"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a mere village, with villas all about it, and the thing to remember there is not only that Desiderio was born there but that Michelangelo's foster-mother was the wife of a local stone-cutter—stone-cutting at that time being the staple industry. On the way back to Florence ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... long, mother, as you imagine," replied Aladdin. "This demand is a mere trifle, and will prove no bar to my marriage with the princess. I will prepare at once ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... But for such a mere child, Gianetta played with marvellous correctness. As for Nicolo, his countenance cleared with every sound that he drew from his beloved violin; he forgot his gloomy father; he thought no longer of his dull, sad home. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... days. After that no further reinforcements can be expected for a month, so that during the next few weeks the whole strength of the Boers, so far as it is available at all, can be employed against a mere fragment of the British power. To the gravity of this situation it would be folly to shut our eyes. It contains the possibility of disaster, though what the consequences of disaster now would involve must for the present be left unsaid. Yet it may be well to say ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... holding up the head, not an eyelid had time to wink before the wicked King Polydectes, his evil counselors and all his fierce subjects were no longer anything but the mere images of a monarch and his people. They were all fixed forever in the look and attitude of that moment! At the first glimpse of the terrible head of Medusa, they whitened into marble! And Perseus thrust the head back into his wallet and went ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... are mixed up, of all species, Oak and Maple and Chestnut and Birch! But Nature is not cluttered with them; she is a perfect husbandman; she stores them all. Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed on the earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year. The trees are now repaying the earth with interest what they have taken from it. They are discounting. They are about to add a leaf's thickness to the depth of the soil. This ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... language and the Romansh of the Grisons cannot be considered as a mere object of curiosity, but may also serve to corroborate the proofs I have above alleged of the antiquity of the latter, I have annexed in the appendix,[AQ] a translation of this oath into the language of Engadine, which approaches nearest to it; although I must observe, ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... people coming up, and urging me in the same manner with great earnestness, I suspected that some of the king's messengers, who were sent in search of me, were in the town; and that these Negroes, from mere kindness, conducted me past it with a view to facilitate my escape. I accordingly took the road for Sego, with the uncomfortable prospect of passing the night on the branches of a tree. After travelling about three miles, I came to a small village near ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... contradictory, were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to have been not one, but many: nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect exhibited by him that led the world, during his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... negotiation. His majesty was highly indignant, said his confidence had been abused, and that now, for the first time, he was made acquainted with the real state of affairs. He accused the ministers of falsehoods, malversations, and all kinds of offences. His displeasure did not end in mere words; he drew his Da, or sword, and sallied forth in pursuit of the offending courtiers. These took to immediate flight, some leaping over the balustrades which rail in the front of the Hall of Audience, but the greater number escaping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... chief alteration was in the formula of the Lord's Supper. Elizabeth and her divines were not inclined to let this stand as it was read in the second edition of Edward's time, since the mystical act there appeared almost as a mere commemorative repast.[188] They reverted to a form composed from the monuments of Latin antiquity, from Ambrose and Gregory, in which the real presence was maintained; this which already existed in the first edition they united with the view of the second. As formerly in the Augsburg confession ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... had been consented to by his grand-uncle, and, instead of travelling for his own pleasure, he might be the means of satisfying the mind and quieting the anxiety of one who had been so kind to him. Indeed, he should actually prefer a journey into the interior of Africa to a mere sojourn of some time on the continent; the very peril and danger, the anticipation of distress and hardship, were pleasing to his high and courageous mind, and before he fell asleep Alexander had ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nature to practical politics, or in fact to any activity save that of ideas, I was far from regarding myself as mere material for a scholar, an entertaining author, a literary historian, or the like. I thought myself naturally fitted to be a man of action. But the men of action I had hitherto met had repelled me ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... of the "Ruined Mill" is familiar to all who are acquainted with it, and has been greatly admired by those who did not feel impelled to condemn its many faults. But CLAUDE is now known to have been no artist, but a mere pretender. There is reason to believe that he had never read RUSKIN, and was hence necessarily ignorant of the aim and method of landscape painting. Our young friend BROWN, the spirituel and fascinating assistant Rector of a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... more completely how I have severed my bonds than this: that my wife is willing to let our friends smoke in the study, but I will not hear of it. There shall be no smoking in my house; and I have determined to speak to Jimmy about smoking out at our spare bedroom window. It is a mere contemptible pretence to say that none of the smoke comes back into the room. The curtains positively reek of it, and we must have them washed at once. I shall speak plainly to Jimmy because I want him to tell the others. They ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... finished; I paid for it and sauntered out, keeping the boy well in view. His route to the office lay through a dozen streets which were all deserted at so late an hour; but I remarked one that was even more forbidding than the rest—a mere alley that seemed positively to have been designed for our purpose. Our course is clear—we shall attack him in the ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... called The Muses' Welcome to King James, (first of England, and sixth of Scotland,) on his return to his native kingdom, shewed that there was then abundance of learning in Scotland; and that the conceits in that collection, with which people find fault, were mere mode.' He added, 'we could not now entertain a sovereign so; that Buchanan had spread the spirit of learning amongst us, but we had lost it during the civil wars[169].' He did not allow the Latin Poetry of Pitcairne so much ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... many persons. The old saying concerning the rushing in of fools where angels walk warily came involuntarily to her mind. Then she laughed and squaring her capable shoulders murmured half aloud, "I'm neither a fool nor an angel. I'm just Grace Harlowe, a 'mere ordinary human being,' as Hippy would put it. I'm not going to be so silly as to expect to get along with a whole houseful of girls without some friction. Like the gardens Anne and I planted away back in our freshman year, there are sure ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... As a mere infant Borrow was gloomy and fond of solitude, "ever conscious," he says, "of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... are blossoming out and getting independent! I should think mere decency would have made you consult us before you did anything. What do you know about business? Herbert will be mad as anything when I tell him; and like as not you'll get into no end of trouble with a strange tenant, and we'll have to help you out. Herbert always says women make all ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the street, torrents of water poured from above, which, instead of diminishing, seemed to be growing more terrible every moment. I had never seen so fearful a storm. It did not appear like mere rain which was falling; the water came down in broad sheets, and changed the road into a river. I got more and more anxious about old Nip. It was getting dark, and I knew he was not strong. My hope was that he ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... for producing sonorous shocks following each other rapidly at regular intervals. Musical sounds are distinguished from mere noises by their regularity. If we shake a number of nails in a tin box, we get only a series of superimposed and chaotic sensations. On the other hand, if we strike a tuning-fork, the air is agitated a ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... as he went, and must have known from his gait what was the nature of the answer he had received. But yet she went quickly upstairs to inquire. The matter was one of too much consequence for a mere inference. Mary had gone from the sitting-room, but her stepmother followed her upstairs to her bed-chamber. "Mamma," she said, "I couldn't do it;—I couldn't do it. I did try. Pray do not scold me. I ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... you see one of those naval officers has turned round and heard you? My dear Clopper, it was a mere childish bagatelle." ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you mean?" asked Joe, beginning to feel that it was more than a mere notion on the part of the treasurer that something was wrong. "Is it a rough crowd? Will there be a 'hey rube!' cry raised—a fight between our men and the ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... bit her lip and turned away. And she did not make the apology her father expected. Dimly it seemed to her that they were all over ready, over eager to condemn the man whose one crime had been mere heedlessness, who was surely hurting no one but himself, but who offended their ideas in refusing to take life seriously and bear ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... stuff, Jim, even if it is in cipher. Well, the last I remember of that note was crumpling it up till it was a mere nothing at all. I must have tossed it away unconsciously and it got lodged in the toe of my gum boot, although I always felt certain within myself till now that I had burned it along with every other scrap of paper ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... plead with all his heart that he had left home with no evil intentions towards young Oakshott, the lawyers agreed that to prove that the death of the victim was uncertain would reduce the matter to a mere youthful brawl, which could not be heavily visited. Mr. Harcourt further asked whether it were possible to prove that the prisoner had been otherwise employed than in meddling with the body; but unfortunately it had been six hours before ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... present day, it may be considered a general rule, that no picture is admired, no book pronounced readable, no magazine or newspaper circulated, unless in each case it develope intrinsic merit. The mere name of the artist, or author, or editor, has not the slightest weight with our present intelligent, discriminating community, who are never enslaved, or misled, by whim, caprice, or fashion. It has been said, but it seems too monstrous for belief, that, formerly, persons were ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... famous "purge" had reduced the House to a mere shadow of its former self, and who was elected a member of the Common Council on the same day as Lilburne, was allowed to take his seat without objection,(980) whilst Colonel John Fenton was declared by the House to be disabled ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... left, his class would follow, dropping the number to twenty or under, and all would be likely to take the same course. He did not feel satisfied with laboring under such circumstances, with a guard, may be a mere boy, at his side to watch him, and he, perhaps, turned off as unceremoniously as the other. He preferred going of his own accord. But my plea prevailed, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... Natal left but scant numbers to Cape Colony, which was comparatively of less consequence, because the points of vital importance to Great Britain lay near the sea-coast, protected by their mere remoteness from any speedy attack. On the far inland borders of the colony the situation soon reduced itself to that with which we were so long familiar. The four or five thousand men available at the outbreak of the war for the defence of the long frontier, extending over ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... to give away to-day, Sir W. Pen and I took coach, and (the weather and ways being foul) went to Walthamstowe; and being come there heard Mr. Radcliffe, my former school fellow at Paul's (who is yet a mere boy), preach upon "Nay, let him take all, since my Lord the King is returned," &c. He reads all, and his sermon very simple, but I looked for new matter. Back to dinner to Sir William Batten's; and then, after ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... felt, because you would be ashamed of not liking to go to heaven. But answer God. Answer yourselves in the sight of God. When you keep yourselves back from doing a wrong thing, because you know it is wrong, is it for love of heaven, or for mere fear of being punished in hell? Some of you will answer boldly at once: "For neither one nor the other; when we keep from wrong, it is because we hate and despise what is wrong: when we do right it is because it is right and we ought to do it. We can't explain it, but there ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Your father has deserv'd it at my hands, Who, of mere charity and Christian ruth, To bring me to religious purity, And, as it were, in catechising sort, To make me mindful of my mortal sins, Against my will, and whether I would or no, Seiz'd all I had, and thrust me out o' doors, And made my house a place for ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... that the Son was long before Jesus was born is no mere mysterious dogma without bearing on daily needs, but stands in the closest connection with Christ's work and our faith in it. It is the guarantee of His representative character; on it depends the reliableness of His revelation of God. Unless He is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... structure itself. "Curious and clever" well describes it. As for the former cathedral over which the Kreisker throws its shadow, it is one of those majestic twin-towered structures not usually associated with what, when compared with the larger French towns, must perforce rank as a mere village. ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... The mere fact that this expedition was despatched while Napoleon Bonaparte was First Consul of the French Republic, has led many writers to jump to the conclusion that it was designed to cut out a portion of Australia for occupation by the French; that, under the thin disguise of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... dashed it to pieces against a stone. Like a human being, his imagination was stronger than his experience; he tried to persuade himself that there might be something there; hoping against hope. Mind, you see, working in the bird's brain, and overlooking facts. A mere mechanism would have left the empty and useless shell untouched—would have accepted facts at once, however bitter, just as the balance on the heaviest side declines immediately, obeying the fact of an extra grain of weight. The bird's brain was not mechanical, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... which Sara's character is depicted in the course of the story make it impossible that the reader should entirely dislike her as a mere sample of the calculating coquette. She is one of that large class of women, with a limited capacity for affection, whose natures expand only in an atmosphere of luxury. 'Don't be shocked,' she says to her sister in reference to the unsuccessful suit of her clerical lover; ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... have made a very clever hit!" he said—"Quite a random shot, of course—which by mere coincidence went to its mark! It's quite true I have brought with me a curious piece of jewel-work which I always carry about wherever I go—and something moved me to- night to ask your opinion of its value, as well as to place its period. It is old Italian; ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Jove, or Thetis, stop thy arm, Some beam of comfort yet on Greece may shine, If I but lead the Myrmidonian line: Clad in thy dreadful arms if I appear, Proud Troy shall tremble, and desert the war; Without thy person Greece shall win the day, And thy mere image chase her foes away. Press'd by fresh forces, her o'erlabour'd train Shall quit the ships, and Greece respire again." Thus, blind to fate! with supplicating breath, Thou begg'st his arms, and in his arms thy death. Unfortunately good! a boding sigh Thy friend return'd; ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... arranged on an EXCELLENT SYSTEM, calculated to give an intelligent grasp of the subject, and not the mere faculty of mechanical copying.... Mr. Wells shows how to make complete working drawings, discussing fully each step in ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... is to say, the tendency of this electromagnet to retard the current was 496 times as great as that of the simple coil. But when an armature was put over the top, the effect ran up to 2,238. By the mere device of putting the coils in parallel, instead of in series, the 2,238 came down to 502, a little less than the quarter value which would have been expected. Lastly, when the armature and yoke were both of them split in the middle, as is done in fact in all the standard patterns ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The laws of nature and the moral laws are not the mere despotic mandates of His Omnipotent will; for, then they might be changed by Him, and order become disorder, and good and right become evil and wrong; honesty and loyalty, vices; and fraud, ingratitude, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... books were arranged wholly on the calendar method—giving specific directions for each month in the year. We have now accumulated sufficient fact and experience, however, to enable us to state principles; and these principles can be applied anywhere,—when supplemented by good judgment,—whereas mere rules are arbitrary and generally useless for any other condition than that for which they were specifically made. The regions of gardening experience have expanded enormously within the past fifty and ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... and never loves Hugging the chain of denial to his bosom I have a good memory for forgetting I am only myself when I am drunk I should remember to forget it Importunity with discretion was his motto In all secrets there is a kind of guilt Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting It is good to live, isn't it? Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind Liquor makes me human Nervous legs at a gallop Pathetically in earnest Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do So say your prayers, believe ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... for the first time since the apostolic period, occurred an outburst of general missionary zeal and activity. Beginning in Great Britain, it soon spread to the Continent and across the Atlantic. It was no mere push of fervor, but a mighty tide set in, which from that day to this has been steadily rising and spreading."—"A Hundred Years of ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... to discover education, which is the necessary reciprocal of government, and that all this—in which my own little speck of a life was so manifestly overwhelmed—this and its yesterday in Greece and Rome and Egypt were nothing, the mere first dust swirls of the beginning, the movements and dim murmurings of a sleeper who will presently ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... country, fifty miles in width, was opened for peaceful settlement by the bravery of Captain John Lovewell and the company under his command. In this view their acts become more important than those of a mere scouting party, and demand, and have received, an acknowledged ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... He cannot seem smug, nor colourless, nor over-prosperous: he is too vivid and too vigorous. His childish vanity is nobly discounted by his childlike simplicity in facing big issues. The blue and gold which he wore so magnificently can never to us be the mere trappings of rank: they carry on them the shadows of battle smoke, and the rust of enviable wounds. Let us take his memory then gladly, and with true homage, rejoicing that its record of happiness appears as stainless ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... where none could have rolled down from above. They must have been ejected within the previous five or six months, but they now consisted of more or less rounded fragments of all sizes, from 0.75 of an inch in diameter to minute grains and mere dust. Dr. King witnessed the crumbling process whilst drying some perfect castings, which he afterwards sent me. Mr. Scott also remarks on the crumbling of the castings near Calcutta and on the mountains of Sikkim during ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... letter was written to Poppy, in which the noisy room was secured for the following Thursday, and as this was Monday, the girls were too busy packing to give many mere thoughts to poor ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... pouncing upon peaceful settlers by surprise, and generally in the night. Combatants and non-combatants were slaughtered together. By parading the number of slain, without mentioning that most of them were women and children, and by counting as forts mere private houses surrounded with palisades, Charlevoix and later writers have given the air of gallant exploits to acts which deserve a very different name. To attack military posts, like Casco and Pemaquid, was a legitimate act of war; but systematically to butcher helpless farmers and their ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... mere doctor. A man of science, of world-wide repute, is not like a general practitioner, with a red lamp and an apothecary's shop, where he ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the smallest detail, everything was laid open, clear before him in those astounding letters. To-night, it was vague at best. A man had been murdered. Connie Myers had committed the murder under circumstances that pointed strongly to some hidden motive behind and beyond the mere chance it afforded him to search his victim's house for the hidden cash. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... letter was a curiosity. It bore the Englishman's signature, and hinted at cats—at a Sending of cats. The mere words on paper were creepy and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... transported himself into Italy, and had drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not love-sick!" What a false idea would any thing of the mere whining amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he is really in Shakspeare—the noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet—with even less truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... night, they killed as many hogges as they needed. In this iourney they were well prouided of beefe and porke: And they were greatly troubled with Muskitos, especially in a lake, which is called the mere of Pia, which they had much adoe to passe from noone till night, the water might be some halfe league ouer, and to be swome about a crosse bowe shot, the rest came to the waste, and they waded vp to the knees in the mire, and in the bottome were cockle ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... and proper that this should be done. A mere obligation not to resort to war, without more, would almost imply that disputes between the parties to the obligation should {15} find some other method of settlement. For if some other method could not be found, feelings due to the continuance of the dispute might well arouse such passions in ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... difference and distinguish one from the other requires a little close inspection. The color of the faeces varies with the comb on which they feed, from white to brown and black. The size of these grains will be in proportion to the worm—from a mere speck to nearly as large as a pin-head: shape cylindrical, with obtuse ends: length about twice its diameter. By the quantity we can judge of the number. If the hive is full of combs the lower ends may appear perfect, while ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... this direction, Chellalu applied herself to bandaging. She would persuade someone to lend her a finger or a toe; the owner was assured it was sore—very sore. She would then proceed to bandage it to the best of her ability. But all this was mere play. What Chellalu's soul yearned for was a real knife, or even only a needle, provided it would prick and cause red blood to flow. Oh to be allowed to operate properly, as grown-up people do! Chellalu had seen them do it—had ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... "could not we start our little reading sociables, that were so pleasant last year? You know we want to keep some little pleasant thing going, and draw Lillie in with us. When a girl has been used to lively society, she can't come down to mere nothing; and I am afraid she will be wanting to rush off to New York, and ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "died three months ago, in England, whither he had emigrated when I was a mere child, leaving my poor mother to struggle along for a livelihood as best she could. My mother died last year, Monsieur, and I have hard a hard life; and now it seems that my father made a fortune in England and left it ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... is no great cleverness needed where there is a will to it. Yefim murdered people with viper's fat. That is such a poison that folks will die from the mere smell of it, let alone ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... more genuine memory of the real greatness of his race than the modern and almost gimcrack stars and garters that were pulled in Windsor Chapel. From modern knighthood has departed all shadow of chivalry; how far we have travelled from it can easily be tested by the mere suggestion that Sir Thomas Lipton, let us say, should wear his lady's sleeve round his hat or should watch his armour in the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The giving and receiving of the Garter among despots and diplomatists is now only part of that ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... consciousness of his own innocence he could not see where he had been at all to blame; they could certainly not accuse him of a misdemeanor on the strength of mere suspicion in the mind of Mr. Graylock, who had shown so plainly the strange and unreasonable dislike ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... sand to bearing, had made three hundred acres of desert a thing of breathing beauty from January to January, the ranch meant something to him that a northern farmer could not understand. And these three hundred acres were Oscar's world. He could not see beyond them. The dam was a mere adjunct to the Ames ranch. He would leave no stone unturned to see that it served his own ranch's needs as he saw them. If Sara saw this quality in Oscar and had any motive for playing on it, he could do infinite ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... deepened and widened wondrously. I sat often among the crowd of students in Kirchoff's lecture-room, watching the play of his delicate features as he unravelled mysteries which till he showed the way were a mere hopeless knot. Near him as he spoke, on a table were the wand, the rings, the vials, above all a spectroscope with its prisms, the apparatus with which the magician solved the universe. Once, as I stood near him, he indicated in a polite sentence, with a gesture ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... magistrates, male and female, should contrive secretly, by the use of certain lots, so to arrange the nuptial meeting, that the bad of either sex and the good of either sex might pair with their like; and there was to be no quarrelling on this account, for they would imagine that the union was a mere accident, and was to be ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... to endeavor to awake a response in her heart. But she held herself aloof from all. Proud of the Spanish blood in her veins, though that blood was but that of a common soldier, she counted herself to be of the gente de razon, far above the level of the mere Indians, her mother's people. And, indeed, in her finer features, quick glance, and more spirited bearing, the difference of strain was manifest: the Latin admixture, though only fractional, justified itself in evident supremacy over ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... to you, my friend," said I, "for this piece of information, and in order that you may understand something of the person you are speaking to beyond the mere exterior view, here is ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Mere matter of business," replied Orcutt. "Figure it out for yourself. If he stayed with you the best he could expect would be a fair salary. With us he was in position to dictate his own terms. They were stiff terms, too, for Wentworth is shrewd. But he has been worth all he cost. He is ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... faintest excuse for speaking. She had kept him from any avowal so completely that he might well, now, wonder if his self-control had not been owing far more to the intuition of hopelessness than to mere submission. Could she have kept him so silent, had she been the least little bit in love with him? He had, of course, been tremendously in love with her—it was bewildering to use the past tense, indeed—and she, of course, clever ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... admiraient surtout, c'etaient qu'ils fussent si traitables et si dociles sons la main de leurs cavaliers, qui les faisaient marcher a leur fantaisie. [333] Sa Majeste a encore envoye des chevaux, ecrivait en 1667 la mere Marie de l'Incarnation, et on nous a donne pour notre part deux belles juments et un cheval, tant pour la charrue que pour le charroi. [334] "L'annee 1670, le Roi envoya pareillement un etalon et douze ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... verdicts, undoubtedly, gave rise to a grave discussion, whether the law, as it now stands, was sufficiently stringent to have reached these cases; and though this question was decided in the affirmative, the mere entertaining of the doubt afforded another specious confirmation of the impression, that a singular fatality was attendant upon a state prosecution. This idea received another support from the case of Lord Cardigan, who, about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... epidemic of influenza. The strange disease was all over the country, in the cities, the villages, the cow-camps, the mines—everywhere. At first I thought Haught's informant was exaggerating a mere rumor. But when he told of the Indians dying on the reservations, and that in Flagstaff eighty people had succumbed in a few weeks—then I was thoroughly alarmed. Imperative was it indeed for me to make a decision at once. I made it instantly. We would break camp. So I told the men. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... up and down petite mere's avenue, alongside the Couillards' farm. Something weighed on her spirit like a presentiment of the long boredom of the monotonous life ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... was otherwise. She was old England, through and through. The conversation cheered him to an unusual degree—among all those foreign people he felt strangely drawn towards this wistful lady who could talk so naturally and conjure up, by the mere power of words, a breath of his own homestead in the Midlands. He might have been sitting with an elder sister just then, eating strawberries and cream and watching a tennis match on some shady green lawn. He was happy; happier still when Angelina once more floated into his ken and, noticing ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... label on the bottle under discussion. "Well, as a writer, I might say that it depends how far you travel up or down Green River. But as a mere individual enjoying the blessings of companionship, I should say, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... that tree as the hierarchy—the priesthood—he has not reached the entire truth. He does not touch the ground which supports the tree. Polygamy is but one development of the doctrine of woman's created inferiority, the constant tendency of which is to make her a mere slave, under every form of religion extant, and of which the complex marriage of the Oneida Community ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... unwholesome fable of Dr. Faustus, with its rebuke to the mere arrogance of learning, is sound and stringent enough; but it is not a fair sample of the mediaeval soul at its happiest and sanest. The heart of the true Middle Ages might be found far better, for instance, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... leave, madam," said I; "that is my office. Allow me, and I hope to make both head and tail of it for you. But let me give you first a mere general, and indeed a more applicable motto for my story. It is this—from no worse authority ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... you are a thinking man, and yet you lie idly there. You could do something, and you do nothing. You lie on the top with full paunch and say, 'To lie idle—so must it be; because all that people ever do—is all vanity, mere nonsense ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the house still went on. Set a business going, and it is astonishing how long it will continue to move by the force of mere daily routine. People flocked in for shirts and stockings, and young women came there to seek their gloves and ribbons, although but little was done to attract them, either in the way of advertisement or of excellence of supply. Throughout this wretched month or two Robinson ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... leaving home, were perverted, by the vilest misconstruction, to support an accusation of treachery and falsehood which would have stung any man to the quick. Andrew felt, what I felt, that if these imputations were not withdrawn before his generous intentions toward his brother took effect, the mere fact of their execution would amount to a practical acknowledgment of the justice of Michael's charge against him. He wrote to his brother in the most forbearing terms. The answer received was as offensive as words could make it. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... that manual workers have to concentrate their minds and their attention on their work or they would not be able to do it at all. His talk about employers being not only the masters but the "friends" of their workmen is also mere claptrap because he knows as well as we do, that no matter how good or benevolent an employer may be, no matter how much he might desire to give his men good conditions, it is impossible for him to do so, because he has to compete ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... your own personal activity is a mere preliminary to the activity of Mrs. Omicron. Without hers, yours would be absurd, ridiculous, futile, supremely silly. By spending she completes and justifies your labour; she crowns your life by spending. You married her so that she might spend. You wanted some one to ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... appetites and usually secured the desired revelation of the whereabouts of the hidden ivory or other goods under the torture of the burning feet, and divers other ingenious methods. Of late this practice had proved so satisfactory that the mere threat was usually sufficient. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... of it all? A larger plant with more machines to buy and more men to work them and to be overseen and to be paid, a few more figures in a Bank Book—what else? Jack's tastes were simple. He despised the ostentation of wealth in the accumulation of mere things. He had only pity for the plunger and for the loose liver contempt. Why should he tie himself to a desk, a well appointed desk it is true, but still a desk, in a four-walled room, a much finer room than his father ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... please, belle mere," said Edward, and he motioned to a gentleman, who stood a few paces behind his chair, and who, from the entrance of the mechanician, had seemed to observe him with intense interest. "Master Nevile, attend this wise man; supply his wants, and hark, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not take up the idea, Mr. Lawrence?" asked his employer. "House finishing and furnishing is fast coming to be a fine art. An intelligent, harmonious beauty is demanded. We are leaving behind the complacency of mere money in our adornments, and asking for something that evinces thought and refinement. I am sure you could succeed if you once ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... are extremely abundant, producing figs, nutmegs, and oranges, besides the fruits common to the rest of Polynesia. The inhabitants present the most ugly specimen extant of the Papuan race; the men wear no covering, and the women, who are used as mere beasts of burden; wear only a petticoat, made from the plantain leaf. Their canoes are more rudely constructed than in most of the other islands; and, on the whole, these people seem to be among the most degraded of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... gates for the rood screen with the loft and rood. But this, it might plausibly be contended, was merely an adaptation of the old idea to modern requirements, and it would have been quite difficult to explain why the whole building, from the mere mortar setting between the stones to the Gothic gas standards, was a mysterious and elaborate blasphemy. The canticles were sung to Joll in B flat, the chants were 'Anglican,' and the sermon was the gospel ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... were closely surrounded on all sides, not to be released until they had decided to give one another their hands. "God be with you, Ivan Nikiforovitch and Ivan Ivanovitch! declare upon your honour now, that what you quarrelled about were mere trifles, were they not? Are you not ashamed of yourselves ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... stringent obligations to us who stand, however unworthy, in the place of the generations that are gone, as the hearers and ministers of the Word of God. Let me put two or three very simple and homely exhortations. First, see to it, brother, that you accept that Word. By acceptance I do not mean a mere negative attitude, which is very often the result of lack of interest, the negative attitude of simply not rejecting; but I mean the opening not only of your minds but of your hearts to it. For if what I have been saying is true, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... satisfaction. The joy of being able to meet Ylajali cleanly and honourably, and of feeling I could look her in the face, ran away with me. I was not conscious of any pain. My head was clear and buoyant; it was as if it were a head of mere light that rested and gleamed on my shoulders. I felt inclined to play the wildest pranks, to do something astounding, to set the whole town in a ferment. All up through Graendsen I conducted myself like a ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... at the door, and when the commandant said, "Come in," one of their automatic soldiers appeared, and by his mere presence announced that breakfast was ready. In the dining-room, they met three other officers of lower rank: a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheunebarg, and Count von Eyrick a very short, fair-haired ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... expounded, "the progression from, and the regression of all things to, the One, and the entire domination of the One,"[15] and, further, these different Beings were evoked, and appeared, sometimes to teach, sometimes, by Their mere presence, to elevate and purify. "The Gods," says Iamblichus, "being benevolent and propitious, impart their light to theurgists in unenvying abundance, calling upwards their souls to themselves, procuring them a union with themselves, and accustoming them, while they are yet in body, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... day that was passing over him required to be provided for. His fight for fame was long and hard; and his life was interrupted, like that of other men, by sickness and pain. In the stoop in his gait, in the lines in his face, you saw the man who had reached his Ithaca by no mere yachting over summer seas. And hence, no doubt, the utter absence in him of all that conventionalism which marks the man of quiet experience and habitual conformity to the world. In the streets, a stranger would have known Jerrold to be a remarkable man; you would have gone away speculating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of the lost woman told its terrible tale in that one word. Invited to rest herself in the hotel, she asked leave to remain where she was; the mere effort of rising was too much for her now. Catherine said the parting words kindly. "I believe in your good intentions; I believe in ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... seek knowledge rather than attempt any laborious application of it. We love to add to our stock of ideas, facts, or even notions of things, provided moderate pains will suffice; but to put our knowledge in practice is too often esteemed servile, or eschewed as mere drudgery. Useful activities flatter pride, and gratify the imagination, too little. But of what avail, ordinarily, is the possession of truth, unless as light to direct us in the ways of beneficent labor, for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Flossie had forgotten about in the excitement and, after eating them, the two children made another snow man; for the first one, and his "little boy" as they called him, had melted into mere lumps. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... the custom of the naive people of those days to torture a wolf if they caught one. They put him to death with the same refinements which were requisitioned for human criminals. This meant nothing to the wolf. The mere fact that he had been caught was what tortured him. And so I think it will be with the Germans when they find that they have failed. They have built up their power on the absurd hypothesis that they are men. Their punishment will be in discovering that they never were anything but low animals ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of gesture, also, in a measure, bespeak and proclaim commanding oratory. The power, moreover, which with the Indian resides in mere gesture, as a medium for disclosing and laying bare the thoughts of his mind, is truly remarkable. Observe the Indian interpreter in Court, while in the exercise of that branch of his duty which requires that the evidence of an English-speaking ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... plants which had been subjected to the same conditions and had been self-fertilised during the seven previous generations, did not effect the least good; for the intercrossed grandchildren were actually shorter than the self-fertilised grandchildren, in the ratio of 100 to 107. We here see that the mere act of crossing two distinct plants does not by itself benefit the offspring. This case is almost the converse of that in the last paragraph, on which the offspring profited so greatly by a cross with a fresh stock. A similar trial was made with the descendants of Hero in the ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... terribly eloquent. To tell the truth, my lonely musings, before you came in, were eloquent enough, in their way. What do you know of anything but this strange, terrible world that surrounds you? How do you know that your faith is not a mere crazy castle in the air; one of those castles that we are called fools for building when we lodge ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as "Offe Caraccas," or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as "62o 17' ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into a fruit-garden, demand that all unproductive trees should give way as fast as possible, in a civilized country, to other trees which afford food to the inhabitants? Are there not desolate countries enough in which to grow trees for the mere purposes of timber? Are there not soils and situations even in England, where none but timber-trees can grow? And is not the timber of many fruit-trees as useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... condition with what I at first expected it should be; how I should have done, if I had got nothing out of the ship, that I must have perished before I had caught fish or turtles; or lived, had I found them, like a mere savage, by eating them raw, and pulling them in pieces with my claws, like a beast. I next compared my station to that which I deserved: how undutiful I had been to my parents; how destitute ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... and to convince all and sundry that they were destined not to rule, but to serve him as the ruler. As he did precisely the contrary, and the matter came to look quite as if the object was to place the government in the hands not of an intelligent and vigorous master, but of the mere -canaille-, the men of material interests, terrified to death at the prospect of such confusion, again attached themselves closely to the senate in presence of this common danger. While Gaius Gracchus, clearly perceiving that no government could be overthrown ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sincerities and insincerities—were the subject of his wholly brilliant analysis. He rather admired the clever opportunist, I think, so long as he was not mean in view or petty, yet he scorned and even despised the commercial viewpoint or trade reactions of a man like McKinley. Rulers ought to be above mere commercialism. Once when I asked him why he disliked McKinley so much he replied laconically, "The voice is the voice of McKinley, but the hands—are the hands of Hanna." Roosevelt seemed to amuse him always, to ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... of dress, are stamped in my memory. She is seated on the extreme left of the mirror. A sort of shadowy figure crouches down beside her— I can dimly discern that it is a man—and then behind them is cloud, in which I see figures—figures which move. It is not a mere picture upon which I look. It is a scene in life, an actual episode. She crouches and quivers. The man beside her cowers down. The vague figures make abrupt movements and gestures. All my fears were swallowed up in my interest. It was maddening to ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the eleven that were killed at this place. She remained on her hiding place till just before the arrival of a party, who were in pursuit of the murderers, when she came down and fled to a swamp, where, a mere child as she was, with the horrors of the late scene before her, she lay concealed until the next day, when seeing a party go up to the house, she came up, and on being asked how she escaped, replied with the utmost simplicity, ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... was troubled about the uncertainty of there being at the Corners any repair shop. He knew it was a small settlement. At most, the repair garage would be very small, and perhaps the mechanic a mere country "jack-of-all-trades," who ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... we rise above the mere workaday world of manual labor, with its sense-dulling disgust, its vexatious monotony, and its frightful menace against law and justice. While jurists merely studied the language of dead laws, expounding them with effort unceasing, and, one may complain, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... heavenly citizenship is ours in no mere play of the imagination but in most solid substance, is because He is there for whom we look. Where Christ is, is our Mother-country, our Fatherland, according to His own promise, 'I go to prepare a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hesitation, and then the boys struck the ice almost at the same time. There was a ringing hissing sound, mingled with a peculiar splitting as if the ice were parting from where they started across the mere to the Toft, and then they were going at a rapidly ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... especially well "The Ray of Madness," "Cold Light," "From the Ocean Depths" and its sequel "Into the Ocean's Depths," "Brigands of the Moon," and "Murder Madness." Of course, I like the others too. I am only a mere girl (that accounts for this poor typewriting)—only ten years old—but I know my likes and dislikes.—Ellen Laura Nightingale, 223 So. Main ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... being damp or wet. To keep these extremities warm and dry is a great preventative against the almost endless list of disorders which come from a "slight cold." Many imagine if their feet are not thoroughly wet, there will be no harm arising from mere dampness, not knowing that the least dampness is absorbed into the sole, and is attracted nearer the foot itself by its heat, and ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette |
