they are not devoid of intelligence in spite of believing in the fifteenth century, they realize that the Jesuits are right, and they will still take part in the future of the younger ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Winstanley may seem devoid of taste, but his acquaintance with English poetry is impressive. Indeed, Winstanley, unlike Phillips, strikes us as a man who really read and enjoyed poetry. Phillips is more the slipshod bibliographer and cataloguer, ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... scene appears devoid of life, but suddenly the call of a jay bird is heard faintly and far up the trail that leads to the right among the rocks. It is repeated nearer at hand, perfectly imitated but with a nuance that advises of human origin, and two or three half-naked Indians are seen to be making ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... the liability of all to be dreadfully frost-bitten. The hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time the strength of their draught animals began to fail. The small supply of provender they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment; and they could only keep them from starving by seeking for the "browse," as it is called, this being the green bark and tender buds and branches of the cottonwood and other stunted growths ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... that changed, abject aspect, that bearing, devoid totally of confidence? All pretense of a certain coster smartness that he remembered, had vanished; the hair, once curled with cheap jauntiness, hung now straight and straggling; a tawdry ornament which had stood out in the past, absurdly distinct on a bright cravat, with many ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... help suspecting that the little thing he said, which was not so many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless! This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour—that much is clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. What had he said? Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us hurts far ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... should be set on low, jut out rather straight, then turn downwards, the end pointing horizontally. It should be quite round in its whole length, smooth and devoid of fringe or coarse hair. It should be moderate in length, rather short than long, thick at the root, and taper quickly to a fine point. It should have a downward carriage, and the dog should not be able to raise it above the level of the backbone. The tail should not curve at the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... his shoulder, he raised her right foot, and thrust it into the stirrup; and, with a hand under each of her arms, lifted her until she was able to throw the left foot over, and her body into the saddle. Once more Marion bit her lip. His action was as devoid of personal interest as Pete's had been when he carried her out of the pool; and she had not come to Philip Haig to be treated like ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... devoid of sense as he is of manners; he deserves to lose. What I can't get over is that fellow Batley's staying in what was once George Gladwyne's house, with Clarence standing sponsor ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... like sheep, follow the lead of the most ancient bell-wether; and the reason of this is not far to seek. Curators, as a rule, are men with one hobby—"one-horse" men, as the Americans so aptly put it—"sometimes wise, sometimes otherwise," but in many cases totally devoid of that technical education so much needed in reconciling the divergent atoms of the institutions they represent; in fact, head and ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... few moments he realized that the grounds were not so devoid of human life as he had believed. He heard voices on the side toward the hill, and a rustling in the thicket told him that some ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... naturally-serviceable actions implied by the division of labour—there has been a development of those gentle emotions of which inferior races exhibit but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain rather than pleasure—are almost devoid of sympathy; while among ourselves, philanthropy organizes itself in laws, establishes numerous institutions, and dictates ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... a Corean woman, though that of a slave kept in strict seclusion, with prospects of floggings and head-chopping, is not always devoid of adventures. Love is a thing which is capricious in the extreme, and there are stories current in Cho-sen about young, wives being carelessly looked after by their husbands, and falling in love with some good-looking youth, of course married to some one else. Having, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Scriptures; they are good thoughts presented in pleasing words. Some songs, though expressed in charming words, are worldly and carnal; while others presenting good thoughts are at the same time expressed in words inappropriate, unattractive and devoid ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... roofs, and were painted at the right time. In the tool house carts, ploughs, harrows, stood in perfect order, the harness was well cleaned and oiled. The horses were not very big, but all home-bred, grey, well fed, strong and devoid of blemish. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... that not all things desire peace. For, according to Dionysius (Div. Nom. xi), peace "unites consent." But there cannot be unity of consent in things which are devoid of knowledge. Therefore such things cannot ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... space at the bottom of the cup devoid of tea-leaves, it shows water, and that, in all probability, the letter is coming from abroad. If the symbol of the letter comes very near to a bird flying, it shows a telegram. If the bird is flying towards the consultant (the handle), the telegram has been received. The news in it is to be judged ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... so full of wantonness, as the unwieldy rabble. It were folly not to be borne, for men, while seeking to escape the wantonness of a tyrant, to give themselves up to the wantonness of a rude unbridled mob. The tyrant, in all his doings, at least knows what he is about, but a mob is altogether devoid of knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge in a rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses everything. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies; ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... has inserted a formal complimentary letter from king James to the Great Mogul, or emperor of Hindoostan, together with another from the Mogul to king James, containing nothing besides hyperbolical expressions of regard; both of which are here omitted, as entirely devoid of interest, amusement, or information. Purchas has also added several letters said to have been found among the papers of Sir Thomas Roe, with some others which he says were transcribed from Sir Thomas Roe's own book. As these letters merely repeat circumstances and opinions already more ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... do not mean to say that the French are wholly, or even generally devoid of religious feeling; on the contrary, we believe it may often be seen to break out in a very striking manner, even in the conversation of those who are accustomed to think it wise to express contempt for it. A Frenchman, full of enthusiasm about the glory of his country, who was talking ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... whom he was at variance, in the woods alone, he would murder them and attribute it to the savages. He had led, when in England, a most abandoned life, and after he was transported to this country, was so reckless of reputation and devoid of shame for his villainies, that he would often recount tales of theft and robbery in which he had been a conspicuous actor. The fearful apprehensions of increased and aggravated injuries after the taking of him prisoner, were well-founded; and subsequent events fully proved, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... celebration of the first completed division of sixteen and a half miles, from Omaha to Papillon. When the orators spoke so confidently of the determination to build two thousand miles of railway across the plains, mountains, and desert, devoid of timber, with no population, but on the contrary raided by the bold and bloody Sioux and Cheyennes, who had almost successfully defied our power for half a century, I was disposed to treat it jocularly, because I could not ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the Sea Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it is not devoid ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and, therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found their own personal interests at stake. So good had the tenure seemed, that it had ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... things which inspired the terror of the little ones, and caused respect not devoid of fear in the grown-up people, was the horse that the baron had. It was a creature with a fiery eye, and so fierce that nobody but he and his friend Fray Diego, who had served in the cavalry, dared to mount him. He had to be most cleverly managed when taken to drink, and even then the ungovernable ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... angry crowd of track-graders with the ax in his hand, and she had seen very much the same tenacity and steadfastness stamped on the faces of successful men. Her father was one, and he was a man who had scarcely been educated, and was certainly devoid of any complexity of character. Stirling had made his mark by smashing down opposition, and, when that was not possible, grimly holding on and bearing the blows dealt him. There was, as she recognized, something to be said in favor of that kind ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... for officers to command without humoring their soldiers. In this condition they left the city, and encamped by the river Allia, about ten miles from Rome, and not far from the place where it falls into the Tiber; and here the Gauls came upon them, and, after a disgraceful resistance, devoid of order and discipline, they were miserably defeated. The left wing was immediately driven into the river, and there destroyed; the right had less damage by declining the shock, and from the low grounds getting to the tops of the hills, from whence most of them afterwards ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... shutters to its loopholes, and being in every way inferior to the powerful machines I saw working along the southern frontier. Nevertheless it is a useful means of reconnaissance, nor is a journey in it devoid of interest. An armoured train! The very name sounds strange; a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant; the agent of civilisation in the habiliments of chivalry. Mr. Morley attired as Sir Lancelot would seem scarcely more incongruous. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... support his frame in an upright and easy attitude. The first glance of the eye told his former friends, that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. His eye was glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression. His features were a little more sunken and strongly marked than formerly; but there, all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said to have ceased. His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any positive disease, but had been a gradual and mild ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... what is undoubtedly one of the most effective artifices at the command of the lyric writer—we mean repetition—render the following lines worthy of the universal admiration which they have obtained in the original, and may not be devoid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... action are looking at the writing, and both are thinking of the next letter which must be written, and of the motion of the pen necessary to produce it. Unless the executing hand were absolutely lifeless or entirely devoid of power, it would be impossible for it not to influence the guiding and presumably stronger hand; for the least force exerted cannot fail to deflect a hand, however strong, in an unnatural and cramped position. Nor can ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... night. Even the part of town where they were, so devoid of character by day, had become all at once romantic with phantasmal lights and glooms, echoes and silences. Along the edge of a wide chimney-top on one blank, new hulk of a house, that nothing else could have made poetical, a mocking-bird ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... These unfortunate children cannot have any notion of good or evil. Their souls must be an abyss of scandal and impurity—brought up as they have been, by an impious mother, and a soldier devoid of religion." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of ill presage, Go vanish into Night! Let all things sweet and fair Yield homage to the pair: From Infancy to Age Each Brow be smooth and bright, As Lake in evening light. To-day be Joy! and Sorrow Devoid of Blame (The widow'd Dame) Shall welcome be to-morrow. Thou, too, dull Night! may'st come unchid: This wall of Flame the Dark hath hid With turrets each a Pyramid;— For the Tears that we shed, are Gladness, A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... one of these bearskins; and it added no little to the natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of the Upsaroka character. The mouth extended nearly from ear to ear, the lips were thin, and seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of natural pliancy, so that the ruling expression never varied under the influence of any emotion whatever. This ruling expression may be conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... glance also the cathedral seemed devoid of charm. I suppose travellers seek emotions in the things they see, and often the more beautiful objects do not give the most vivid sensations. Painters complain that men of letters have written chiefly of second-rate pictures, but the literary sentiment is different from the artistic; and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... may still be seen to-day. It was the same with architecture, for it was necessary to build, and as form and good methods were lost by the death of good artists and the destruction of good buildings, those who devoted themselves to this profession built erections devoid of order or measure, and totally deficient in grace, proportion or principle. Then new architects arose who created that style of building, for their barbarous nations, which we call German, and produced some works which are ridiculous to our modern eyes, but appeared ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... mother of the perambulating young officer, (he was a class-mate of Rossitur's,) was extremely plain in feature, even more than ordinary. This plainness was not, however, devoid of sense, and it was relieved by an uncommon amount of good-nature and kindness of heart. In her son the sense deepened into acuteness, and the kindness of heart retreated, it is to be hoped, into some hidden recess of his nature; for it very rarely showed itself in open expression; ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 22, 28 and 32. If this has been done without due authorization you are liable for trespass. Fine of not less than $200 or imprisonment for not less than twelve months—or both." He delivered this in a voice absolutely devoid ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... sparkling lakelets, teeming with wild fowl, are always close at hand, and if the surface water in some of these has alkali, excellent water can always be had in others, and by the simple process of digging for it a short distance beneath the sod with a spade, the soil being so devoid of stones that it is not even necessary to use a pick. No wonder that under these circumstances we hear no croaking. Croakers are very rare animals throughout Canada. It was remarked with surprise, by an Englishman accustomed to British grumbling, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... little light that was meant to keep Renwood's ghost from disturbing the slumbers of old man Grimes and his wife. She could not reach that light, that much she knew. Her feet were like hundredweights, her limbs almost devoid of power; Grimes' hut appeared to be a couple of miles away. With a last, breathless effort, she turned off the road and floundered through weeds and brush until she came to what proved to be the rear of the darkened house. Long, low, rangy it reached off into the shadows, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... always felt in the welfare of the very humblest of his brethren of the lyre, is highly creditable to him. But the extent to which he sacrificed his own interests to serve them, was often any thing but prudent. He was devoid of every sordid and avaricious feeling, and indeed carried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... new fact, those pages, seemingly so cold, are seen to be alive with feeling. What appeared to be a lack of interest in the philosopher turns out to have been a touching insincerity of the man to his own heart; and that fine-spun airy theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains. The most temperate of living critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, "This seems nonsense." It not only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the Bank of England, devoid equally of dignity and sensation, and then turned and looked at the Royal Exchange. A pigeon flew up from the ground and perched among the figures carved over the portico, and as he watched it, he read the inscription beneath the figure of Justice: The Earth ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... what is all this?" a chill, incisive voice demanded. Barnabas turned, and lowering the cane, stood looking curiously at the speaker. A tall, slender man he was, with a face that might have been any age,—a mask-like face, smooth and long, and devoid of hair as it was of wrinkles; an arresting face, with its curving nostrils, thin-lipped, close-shut mouth, high, prominent brow, and small, piercingly-bright eyes; quick eyes, that glinted between their red-rimmed, hairless lids, old in their experience of men and the ways of men. For ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... and a gale of talk and laughter came to his ears. Wilbur stared at the picture, his face devoid of expression. The "Petrel" came on—drew nearer—was not a hundred feet away from the schooner's stern. A strong swimmer, such as Wilbur, could cover the distance in a few strides. Two ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... young man's mother. The commandant was under bonds for the safe-keeping of his prisoner; but being a man of tender feelings, he imposed little restraint upon Gustavus, merely exacting from him a promise that he would make no effort to escape. His life therefore was, to outward appearance, not devoid of pleasure. The castle was situated on a promontory in Jutland, at the northern end of Kaloe Bay. Its wall ran close along the cliffs, a hundred feet above the sea. At either end of the castle was a gray stone tower, and from the windows in the towers was a ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... past these glacial outposts, scarcely any signs of storm appeared; last year's leaves, still matted together underfoot, were tangled with the green vine of the creeping linnaea and a rare root of the lustrous winter-green. Here, beneath the thick canopy of branches not all devoid of their foliage since many larches and pines were to be found there, was another climate; coming from that bland whiteness which was not cold, these dark arcades of forest struck chills to the feet and face; ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... going to answer the first. While not objecting to the nomination of Mr Bayley,[49] she wanted to point out the importance of, at a future vacancy, not to confine the selection to respectable parish priests, but to bear in mind that the Bench of Bishops should not be left devoid of some University men of acknowledged standing and theological learning; it would be seriously weakened if, in controversies on points of doctrine agitating the Church, no value were attached to the opinions at least of some of those who are to govern her. Lord Palmerston ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... than the lion, and her form is more slender and graceful. She is devoid of the mane of her lord and master, and has four or five cubs at a birth, which are all born blind. The young lions are at first obscurely striped and spotted. They mew like cats, and are as playful as kittens. As they get older, the uniform color is gradually assumed. The mane appears ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... staircase, with room in the head for a child, like another Pallas in the brain of Zeus, must alone involve very considerable outlay. But I am encouraged by your Majesty's wise and statesmanlike measure of debasing the currency; since, money having become devoid of value, there can be no difficulty in devoting any amount of ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... silent for an instant. Saintly man that he was naturally, altogether devoid of passions, with no keen intelligence to disturb him in his faith, he displayed a naive admiration for beauty, wealth, and power, which he had never envied. Nevertheless, he ventured to express a doubt, a scruple, which troubled ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... moment, too, Footsack shouted that the wagon was inspanned and ready. Now I hesitated what to do. If we made for the wagon, which must be very slowly because of Anscombe's wounded foot, we had to cross seventy or eighty yards of rising ground almost devoid of cover. If, on the other hand, we stayed where we were till nightfall a shot might catch one of us, or other Basutos might arrive and rush us. There was also a third possibility, that our terrified ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the United States. And yet when I take a look at my inner identity it impresses me as being precisely the same as it was thirty or forty years ago. My present station, power, the amount of worldly happiness at my command, and the rest of it, seem to be devoid of significance. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... feel constrained to inquire sternly who I am that I should talk in this unbecoming manner of Carlyle? To which I reply that I am only a humble German seeking after peace, devoid of the least real desire to criticise anybody, and merely anxious to get out of the way of geniuses when they make too much noise. All I want is to read quietly the books that I at present prefer. Carlyle is shut up now and therefore silent on his comfortable ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... be seen, however, and Balsamides followed the negro, who entered a door on the right-hand side, at the end of the hall. They passed through a narrow passage, entirely hung with rose-colored silk and matted, but devoid of furniture, and then Selim raised a curtain and admitted Gregorios to the presence of the ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... instincts, and, for all the childish or ridiculous perversions which they may exhibit in certain individuals, of the highest utility! After all, these are forms, the most rudimentary forms, of the scientific spirit. Those who are devoid of them have no place in the world of critical scholarship. But those who aspire to be critical scholars will always be numerous; for the labours of interpretation, construction, and exposition require the rarest gifts: all ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... numbness, and a sleepiness, when he was forced to sit for two or three hours while M. Foissac pointed his fingers at him? As for the amelioration in his health, no argument can be adduced to prove that he was devoid of faith in the remedy; and that, having faith, he should not feel the benefit of it as well as thousands of others who have been cured by means ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... laughed heartily. The detective, greatly vexed, bit his lips; to him the joke was quite devoid of humor. The arrival of a prison guard gave Ganimard an opportunity to recover himself. The man brought Arsene Lupin's luncheon, furnished by a neighboring restaurant. After depositing the tray upon the table, the guard retired. Lupin broke his ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... of building hotels in dead areas, although I admitted that I'd steer clear of any hotel in a clear area myself. But I didn't need a clear area nor a sense of perception to inform me that Room 913 was absolutely and totally devoid of any remote sign of female habitation. In fact, I gathered the impression that for all of his brute strength and virile masculinity, Mr. Horace Westfield hadn't entertained a woman in that room ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Both Corona and her husband were surprised at his imposing appearance, as well as at the dignity and self-possession he displayed. His southern accent was not more noticeable than that of many Neapolitan gentlemen, and his conversation, if neither very brilliant nor very fluent, was not devoid of interest. He talked of the agricultural condition of the new Italy, and old Saracinesca and his son were both interested in the subject. They noticed, too, that during dinner no word escaped him which could give any clue to his former occupation ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... herd on their arrival, with our gun-bearers squatted around us behind our respective trees, while the non-sporting village followers, who now began to think the matter rather serious and totally devoid of fun, scrambled up various large ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of the youngest sister was established solely, I think, by one big braid down her back. Neither was it because she was the plainest, for the beauty of the Piper girls was a recognized general distinction, and the youngest Miss Piper was not entirely devoid of the family charms. Nor was it from any lack of intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness alarming. Neither do I think it could be said that a slight deafness, which ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Image, Eikon, paragraph by paragraph, turning it round, and asserting the negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at this ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... are in reality very uninspiring emotions. The thing that has most deeply impressed me in my searching of the German war-scriptures is the extraordinary aridity of spirit that pervades them. A literature more unidea'd (to use Johnson's word), more devoid of original thought, or grace, or charm, or atmosphere, it would be hard to conceive. There are, of course, some inequalities. One or two writers seem (to the foreign reader) to have a certain dignity of style which is lacking in the ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... Society which has been caluminated as devoid of all sense of religion, law or morality, to sympathize with one whom calumny of a similar kind is about to drive from his native land, a land which he has adorned and enlightened in almost every branch of liberal literature, and of useful philosophy. ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... mushrooms, and depend on commercial or manufactured spawn, should see to it that the spawn purchased possesses these desirable qualities of texture, and the presence of an abundance of the mycelium. That which appears devoid of an abundance of mycelium should be rejected, and good spawn should be called for. There is no more reason why a grower should accept a worthless spawn from his seedsman than that he should accept "addled" eggs from his grocer. In this business, that is, the manufacture ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... spend all his rage; And that must end us; that must be our cure— To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated Night, Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows, Let this be good, whether our angry Foe Can give it, or will ever? How he can Is doubtful; that he never will is sure. Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, Belike through impotence or unaware, To give his enemies ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... who are entirely devoid of any such religious principle or belief as would bind their consciences to speak the truth, are incompetent as witnesses. Hence, the testimony of an atheist must be rejected; because, as it has been well said, such ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the dead soul of ancient Rome away with him, and it was not the paintings executed after Raffaelle's designs that had touched him, it was rather the pretty hall on the river side decorated in soft blue and pink and lilac, with an art devoid of genius yet so charming and so Roman; and in particular it was the abandoned garden once stretching down to the Tiber, and now shut off from it by the new quay, and presenting an aspect of woeful desolation, ravaged, bossy and weedy like a cemetery, albeit the golden fruit ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... another family of insects, the singular habits of which will not fail to attract the traveller in the cultivated tracts of Ceylon—these are moths of the genus Oiketicus[1], of which the females are devoid of wings, and some possess no articulated feet. Their larvae construct for themselves cases, which they suspend to a branch frequently of the pomegranate[2], surrounding them with the stems of leaves, and thorns or pieces of twigs bound together by threads, till the whole presents the appearance ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and of inquiry, an oriental savant—more than a savant—a sage, with a mind clear, loyal, and vast; a German mind passed through an English filter, a cloudless, unruffled mirror, open and limpid; of pure and frank morality; early disenchanted with all things; with a grain of irony devoid of all bitterness, the laugh of a child under a bald head; a Goethe-like intelligence, but free from all prejudice." "A charming and spirituelle Frenchwoman," Miss O'Meara goes on to say, "said of Julius Mohl that Nature in forming his character had skimmed the cream of the three ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... that power developing until that detection is possible at interstellar ranges, with members of that race being able to pick up faint impressions from received thoughts—distorted impressions? And can you imagine that same race, ignorant of the humanic equations, devoid of a stable ethic, superstitious, distrustful and fearful of advanced entities? They would be undetectable by normal telepathic means, you know. And suppose they were disposed to destroy what they could not understand." ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... not so reckless of our true interest, so blind to utter helplessness—not to say so devoid of humanity, as to entertain the hostile designs, or to cherish the fiendish passions, which it seems have been, by the unthinking, so unjustly attributed ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Quaritch hid a vein of considerable richness. Few of those who associated with him would have believed that the man had a side to his nature which was almost poetic, or that he was a ripe and finished scholar, and, what is more, not devoid of a certain dry humour. Then he had travelled far and seen much of men and manners, gathering up all sorts of quaint odds and ends of information. But perhaps rather than these accomplishments it was ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... mental images as speedily as they are developed in the subconscious area, and goes out to meet them in a mood of speculative enquiry. But the passive temperament most frequently feels first and sees afterwards, the visionary process being entirely devoid of speculation and mental activity. In a word, the distinction between them is that the one sees and thinks while the other feels ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... became a power of tremendous magnitude and extent. People read leading articles by torchlight, and shouted out to the moon apostrophes to liberty, ay, 'liberty, equality, fraternity.' These three talismanic words, too often devoid of meaning in the apprehension of those who shouted them with a fervour sufficient to split the ears of the groundlings. Liberty? every man doing what he deemed best, seemed to be the interpretation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... however, to a princedom by paths of wickedness and crime; that is, not precisely by either merit or fortune. We may take as example first Agathocles the Sicilian. To slaughter fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be devoid of honour, pity, and religion cannot be counted as merit. But the achievements of Agathocles can certainly not be ascribed to fortune. We cannot, therefore, attribute either to fortune or to merit what he accomplished without ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... her thoughts are gone, She nothing sees—no sight but one! The maid, devoid of guile and sin, I know not how, in fearful wise, So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, That all her features were resigned To this sole image in her mind: And passively did imitate That look of dull and treacherous hate! ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... But the chief result of the penny-in-the-pound rate is to supply women old and young with outmoded, viciously respectable, viciously sentimental fiction. A few new novels get into the Library every year. They must, however, be "innocuous," that is to say, devoid of original ideas. This, of course, is inevitable in an institution presided over by a committee which has infinitely less personal interest in books than in politics or the price of coal. No Municipal Library can hope to be nearer than twenty-five years to date. Go into the average good home ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... not devoid of wisdom. Fine clothes sometimes went with a long purse, and a long purge might do wonders to help the comfort of any prisoner in London, as well as the comfort of his keeper. Truly his eyes opened wide ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Service is devoid of partisanship; its importance should appeal to every American citizen and should receive the generous consideration ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... consistent even with extreme old age. The forehead is wide and low, supported by regular eyebrows; the face beneath long and narrow, of a dark and dry complexion. In sleep, open-mouthed, the expression is rather inane; though we can readily imagine the waking face to be not devoid of a certain intensity and comeliness of aspect, marred, however, by an air of guarded anxiety which is ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to another lady, Judith Cowper, afterwards Mrs. Madan, who was for a time the object of some of his artificial gallantry. The only thing that can be said is that his abuse was a sheer piece of Billingsgate, too devoid of plausibility to be more than an expression of virulent hatred. He was like a dirty boy who throws mud from an ambush, and declares that he did ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... dwelt, yonder, behind the horizon. And now that age was stealing upon him his torment seemed to increase, as if he were in despair at finding himself unable to try the possibilities of the unknown, before he ended a useless life devoid ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... virtues of an ancient aristocracy. In this respect Catharine's "Memoirs" are not peculiar. For it is remarkable, that in all the published memoirs, journals, and confessions of members of royal households, (there may be an exception, but we do not remember it,) court-life within-doors has appeared devoid of every grace and beauty, and deformed by all that is coarse, brutal, sordid, and grovelling. Even that grace, almost a virtue, which has its name from courts, seems not to exist in them in a genuine form; and instead of it we find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to be so late," she said in a voice devoid of anything in the way of tone or inflection, "and I had to bring my dressing-case, it would be so tiresome to be stranded in the desert with no looking-glass ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... of wonder, and devise twenty romantic fictions to account for it. Formerly I used to listen to report with interest, and a certain credulity; but I am now grown deaf and sceptical: experience has taught me how absolutely devoid of foundation her stories ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... grip of a mean, paltry fear, was he overcome by that wretched blindness of the soul which cannot lift its vision beyond its own ego nor lose sight of its ego for the sake of an idea? Was he really so devoid of any sense for the common welfare, so utterly ruled by short-sighted selfishness, concerned with nothing but his bare, miserable existence? No, he was not like that. He clung to his own life no more than any other man. He could have ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... establishments, where alone the artist-cook can flourish. But it seems that the neglect of decent cooking is also due in this country to a racial incapacity and indifference which leads both men and women to despise "taking pains" about small things, and brings them into the world devoid of the desire to carry out with skill those small enterprises on which much of the sweetness ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... discussed rambled a while in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another; questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one charged with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants? Political economy has not treated of gifts. It has hence been concluded that it disowns them, and that it is therefore a science devoid of heart. This is a ridiculous accusation. That science which treats of the laws resulting from the reciprocity of services, had no business to inquire into the consequences of generosity with respect to him who receives, nor into its effects, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... begged her to defend him against the charge of undutiful conduct. It might be true, he said, with the irony which was one day to become so familiar, that he was that dreadful thing, a liberal, but devoid of natural feeling he was not. On the great day when the Statute was granted, he said to the light-hearted old lady, "Marina, we get on capitally, you and I; you were always a little bit of a Jacobin." ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of trench warfare was not entirely devoid of interest, and several little incidents occurred to break the monotony. The first was a big "strafe" on the 25th of August, when for some unknown reason the enemy shelled Stansfield Road very vigorously, and obtained a direct hit on "C" Company Headquarters. Lieuts. Banwell and Edge ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... poems are a number called Poems of the Imagination. He wrote learnedly about the imagination and fancy; but the truth is, that of all the great poets,—and, in spite of his faults, he is a great poet,—there is none so entirely devoid of imagination. What has been said of the heroic may be applied to wit, so important an element in many kinds of poetry; he ignores it because he was without it totally. If only humble life and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... emphatic delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning, for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the inspiration of great patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian intrigue) has any love, it is for such a tool. She cannot afford to lose