"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oppose us with other arguments, arguments which, indeed, receive their force from folly and credulity; but what more powerful assistance can be desired? They promise not mere negative advantages, not an exemption from remote oppression, or an escape from slavery, which, as it was yet never felt, is very little dreaded; they offer an immediate augmentation of dominion, and an extension of power; they propose new tracts of commerce, and open new sources ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... to talk in that odd strain for the mere joy of it, and there was in his voice the God-given vanity of bird ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... poet did not sing for the mere love of singing: he knew nothing about "Art for Art's sake". His object in singing appears to have been intensely practical. The world was inhabited by countless hordes of spirits, which were believed to be ever exercising themselves to influence ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... (1) analysable only by abstraction, and (2) are compound of deduction and induction, i.e. rational and empirical. An illustration of his empirical tendency is found in his attitude to the Absolute and the Self. The "Absolute'' doctrines he regarded as a mere disguise of failure, a dishonest attempt to clothe ignorance in the pretentious garb of mystery. The Self as a primary, determining entity, he would not therefore admit. He represented an empiricism ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... them, as if keeping watch over the Blue Mountains, the far-distant Idaho hills, the near-by forests of Oregon, and the puny, man-made structures at its feet, appeared to have a lofty disdain of them and the burrowings into its mammoth sides, as if all ravagers were mere parasites, mad to uncover its secrets of gold, and futile, if successful, to wreak the slightest damage on ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... enough, Mr Clennam, I don't doubt; but, hear reason. It almost always happens, in these cases, that some insignificant matter pushes itself in front and makes much of itself. Now, I find there's a little one out—a mere Palace Court jurisdiction—and I have reason to believe that a caption may be made upon that. I wouldn't be taken ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... waste your efforts on the mere gratification of revenge, was but natural when you did but know of the result of one deed in the plan of emancipation. Then it might have been enough that you should destroy the breakers and tear down ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... Sir, do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" he went on to inquire. "Tonight," replied Shih-yin, "is the mid-autumn feast, generally known as the full-moon festival; and as I could not help thinking that living, as you my worthy brother are, as a mere stranger in this Buddhist temple, you could not but experience the feeling of loneliness. I have, for the express purpose, prepared a small entertainment, and will be pleased if you will come to my mean abode to have a glass of wine. But I wonder ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... indices, loose-leaf systems, adding machines, and the like. Of course it requires more clerks and stenographers, and possibly we are a bit slower than some. Your father says, however, that he prefers conducting his business as a gentleman should, rather than to make a mere machine of it. His idea," said Rangar, "of a gentleman in business is one who refuses to make use of abbreviations ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... about ten o'clock opposite the campong of the rajah. It was a good deal larger than any that they had passed on the way up, but the houses were mere huts, with the exception of a large wooden structure, which they at once concluded was the residence of the rajah. As soon as the Serpent turned the last bend of the river before reaching the place, the ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... signification which embraces every description of intercourse resulting from the exercise of "man's natural inclination" for association, while with the other TRADE has reference to no idea, beyond that of the mere pedler who buys in the cheapest market and sells in the dearest one. The system of the one is perfectly harmonious, and tends toward peace among men. The other is a mass of discords, tending toward war among the men and the nations ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... 2d of April. Mr. Calhoun, who acknowledged it on the 6th, referred it to the Topographical Bureau. Some question, connected with the establishment of an agency in Florida, complicated my matter. Otherwise it appeared to be a mere question of time. The Secretary of War left me no room to doubt that his feelings were altogether friendly. Mr. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... lexicographers, uncertain which of the two renderings was the true one, called it in their vocabularies the "Rhine horse or hoss," and thence the present still more senseless corruption, "Rhinoceros." This is, of course, mere theory, but it is supported by the well authenticated parallel case of the Nylghau—more properly Nile Ghaut—which derived its name from the singular fact that it was never seen by any human being ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... beacon fires on the near hill tops, and, far in the East, roses over the Sierran snow. Birds twittering in the alder fringes a mile below, and the creaking of wagon wheels,—the wagon itself a mere cloud of dust in the distant road,—were heard distinctly. Then the melting pot was solemnly broken by Don Jose, and the glowing incandescent mass turned ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... correction (even tho we may not expect it) involves the use on our part of an ideal standard. Rationalists themselves are, as individuals, sometimes sceptical enough to admit the abstract possibility of their own present opinions being corrigible and revisable to some degree, so the fact that the mere NOTION of an absolute standard should seem to them so important a thing to claim for themselves and to deny to us is not easy to explain. If, along with the notion of the standard, they could also claim its exclusive warrant for ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... run—fortunately for him a very fast and long one—with imperturbable pluck and with no further misadventure. "Nasty cut that," I said to him as we trained back together, "you'd better get it properly looked to in town." "Pooh," said JOHNNIE, "it's a mere scratch. Did you see the brute take me into the tree? By Jove, it must have been a comic sight!" and with that he set off again on another burst ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... certain amount of talk in diplomatic, or shall we say semi-diplomatic circles, about King Konrad Karl, mere ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... and ask yourselves honestly what theory of Christ's nature and person and work explains that fact, and saves Him from the charge of folly and blasphemy? 'He that believeth upon Me shall never hunger.' Ah, my brother! He was no mere man who said that. He that spake from out of the cloud to the Apostle on the road to Damascus, and said, 'Sanctified by faith that is in Me,' was no mere man. Christ was our brother and a man, but He was the Son of God, the divine Redeemer. The Object of faith is Christ; and as Object of faith ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Squittini, withdrawing the names of their adversaries from the purses, and filling them with those of their friends. Taking advice from the ruin of their enemies, they considered that to allow the great offices to be filled by mere chance of drawing, did not afford the government sufficient security, they therefore resolved that the magistrates possessing the power of life and death should always be chosen from among the leaders of their ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... appears to me, in spite of all this, not completely exhausted. It might not thus be absolutely ruled out that more than a mere superstition lurks behind the folk belief which conceives of a "magnetic" influence by which the moon attracts the sleeper. Such a relationship is indeed conceivable when we consider the motor overexcitability of all sleep walkers and the effecting ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... supernatural serenity of his peace in the presence of such a bereavement that led his attending physician to say to a friend, "I have never before seen so unhuman a man." Yes, unhuman indeed, though far from inhuman, lifted above the weakness of mere humanity by a power ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... propose to do—what we have indeed done—is to make two of these terms constant in connection with a diagram, here given, so that a mere inspection may indicate, with its aid, the focus of a lens. All that is required in making use of it is to plant the camera perfectly upright, and place in front of it, at exactly fifteen feet from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... were panthers larger than that one. According to Uncle Billy the Wardsboro panther was a mere kitten to the one that he once encountered when he was a boy of fourteen. Our old Squire, who then was fifteen years old, was with him and shared the experience. But try as we would, we never could induce him to tell the story. "You get Uncle Billy ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... greater than that of the moon or electricity upon it—that extreme light of the world—the happiness of a human being who blesses in a moment of prosperity the hour he was born. He knew for the first time in his life that happiness is as true as misery, and no mere creation of a fairy tale. No trees of the Garden of Eden could have outshone for him those oaks and birches. No gold or precious stones of any mines on earth can equal the light of the little star of happiness in ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... want reminding! And stranger still that a few verses lower down we should find the Apostles remembering no prophetic saying, but regarding the story of the women as mere idle tales. What shall we say? Are not these differences precisely similar to those which we are continually meeting with, when a case of exaggeration comes before us? Can we accept BOTH the stories? Is this one of those cases in which all would be made clear if we ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... of being able to cross it, and, availing myself of this southerly wind, to run along the coast to the northward, and reach Port Jackson in a few days; but as we drew near the meridian of the south cape, the gale increased to a mere tempest, attended with thick hazy weather, and a most astonishing high sea; this brought us under a reefed fore-sail, balanced mizzen, and the three ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... doll with a giggling appreciation of the importance of her situation in such grand company, and a half-frightened gladness at being so near MacTaggart) he seemed more mysterious and wonderful than ever. Mrs. Petullo, without looking at his half-averted face, knew by the mere magnetic current from his cold shoulder that of her he was just now weary, that with his company as a whole he was bored, and that some interest beyond that noisy ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... witnesses declared he had any concern in hiring the vessel; that the papers were not found upon him; that there ought to be two credible witnesses to every fact, whereas the whole proof against him rested on similitude of hands and mere supposition. He was, nevertheless, found guilty. Ashton behaved with great intrepidity and composure. He owned his purpose of going to France in pursuance of a promise he had made to general Worden, who, on his death-bed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... for a day the enclosed owing to the arrival of your most interesting letter. I knew it was a mere chance whether you could inform me on the points required; but no one other person has so often responded to my miscellaneous queries. I believe I have now in my greenhouse L. trigynum (155/7. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... existence trembles in the balance, and through which it must safely pass before it can be firmly established as a great fact in history, a tangible landmark of progress, a controlling influence in the affairs of humanity. Nor is this crisis ever a mere fortuitous circumstance, but the necessary consequence of conflicting ideas and of untried systems. It is that point in the great process of assimilation when different and hitherto almost discordant elements tremble on the verge either of a harmonious blending for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... upon which a higher type of citizenship might be built. The development of character appears, to us, to be of far greater importance, in the preparation of the youth for the discharge of the duties of public life, than is mere political instruction; for only by introducing loftier ethical standards can the grade and quality ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... mere empirical laws, and laws in which there is no direct evidence of causation, on the same footing of certainty as laws of cause and effect, an error which is at the root of perhaps the greater number of bad inductions, is exemplified only in its grossest form in the kind of generalizations ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... who never tell lies for either themselves or for others, or in jest or for exciting laughter, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who never tell lies for earning their subsistence or for earning merit or through mere caprice, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who utter words that are smooth and sweet and faultless, and who welcome all whom they meet with sincerity, succeed in ascending to Heaven. They who never utter words that are harsh and bitter and cruel. and who are free from deceitfulness ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... again, this blessed day, if you would give us a chance!" exclaimed Sir Gervaise, striking the back of one hand into the palm of the other, with a sudden energy, that showed how much he was excited by the mere recollection of the scene. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the intercourse between the two blind youths consisted of a mere word or two tossed by Keith to the other who gave a still shorter word in reply. And even this was not every day, for John McGuire was not out on the porch every day. But as the month passed, he came more and more frequently, and one evening Mrs. McGuire confided ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... your daughter has been brought up in the belief that you died when she was a mere infant. Consider the effect of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... became more and more distinct, and soon they were in full view of the most marvellous landscape that human eyes had ever beheld. The distances were tremendous. Mountains, compared with which the Alps or even the Andes would have seemed mere hillocks, towered up out of ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... of gliding, and the lightness of their following; all of which I could see at once, through knowledge of our own farm-sleds; which we employ in lieu of wheels, used in flatter districts. When I had heard all this from her, a mere chit of a girl as she was, unfit to make a snowball even, or to fry snow pancakes, I looked down on her with amazement, and began to wish a little that I had given more time ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... place at sunrise or sunset, as it often does, one gets the splendor of the apocalypse. There will be cloud pillars miles high, snow-capped, glorified, and preserving an orderly perspective before the unbarred door of the sun, or perhaps mere ghosts of clouds that dance to some pied piper of an unfelt wind. But be it day or night, once they have settled to their work, one sees from the valley only the blank wall of their tents stretched along the ranges. To get the real effect of a ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... Sebastian and Onaelia in order to placate the Queen and finally in 5.1 when he tells the King that the murder has been carried out. Scene 3.3 shows a further unedifying side of Balthazar when he bursts in on the King and stabs a servant and refuses to express remorse as the servant is a mere groom. On a different note, the character is also used to comic effect, especially in 4.2 when he acts out bawdy dialogue with Cornego. His last significant act is to dissuade the faction from attempting ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... tried to pray; but the habits of a whole life are not to be thrown off at will; and he who endeavors to regain, in his extremity, the moments that have been lost, will find, in bitter reality, that he has been heaping mountains on his own soul, by the mere practice of sin, which were never laid there by the original fall of his race. Jack, however, had disburthened her spirit of a load that had long oppressed it, and, burying her face in the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... that certain words make him sick; that certain other words he reserves for his own use,—"meticulous" once a year, "adscititious" once in a life time. This explains why editors write so little. In the end, out of mere good nature, or seeing the futility of it all, they contribute their words to ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... in, and the employment of such mere children in the mines is forbidden, but at that time it had not been changed, and if a boy was big enough to shut a door he was big enough to go into ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... Aniela, and am even now asking myself, "Have I gone mad?" I did not hold her close to my heart, did not hear an avowal of love. I was spurned without a moment's hesitation; all her modesty risen in arms, she reduced me to a mere nothing. What is it? Am I a fool without brains, or has she no heart? What am I fighting against? What are the obstacles in my way? Why does she spurn me? My head is in such a chaotic state that I can neither think, write, nor reason. I only repeat to myself, over and over ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... applicants was being disposed of by his trained assistants. To the advertising expert's offices had come that day but three cases difficult enough to be referred to the Ad-Visor himself. Two were rather intricate financial lures which Average Jones was able to dispose of by a mere "Don't." The third was a Spiritualist announcement behind which lurked a shrewd plot to entrap a senile millionaire into a marriage with the medium. These having been settled, the expert was free to muse upon a paragraph which had appeared in all the important ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... before the most renowned robbers, before the most famous rogues, of France and Navarre, and who is immediately expected at Brest and at Toulon, where he goes by order of the government. Twenty sous! A mere nothing, gents." ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... now, before going out of the door, he fixed on her his baleful glance. His aspect was more full of meaning than could have been any words. A horrible power, of which he was boastfully conscious, shone from his little, pointed eyes. His mere presence was deadly. Plainly as if he had spoken was the significance of his long gaze. Any one ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... little chalet we look upon what seems no mere cleft in a mountain chain, but in the vast globe itself. This huge hollow, brought about by some strange geological perturbation, is the valley of Muenster, no longer a part of French territory, but of Prussian Elsass. The road we have come by lies behind us, but another as formidable ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... recognise you, my boy," replied M. Moriaz, "although, to tell the truth, you have greatly changed. When you left us you were a mere youth." ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... not fall into the common error of didactic writers, of laying upon life more than it will bear; but he insists that it shall at least bear the fruits of integrity, truth, honour, justice, self-denial, and brotherly charity. Over and above the mere literary charm of his works, too—and herein, perhaps, lies no small part of the secret of his popularity—the warm heart and thoroughly urbane nature of the man are felt instinctively by his readers, and draw them to ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... representations. Because our minds delight greatly in song and harmony, the early poets used meter and rhythm better to incline the soul of man to virtue and morality. It is impossible, however, for a person ignorant of logic to be a true poet. A mere concern with rhythm and the composition of sentences profits nothing, for what is the use of painting and decorating a ship if it is going to be swamped in the storm and never come to port? The poets who endeavor to place ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... said presently, "whom do you mean by the bird of red plumage? Is it a mere figure of speech? Or has it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... what I my self have seen and done; and have caused the same to be printed for you, Candid Readers, out of mere Liberality, gratis communicating it, according to that of Seneca: I desire in this to know somewhat, that I may teach others. Si cum hac Exceptione detur Sapientia, ut illlam inclusam tencam, abjiciam, &c. But if any man doubt of the real truth of this ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... pas trop le Sieur L'eandre. She cries her eyes to scarlet. He has made her four visits, and is so in love, that he writes to her every other day. 'Tis a strange match. After offering him to all the great lumps of gold in all the alleys of the city, they fish out a woman of quality at last with a mere twelve thousand pound. She objects his loving none of her sex but the four queens in a pack of cards, but he promises to abandon White's and both ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... half an hour to a single man at the end of each swath or work. Supposing the mowers made twenty in ten hours from bottom to top of the field, here is the loss of one whole day for one man, or one sixth of the whole aggregate time applied to the harvesting of the crop, given to the mere running down that hill of six pairs of legs for no earthly purpose but to cut inward instead of outward, as we do. The grain-ricks in Scotland are nearly all round and quite small. Every one of them is rounded up at the top and fitted with a Mandarin-looking hat of ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the traders left their shops; the women forsook their children; swords, hatchets, and sticks were seized; but the obstacle which had stayed Salammbo stayed them. How could the veil be taken back? The mere sight of it was a crime; it was of the nature of the gods, and contact ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... finally, the monarch will soon be obliged, if we pay any attention to the chatter of certain scribblers, to give to every individual a share in the throne or to adopt certain revolutionary ideas, which are mere Punch and Judy shows for the public, manipulated by a band of self-styled patriots, riff-raff, always ready to sell their conscience for a million francs, for an honest woman, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... influences of sun and wind make no difference to the life of a tree. We have to bear carefully in mind that those who sow an act reap a habit, who sow a habit reap a character, who sow a character reap a destiny both in this world and in that which is eternal. It is mere selfishness, unconscious, no doubt, but none the less fatal, when parents to suit their own convenience omit to inculcate obedience, self-restraint, habits of order and unselfishness in their children. Youth is the time when the soul is apt to be shaken by sorrow's power and when stormy passions ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... 1875. It may be just possible, however, that this is the same bird recorded by Miss C.B. Carey, and that Mr. MacCulloch only heard of it in the May of the following year, and noted it accordingly. This, however, is mere supposition on my part, for which I have no reason except that both birds were said to have been killed in Herm, and both ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... social virtues as the consummation of happiness here and hereafter, suggests an object sufficiently attractive for the bulk of mankind; but Buddhism presents along with it no adequate knowledge of the means which are indispensable for its attainment. In confiding all to the mere strength of the human intellect and the enthusiastic self-reliance and determination of the human heart, it makes no provision for defence against those powerful temptations before which ordinary resolution must give way; and affords no consoling support under those overwhelming afflictions by ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... runners in their great hats shaped like inverted bowls, their incomprehensible blue tights, and their short blue over-shirts with badges or characters in white upon them, tearing along, their yellow faces streaming with perspiration, laughing, shouting, and avoiding collisions by a mere shave. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... much more than literary criticism as that type of writing had been generally conceived before his time. In place of the mere classification of books and the passing of a judgment upon them as good or bad, he sought to illuminate and explain by throwing light on a literary work from a study of the life, circumstances, and aim of the writer, and by a comparison with ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... we learn that, when an interval occurred inoccupied by his princely duties, Alfred stole into the quietude of his study to seek comfort and instruction from the pages of those choice volumes, which comprised his library. But Alfred was not a mere bookworm, a devourer of knowledge without purpose or without meditation of his own, he thought with a student's soul well and deeply upon what he read, and drew from his books those principles of philanthropy, and those high resolves, which did such honor to the Saxon monarch. He viewed ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... fare the Kyng my father and the good lady my mother. Coment se porte le Roy mon pere et la bonne dame ma mere. ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... would appear on the face of it that the efforts of the Government are absolutely impotent, the notices so much waste paper, and the 'rights of liberty' mere empty phrases of no meaning or significance to the Chinese mind ... A Chinawoman would never dream of effecting her escape for the purpose of evading the blood money. Of course such transactions are absolutely illegal, there is no tittle of reason why the ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... to have been abandoned; or, what is more probable, has never been seriously attempted, the visible roadways from village to village being mere ox-wagon and pack-donkey tracks, crossing the wheat-fields and uncultivated tracts in any direction. The soil is a loose, black loam, which the rain converts into mud, through which I have to trundle, wooden scraper ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... so from the instant when, crouching behind the vines of the cucumber-house, with all her senses strained, she perceived by the mere rustling of the leaves that Claude was making his way down the long, green aisle. She knew then that it was the end. If there had been no other cause of rupture between them, the girl who kept ten or twelve servants would have created it. Rosie ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the sane way to put it. Yes, I know that you can. If you'll only not be satisfied with the results that come easy, you will make a reputation. Not a mere Park Row reputation, but the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... appreciation of the poetry. In later times we suffer from the opposite difficulty. Our descendants will be able to see the general characteristics of the Victorian age better than we, who unconsciously accept our own peculiarities, like the air we breathe, as mere matters of course. Meanwhile a Tennyson and a Browning strike us less as the organs of a society than by the idiosyncrasies which belong to them as individuals. But in the normal case, the relation of the two studies is obvious. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... wanderers in the sky because of their ever changing position. Sharply distinguished from them, therefore, are the "fixed" stars. These appear as mere points of light and always maintain the same relative positions in the heavens. Thousands of years ago the "Great Dipper" hung in the northern sky just as it will hang tonight and as it will hang for thousands of years to come. Yet ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... mere boy," he exclaimed. "You are a bold lad and 'tis a pity you have fallen into our hands. But that is enough. You admit, then, that you entered here to ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... virtue. He will go in just for a moment to pass the time of day with his friend the publican and see his last brand of books, but not to buy—I mean to drink—and then he comes across a little volume, the smallest and slimmest of volumes, a mere trifle of a thing, and not dear, but a thing which does not often turn up and which would just round off his collection at a particular point. It is only a mere taste, not downright drinking; but ah me, it sets him on fire again, and I ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... believed all priests impostors or fools, all religion a mockery and a lie. But now, finding how utterly his own strength had failed him when tried by the rude test of physical pain, he began to think that this Religion which was talked of so largely was not a mere bundle of legend and formulae, but must have in it something vital and sustaining. Broken in spirit and weakened in body, with faith in his own will shaken, he longed for something to lean upon, and turned—as all men turn when in such case—to the Unknown. Had now there been at hand some ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Bowne's conception of the physical organism as but an instrument for the expression of the inner, personal life, just as the telegraphic apparatus is the instrument for the expression of messages, is erroneous, because body is not a mere instrument of inner personal life, but an essential constituent of it. Who can deny that one's physical conditions determine one's character or personality? Who can overlook the fact that one's bodily conditions positively act upon one's personal life? There is no physical organism ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... present to rake up the still smouldering ashes of that controversy. The time will come when it will be reviewed in the calm light of history, and with the assistance of materials that are not now before the public. I shall here content myself with a mere sketch. In the earlier stages of their foreign policy the Government appear to have been perfectly agreed. Lord Derby fully concurred in the purchase of the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal, which was one of the most successful strokes ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... it down to their own want of knowledge. The idea is true. Thought is the great power of the Universe. But to make it practically available we must know something of the principles by which it works—that it is not a mere vaporous indefinable influence floating around and subject to no known laws, but that on the contrary, it follows laws as uncompromising as those of mathematics, while at the same time allowing unlimited ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... head of an army, on which depended the fate of Austria and the empire. Born of a noble family, he relied solely upon his own merit, without soliciting court favour; he aspired after the highest preferment, and succeeded by mere dint of superior worth. His progress from the station of a subaltern was slow and silent; his promotion to the chief command was received with universal esteem and applause. Cautious, steady, penetrating, and sagacious, he was opposed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... considering the nature of the text. The next number ("Quis est Homo"), for two sopranos, is equally familiar. It is based upon a lovely melody, first given out by the first soprano, and then by the second, after which the two voices carry the theme through measure after measure of mere vocal embroidery, closing with an extremely brilliant cadenza in genuine operatic style. The fourth number is the bass aria "Pro peccatis," the two themes in which are very earnest and even serious in character, and come nearer to the church style than any other ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... spectator, who was not, and did not aspire to be, an actor in the occurrences he witnessed, but who lived on terms of intimacy with many of the most active politicians of his times, in both the leading parties in the State, although he strictly belonged to neither of them, and was wholly indifferent to mere party interests. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the working classes, owing to the absence of opportunity for higher education, to the disadvantage of the nation. In consequence of these fundamental differences, the catchword 'equality of opportunity' is meaningless and mere claptrap in the absence of any equality to respond to such opportunity. What is wanted is not equality of opportunity, but education adapted to individual potentiality; and if the time and money now spent in the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... precious stones, except through gross carelessness—a fault seldom, if ever, met with in the trade. For example—a piece of rock-crystal, chemically coloured, and cut to represent a ruby, might appear so like one as to deceive a novice, but the mere application to its surface of a real ruby, which is hardness 9, or a No. 9 needle, would reveal too deep or powdery a scratch; also its possibility of being scratched by a topaz or a No. 8 needle, would alone prove it false, ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... mere employment under State authority are not disqualified; such as commissioners to lay out roads, commissioners of public works, visitors of State institutions, directors of State institutions, examiners of banks, notaries public, and commissioners to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... equivalent is elaborately treated by Leonardo. But both text and diagrams (as Pl. IV, 1-3 and Pl. V) must at once convince the student that the distinction he makes between ombra primitiva and ombra dirivativa is not merely justifiable but scientific. Ombra dirivativa is by no means a mere abstract idea. This is easily proved by repeating the experiment made by Leonardo, and by filling with smoke the room in which the existence of the ombra dirivativa is investigated, when the shadow becomes visible. Nor is it difficult ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... did with great ferocity. All this time there had been growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife, his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to great power in the court. He had persuaded ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... The West was the place for young men with ambitions. That expression had been ding- donged into their ears by college mates from Los Angeles and Seattle ever since they had learned that these two towns were something more than mere dots ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind. Odyssey, lib. iv. This nepenthe was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, De Mere, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to find that it was in reality a flying lemur. It had a largely developed membrane, connecting the fore limbs with the others, and the hind limbs with the tail. With this apparatus the animal can fly from one bough to another separated by a wide distance, which it could not possibly reach by a mere leap. Dan caught sight of it as it was making its way through the forest; but at each flight it reached a bough somewhat lower than the one it had left, till it pitched very near the ground, when, closing the membrane round its body, it ran nimbly up the trunk, its sharp claws ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... This crime was committed in his palace by the husband, attended by a band of cut-throats.[211] In 1577, at Milan, Count Giovanni Borromeo, cousin of the Cardinal Federigo, stabbed his wife, the Countess Giulia Sanseverina, sister of the Contessa di Sala, at table, with three mortal wounds. A mere domestic squabble gave rise to this tragedy.[212] In 1598, in his villa of Zenzalino at Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, with the assistance of a bravo called Jacopo Lazzarini, killed his wife Anna, daughter of the poet Guarini. Her own brother ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... breakfasts upstairs in triumph. I enter the bedroom like no mere humdrum son, but after the manner of the Glasgow waiter. I must say more about him. He had been my mother's one waiter, the only manservant she ever came in contact with, and they had met in a Glasgow hotel which she was eager to see, having heard of the monstrous things, and conceived ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Toothpick.' Statesmen have cut their teeth on it, and it has been their solace in the great crises of the nation's history. As for spittoons, they were invented for our own Southern aristocrats who loved tobacco then as now. They decorate our Capitol as a mere matter of form. I don't pretend to hope that ninety representative Americans are Beau Brummels, but there must be a respectable minority of gentlemen— whether self-made or not I don't care. I am going to make a deliberate attempt to know that minority, and shall call on Lady Mary Montgomery ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... little stir of excitement in the small country church when Seth Winters and his following of young folks entered it, and by mere force of numbers so impressing the ushers that the very front pews were vacated in their behalf, although the farrier protested against this. However, he wasn't sorry to have his company all together, ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... their souls in quietude, despite the storm and turmoil without. Pancoast says: "He delights in leading us to contemplate the infinite calm of Nature, beside which man's transitory woes are reduced to a mere fretful insignificance. All the beautiful poem of Tristram and Iseult is built upon the skilful alternation of two themes. We pass from the feverish, wasting, and ephemeral struggle of human passions and desire, into an atmosphere ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... his personality than mere sociability and a genial manner, because an indefinable power or strength went forth from him. It was in his ministry to the sick that people felt especially a certain grace in his faith. He carried about with him "the medicine of a merry heart," and patients wanted to see him. ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... was inevitable. When the paroxism was over she found a shaded seat under a cocoanut tree and determined not to return to the hotel for breakfast, nor indeed until she felt herself able to endure the sight of mere people; and endeavoured to expel all thought of Warner from her still tormented mind. In the distance she could see Monserrat and Antigua, gray blurs on the blue water, she could hear the singing of negroes in the cane fields far away, but near her no living thing ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... her excellent mother? I don't know much about you, Mrs. Bertram, but I feel—forgive me, I am a man of intuition—I feel that you are one to look up to. Miss Catherine is a fortunate girl. You are right. She is far too young to walk alone. Seventeen, did you say—pooh—a mere child, a baby. An immature creature, ignorant, innocent, fresh, but undeveloped; just the age, Mrs. Bertram, when she needs the aid and counsel of ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the alertness peculiar to those who work on the night-shifts of restaurants, dumped a tray down on the table with a clatter. The Duchess woke up. Babe took her eyes off the ceiling. The Southern girl ceased to look at the sunshine. Already, at the mere sight of food, the extraordinary recuperative powers of the theatrical worker had begun to assert themselves. In five minutes these girls would be feeling completely ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the length of the dowel you can observe the crooked portions. If these are very bad, they should be heated gently over a gas flame and then bent into proper line over the base of the thumb or palm. A pair of gloves will protect the hand from burning. If the deviation be slight, then mere manual pressure is often sufficient. During this process the future arrow should be tested for strength. If it cannot stand considerable bending it deserves to break. If ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... time we write of, and indeed at all times during Turkish rule, human life was held very cheap. For the slightest offences, or sometimes at the mere caprice of those in power, men were taken up and bastinadoed in the open streets until they died from sheer agony, and their relations did not dare to remove the bodies for burial until their tyrants had left the scene. Cruelty became almost the second ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... turns to draw. One looked up, and, as he fancied, recognised him, for she nudged her neighbour. And then first the one woman and then the other, looking askance, muttered something; it might have been a prayer, or a charm, or a mere word of gossip. But he liked neither the glance nor the action, nor the furtive, curious looks of the women; and as quickly as he could he filled his ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... awe, or was it with intensity of gladness? Perhaps every night he was thus near me while I slept—a heavenly sentinel patrolling the house—the visible one of a whole camp unseen, of horses of fire and chariots of fire. So entrancing was the notion, that I stood there a little child, a mere incarnate love, the tears running down my checks ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... identified English and Rationalism, German and Lutheranism (that is to say, unionistic Evangelicalism). Lamenting the inroads that Rationalism was making also in Lutheran congregations, they wrote: "But now the Protestant churches are threatened by a terrible storm, which is not the mere consequence of the natural course of things, but a sign of this time, and it will soon despoil them of the treasures of their Church together with all their happiness, unless teachers and parents will counteract it with united strength. Almost universally, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... knowledge of the facts must come first, but there was always in school with me—either they have it as a natural gift, or my teaching takes naturally that line—a tendency to go deeper than the mere apprehension of a fact, a miracle wrought, or a statement made. The moral meaning of the miracle, the principle involved in the less important expression of it, or particular manifestation of it, these points always of late I am able to talk about ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has five toes on the fore feet, and four on the hind feet, with a mere rudiment of a fifth metatarsal bone in some feet; but, in others, the fifth bone is long and well proportioned, and advances as far as the origin of the first phalanx of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of collateral consequences. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to God, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the field. God is not heart of our heart and reason of our reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... here," replied Mr. Dwerrihouse, pointing significantly to his breastpocket, "but a mere fraction of what we shall ultimately have ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... individual and various Thing in women on which Browning seized with delight. He did not write half as much as other poets had done of woman as being loved by man or as loving him. I have said that the mere love-poem is no main element in his work. He wrote of the original stuff of womanhood, of its good and bad alike, sometimes of it as all good, as in Pompilia; but for the most part as mingled of good and ill, and of the good as ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... life a love for goodness and truth in every form. In short, through the curriculum the latent powers constituting the life capital of every normal child are to be stimulated and developed to the end that his life shall be more than mere physical existence—to the end that it shall be crowned with fullness of knowledge, richness of feeling, and the victory of worthy achievement. This is the right of every child in these prosperous and enlightened ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... feeling came over her that an invisible companion glided by her side. This was the revenge of that other. The shadow that once fell on her innocent life now drove her friend away from their circle. Anton's affections clung to another. She had but been in his eyes a mere stranger, who had once loved and languished for one now far away, and who now, in widow's weeds, looked back regretfully to the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... justified in giving to the public it is important, of course, to take into account the character, the idiosyncrasy of the writer in regard to all his relations towards what may be called the mechanism of every-day life. Some poets are so methodical that the mere fact of anything having been left by them in manuscript unaccompanied by directions as to its disposal is primâ facie evidence that it was intended to be withheld from the public, either temporarily for revision or finally and absolutely. And, of course, the representative, especially ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... noted that his words were not mere polite patter. Farrel's gravely courteous bearing, his respectful bow to Mrs. Parker and the solemnity with which he spoke impressed them with the conviction that this curious human study in light and shadow regarded their approval as an ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... his client honest knowledge concerning the various matters about which he is consulted? That he shall keep abreast of the tide of discovery and improvement, and that upon these subjects he shall know, not trusting to mere hearsay or to unintelligent prejudice for ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... torpor fell from the skies and amid this general silence, this immobility, the cabin door alone seemed to live, live in weird manifestation. It had been left open, and now it was swinging and slamming to and fro jerkily, and shuddering from top to bottom. Half in plan, half in mere irritation at this senseless, incessant jigging, I sprang toward it and with one nervous pull tore it, hinge and all, from the rotten woodwork. I heaved it over the side, went in head first after ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... course, to get that letter, to have to read so many lines in that loathsome, large, neat, inflated handwriting, but she took it that it meant that those toys which he had sent Roger every six months were not, as she thought, mere attempts to torture her by reminding her of his existence, but signs that he had really wanted to be a father to his son, and that now that Harry was dead he was declaring his desire freely. That made her very happy, for she knew that love from the worst man on earth ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West |
