"Nil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shu Kofa, while Ama Wang, on his side, sought to gain over Shu Kofa by making him the most lavish promises of reward. But that minister proved as true to his sovereign as Wou Sankwei did to the Manchu. The result of the long correspondence between them was nil, but it showed the leaders of the Manchus in very favorable colors, as wishing to avert the horrors of war, and to simplify the surrender of provinces which could not be held against them. When Ama Wang discovered that there was no hope of gaining over Shu Kofa, and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... purposes in addition to the amount now available in Splitrock Pond. This project is one of the most attractive in the Rockaway Basin, as the damages which would be caused by flooding would be, comparatively speaking, nil. The property is, however, now owned by the East Jersey Water Company, and is prized highly as a reservoir ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... tactus gustus in te falitur, Sed auditu solo tuto creditur: Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius: Nil hoc veritatis verbo verius. ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... know better than he does himself. A friend of mine—I call him my friend for brevity; he is now, I understand, in Demerara and (most likely) in gaol—was the previous occupant. I defended him, and I got him off too—all saved but honour; his assets were nil, but he gave me what he had, poor gentleman, and along with the rest—the key of his chambers. It's there that I propose to leave the piano and, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... symptoms which are excessively variable. The local lesions may be confined to a small portion of the animal's body and the constitutional phenomena be nil. The appearance and gravity of the local lesions may be so unlike, from difference of location, that they seem to belong to a separate disease, and complications may completely mask ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... "flying waiter" brought glasses and the "stationary waiter" looked through them. Finally, it will be remembered the "stationary waiter" left the room, casting a glance which indicated "let it be understood that all emoluments are mine, and that Nil is the reward of this slave." Still, Dickens wrote the book as a detective story; he wrote it as The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And alone, perhaps, among detective-story writers, he never lived to destroy his mystery. Here alone ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... made by R 34, exceedingly bad weather was encountered, and the airship passed through several blinding snowstorms; nevertheless the proposed flight of some seventeen hours was completed, and though at times progress was practically nil owing to the extreme force of the wind, the station was reached in safety and the ship landed without any contretemps. This trial run having been accomplished in weather such as would never have been chosen in the earlier days of rigid ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... Over-population as a social matter relates wholly to the habits acquired by people in using established kinds of food, but with the development of the nut trees, which furnish the appropriate starch, oils, and essentials of human diet, the danger of over-population becomes absolutely nil. We can not have over-population anyway, because nations of people reach cultural limitation, just as breeds of cattle run out, just as a breed of dogs runs out, just as a breed of any cultivated animal runs out. We are sure to do that. In all ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum, quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur. et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri, ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris, in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum omnibus humanis esset terraque marique, sic, ubi non erimus, cum corporis atque animai discidium ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... not think at nil. I suppose you would have left me in ignorance forever, if I had not heard from ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime, the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a passage down south. To hear was to accept. Two days afterwards ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... call you hence away? Why make you breach betwixt my soul and me? Ye traitorous floods, why nil your floats delay Until my latest moans discoursed be? For though ye salt sea-gods withhold the rain Of all your floats and gentle winds be still, While I have wept such tears as might restrain The rage of tides and winds against their will. Ah shall I love your sight, bright shining eyes? ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... finally decided, likely to be useful to him at the present moment. For the amount of money that he required was large—larger, indeed, than he cared to verify with any strictness, and the security that he could offer, almost nil. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in Macgregor's home in the small boy period, and a funeral or two, Willie's experience of tea parties was nil. Despite his frequently expressed contempt for such 'footerin' affairs,' he was secretly flattered by Christina's invitation. At the same time, he suffered considerable anguish of mind on account of his ignorance of the 'fancy behaviour' which he deemed indispensable in the presence of ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... et Hernicus olim 180 Vestinusque senex, 'panem quaeramus aratro, Qui satis est mensis: laudant hoc numina ruris, Quorum ope et auxilio gratae post munus aristae Contingunt homini veteris fastidia quercus. Nil vetitum fecisse volet, quem non pudet alto 185 Per glaciem perone tegi, qui summovet Euros Pellibus inversis; peregrina ignotaque nobis Ad scelus atque nefas, quaecumque est, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... for the sheer beauty; I want it for the tremendous panorama the sight of it unfolds in my mind. I imagine what happened from the hour the stone was mined to the hour it came into my possession. To me—to all genuine collectors—the intrinsic value is nil. Can't you see? It is for me what Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin would be to you if you had fallen on it for the first time—money, love, ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... attuned to pitch, gives absolutely no musical sound; the lips of the player placed on the mouthpiece detached from the tube and bell of the brass instrument produce only a splutter; and a pianoforte without a sounding-board is nil. The air column in the tube of the French horn, and the sounding-board of the pianoforte develop the vibrations caused by the lips and strings into musical tones pleasing to the ear. The tuning-fork alone can scarcely be heard, while ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... essentially necessary to form a party of some sort, if the trip is to be carried out in the spring; for although, as we shall endeavour to show later, the scenery is then at its best, still, since it is not the season, only one or two hotels are open in each resort, and society is "nil." ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... sickening with the fumes of chloroform. They fairly sent my head a-reeling, but their effect upon the burglar seemed to have been nil. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... the town by the south gate. They had fought as crusaders, for to many of them Catholic Louisbourg was a stronghold of Satan. Whitfield, the great English evangelist, then in New England, had given them a motto—Nil desperandum Christo duce. There is a story that one of the English chaplains, old Parson Moody, a man of about seventy, had brought with him from Boston an axe and was soon found using it to hew down the altar and images in the church at Louisbourg. If the story is true, it does ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... to be complete must comprise, in addition to imaginative works, all these branches of intellectual activity. Comprising all these branches, it cannot avoid comprising works of which the purely literary interest is almost nil. ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... law, neglected nothing that could sap little Ginx's vitality, deaden his instincts, derange moral action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it was born." Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge to be reduced to a MINIMUM or NIL. The Baby's constitution alone prevented his reduction ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... had generously charged me "nil" for dues. I had letters for France from the highest authorities to pass the Rob Roy as an article entered for the Paris "Exhibition;" and when the douane and police functionaries came in proper state at Boulogne ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... nil nisi bonum." When For me this end has come and I am dead, And the little voluble, chattering daws of men Peck at me curiously, let it then be said By some one brave enough to speak the truth: Here lies a great soul ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the prognosis is favorable as to ultimate cure, the duration of the treatment varying with the number of strictures, the tightness, and the extent of the fibrous tissue-changes in the esophageal wall. Mortality from the endoscopic procedure is almost nil, and if gastrostomy is done early in the tightly stenosed cases, ultimate cure may be confidently expected ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... nil iuuat, imo nocet: quia enim hic inuidiae et otij facibus super ingenuitatem mentis omnium generaliter nobilium principum verebatur in corde: (ingenuitas enim, et rusticitas nunquam cohabitant in cordis vno domicilio) Composuerat ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... too, how common they are, you can't fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what was the name of that gentleman ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had every reason to be satisfied with her progress and to congratulate herself upon the judgment she had displayed in continuing to raise sheep for their fleece when the price of wool was nil, practically, and every discouraged grower in the state, including the astute Neifkins, was putting in "black-faces" that were better for mutton. Now a protective administration was advancing the price ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... declaration, if there ever was one, overruled. Defendants who are served now, at 8 o'clock p. m., of the last day of the term, ask to plead to the merits, which is denied by the court on the ground that the offer comes too late, and therefore, as by nil dicet, judgment is rendered for Pl'ff. Clerk assess damages. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar, 'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.' You seem to want that 'vivida vis animi,' which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the desire and attention ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... fire of three batteries, one close in on the Heights of Abraham, another from across the mouth of the St Charles, and the third from Levis. But the combination failed: the batteries were too light for the work and overmatched by the guns on the walls, the practice was bad, and the effect was nil. On the 3rd of May the new general, Thomas, an enterprising man, tried a fireship, which was meant to destroy all the shipping in the Cul de Sac. It came on, under full sail, in a very threatening manner. But the crew lost their nerve at the critical moment, took ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... brutality calling for vengeance in one direction and a man firing at his back from the other, Winslow's aversion to bloodshed became nil; and, aiming cool, he began firing at the ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... spare him, and after at length obtaining leave to return to Europe for that purpose—it was hard, we repeat, when hostilities did at last break out in America, that his energies should have been so cramped by the passive attitude of his superior. Remembering, however, the maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, the editor has refrained from transcribing aught reflecting on the memory of that superior when he could do so consistently with truth, although he feels acutely that the death of Sir Isaac Brock—hastened as he ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... a minute salt crystal, so rare and costly to obtain that it may be counted as about three thousand times the price of gold in the market. But of the action of PURE radium, the knowledge of ordinary scientific students is nil. They know that an infinitely small spark of radium salt will emit heat and light continuously without any combustion or change in its own structure. And I would here quote a passage from a lecture delivered by one of our prominent scientists ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... pursuer's strong arms cleft the water and sent it rippling past her lips, something like terror took possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of the Pilgrims was in her veins, and "Nil desperandum" her motto; so, setting her teeth, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... former: Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Digraph: SU Type: military civilian government suspended and martial law imposed after 30 June 1989 coup Capital: Khartoum Administrative divisions: 9 states (wilayat, singular - wilayat or wilayah*); A'ali an Nil, Al Wusta*,, Al Istiwa'iyah*,, Al Khartum, Ash Shamaliyah*, Ash Sharqiyah*, Bahr al, Ghazal, Darfur, Kurdufan Independence: 1 January 1956 (from Egypt and UK) Constitution: 12 April 1973, suspended following ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... us forget Pyrrhic victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric laughter; quos deus vult and nil de mortuis; Sturm und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of coincidence, and the soul of goodness in things evil; Hobson's choice, Frankenstein's ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex verbis, verba notionum tesserae sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae, id quod basis rei est, confusae sint, et tenere a rebus abstractae, nihil in iis quae superstruuntur est firmitudinis. Itaque spes est una in Inductione vera. In notionibus nil sani est, nec in Logicis nec in physicis. Non substantia, non qualitas, agere, pati, ipsum esse, bonae notiones sunt; multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue, humidum, siccum, generatio, corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum, materia, forma, et ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one part of this great subject, that the apostles absolutely command a slave to give obedience to his master in nil things, "as to the Lord." It is in vain to deny, that the most grasping of slave-owners asks nothing more of abolitionists than that they would all adopt Paul's creed; viz., acknowledge the full authority of owners of slaves, tell them that they are responsible ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... how far these different kinds of restraint operate upon the community as a whole in the prevention of deliberate crime. Clearly the fear of pecuniary loss through actions brought to judgment in the civil courts is practically nil. Most persons who set out to commit crime have no bank account, the absence of one being generally what leads them ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... one example of his skill as a palmist in the De Vita Propria: "Memini me dum essem adolescens, persuasum fuisse cuidam Joanni Stephano Biffo, quod essem Chiromanticus, et tamen nil minus: rogat ille, ut praedicam ei aliquid de vita; dixi delusum esse a sociis, urget, veniam peto si quicquam gravius praedixero: dixi periculum imminere brevi de suspendio, intra hebdomadam capitur, admovetur tormentis: pertinaciter delictum negat, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... where training was resumed, and this time once more within sound of the rumble of the guns. But that didn't upset the H.L.I., whose 16th and 17th Battalions met in the final of the Brigade Football Tournament, which was won in easy style, 5 goals to nil, by the Chamber of Commerce boys. Four days later they defeated the 32nd Divisional Supply Column in the semi-final of the Divisional Tournament, and then two days after that, meeting the 2nd Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers in the final, the 17th H.L.I. carried off the Championship, repeating ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... alijs nationibus mittatur, vel donetur eisdem. In hyeme, nisi diuites sint, lac iumentinum non habent. Millium cum aqua decoquunt, quod tam tenue faciunt, qud non comedere sed bibere possunt. Et vnus quisque ex eis bibit cyphum vnum vel duos in mane, et nil plus in die manducant. In sero vnicuique parum de carnibus datur, et brodium de carnibus bibunt. In state autem, quia tunc habent satis de lacte iumentino carnes rar manducant, nisi fort donentur eis, aut venatione aliquam bestiam ceperint, siue auem. [Sidenote: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... us bearings by which we got a direct line for the shore. St. Pierre Miquelon is a bare, wild, hideous islet, but with a first-class port. Admirable as a victualling station and mart for our fishermen, its military value as far as our trade is concerned is absolutely nil. Whatever may be done for it, it will always be at the mercy of whoever is master of the seas in time ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... only, but whole tomes and voluminous treatises about nothing? Why should a fellow like me, who all his life does nothing, be ashamed to write nothing, and that, too, to one who has nothing to do but read it?" And so, with "ex nihilo nil fit," he laughingly ends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... young scamp Mercury says that we do nothing, and leave all the duties of Olympus to him. Will you believe it, he actually says that our influence on earth is dropping down to nil. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... License. The labour his writing cost him was enormous. "I shall never again make so great a sacrifice for the younger generation," he says in a letter, "I am amazed to note how insignificant, how almost nil is the effect produced, in comparison to the cost, in vitality to me. Or perhaps it is I who am in error. Perhaps one must have reached middle age, or the Indian Summer of life, must have seen much, heard much, felt and produced much and been much in solitude to receive in reading ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... siege of Troy for nine years, and it would not do now to carry back to Greece "nil decimo nisi dedecus anno." I mean I had been in search of a large serpent for years, and now having come up with one it did not become me to turn soft. So, taking a cutlass from one of the negroes, and then ranging both the sable slaves behind me, I told ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... do, miracles or fruitless deeds, You're a man, man, man, if you do them with a will; And no matter how you loaf, cursing wealth or mumbling creeds, You are nothing but a noise, and its weight is nil. ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... mortuis nil nisi bonum" has usually been applied to cases similar to the above; "nil nisi justem" I think a sounder reading where a man is held up as a public example, and deem that the selection of a church or a college for a monument should not ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... he. "As the schoolmen labored most intellectually and scientifically—practical result, nil, so these labor harder than other men—result, nil. This is literally 'beating the air.' The ancients imagined tortures particularly trying to nature, that of Sisyphus to wit; everlasting labor embittered by ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... of July, the Russian Government sought to prevail upon Great Britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with Russia and France, and on the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg pointing out that "direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion," the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that "we must not forget that the general European question was involved, the Servian question being but a part ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... your sex, whilst at the same time you could be put to the blush in many things by a school-girl of fifteen. For instance, though I firmly believe that you could at the present moment take a double first at the University, your knowledge of English literature is almost nil, and your history of the weakest. All a woman's ordinary accomplishments, such as drawing, playing, singing, have of necessity been to a great extent neglected, since I was not able to teach them to you myself, and you have had to be guided solely by books and by the light of Nature in giving ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... spirit is full of what Edmond Holmes calls the desire to ask the teacher or person in authority for his credentials. And if these are not entirely satisfactory, the influence he can hope to wield will be nil. ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... opened before my eyes. I saw fires on the water front, fires in the commercial district and also portentous columns of smoke hovering over the southern part of the city. Then like a blow in the face came the realization that all fire fighting facilities were nil owing to the lack of water. One short hour previous, San Francisco was sleeping peacefully in its prosperity, and now the sight was appalling. Devastation, far as the eye could see, was ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... comprised a chapel, a wheelwright's, and a Young Men's Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming a back lane. No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at N-Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to their ancestral traditions and the place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried to push the outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematical ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... j'admire et combien j'approuve la politique actuelle de votre gouvernement en Egypte. Commissaire du gouvernement egyptien aupres de la compagnie de Suez depuis pres de vingt ans, j'ai etudie de pres ce qui se passait sur le Nil, et je ne crois pas ceder a un mouvement d'amitie pour le Khedive, en pensant que c'est de son cote que se trouvent le Droit, la justice, la civilisation. Apres l'avoir intronise, lui avoir promis ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... ago. But the conditions were no longer the same. In those old Pretoria days I had known the Transvaal by heart; the number, value and disposition of the British forces; the characters of the Boer leaders; the nature of the country. But my knowledge of the Dardanelles was nil; of the Turk nil; of the strength of our own forces next to nil. Although I have met K. almost every day during the past six months, and although he has twice hinted I might be sent to Salonika; never once, to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... long she had the larger half of all the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessary parsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions and extra allowances they gave in their early years were nil.[23] By 1753 her ships in the slave traffic numbered eighty-seven, totaling about eight thousand tons burthen and rated to carry some twenty-five thousand slaves. Eight of these vessels were trading on the Gambia, thirty-eight on the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... added, "should now become your motto: "Inveni portum. Spes et fortuna valete; Nil mihi ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... see why we should trouble ourselves about his 'worst.' He had his weaker side like all of us, the foolish part of his nature as well as the wise; but 'de mortuis nil nisi bonum' especially applies in such cases.—I remain, dear sir, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... all manner of fatigues and other means of torture had been exhausted, Dicky and Freeth discovered they had a simultaneous birthday. Prospects of wounded arriving seemed nil, and permission was given for a fancy-dress tea party to celebrate the double event. It must be here understood that whether work came in or not we all had to remain on duty in camp till five every day, in case of the sudden arrival ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... of the town to overtake them. Young Holmes, suffering under an exuberance of exhilaration begotten of multifold good-byes effected to a spirituous accompaniment, was not so firm in his saddle as he might have been; but on the hardened heads of the other two the effect of such farewells had been nil. They were just getting clear of the town when they became aware of a panting, puffing ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... as black as those of apes and their skin tanned like the ancient parchments of an olim; whose complexion is burnt brown by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled like that of a turkey; who are covered with rags; whose voice is hoarse; whose intelligence is nil; who think of nothing but the bread box, and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; who dig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead the bread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants and men, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... replied the banterer; "the Chevalier first, and if he leaves anything worth fighting, I; as for you, my poet, your chances are nil." ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... it's in spacedrive. It's out of normal space-time dimensions. We had a smattering of the theory at cadet school ... anyway, if one did flash into normal space-time—say, for instance, coming in for a landing—the probability of us being at the same place at the same time was almost nil. 'Two ships passing in the night' as ...
— Homesick • Lyn Venable
... Ducis de Schonberg ad Bubindam occisi A.D. 1690. Decanus et Capitulum maximopere etiam atque etiam petierunt, ut haeredes Ducis, monumentum in memoriam parentis erigendum curarent. Sed postquam per epistolas, per amicos, diu ac saepe orando nil profecere, hunc demum lapidem statuerunt; saltem ut scias hospes ubinam terrarum ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... I had put it to Mrs. Munden on our next meeting after the incident at my studio; with the effect, however, only of leaving my friend at first to take me as alluding to Mrs. Brash's possible prevision of the chatter she might create. I had my own sense of that—this provision had been nil; the question was of her consciousness of the office for which Lady Beldonald had counted on her and for which we were so promptly ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... auspices. Being a Puritan in command of Puritans, he quickened the bravery of his comrades by a show of religious zeal. He made it plain that he was engaged in a war against papistry, and he asked George White-field, then in America, for a motto. "Nil desperandum, Christo duce," said the preacher; and thus heartened, the little fleet set sail on its triumphant journey. At first sight the contest seemed unequal. On one side was Duchambon, an experienced ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... January, and thus far the opportunities for skating that had come to the young people of that section of country where Scranton was located, had been almost nil; which would account for the enthusiasm of the lads when Thad announced how rapidly the thermometer was giving promise ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... they would have shaken hands even with the banker's servants, so much did their gratitude need an object to expend itself upon. One thing above all the rest heightened the respect, nay almost the veneration, of Danglars for Cavalcanti. The latter, faithful to the principle of Horace, nil admirari, had contented himself with showing his knowledge by declaring in what lake the best lampreys were caught. Then he had eaten some without saying a word more; Danglars, therefore, concluded that such luxuries were common ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... work in this particular bakehouse is comparatively nil. The ovens have to be started on Sunday morning; but this the master does himself, and puts in the ferment, so that there is only the sponge to be made in the evening—a brief hour's job, taken on alternate Sundays ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Hannah was out of humor because her week's work was deranged, and prophesied that "ef the washin' and ironin' warn't done reg'lar, nothin' would go well anywheres". This hitch in the mainspring of the domestic machinery had a bad effect upon the whole concern, but Amy's motto was 'Nil desperandum', and having made up her mind what to do, she proceeded to do it in spite of all obstacles. To begin with, Hannah's cooking didn't turn out well. The chicken was tough, the tongue too salty, and the chocolate wouldn't froth properly. Then the cake and ice cost more than Amy ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... selector's heart was not in farming nor on selections—it was far away with the last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with many Golden Points, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... a trifle," Freydis replied, "although it is the only magic I can perform in an enclosure of buttered willow wands. Now, then, you see for yourself that I am not going to take orders from you. So the figure you have made, will you or nil you, must limp about in all men's sight, for not more than a few centuries, to be sure, but long enough to prove that I am not ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... nil nisi bonum: of the dead nothing but the bones. If he had lived he would certainly have beaten me. Here's to our ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... compelled to concede something—or to appear to do so. Congress appointed a Tariff Commission of which the Chairman was secretary of the wool manufacturers' association, and after a report the tariff act of 1883 was passed. The net results were almost nil. Some rates were lowered, while others were raised with a definite protectionist purpose. The average rates for the next seven years, 1884-1890, were 45 on dutiable (an increase of nearly 2 per cent) and 30 on free and dutiable ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... ALPHA}: whereas the Judaical rites were abolished, whereupon Zanchius noteth,(193) that the Apostle doth not so much speak of things by-past, as of the very nature of all rites, Definiens ergo ipsos ritus in sese, dixit eos nil aliud esse quam umbram. If all rites, then our holidays among the rest, serve only to adumbrate and shadow forth something, and by consequence are unprofitable and idle, when the substance itself is clearly set before us. 4. That reason, Col. ii. 20, doth ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Turkestan or the higher plains of Mongolia and Tibet, they present the same general characteristics of land surface, climate, flora and fauna, and the same nomadic populations of pastoral or hunting tribes. In them the movement of peoples reaches its culminating point, permanent settlement its nil point. Here the hunting savage makes the widest sweep in pursuit of buffalo or antelope, and pauses least to till a field; here the pastoral nomad follows his systematic wandering in search of pasturage and his hardly less systematic campaigns of conquest. It is ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... natus ab Inacho, Nil interest, an pauper, et infima De gente sub divo moreris, Victima nil miserantis Orci."—Hor. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... were swayed By those who dwelt upon this hill, And who in humble awe obeyed The dictates of their sovereign will,— Are they self-conscious beings still, Or are their minds and bodies ... Nil? ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Archimedes, erst of Sicily, And of D'Israeli ... forti nil difficile, Is likewise mine. Pygmalion was a fool Who should ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Lunch.—Nil, or perhaps I should say that I eat an apple or orange before each meal or a bit of turnip or ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... moral grandeur and monumental immobility, such as we see in Marius, with the dazzling intellectual versatility found in the Gracchi, in Sylla, in Catiline, in Antony. The comprehension and the absolute perfection of his prescience did not escape the eye of Lucan, who describes him as—"Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum." A fine lambent gleam of his character escapes also in that magnificent fraction of a line, where he is described as one incapable of learning the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... solidarity with Russia and France. France would fulfill the treaty obligations with Russia, besides supporting Russia in diplomatic negotiations. Sir George said, that personally he did not expect any declaration of this kind from Great Britain. Direct British interests were nil in Serbia, British public opinion would not permit Great Britain to enter war on her behalf. M. Sazonof replied that the general European question was involved, and Great Britain could not afford to efface herself from the problems ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... at least Col. Stewart, who was there and was acquainted with every one of note in the army, asserts positively that there was no such man along; nor has any other American account ever mentioned him. His military knowledge was nil, as may be gathered from his remark, made when the defeats of Braddock and Grant were still recent, that British regulars with the bayonet were best fitted ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... at the body floating far out on the swift tide. Three sharks were circling lazily. He looked around for a boat, saw none. He swiftly estimated his chances of swimming out after the fat man and towing him in. The chances appeared to be nil. Nevertheless, he began stripping off ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis
... magister ALBERTINUS DE MAYIS Notarius Veneciarum hoc exemplum exemplari anno ab incarnatione domini nostri Jesu Christi Millesimo trecentesimo quinquagesimo quinto mensis Julii die septimo, intrante indictione octava, Rivoalti, nil addens nec minuens quod sentenciam mutet vel ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... expelled from the university, in spite of his indifference toward "new" ideas. The children are continually harassed by their father, who bemoans the fact that he has given them an education. Besides, another sadness troubles him: Nil, his adopted son, whom he has had taught the trade of a mechanician,—an alert and industrious fellow,—wants to marry Polya, a girl without a fortune. The father is beside himself, for, if Nil marries, he ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... London, but they might conceivably speak so of Calcutta.... The Turk is a conqueror and nothing else. The history of the Turk is a catalogue of battles. His contributions to art, literature, science and religion, are practically nil. Their desire has not been to instruct, to improve, hardly even to govern, but simply to conquer.... The Turk makes nothing at all; he takes whatever he can get, as plunder or pillage. He lives in the houses which he finds, or which he orders to be built for him. ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... and we succeeded with care in thawing it out. We waited till we were all in our bags, and then we had one. I was greatly disappointed; it was not half so good as I had thought. But I am glad I tried it, as I shall never do so again. The effect was nil; I felt nothing, either in my head or ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the thymus, we are a good deal at sea. The latest opinion about the results of extirpation even in young and growing animals is that they are nil. Yet there is a certain justification for proclaiming the thymus the gland of childhood, the gland which keeps children childish and sometimes makes children out of grown-ups. There is a quantity of data for that proposition. In the first place, the curve of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... "Laws are nil," said the rhyme, "when kings will," but though nobles and people submitted in the lifetime of Ferdinand, the storm broke out again on his death in October, 1383. During the last ten years the Queen had practically governed, and the kingdom seemed to be sinking back into ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... affairs, disturbing enough in itself, was rendered still more disquieting by the fact that, except for the Boy Scouts, England's military strength at this time was practically nil. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... is delightful—rather cold now, but will be perfect in hot weather—so airy and cheerful. I think I shall stay on here all the time the expense is nil, and it is very comfortable. I have a friend in a farm in a neighbouring village, and am much amused at seeing country life. It cannot be rougher, as regards material comforts, in New Zealand or Central Africa, but there is no barbarism or lack of refinement in the manners of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... were missing altogether. One of the party would walk on to find the way, and later I would go forth to find him. We could see the road stretching away in front of us for kilometres; but between us and it there would be twenty yards of nil. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... "Nil cifra significat sed dat signare sequenti. Expone this verse. A cifre tokens no[gh]t, bot he makes the figure to betoken that comes after hym more than he shuld & he were away, as thus 10. here the figure of one tokens ten, & yf the cifre were away & no figure byfore hym he schuld token ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... been said, De mortuis nil nisi bonum; but, while fully acknowledging the force of the remark, as also the great scientific attainments and love for natural history which distinguished the illustrious traveller, I cannot allow anyone who reads his entertaining works to be misled into ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... past the museum, crossed the street, and walked up Kasr El Nil past the Modern Art Museum and the Automobile Club. Scotty took a pair of sunglasses from his pocket. They were of the silvered one-way mirror type that cuts down light transmission much as a neutral-density filter does for ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... increase of precipitation in the region watered. [Footnote: On the pluviometric effect of irrigation, see Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni, etc., p. 72, 74; the same author, Essai Hydrologique sur le Nil, p. 32; Messedaglia, Analisi dell' opera di Champion, pp. 96, 97, note; and Baird Smith, Italian ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... seas the currents change with the ebb and flood. At the precise moment of the turn of the tide the undercurrent is supposed to be nil, and the diver must take advantage of this moment to perform his task. Another difficulty arises from the sand being shifted by the currents, and settling on the prominent parts of a wreck; it often envelops them to such a degree that the ship becomes so deeply embedded in ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... (Ochrosia parviflora); Moodu-cobbe (Ornitrophe serrata); Moodu-murunga (Sophora tomentosa,) &c. &c. Amongst these marine shrubs the Nil-picha (Guettarda speciosca), with its white and delightfully fragrant flowers, is a conspicuous object on some parts of the sea-shore between ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... planetoid, or the danger of waiting nineteen days for the coming of the supply ship. If the ones who remained within suspected anything—anything at all!—then his chances of coming out of this alive were practically nil. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... quo cecidit sub crimine; quisnam Delator? quibus judiciis; quo teste probavit? Nil horum; verbosa et grandis epistola venit A Capreis. Bene habet; nul ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... rights are attained "feminism" still has a proper task to achieve. But women must use their strength in the sphere for which their own nature fits them. Even though millions of women are enabled to do the work which men could do better the gain for mankind is nil. To put women to do men's work is (Ellen Key has declared) as foolish as to set a Beethoven or a ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... fiasco in the military sense. The damage inflicted by the bombs was not at all in proportion to the quantity of explosive used. True, in the case of Antwerp, it demoralised the civilian population somewhat effectively, which perhaps was the desired end, but the military results were nil. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... of Rome—'Aliae regiones vina, balsama et olentia thura transmittant: Roma tradit eloquium, quo suavius nil sit ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead, who, if they cannot defend themselves, are, at least, ignorant of his abuse, will not hesitate, by the most ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson |
