"Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tendencies, which are a mockery to her Philistine brothers, and a reproach to her commonplace sisters. She will have elevated her father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... ever a great load removed from the mind of the petty officer who had charge of flats and certain parts of the deck when his inspection was over. But if fault had been found ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... that the union of the familiar and beautiful with the unfamiliar and wild is that which arouses our enthusiastic admiration. As we stand in the calm genial atmosphere of a summer day, surveying the land and sea-scape from a commanding height that seems to have raised us above the petty cares of life, the eye and mind pass like the lightning-flash from the contemplation of the purple heather and purple plants around—and from the home-feelings thereby engendered—to the grand, apparently illimitable ocean, and the imagination ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... future—whatever was important in life—were therefore at stake with Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne; and yet her great duty to herself was perpetually in danger of being stifled by the fictitious and petty duties of daily life. It was necessary to stimulate her. She felt these things in general; and that it was necessary that her sister-in-law should be a Princess, neither able nor willing to give her umbrage, and over whom she should be mistress. But in spite ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... suppose some months to have elapsed in this manner—months, to me, of prolonged torture and suspicion. Circumstanees, like petty billows of the sea, kept chafing upon the low places of my heart, keeping alive the feverish irritation which had already done so much toward destroying my peace, and overthrowing the guardian outposts ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the very seat of his dignity. Maidens, inconsolable for lovers snatched from them and now bound for Bodmin Gaol, hushed their sorrow and wiped their tears by stealth, abashed before those tragic eyes which, fixed on the river reach ahead, travelled beyond all petty private woe to meet the end of all things ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... manage to live where so many poor wretches who have escaped found their end. But I was servant to a just man; your mother and sisters treated me when they saw me as if they were sorry for me, and I could not go. Then you dame, boy, and tied me tighter to the place, making all the petty troubles caused by that ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... the Bismarck petty title outright, but while he confiscated Burgstal forest, he offered Schoenhausen, on the Elbe, in exchange. However, Schoenhausen did not compare with the estate that the envious monarch took by force. The Burgstal forest is to this ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... done it; marked the hiding-place which he had deemed so safe, and made off with the prize; and i' faith 'twas easy carrying. There was but one piece, and Dickon minded how he had changed his petty hoard to gold scarce a month back at the fair. Maybe it was Thomas the charcoal burner had served him this ill turn; or William Crookleg, the miller's man; he was a sly, prying fellow, and there had ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... he was in the game country, and he was able to go on buck-shooting expeditions as frequently as he cared. He was not compelled to rise at a certain hour in the morning, and he could go to bed whenever he wished. There was no drill, no roll-calls, nor any of the thousands of petty details which the soldiers of even the Portuguese army are compelled to perform. As a result of a special law there was no work on Sundays or Church-holidays unless the enemy brought it about, and then, if he was a stickler for the observance of the Sabbath, he was not compelled to move a muscle. ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... strange, until after the enactment of the Municipal Corporation Bill, Sheffield had no local authorities. The Petty Sessions business was discharged by county magistrates, and the Master Cutler acted as a sort of master of the ceremonies on occasions of festivity, without any real power. That honorary office is still retained, although Sheffield has now its ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... called vendetta, still exists in the villages; where the people having no social amusements, nothing to read, nor any other resource than cards during the winter nights, are apt to quarrel over trifles; which, fanned by their local petty jealousies, assisted often by the generous nature of their wine, ripen ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... Edgeworth's story. She first established infant schools in France.] a literary and fashionable lady, with something of Mrs. Saunderson's best style of conversation: M. de Pastoret, her husband, a man of diplomatic knowledge; Lord Henry Petty, son of Lord Lansdowne, with whom my father had much conversation; the Swiss Ambassador, whose name I will not attempt to spell; M. Dumont, [Footnote: M. Pierre Etienne Louis Dumont, tutor to Lord ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... unpleasantly about his forehead, and in scrambling up the side of the last high ridge which he had crossed, one neatly-fitting boot had galled his foot, while he smiled with somewhat sinister amusement as he felt the grip of the tight jacket on his shoulders. These were, as he recognized, petty troubles, and he was rather astonished that he should resent them, as he certainly did. He remembered that a little while before he had made no complaint against the restraints of civilization, and had, indeed, begun to shrink from ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... How petty men were, how cruel was the fate of the great, to whom envy clings like their own shadow, and whose image was basely distorted even by those who knew the grandeur of their intellect and their deeds, and who owed to them their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... what a long chapter we have been betrayed into! We had quite forgotten all such petty restrictions as chapters, we solemnly declare. So here goes, to give the goblin a fair start in a new one. A clear stage and no favour for the goblins, ladies and gentlemen, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... maintained a stoic calm that effectually hid the storm raging within his breast. All the annoyances incidental to building a house were heaped on Morris, and both he and Rashkin, equally, suffered petty blackmail at the hands of the attorney and the architect for ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... but being convicted by Cicero, was forced to fly the city. Yet Lentulus and Cethegus remained with several others, to carry on the same plot; and blaming Catiline, as one that wanted courage, and had been timid and petty in his designs, they themselves resolved to set the whole town on fire, and utterly to overthrow the empire, rousing whole nations to revolt and exciting foreign wars. But the design was discovered by Cicero, (as we have written in his life,) and the matter brought before the senate. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of her non-resisting organization. Ernie, on the contrary, grappled with obstacles uncomplainingly, and was only outspoken in his moments of gratification. His was the temperament that is the noblest and the most magnanimous in its very moulding. Whining children are selfish, as a rule, and petty-minded, and most often incapable of enjoyment—which last is a gift of itself that goes ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... have not the people in Hindustan united in the same way? There the agricultural settlements remain as they did ages ago; separate petty chieftains rule under the all-governing power of England. ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... man such as I to follow all the changes of your petty laws, and to remember under which form of government he happens to be living at the moment!" he had boldly said to a great personage from St. Petersburg, and the observation was duly reported in the capital. It was, moreover, said in Warsaw that the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... as I listened to them, my mind spread out its wings; it burns to babble about trifles, to maintain worthless arguments, to voice its petty reasons, to contradict, to tease some opponent. But are they not going to show themselves? I should like to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... next day to Court, and there the Judges as before, and Sir John the High Sheriff, and the Counsel for the Crown and for us, and twelve honest gentlemen in a box by themselves, that were of the Petty Jury, to try us; and, I am ashamed to say, a great store of Ladies, all in ribbons and patches and laces and fine clothes, that sate some on the Bench beside the Judges, and others in the body of the Court among the Counsel, and stared at us miserable objects in ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... its numberless stereotyped divisions, its myriad insurmountable barriers between class and class, and its countless petty jealousies and mutual antagonisms, is well known to all. And so long as Hindus continue to worship this demon, caste, it is impossible for them to become a united body to which, with any courtesy, the name Nation can be applied. Nor can they blend into such action as can in any sense be ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... his covetous eyes such a vast horizon of enjoyment, that he had come to look upon things as pitiful, which would formerly have satisfied his highest wishes. Should he, after having dreamed of those glorious achievements by which millions are won in a day, sink back again into the meanness of petty thefts? His heart turned from that prospect with unspeakable loathing; and yet ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... of his assailants decreased, the enterprises of the Sultan became more numerous and more bold in this species of petty warfare. The camp of the Crusaders was surrounded, and almost besieged, by clouds of light cavalry, resembling swarms of wasps, easily crushed when they are once grasped, but furnished with wings to elude superior strength, and stings to inflict ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Paris on the 11th of April, and found everything in the utmost confusion. It would be impossible to follow all the petty intrigues, or even make allusion to all the events which affected the relative situations of the parties in the capital; but it may be observed that the tendency of both parties was to hold themselves in the neighbourhood of ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... lords, who always sought to advance their own interests by the force of arms. Feudalism in form of government was the antithesis of imperialism, yet in effect something the same. It substituted a horde of petty despots for one and it developed a petty local tyranny in the place ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... blessing; the parents on one of their eventful journeys representing themselves as brother and sister, instead of husband and wife, for fear that some potentate might kill Isaac, in order to possess his beautiful wife; all these petty deceptions handed down from generation to generation, show that the law of heredity asserted itself even ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... recurrent types. On the one hand, there are the small kinship groups, often vigorous enough in themselves, but feeble for purposes of united action. On the other hand, there are larger societies varying in extent and in degree of civilization from a petty negro kingdom to the Chinese Empire, resting on a certain union of military force and religious or quasi-religious belief which, to select a neutral name, we have called the principle of Authority. In the lower stages of civilization ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... not an Indian nor a Frenchman was to be seen, and night closed over the frightful but silent masquerade, with the steady and unalterable progress with which the earth obeys her laws, indifferent to the petty actors and petty scenes that are in daily bustle and daily occurrence on her bosom. The night was far more quiet than that which had preceded it, and Mabel slept with an increasing confidence; for she now felt satisfied that ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... appointed a justice of the peace. Then he went on to Yale. At Yale he considered the price of provisions too high, and by arbitrarily reducing the price at the company's stores, he broke the ring of the petty dealers. This won him the friendship of the miners. Within a week he had allayed all irritation between white man and Indian. In a quarrel over a claim a {37} white man had been murdered on one of the bars. Douglas appointed magistrates to try the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... quantities of bread, meat, soup, and other eatables; and to such a length were these shameful impositions carried, that a considerable traffic was actually carried on with the articles so collected, between the beggars, and a number of petty shop-keepers, or hucksters, who purchased them of the beggars, and made a business of selling them by retail to the indigent and industrious inhabitants. And though these abuses were well known to the public, yet this custom had so long ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... sigh. "Hadria," she said, "are you going to allow your petty rancour about this—well, I will call it error of ours, if you like to be severe—are you going to bear malice and ruin your own life and Hubert's and the children's? Are you so ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... securing of an alliance with the Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... driving. If you plotted my disgrace by leading me into these confessions, you have found me easy prey. But do not credit yourself too much. I have often vowed I would go to Admiral von Kufner, and say these things to him. But the formal exterior of that petty pompous man I cannot penetrate. If I have confessed to you, it is merely because you are a man without that protecting shield of bristling authority and cold formality. You seemed merely a man of flesh ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... grew gradually cold and numb, and then became insensible as so much lead. The physical pain, however, was nothing to what I felt mentally. Only an hour or two before I was leading that calm, happy home-life, without a trouble beyond some petty disappointment in the garden or farm or during one of the hunting or shooting expeditions with Joeboy to carry my game; and now a lightning-like stroke seemed to have descended to end my idyllic boy-life and make me ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... delighted, vexed and grieved Pao-yue. He felt delighted, on account of the consideration shown by P'ing Erh for his own feelings. Vexed, because Chui Erh had turned out a petty thief. Grieved, that Chui Erh, who was otherwise such a smart girl, should have gone in for this disgraceful affair. Returning consequently into the house, he told Ch'ing Wen every word that P'ing Erh had uttered. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Occasionally a Babylonian word is followed by the corresponding Canaanite word, also in cuneiform, but marked as a translation. Like the Egyptian kings, so the Asiatic sovereigns had each his staff of scribes. One of the petty chiefs, Tarkhundarash of Arsapi, was evidently so unhappy as to have none in his Court who could read or write a letter in Babylonian, for letters to him were written in his own tongue. The scribe of the Hittite king produced only a species of dog Latin, while the scribe of the ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... the preparation of the Slater Museum. On photographs about $800 have been spent thus far, the electrotype coins cost something less than $750, and the balance of the total quoted was made up by such incidentals as the draperies and upholstering, photograph frames, the designer's commission and petty expenses. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... had of such good luck, the better pleased I am to have found here my sister. And indeed, I know not any man, however exalted his station, who ought not to be well pleased to have such a sister; much more, then, I, who am but a petty merchant; but, I pray you, resolve me of one thing: how came you to know that I was here?" Then answered she:—"'Twas told me this morning by a poor woman who is much about the house, because, as she tells me, she was long in the service of our father both at Palermo and at Perugia, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... dynasty; the shadow of its power was also cast over the lesser princes of Southern India. But after 1709, and still more after 1739, the Mogul Empire collapsed, and the whole of India, north and south, rapidly fell into a condition of complete anarchy. A multitude of petty rulers, nominal satraps of the powerless Mogul, roving adventurers, or bands of Mahratta raiders, put an end to all order and security; and to protect themselves and maintain their trade the European ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... tenants, but by all who were conscious of their hereditary claims to respect; they did not care whether hair were long or short, and their benefits were more substantial and reliable than could be looked for from the casual visitors and petty gentry around, so that sundry houses that were forbidden ground to district visitors, were ready to grant ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hats and their other garments" in the fiery furnace. If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego wore their hats before Nebuchadnezzar and kept them on even in the fiery furnace, why should a free-born Englishman take his hat off in the presence of a petty Justice of the Peace? Fervent Fifth Monarchy men were willing to die rather than acknowledge any king but King Jesus who was about to come to reign. Non-juring bishops were willing to go to jail rather than submit to the judgment of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and forgot her skirt. The solemn beauty that his words conjured up called her from her petty irritation. She looked at the mountains, her face ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... where the languid air tends to produce elisions. The Carrolls came originally from Kentucky, and had lived there until after the births of the two daughters. When they were scarcely more than infants, Arthur Carroll had experienced the petty and individual, but none the less real, cataclysm of experience which comes to most men sooner or later. It is the earthquake of a unit, infinitesimal, but entirely complete of its kind, and possibly as far-reaching in its thread of consequences. Arthur Carroll had had his palmy days, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... improperly, through the efforts of the religious who are in this province who are born in these regions. In it his Holiness ordained that all the elections among the said religious, from that of provincial to that of the most petty official, should be shared between the religious of these regions and those who have come from Espana at your Majesty's cost. The execution of this decree was impossible, because the number of the said religious who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the question he feared to answer. To drag out into the open his petty, selfish reasons, shorn of the tinsel glamor of so-called "service" and ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... of the many mean and petty acts of certain members of Congress, the President, while talking on the subject one day ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the end of Ali Higg's prospects, for as sure as my name's Grim the British would smash him to avenge me, and you know it! If they didn't get you they'd get him, and you'd become the property of the first petty chief who could lay his hands on you. So let's talk like ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... that—a friend in need. And to Colonel Elliot also I was an American, and one needing assistance. We seldom spoke of our political differences, partly because our lives speedily became too full and intimate to admit of the petty exchange of divergent views, and partly because I had been a boy during the Civil War and my youthful brain had not been sufficiently mature to assimilate the manifold prejudices, likes, dislikes and opposing theories that were the ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... Suffolk, with Commodore Payne, R.N., Mr. Hodgson, the British Consul, the President of the Zemstrov Prava, and Russian and Allied officials, were assembled on the quay to receive me. As I descended the gangway ladder the Czech band struck up the National Anthem, and a petty officer of the Suffolk unfurled the Union Jack, while some of the armed forces came to the present and others saluted. It made quite a pretty, interesting and immensely impressive scene. The battalion at once disembarked, and led by the Czech band and our splendid sailors ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... When I was looking upon that marvellous scene—that transfigured world—the morning after my arrival, you appeared and seemed a part of it. Do you remember what I said then? I have reluctantly thought to-night that you could wear your coronet of beauty, not Only as a benignant queen, but as a petty tyrant,—that you could put it to ignoble uses, and make it a slave to self. It seemed at times that you only sought to lead men to bow in admiration to you, instead of inspiring them to stand erect in true manhood, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... themselves impressed with divine changelessness—no domesticity—no jest—no anxiety—no expectation—no variety of action or of thought. Love, all fulfilling, and various modes of power, are alone expressed; the Virgin never shows the complacency or petty watchfulness of maternity; she sits serene, supporting the child whom she ever looks upon, as a stranger among strangers; "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" forever written ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... no time or inclination for petty revenge. That is not my nature." General Waymouth was as cold and calm as inexorable Fate itself. "I accept your pledge, Chairman Presson. Not one interest of yours that is right will suffer at my hands. On the other hand, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... position in the village community of Elstow. The family was of long standing there, but had for some generations been going down in the world. Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas Bunyan, as we learn from his still extant will, carried on the occupation of a "petty chapman," or small retail dealer, in his own freehold cottage, which he bequeathed, "with its appurtenances," to his second wife, Ann, to descend, after her death, to her stepson, his namesake, Thomas, and her ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... nevertheless be mixed and formed into one mass if they are broken up into small pieces, because then they more easily fit into each other, determined to divide the whole mass of the people of Rome into many classes, and thus, by creating numerous petty rivalries, to obliterate their original and greatest ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... never tried to understand them, stood amazed; they remembered their own commonplace, bungling youth, full of petty egotisms, small ambitions, and mean pleasures. As they could not recognise themselves in their children they attributed to the war this flowering of virtues which had been growing up for twenty years around their indifference and which the war was ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... of the Greek torso which other students were copying in the next room. The intimacy of the studio, the warmth and the colour and the meretricious luxury were gone from his life. On the other hand he was making money. He had fifty pounds in the Savings Bank, the maximum of petty thrift which an incomprehensive British Government encourages, and a fair, though unknown, sum in an iron money-box hidden behind his washstand. Up to now he had had no time to learn how to spend money. When he took to smoking cigarettes, which he had done ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... stand at all. I opposed Poundstone for the office; Dobbs, who was appointed to fill a vacancy caused by the death of a regularly elected councilman, was once a bookkeeper in our office, you will remember. I discharged him for looting the petty-cash drawer. Andrews and Mullin are professional politicians and not to be trusted. In fact, Poundstone, Dobbs, Andrews, and Mullin are known as the Solid Four. Yates and Thatcher, the remaining members of the city council, are the result of the reform ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... only do all the mighty and subtle work possible on this planet better than we could do it, but with the immense advantage of banishing from the earth's atmosphere screaming consciousnesses which, in our comparatively clumsy race, make an intolerable noise and fuss to each other about every petty ant-like performance, looking on at all work only as it were to spring a rattle here or blow a trumpet there, with a ridiculous sense of being effective? I for my part cannot see any reason why a sufficiently ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Wolseley and some members of the Cabinet. He was asked if he would undertake a mission to the Soudan, to try to resettle affairs there, to bring away the Egyptian garrisons, and to divide, if possible, the country amongst the petty sultans whom he thought strong and wise enough to ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... by his environment. It made mass-movements impossible. Great waves of migration from the steppe-land to the northeast, or from the forest-land to the north-west, would thunder on the long mountain barrier, only to trickle across in rivulets and form little pools of humanity here and there. Petty feuds between plain, shore, and mountain, as in ancient Attica, would but accentuate the prevailing division. Contrariwise, on the southern side of the Mediterranean, where there was open, if largely desert, country, there would be room under primitive ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... were ordered out, each in charge of a midshipman and a petty officer. Twenty men were told off for each boat. Our instructions were, as soon as night fell, to put off for shore, land at two different points a mile apart, and approach the fort from opposite sides. The Diana, meanwhile, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... experience there. But it was no fairy-land. It was an academy town in New England, and the fact that it was so alluring is a fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to which she now returned. What could she do? In the dreary round of petty details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no companions or any sympathy—for the family of a hard-working New-England farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor the cowboys Corydons—with ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... by which new invasions and pacifications may be lawfully made; also the smallness of the number of men, the slight cost, and the great ease and advantage with which they should be made, because of the division of the country into many islands and among many petty rulers, who easily come to blows among themselves, and ally themselves with the Spaniards, and hence can be preserved with but few soldiers. Since the petition in regard to the pay and number of the soldiers there was conceded—and you must ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... which my mind had been driven. The intricate windings of the river, after we had passed the lake, rendered the navigation very slow and difficult; and the swarms of flies, that plagued us for the first time seriously, brought petty annoyances to view more forcibly than we had experienced in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... error, and the second proved almost as mischievous. She thought to divert Morris from a central idea by a multitude of petty counter-attractions; she believed that by stopping him from the scientific labours and esoteric speculation connected with this idea, that it would be deadened and in ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... anything, meant a doctrine as low in the intellectual scale as that of any of the objects of missionary enterprise. The conception of the transactions between God and man was apparently modelled upon the dealings of a petty tradesman. The "blood of Christ" was regarded like the panacea of a quack doctor, which will cure the sins of anybody who accepts the prescription. For anything I can say, such a creed may be elevating—relatively: elevating as slavery is said to have ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dependents or followers married, exercised the right of assuming the bridegroom's proper place in the marriage couch for the first night. Seldom was there any escape from this abominable practice. Sometimes the husband, if wealthy, succeeded in buying off the petty ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... naught, A measure of disquietude suppressed, A peace in importunity possessed, A reconcilement generously sought, A purpose put aside, a banished thought, A word of self-explaining unexpressed,— Trifles they seem, these petty soul-restraints; Yet he who proves them so must needs possess A constancy and courage grand and bold. They are the trifles that have made the saints. Give me to practise them in humbleness, And nobler power than mine ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... manners without having them imposed on us Men overweeningly in love with their creations Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction The social world he looked at did not show him heroes The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity Utterance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expect his young friends to sympathize with the schoolmaster of this story, for doubtless many of them have known and despised a similar creature in real life. Mr. Parasyte is not a myth; but we are grateful that an enlightened public sentiment is every year rendering more and more odious the petty tyrant of the school-room, and we are too happy to give this retreating personage a parting blow as he retires from the scene of ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... that evening she was cheerful enough—so cheerful, indeed, in her little bird-like way, that many of those who talked with her fancied that the resourceful little body was beyond the reach of petty grief. The modest, almost girlish smile beamed through the wrinkles of fifty autumns as brightly that evening at the Penningtons' as the town had ever seen it. From her place in a high-backed chair in the corner, Miss Morgan, in her shy, self-deprecatory way, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... exuberant fun and fancy, in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1867, and afterwards republished in Friendship's Garland. Arminius, the cultivated Prussian, accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country town, and is horrified by the degraded plight of an old peasant who is tried for poaching. The English friend (the imaginary Arnold) says that for his own part he is not so much concerned about ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... little experiences, all the petty ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff; as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... claims. But many considerations made him refuse to despair of the empire. His intensely human view of politics led him to put more trust in the bonds of kindred and affection than in constitutional forms. He hated the petty quibbles of political legists and pedants—their dilemmas, and metaphysical distinctions, and catastrophes. In his opinion the bulk of mankind was not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst they were really happy. But perhaps his political ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... elementary crudity or barbarism which the human spirit often betrays when it is deeply stirred. Not only are chance and divination welcomed into the world but they are reverenced all the more, like the wind and fire of idolaters, precisely for not being amenable to the petty rules of human reason. In truth, however, the English duality between prudence and science is no more fundamental than the German duality between reason and understanding.[A] The true contrast is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... herself, and have a great sympathy with their small hopes and aims; but she would not have been led into such a crime if she had cultivated from her infancy upward a consistent self-indulgence, making herself the centre of a world of mean desires and petty gratifications. And then she thought of the old and beautiful days up in the Lewis, where the young English stranger seemed to approve of her simple ways and her charitable work, and where she was taught to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... short months of war had cast all that at his feet. It was the harvest of but a single year of war. Thirty-nine years of his life had previously gone in the service in tedious monotony, in an eternal struggle with sordid everyday cares. He had worn himself out over all the exigencies of a petty bourgeois existence, like a poor man ashamed of his poverty, making pathetic efforts to conceal a tear in his clothes and always seeing the telltale hole staring out from under the covering. For thirty-nine years he had never swerved ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... their share of the land, had parted with them long since, either to their own officers or to the trafficers in such bonds, who had sprang up by hundreds, and who obtained them from the needy soldiers often for a mere trifle. Sharp-sighted speculators like Dr. Petty, by whom the well-known Survey of Ireland was made, acquired immense tracts of land at little or no outlay. Of those soldiers, too, who did receive grants of land many left after a while. Others, despite ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... not speak here of politics in the ordinary sense of the word,—nay, Igladly leave the groping for the petty causes of the late war to the scrutiny of those foreign statesmen who have eyes only for the infinitesimally small, but cannot, or will not, see the powerful handiwork of Divine justice that reveals itself in the history of nations as in the lives of individuals. Ispeak of politics ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... because there are no operations during the war, with the exception perhaps of those of the Rhodesian Column, concerning which it is so difficult to get a clear impression. The fluctuating forces, the vast range of country covered, and the petty farms which give their names to positions, all tend to make the issue vague and the narrative obscure. The British still lay in a semicircle extending from Slingersfontein upon the right to Kloof Camp upon the left, and the general ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... developed; he would fain be held a connaisseur in wines, and kept up a good stock of distinguished vintages, from which he had brought of such to Glenruadh as would best bear the carriage. Having no aspiration, there was room in him for any number of petty ambitions; and it vexed him not to reap the harvest of recognition. "But of course," he said to himself, "no highlander ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... properly transitive, at least, in respect to this word; as, "It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish, dull, and crudy vapours."—Shakspeare's Falstaff. "Then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart."—Id. This is a faulty relic of our old Saxon dative case. So of the second person; "Fare you well, Falstaff."—Shak. Here you was written for the objective case, but ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the condition of England toward the close of the sixth century. The old Roman organization and civilization had disappeared entirely, and a new race, with a new language, a different religion, another form of government, changed institutions and customs, had taken its place. A number of petty kingdoms had been formed during the fifth and early sixth centuries, each under a king or chieftain, as in the old Celtic times before the Roman invasion, but now of Teutonic or German race. The kings and their followers had come ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... whom (in their songs So bards of elder time had haply feigned) Some Fury fondled in her hate to man, 175 Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge Lick his young face, and at his mouth imbreathe Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore! Soul-hardened barterers of human blood![116:1] 180 Death's prime slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate! Nor least in savagery of holy zeal, Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate, Whom Britain erst had blushed to call her sons! Thee to defend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "The rascal has been doing something wrong," he said to himself; "he is afraid of being found out! And found out he is sure to be; he has not the brains to hide a thing! It's not murder—he ain't got the pluck for that; but it may be petty larceny!