him. She pleads for him; and, as Camilla is silent on his account, the cynical magnanimity of Camillo is predisposed to spare a fangless ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Glaucus were slowly strolling towards the house of Diomed. Despite the habits of his life, Sallust was not devoid of many estimable qualities. He would have been an active friend, a useful citizen—in short, an excellent man, if he had not taken it into his head to be a philosopher. Brought up in the schools in which Roman ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... contains chapters on Keats, Jane Austen, Anatole France, Walt Whitman, Pope and Rabelais of that more considered character one expects from the editor of the London Mercury. This is not to say that these studies are devoid of humour; and those chapters in the volume which are in the nature of interludes are among the best Mr. Squire has written. Unfortunately I have left myself no room to quote the incomparable panegyric ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... their edges as if a plate had taken to spreading at its rim, the tits were much occupied in picking out minute insects; the wagtails came too, sparrows, robins, hedge-sparrows, and occasionally a lark; a bare blank wall to all appearance, and the bare lichen as devoid of life to our eyes. Yet there must have been something there for all these eager bills—eggs or pupae. A jackdaw, with iron-grey patch on the back of his broad poll, dropped in my garden one morning, to the great alarm of the small birds, and made off with some large dark ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... with equal liberality. The contest was nearly as fierce as the struggle between the whites and Indians. If epithets had been as fatal as bullets, the loss of life would have been terrible. Happily, the wordy battle was devoid of danger, and the State of Minnesota, her politicians, her generals, and her men emerged from ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... profession. Within a few years he has returned to England, the outlawry against him having been removed; and those who feel an interest in the history of this persecuted family, may be gratified to know that their decline of life will not be devoid of comfort. They reside near Bath, in England, with a sister of Blennerhasset, the relict of the late admiral De Courcy. The evening of life promises to close free from those clouds that so long ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... ministrations of mercy to the wounded, but ready if occasion required, to lead the troops into action and always manifesting the most perfect indifference to the shot and shell or the whizzing minie balls that fell around her. She seemed entirely devoid of fear, and though so constantly exposed to the enemy's fire never received ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... merely emphasised the extreme ungracefulness of his figure. His long pale face was made paler by the shock of coarse, tow-coloured hair; his eyes, even, looked colourless, though they were certainly the least uninteresting feature of his face, for they were not devoid of expression. He had a way of slouching when he moved that singularly intensified the general uncouthness of his appearance. "Are you very tired?" asked his wife, gently, when he had dismounted close to the tent. The question would have been an unnecessary ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... wept as though her heart was broken." Many good writers, even some devoid of the lexicographers' passion for inclusion and approval, have specifically defended this locution, backing their example by their precept. Perhaps it is a question of taste; let us attend their cry and ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... of their parents. No difficulty about relapsing. But a fair percentage of the lowest classes tend to rise; they stand, potentially, above their surroundings. An apparatus has been contrived for catching these children. But it is defective, because devoid of sympathy. I have known hundreds of cases in the East End of London where families have been unable to raise themselves by this means because, at the critical moment, there was not twenty shillings in the house wherewith to buy ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... John absently. It was some years before Beetle perceived that this was rather a tribute to innocence than observation. The long, light, blindless dormitories, devoid of inner doors, were crossed at all hours of the night by masters visiting one another; for bachelors sit up later than married folk. Beetle had never dreamed that there might be a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... arrival at the front was devoid of excitement; for the three neophytes—Rockwell, Chapman, and myself—it was the beginning of a new existence, the entry into an unknown world. Of course Rockwell and Chapman had seen plenty of warfare on the ground, but ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... and color of this cuticle. Thus, in the dark races, the pigment cells are most numerous, and in proportion as the skin is dark or fair do we find these cells in greater or lesser abundance. The skin of the Albino is of pearly whiteness, devoid even of the pink or brown tint which that of the European always possesses. This peculiarity must be attributed to the absence of pigment cells which, when present, always present a more or less dark color. The theory that climate alone is capable ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... devoid of any furniture save two or three wooden chairs, which the girl and her father occupied at their work, the long wooden bench, the great coils of willow—the usual ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey |