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... alone were unable to move and handle the enormous eggs, the Countess, whose sweet character was a stranger to vindictiveness or petty resentment, had written to the members of the ornithological committee, revealing the marvellous fortune which had crowned her efforts in the search for evidence to sustain her theory concerning the ux, and inviting these gentlemen to aid her in ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... conducting it in person; Morga describes this naval campaign in detail. Ternate is captured by the Spaniards without bombardment, and with little loss to themselves. The fugitive king of the island is persuaded to surrender to the Spaniards and become a vassal of Felipe. Several other petty rulers follow his example and promise not to allow the Dutch to engage in the clove trade. Acuna builds a new fort there, and another in Tidore, leaving Juan de Esquivel as governor of the Moluccas, with a garrison and several vessels ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... this village in the condition in which it was to be expected that a place of so much importance during the progress of the late siege would be found, in other words, completely metamorphosed into a chain of petty posts. Being distant from the outworks of Bayonne not more than a mile and a half, and standing upon the great road by which all the supplies for the left of the British army were brought up, no means, as may be supposed, had been neglected, which art or nature could supply, towards ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... scarcely been permitted to see the general aspect of the British aristocracy, or to become acquainted with their sentiments, their characters, or their manners. The petty, artificial world framed and got up for her deception, is no more capable of suggesting to her mind the vast moral and social creation beyond its narrow boundaries, than one or two leaves of a hortus siccus exemplify the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... that had always existed between Richard and the King of France now led to constant petty wars between them. To secure his Norman province, Richard built on its border a splendid fortress, which he called his Chateau Gaillard,—"Saucy Castle." Amazed and enraged at the wonderful strength of this stronghold, perched ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... (She laughs.) Ah, my woman's diplomacy knows how to tie a knot and draw tight the ends of it. How your embarrassment pleases me. But there is something quite different. Let us suppose that I am a vain person, full of womanly self-love; full of petty jealousy and envy. Well, you have painted the portrait of Mme. Zofia and of Helena. I wish to have mine also. One does not refuse the women such things. Reports of your fame come to me from all sides. I hear all around me the words: "Our ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... quick to enthusiasm; the sight of the Eagles planted on the Acropolis at Carthage moved him in a way he never forgot. He acquired the habit of seeing big, and began to cast off race prejudices and all the petty narrowness of a local spirit. When he became a Christian he did not close himself up, like the Donatists, within the African Church. His dream was that Christ's Empire upon earth should equal the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... of petty humiliations had exasperated Eaton's bold and fiery temper. He found some relief in horse-whipping Monsieur Famin, who had been unceasing in his quiet annoyances, and in writing to the Government at home despatches of a most undiplomatic warmth and earnestness. From the first, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... ornamenting it with various designs in black! Otherwise he was much the same in appearance as Romata, though not so powerfully built. As this chief had never seen a ship before—except, perchance, some of the petty traders that at long intervals visit these remote islands—he was much taken up with the neatness and beauty of all the fittings of the schooner. He was particularly struck with a musket which was shown to him, and asked where the white men got hatchets hard enough to ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... wisdom, affection, or goodness. He never spares himself, except now and then to assume a somewhat diaphanous anonymity. Without regard for his own dignity, he exhibits himself as humiliated, or drunken, or hypochondriac, or inquisitive, or resorting to petty subterfuge—anything for the accomplishment of his one main purpose. 'Nay, Sir,' said Johnson, 'it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' 'What, Sir,' asks the hapless Boswell, 'will sense make the head ache?' 'Yes, Sir, when ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... long the Other Girl smiled over her petty, distasteful work, and Glory's face crept in between her tasks and nodded at her in friendly fashion. She watched for it breathlessly at night, when the train stopped at Centre Town. And it was there on the platform; it came smiling ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... brow. Even of Shakespeare, it is said in the morning he polished his sonnets, while at midnight he poached game from a neighboring estate. Our era bestows unstinted admiration upon the essays of Lord Bacon. How noble his aphorisms! How petty his envy and avarice! What scholarship was his, and what cunning also! With what splendor of argument does he plead for the advancement of learning and liberty! With what meanness does he take bribes from the rich against the poor! His mind seems like a palace ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Left in the Prussian Landtag; yet we never heard a disrespectful word spoken of Frederick William IV, and we were instructed to show the utmost respect to the prince of the little country of Rudolstadt to which Keilhau belonged. Barop, spite of his liberal tendencies, was highly esteemed by this petty sovereign, decorated with an order, and raised to the rank of Councillor of Education. From a hundred isolated recollections and words which have lingered in my memory I have gathered that our teachers were liberals in a very moderate way, yet they were certainly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Anthony's uniform kindness and courtesy to reporters, always granting an interview no matter how tired or how busy she might be, and assisting them in every possible way with information and suggestions, it is astonishing that any one of them could indulge in petty, personal criticism and innuendoes. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Petty gossip is the prevailing danger of any small community such as a girls' school. Provincial gossip, Matthew Arnold would call it—provincial being one of his severest adjectives for the Philistines whom his soul abhors,—by which he means ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Dawson's room. When I told him that we were resolved, if possible, to effect his escape, nothing could exceed his transport and gratitude; this was, indeed, expressed in so mean and servile a manner, mixed with so many petty threats of vengeance against Thornton, that I could scarcely conceal ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the very essence of democracy." For democracy means freedom, equality of opportunity, "self-determination." No man is a greater slave than one who is bound and driven by financial necessity. By thrift the mind is "unfettered by the petty annoyances that result from improvident ways." Thrift means providing for the future. There is nothing in the world that will so establish one's faith in the future and that will, therefore, give that freedom of spirit upon which democracy ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... any argument against intemperance, only that it was expensive. Now he hated all the petty meanness that he ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... of all outward pastimes is that of [3243]Areteus, deambulatio per amoena loca, to make a petty progress, a merry journey now and then with some good companions, to visit friends, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... in that hall in fear of death, and he began shouting his insults. Law was a farce in Linrock. The court was a farce. There was no law. Your father's office as mayor should be impeached. He made arrests only for petty offenses. He was afraid of the rustlers, highwaymen, murderers. He was afraid or—he just let them alone. He used his office to cheat ranchers ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... I think I may have succumbed a little when I first wrote about him. He is so great a master of literature that one may be led to concentrate attention on this; and if not to neglect, to regard somewhat inadequately, his greatness as a novelist. Here at any rate such failure would be petty, if not even ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of his fellow-men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away or softened down by the levelling influence of what is termed good-breeding, and he practises so many petty deceptions and affects so many generous sentiments for the purposes of popularity that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character. The Indian, on the contrary, free from the restraints and refinements of polished life, and in a great degree a solitary ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Pfalz proved a highly respectable Kaiser; lasted for ten years (1400-10), with honor to himself and the Reich. A strong heart, strong head, but short of means. He chastised petty mutiny with vigor, could not bring down the Milanese Visconti, who had perched themselves so high on money paid to Wenzel; could not heal the schism of the Church (double or triple Pope, Rome-Avignon affair), or awaken the Reich to a sense of its old dignity and present ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of view advanced by the chair, the miners decided that the two thieves should be whipped and banished from camp. A strong feeling prevailed that any man who, in this age of plenty, would descend to petty thieving, was a poor, miserable creature to be pitied. Some charitably inclined individual actually took up a small collection which was presented to the thieves after ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... wrote you an answer to your last, which, on reflection, pleases me as little as it probably has pleased yourself. I will not wait for your rejoinder; but proceed to tell you, that I had just then been greeted with an epistle of * *'s, full of his petty grievances, and this at the moment when (from circumstances it is not necessary to enter upon) I was bearing up against recollections to which his imaginary sufferings are as a scratch to a cancer. These things ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... up yonder amongst the snows, and they think that, tired and half starved, our poor fellows will be marching to their death, leaving their enemies very little work to do beside cutting down the stragglers. Ah, depend upon it, all these little petty generals think they have a great victory within their hands without any cost to themselves, and that none of our poor fellows will get across ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... vain our tale, if it convinces Small states that 'tis a wiser thing To trust a single powerful king, Than half a dozen petty princes. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... beyond me, more important than myself, is all undone." And though she was far from knowing this, that something was her country's civilisation, its very soul, the meaning of it all gentleness, balance. Her spirit, of that quality so little gross that it would never set up a mean or petty quarrel, make mountains out of mole-hills, distort proportion, or get images awry, had taken its stand unconsciously, no sooner than it must, no later than it ought, and from that stand would not recede. The issue had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gratification of his personal animosities seem due to public-spirited indignation have been generally exposed. Beside the overwhelming desire to spite Theobald for his presumption in publishing "Shakespeare Restored" the aggrieved poet was actuated by numerous petty grudges against the inhabitants of Grub Street, all of which he masked behind a pretence of righteous zeal. According to the official explanation "The Dunciad" was composed with the most laudable motive of damaging those ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... petty of me, I know, but I do hope he has not grown stout," she said presently. "But of course it is to be expected, and if it is so I must try to bear it. It could not make any real difference. Your Uncle Tom is the same age, and ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... them sought hospitality at the doors of the stately mansions which then stood in the vicinity of Hanover Street and the North Square. Others were applicants at the humble wooden tenements, where dwelt the petty shopkeepers and mechanics. Pray Heaven that no family in Boston turned one of these poor exiles from their door! It would be a reproach upon New England,—a crime worthy of heavy retribution,—if the aged women and children, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... paradoxical statement appears at first thought contradictory or absurd, while it may be really true. Anything is irrational when clearly contrary to sound reason, foolish when contrary to practical good sense, silly when petty and contemptible in its folly, erroneous when containing error that vitiates the result, unreasonable when there seems a perverse bias or an intent to go wrong. Monstrous and preposterous refer to what is overwhelmingly ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... was the principal landlord, and, socially, the most important person in the neighbourhood. Sir Timothy did not like Mr. Courtney. He was of opinion that the R.M. was inclined to take a high hand at Petty Sessions and to bully the other magistrates—Sir Timothy was himself a magistrate—who sat with him on the Bench. He also thought that Mr. Courtney was "too d——d superior" in private life. Sir Timothy had the lowest possible opinion of the progress made by ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Brussels was to secure more speedy execution of justice. He appointed a new provost, "a dangerous varlet of low estate, but excellently fitted to carry out perilous work." Then he determined to settle petty civil suits himself, as there were many which had dragged on for a long time. In order to do this and to receive complaints from poor people, he arranged to give audience three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, after dinner. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... vessel of twelve hundred tons, and the other was the Evening Star, somewhat smaller in size, but both classed A1 at Lloyd's. The former cost twenty-two thousand pounds, and the latter seventeen thousand. Now, Mr. Girdlestone had always had a weakness for petty savings, and in this instance he determined not to insure his new vessels. If the crazy old tubs, for which he had paid fancy premiums for so many years with an eye to an ultimate profit, met with no disaster, surely those new powerful clippers were safe. With their tonnage and horse-power ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... present system the fishermen would consider themselves bound to deal at the shop of the landowner or tacksman if he were engaged in fishing?-If a system of money payments were adopted they might not consider themselves bound to do so, but there would be so many petty vexations put upon them, that the men, out of regard for their own comfort, would decidedly give the preference to the tacksmaster's or the landlord's shop, if he happened to be in the trade, notwithstanding that they might have to pay a trifle ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of freedom as regards external circumstances, such as she had not known for a long time, encompassed her; there were none of the petty domestic cares of the daily round, there was no obligation to talk to relations or acquaintances; she was at liberty that evening to do just ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... North seventy-five years ago, "that cant-patriotism which plumes itself in selecting men from within the State confines only. The truer a nation is, the more essentially it is elevated, the more it disregards petty considerations, and takes the true and the good from whatever quarter it may come. Look at history and you find the proof. Look around you, where you are, and you find it now." And, were Lieber living to-day, he would find a striking exemplification ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... over himself in the effort not to be rude to her. With Herbert, however, it was different. HE was BOUND to him, and therefore in his power. Abner Holden exulted in this knowledge, and with the instinct of a petty tyrant determined to ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... company it was far easier to approach Katharine; alone with her, the aloofness and force of her character checked all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she had behaved very badly to him, but each separate instance of unkindness seemed too petty to be advanced when they ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... This petty event has ascertained the existence of a certain being, who, till now, has not been much more than a matter of faith—the Grand Lama. There are some affairs of trade between the sovereigns of Oude and his Holiness the Lama. Do not imagine the East India Company ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... The statue of Liberty I recognized at once, for it had no pedestal as yet, but stood flat in the mud, with Young America most symbolically making dirt pies, and chip forts, in its shadow. But high above the squabbling little throng and their petty plans, the sun shone full on Liberty's broad forehead, and, in her hand, some summer bird had built its nest. I accepted the good omen then, and, on the first of January, the Emancipation Act gave the statue a nobler and more enduring pedestal than any marble ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... empire enabled France on the west and Turkey on the east to wrest valuable possessions from it. The successors of Charles V. were unable to breast the storm of progress successfully, and the imperial authority was completely shattered. The power of the petty rulers of small states increased and overshadowed that ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... whatever to do it," she raged, as Polly and Lois joined them. "You didn't do it because you thought Fanny really knew how to coast; you just thought it was a good chance to get even with me. You've a fine idea of class dignity to do anything so petty. If you ever do a thing like that again—Jemima, I'll— You ought to be ashamed ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... and ginger beer at a little open-air restaurant near the Broad Walk and talked on until nearly four. We were so young that I think we both felt, beneath our very real and vivid emotions, a gratifying sense of romantic resourcefulness in this prolonged discussion. There is something ridiculously petty and imitative about youth, something too, naively noble and adventurous. I can never determine if older people are less generous and imaginative or merely less absurd. I still recall the autumnal melancholy of that queer, neglected-looking place, in which I had never been before, and which ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... irritable and petty, and in every trivial incident saw an act of robbery or outrage. His gate was kept bolted even by day, and at night two watchmen walked up and down the garden beating a board; and they gave up employing anyone from Obrutchanovo as a labourer. As ill-luck would have it ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his weighty judgment, his great experience, and his upright character, and we believe his decisions were invariably stamped by the qualities of impartiality and justice. He was always ready to lend a helping hand to a friend, and no petty jealousy stood between him and his rivals in the engineering world. The author remembers being with Mr. Stephenson one evening at his house in Gloucester Square, when a note was put into his hands from his friend Brunel, then engaged in his first ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... those middle-class families which were called indifferently, in the impertinent language of the last century, the high bourgeoise or the petty nobility. This family had inherited from the brothers Paclet the fief of Tirechappe, which was dependent upon the Bishop of Paris, and whose twenty-one houses had been in the thirteenth century the object of so many suits before the official. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... at the country itself. In the first place, Arabia is not a nation but a country made up of petty states—some independent, some controlled by the sultan of Turkey; two or three are included in the British Empire. But the country itself is very far removed from the rest of the world so far as accessibility is concerned; and although its coast is scarcely a gunshot from ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon,"[202] were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... glad you think so, papa, for I was afraid I might seem to you very small and petty to have all my ambitions bounded by the four walls ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... classical type of majesty and grandeur, and superiority to everything that is petty and mean. So Shakespeare uses it, and only in this way; for it is very certain he never saw a living specimen of the Cedar of Lebanon. But many travellers in the East had seen it and minutely described it, and from their descriptions he derived his knowledge ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the historian Et Teberi) is a fair specimen. Ardeshir ibn Babek (Artaxerxes I.), the first Sassanian King of Persia (A.D. 226-242), having long unsuccessfully besieged El Hedr, a strong city of Mesopotamia belonging to the petty King Es Satiroun, at last obtained possession of it by the treachery of the owner's daughter Nezireh and married the latter, this having been the price stipulated by her for the betrayal to him of the place. "It happened afterwards ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Clumb," said he, "but this is serious work." So admonished, the meeting appointed committees, fixed upon a time for a future meeting, threw a collection of half-dollars on the desk to start a petty cash fund, made the usual joke about putting the secretary under bond, adjourned ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... you will permit me to take this opportunity to say that I deplore, as must all right-minded and clear-thinking men, the occasional petty criticisms which attribute to you some selfish motive for the honest and noble stand you have taken concerning the importance of immediate action and of a widespread, far-reaching, and generally effective movement looking toward, not the ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... it exercised the powers of a sovereign, even to the infliction of capital punishment on the Hindoos within its jurisdiction. It is incorrect, therefore, to say, that the Company was at first a mere trader, and has since become a sovereign. It was at first a great trader and a petty prince. The political functions at first attracted little notice, because they were merely auxiliary to the commercial functions. By degrees, however, the political functions became more and more important. The Zemindar became a great nabob, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bateaux, fitted out at Montreal, and conveying a body of pale-faced warriors, under the command of one whose hair was white and whose face was seamed with scars, entered the mouth of the Oswego[A]. This petty armament was joined at the beginning of the following season of sleep by a great number of canoes that contained the traders, artizans, and labourers, with their families, together with such tools and utensils as had been deemed necessary for the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones |
