"Unmeaning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... embrasures we have noticed, at times glancing towards the youthful group with an earnestness of sorrowing affection that seemed to have no measure in its depth, no shrinking in its might; at others, fixing a long, unmeaning, yet somewhat anxious gaze on the wide plain and distant ocean, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... upon itself in the redundancy of superfluous demonstration. Examined in detail, this and much of the show of testimony brought up to stare the daylight of conviction out of countenance, proves to be in a great measure unmeaning and inapplicable, as might be easily shown were it necessary. Nor do I feel the necessity of enforcing the conclusion which arises spontaneously from the facts which have been enumerated, by formally citing the opinions of those grave authorities ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... can do as I like with it at once, whilst the governor's all there, and a better life than I am any day? Unless you want me to shoot the old man by accident when we go out on the First.' He laughed a short, unmeaning masculine laugh which jarred somewhat on her. She did not, however, mean to be diverted from her main purpose, so she went ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... its own terror, in the shape of the yet speechless and unconscious man to whom the loudest noise and the most utter silence were yet as one, and the worst struggle of human passion a blank lost in unmeaning chaos. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... which we may assume that he had already suffered at their hands. Perhaps, indeed, Chippendale may have been hinted at in the caustic remarks of Isaac Ware, surveyor to the king, who bewailed that it was the misfortune of the world in his day "to see an unmeaning scrawl of C's inverted and looped together, taking the place of Greek and Roman elegance even in our most expensive decorations. It is called French, and let them have the praise of it! The Gothic shaft and Chinese bell are not beyond nor below ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... from that of dancing in civilized life, that few people, ignorant of its meaning and allusions, would like it. The body is so continually in a stooping attitude, and the gestures and grimaces appear to be so unmeaning, that at first it leaves an impression that they are ridiculing the art of dancing, rather than entering into it in right earnest. There is such creeping and jumping and starting, that a spectator can ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... lively little Boy in the Family, about seven Years old—-but, alas for him, poor Child! quite unfriended; and born to no Prospect. He is the Son of an honest, poor Soldier, by a Wife, grave, unmeaning, and innocent. Yet the Boy, (see the Power of connubial Simplicity) is so pretty, so genteel, and gay-spirited, that we have made him, and design'd him, our own, ever since he could totter, and waddle. The ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... history before the first slow swell of the French Revolution. He could understand the revolutions of the eighteenth century; all the other revolutions of history (so many and so splendid) were unmeaning to him. But the revolutions of the eighteenth century he did understand; and to them therefore he went back, as all historical novelists go back, in search of the picturesque. And from this fact an ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... is indeed guaranteed; but what an insoluble, inextricable contradiction is here: that a man should overstep the limits of the very nature which is his, just because he cannot overstep it! And if he cannot, then says the same querist, then is the external universe an empty name—a mere unmeaning sound; and our most inveterate convictions are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... expediency, 'so far from being a derogation from the moral dignity of man, is the only method consistent with the conditions of his action.' He is neutral upon the question whether 'self-love is the immediate motive of all our actions,' and considers that question unmeaning, 'as not believing it possible that a man should be at once subject and object.' He writes an essay to show that there is no foundation 'for a philosophy of history in the analogy between the progressive improvement of mankind and that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the windows of his cobbler's shop, Fox beheld with righteous indignation the extravagant and insincere courtesies of the gentlefolk, and heard their exaggerated phrases of compliment. In protest against the unmeaning courtesies, he wore his hat in the presence of no matter whom, taking it off only in time of prayer. In protest against the unmeaning compliments, he addressed no man by any artificial title, calling all his neighbors, without distinction of persons, by ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... day you take up that ring, and you repolish it until all the old luster comes back, and you can see in it the flash of eyes that long ago ceased to weep. Oh, it is not an unmeaning thing when I tell you that when Christ receives a soul into His keeping He puts on it a marriage-ring. He endows you from that moment with all His wealth. You are one—Christ and the soul—one in sympathy, one in affection, one ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... forced to impoverish our blood with insufficient diet, or mortify our flesh with various forms of punishment. We do not neglect the worship of God. We offer up daily thanks for His loving care of us, and sing His praises in continual hymns; and instead of wasting the hours of the day in unmeaning penances, we fill up our time in employments that add to our health, comfort, and happiness; and that enable us the better to appreciate the goodness of that Power who is ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... walked street after street, asking to see the wounded; and the fourth day, coming to a residence, rather handsomer than the others on the street, not two blocks from Mrs. Raines, Jack's Samaritan, he found a wasted figure, with bandaged head and unmeaning eyes, that ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... when the effect is a deception upon the public, it is not a subject for present discussion. Both practices are abuses of the times, which have been carried to such an extent that nothing can be more unmeaning than references of this kind—in regard as well to schools, and "institutes," and "seminaries," as to the publication of books by subscription, and the superior merits of patent blacking and razor-straps; as to which, by the way, it has always been ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... opposition coaches, making a great dust and spattering each other with mud, but travelling by the same road to the same end. A Whig, he said, was a trimmer who dared neither to be a rogue nor an honest man, but was 'a sort of whiffling, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.' And the true genuine radical reformers? To them, as represented by the school of Bentham, Hazlitt entertained an aversion quite as hearty as his aversion for Whigs and Tories. If, he says, the Whigs ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... impaired in its strength, the memory also enfeebled and sometimes quite obliterated. The mind is wandering and vacant, and incapable of intense or steady application to any one subject. This state is usually accompanied by an unmeaning stare or fixedness of countenance quite peculiar to the drunkard. The imagination and the will, if not enfeebled, acquire a morbid sensibility, from which they are thrown into a state of violent excitement from the slightest ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... give me not unmeaning smiles, Though worldly clouds may fly before them; But let me see the sweet blue isles Of radiant eyes when tears wash o'er them. Though small the fount where they begin, They form—'tis thought in many a sonnet— A flood to ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... the stranger, 'you speak like a mere man of the world, and I think you something better. Therefore, pray do not sink your real character in paying unmeaning compliments to me.' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... after its shape. Has it legs or arms? If not, I would ask it to be made clear to me how a thing without these appliances can act so perfectly the part of a builder? (I insist on definition, and ask unusual questions, if haply I might thereby banish unmeaning words.) What were the condition and residence of the soul before it joined the crystal? What becomes of it when the crystal is dissolved? Why should a particular temperature be needed before it can exercise its ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... quietest human being, seated in the quietest house, there will sometimes come a sudden and unmeaning hunger for the possibilities or impossibilities of things; he will abruptly wonder whether the teapot may not suddenly begin to pour out honey or sea-water, the clock to point to all hours of the day at ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... breathing grew more normal, other words mingled with hers in a kind of verbal potpourri—jumbled and unmeaning, yet soon getting clear of the confusion and sounding in his ears ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... misjudging, that no sense can hit, Scar'd by the jargon of unmeaning wit, The senseless splendour of the tawdry stage[2], The loud long plaudits of a trifling age, Where dost thou wander? Exil'd in disgrace, Find'st thou in foreign realms some happier place[3]? Or dost thou still though banish'd from the town, In Britain ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... fashionable world; and through them, the middle classes, who are so disposed to imitate them in all things, will in course of time benefit by their example. There is also, we believe, a growing disposition on the part of the people at large to avoid the unmeaning displays we refer to; and it only needs the repeated and decided expression of public opinion, to secure a large measure of beneficial reform ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... came forward at the end of the eighteenth century with his famous reform of the language of English poetry, the Miltonic diction was the current coin paid out by every versifier. Wordsworth revolted against this dialect as unmeaning, hollow, gaudy, and inane. His reform consisted in dropping the consecrated phraseology altogether, and reverting to the common language of ordinary life. It was necessary to do this in order to reconnect poetry with the sympathies of men, and make it again a ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... accepted his advice, three millions to put into his coffers; and by his secret councils he was to unfold matters of moment and secrecy. A Latin letter was delivered to "David Ramsey of the clock," to hand over to the king: a copy of it has been preserved in a letter of the times; but it is so unmeaning, that it could have had no effect on the king, who, however, declared that he would not admit him to an audience, and that if he could tell where "the President of the Rosycross" was to be found, unless he made good his offer, he would hang him at the court-gates. This served the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of armies—careless of the political changes which they created, or of the interests (all neutral as regarded any opinion of his) which they disturbed—but alive to every form of beauty connected with these else unmeaning hostilities—alive to the beauty of their battle-array, to the pomp of their manoeuvres, to the awning of smoke-wreaths surging above the artilleries, to the gleaming of sabres and bayonets at intervals ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the absence of every sort of intermediate form. Those in the line between one species and another supposed to be derived from it he may be bound to provide; but as to "an infinite number of other varieties not intermediate, gross, rude, and purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause," born only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his theory—rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative—the theistic view rids him at once of this "scum of creation." For, as species do not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... question is unmeaning, and yet you ask an explanation of it. If there is no meaning in it, ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... own. "Yet, even so, it would have failed. For as soon would I doubt the truth of heaven itself, as question the patriotic faith of the conqueror of Spartacus! But left at thy house, my Crassus, it seems almost senseless and unmeaning. What ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... admirable artistic arrangement! Is it not exquisite?" "No," I replied, assuming as far as possible the traditional attitude of John Bull in the pictures in Punch—"No, it is not exquisite. Perhaps it is unmeaning; if it is unmeaning I do not mind. But if it has a meaning I know what the meaning is; it is that under all their pageant of chivalry men are not only beasts, but even hunted beasts. I do not know much ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... tremulousness of hand; many words would have been quite illegible to one not familiar with the handwriting of the old man. Sometimes the word was written two or three times, and there were numerous blots and unmeaning lines. It grew more and more illegible toward the close. Evidently it was the work of one who was but ill able to exert even sufficient strength to hold a pen in ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... strains of the fast galop on the perfumed air arise, Rosy cheeks are turning carmine, brighter grow the brightest eyes, As the whirling crowds of dancers pass again and yet again— Girls coquettish, silly women, vapid and unmeaning men. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... evident that the subject filled his whole mind, for the views which he enunciated were large, and broad, and most reverential—free at once from the bigoted dogmatism which passes current in certain circles for religion ... and from the loose, unmeaning jargon which is too often accepted ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... square pillars which support the gallery at the west end, they have no more architectural effect than two wooden posts. The same kind of failure in boldness of purpose exists throughout; and the building is, in fact, rather a small museum of unmeaning, though refined sculpture, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... from my master, with my private and ill-chosen studies, rendered me reserved, unsociable, and almost deranged my reason. Though my taste had not preserved me from silly unmeaning books, by good fortune I was a stranger to licentious or obscene ones; not that La Tribu (who was very accommodating) had any scruple of lending these, on the contrary, to enhance their worth she spoke of them with an air of mystery; this produced an effect she had not foreseen, for both ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... glaciere in some respects more remarkable than any of those I have seen, lay in a line from east to west, across the middle of the cave, on that part of the floor where the ice was thickest. The central mass was extremely solid, but somewhat unmeaning in shape, being a rough irregular pyramid; its size alone, however, was sufficient to make it very striking, the girth being 66-1/2 feet at some distance from the ice-floor with which it blended. The mass which lay to the east of this was very lovely, owing to the good taste of some one who ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... his boy of fifteen on the steps returning from his school. "Well, James," he says, as they walk together up stairs, "I hope you have been a good boy at school to-day." James, not knowing what to say, makes some inaudible or unmeaning reply. His father then goes on to say that he hopes his boy will be diligent and attentive to his studies, and improve his time well, as his future success in life will depend upon the use which he makes of his advantages while he is ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... into enjoyment. The fair Mariana, whose partner had been reft from her, as the Queen had related, was in no mind to lose the new one she had gained. She pressed upon him from time to time the wine-flask and the fruits; and in those unmeaning courtesies her hand gently lingered upon his. At length, the hour arrived when the companions retired to the Palace, during the fiercer heats of noon—to come forth again in the declining sun, to sup by the side of the fountain, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as bearing on the genuineness of this dialogue: (1) that the manners of the speakers are less subtle and refined than in the other dialogues of Plato; (2) that the sophistry of Socrates is more palpable and unblushing, and also more unmeaning; (3) that many turns of thought and style are found in it which appear also in the other dialogues:—whether resemblances of this kind tell in favour of or against the genuineness of an ancient writing, is an important ...
— Lesser Hippias • Plato
... Caerlowrie, was designated by a name, having apparently the Celtic "battle" noun as a prefix in its composition—viz., Cat-elbock. This fine old Celtic name has latterly been changed for the degenerate and unmeaning term Almond-hill.] ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... duck and the gull are essential parts of nature, each well fitted for its place, and that if one had been produced from the other by a gradual metamorphosis, the intermediate forms would have been useless, unmeaning, and unfitted for any place, in the system of the universe. Now, this idea can only exist in a mind ignorant of the very foundation and essence of the theory of natural selection, which is, the preservation of useful variations only, or, as has ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... not more ignorant than his tutor; nor is he aware that whatever word or idea comes into his mind, with any species of pain, will return, whenever it is recalled to his memory, with the same feelings. The word Task, the first time he hears it, is an unmeaning word, but it ceases to be indifferent to him the moment he hears it pronounced in a terrible voice. "Learn your task," and "fetch your book," recur to his recollection with indistinct feelings of pain; and hence, without further consideration, he will be disposed ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... to Greece, commencing with 'The Isles of Greece! the Isles of Greece!' a very feeble line, as any one will see, for it contained a useless and an unmeaning repetition." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... authority and renown shall receive some of the lustre of a far-shining triumph. What we complain of in Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance, is not that he sought power, but that he sought it in the interests of a coarse, brutal, and essentially unmeaning personal ambition. And so of Robespierre. We need not discuss the charge that he sought to make himself master. The important thing is that his mastery could have served no great end for France; that it would have been like himself, poor, barren, and hopelessly mediocre. And this would have been ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... coffin "Whither?" The poor barbarian weeping above his dead can answer the question as intelligently and satisfactorily as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful ignorance of the one is just as consoling as the learned and unmeaning words of the other. No man standing where the horizon of a life has touched a grave has any right to prophesy a future filled with pain and tears. It may be that death gives all there is of worth to life. If those who press and strain against our hearts could never die, perhaps that ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... stood at her drawing-room door as her guests were ushered in, not by the greengrocer's assistant, but by the greengrocer himself in person. And she made no quiet little curtsies, whispered no unmeaning welcomes with bated breath. No; as they arrived she seized each Littlebathian by the hand, and shook that hand vigorously. She did so to every one that came, rejoiced loudly in the coming of each, and bade them all revel in tea and cake with a voice ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of sending a deputation; but Pompey had sworn, on leaving, that he would hold all who had not joined him as his enemies; no one, therefore, could be found willing to go. Three days were spent in unmeaning discussion, and Caesar's situation did not allow of trifling. With such people nothing could be done, and peace could be won only by the sword. By an edict of his own he restored the children of the victims of Sylla's proscription to their civil rights and their estates, the usurpers being mostly ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... my intimacy with Boyce. The blind and lonely man craved it and claimed it. It would be an unmeaning pretence of modesty to under-estimate the value to him of my friendship. He was a man of intense feelings. Torture had closed his heart to the troops of friends that so distinguished a soldier might have had. He granted admittance but to three, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... thousand additional marines should be provided; and an increase in the officers should be provided by making a large addition to the classes at Annapolis. There is one small matter which should be mentioned in connection with Annapolis. The pretentious and unmeaning title of "naval cadet" should be abolished; the title of "midshipman," full of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... [Fr.]; hanemolia bazein [Gr.]; be absurd &c adj.. Adj. absurd, nonsensical, preposterous, egregious, senseless, inconsistent, ridiculous, extravagant, quibbling; self-annulling, self- contradictory; macaronic^, punning. foolish &c 499; sophistical &c 477; unmeaning &c 517; without rhyme or reason; fantastic. Int. fiddlededee!, pish!, pho!^, in the name of the Prophet—figs! [Horace Smith]. Phr. credat Judaeus Apella [Lat.] [Horace]; tell it to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... country, as yet so barren of great works, and pray that the noble school of art of which this is so admirable an exponent, may find favor, not only with our painters, but with those who call themselves connoisseurs, in preference to unmeaning works of microscopic finish, or slick examples ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... eye to the crevice and listened with painful and intense attention to the harmonious and rhythmic language, every syllable of which held a secret which she would have given her life to learn, and which sounded in her ears vague, swift, and unmeaning like the wind in the leaves and the water ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them; what we call its triviality is really the tag-ends of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand thrilling detective stories mixed up with a spoon. My experience was a fragment of this nature, and it is, at any rate, not fictitious. Not only am I not making up the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... perhaps common veracity, who presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of The late John Bernard, offers the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that Faith. Thereby shall my German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... approximate, suggesting that stars and nebulae of every species might be formed out of variously aggregated meteorites, failed of verification by exact inquiry. And spectroscopic coincidences admit of no compromise. Those that are merely approximate are, as a rule, unmeaning. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... destiny. The mummeries of these impostors, consisting in pretended consultations with their oracles, are looked upon with confidence, and their mandates, however absurd, superstitiously submitted to. These are constituted of unmeaning ceremonies and prohibitions generally affecting the diet, both in kind and mode, but never in quantity. Seal’s flesh is forbidden, for instance, in one disease, that of the walrus in the other; the ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... and selfish, grasping policies. He ought to have died in some really great cause; it was an age of gallant soldiers—an age, however, that brought out none more gallant than Berwick. Of him it might fairly be said that "his mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes." This unmeaning little war—unmeaning in the higher sense—was also the last campaign of the illustrious Prince Eugene. Eugene did all that a general could do to hold up against overwhelming odds, and but for him the victory of the French would have been complete. The short remainder ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... them they owe every civilization, and every improvement. Did Amphion, from the rude and shapeless stones, raise by his power a regular edifice, houses, palaces, and cities? Did Orpheus by his lay humanize the rugged beasts and teach the forests to listen? No, these are wild, unmeaning fables. It was woman, charming woman, that led unpolished man forth from the forests and the dens, and taught him to bend before thy shrine, humanity! See how the face of nature changes! Where late the slough mantled, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... harms, Whom even a helpless hare alarms? Yet he repines not at his lot; When past, the danger is forgot: On yonder bough he trims his wings, And with unusual rapture sings: 190 While we, less wretched, sink beneath Our lighter ills, and rush to death. No more of this unmeaning rage, But hear, my friends, the words of age: "When, by the winds of autumn driven, The scatter'd clouds fly 'cross the heaven, Oft have we, from some mountain's head, Beheld the alternate light and shade Sweep the long vale. Here, hovering, lowers The shadowy cloud; there downward pours, 200 ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... we soon reached Naples. I went immediately to M. ****: he put a great number of indiscreet questions to me; and I replied by an equal number of unmeaning answers. He probably thought that I knew no better, and therefore my caution did not offend him. When our preliminary conversation was exhausted, I desired him to give me my passport; he did so immediately: it was ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... stiff and unmeaning finger at the white rat, so as to pretend that its charms alone employed his tongue, explained matters to the others, while the Psammead hunched itself, and bunched itself, and did its very best to make itself ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... make the waters roll In healing murmurs round the weary soul. Ah, when wilt thou draw near, Thou messenger of mercy robed in song? My lonely heart has listened for thee long; And now I seem to hear Across the crowded market-place of life, Thy measured foot-fall, ringing light and clear Above unmeaning noises and unruly strife. In quiet cadence, sweet and slow, Serenely pacing to and fro, Thy far-off steps are magical and dear,— Ah, turn this way, come close and speak to me! From this dull bed of languor set my spirit free, And bid ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... asked him the old man returned only his urbane, unmeaning replies, touched with their melancholy symbolism. When St. George left him it was in the hope that Olivia would consent to have him sent down the mountain, although St. George himself was half inclined to agree with Amory's "But, really, I would far rather talk with one madman with this madman's ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... its name from the word Seneschallus, it might be contended that the initial letters of the lines above quoted mystically stand for "Collar, S. S." Enough, however, has already been written on this unmeaning point to show that some of us are "great gowks," or, in other words, stupid guffs, to waste so much pen, ink, and paper ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... from the ground; the arms were fixed close to the sides, the body being all the while kept upright and immovable, excepting when the parties passed each other, at which time the hand was raised with a quick and awkward motion. But if the Russian dance was, at the same time, both unmeaning and ridiculous, the Kamtschadale joined to the latter quality the most whimsical idea that ever entered into any people's heads. It is intended to represent the awkward and clumsy gestures of the bear, which these people have frequent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... personages who figure in the history. Witness his "Salutation of the Virgin," in the Marquis of Westminster's collection, which is evidently engendered from the idea contained in the design of Albert Durer. His strict application to nature, while it enabled him to destroy the unmeaning combinations of his predecessors, led him into many errors, by the simple fact of drawing from the people in his presence. But are not others chargeable with some incongruities? Are the Madonnas of Murillo anything but a transcript of the women of Andalusia? ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... the peritoneal ligaments of the uterus fully subserve suspensory functions. The anterior, posterior, and lateral ligaments are mainly concerned in preventing the gravid uterus, in quadrupeds, from pitching too far forward toward the diaphragm. The round ligaments are utterly unmeaning in the human female, but in the lower animals they serve the same purpose as the other ligaments. Prolapsus uteri, from the erect position and the absence of supports adapted to the position, is thus rendered common, destroying the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... so called? Pray, Mrs. B., let these old unmeaning names be entirely given up, by us at least; and let us call this salt ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... our age to deny the possibility of voluntary intellectual error. Error is often voluntary, and (where the matter is one that the person officially or otherwise is required to know) immoral too. A strange thing it is to say that "it is as unmeaning to speak of the immorality of an intellectual mistake as it would be to talk of the colour of a sound." (Lecky, European ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... His features were not delicate, not slight like those of a woman, nor were they cold, frivolous, and feeble; though well cut, they were not so chiselled, so frittered away, as to lose in expression or significance what they gained in unmeaning symmetry. Much feeling spoke in them at times, and more sat silent in his eye. Such at least were my thoughts of him: to me he seemed all this. An inexpressible sense of wonder occupied me, as I looked at this man, and reflected that he could not ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... pair of moccasins, ornamented in the best manner of Indian ingenuity. The outlines of his face were grave and dignified, though his vacant eye, which opened and turned slowly to the faces of those around him in unmeaning looks, too surely announced that the period had arrived when age brings the mental ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... would call "uniqueness of aspect," and those who do not like it "not quite coming off." I mean the thing meant something from one standpoint; but its mark was that the smallest change of standpoint made it unmeaning and unthinkable—a foolish joke. A beggar painted by Rembrandt is as solid as a statue, however roughly he is sketched in; the soul can walk all round him like a public monument. We see he would have other aspects; ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of the books." Hoangti was essentially a reformer. Time-honored ceremonies were of little importance in his eyes when they stood in the way of the direct and practical, and he abolished hosts of ancient customs that had grown wearisome and unmeaning. This sweeping away of the drift-wood of the past was far from agreeable to the officials, to whom formalism and precedent were as the breath of life. One of the ancient customs required the emperors to ascend high mountains and offer sacrifices on their summits. The literary class had ancient rule ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the furniture and plate, were all emblazoned with the arms of the royal and noble owners. And even at the present day, heraldry is far more effective for interior decoration than the unmeaning Italian scroll-work that is substituted for it. Some idea of the value of both may be formed by glancing at the interior decoration of the new Royal Exchange; and it is to be regretted that the shields containing the arms of the different ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... the time that CARLYLE broke out; the two disorders aggravated each other, and ran through all the stages incident to literary affectation, until they assumed their worst form, and common sense breathed its last, as the 'Orphic Sayings' came; those most unmeaning and witless effusions—we cannot say of the brain, for the smallest modicum of brains would have rendered their appearance an impossibility—but of mere intellectual inanity.' The American Euphuists, being possessed of the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... felt that the limit of his capacity was being reached. Mr. Slosson had become a sort of Greek chorus. He anticipated all the possible phases of drunkenness that awaited his companions. He went from silence to noisy mirth, when his unmeaning laughter rang through the house; he told long witless stories as he leaned against the bar; he became melancholy and described the loss of his wife five years before. From melancholy he passed to sullenness and seemed ready ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... it not lightly; oh! beware! beware! 'Tis no vain promise, no unmeaning word; Before God's altar, now ye both do swear, And by the High and Holy One 'tis heard! Be faithful to each other till life's close; Seek peace below, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... criticism is the principle involved. Instead of originating or relying upon nature, they copied without intelligence. The rude brick, adobe, or rubble work, left in the rough, or plastered and whitewashed, would have been preferable to their unmeaning patches of color. In the one, there would have been rugged strength to admire; in the other there exists ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... you may not consider it an altogether substantial concern. It has to be seen in a certain way, under certain conditions. Some people never see it at all. You must understand, this is no dead pile of stones and unmeaning timber. It is ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... insipid, I mean sensibility: they are gay, coquet, and sprightly; more gallant than sensible; more flatter'd by the vanity of inspiring passion, than capable of feeling it themselves; and, like their European countrywomen, prefer the outward attentions of unmeaning admiration to the real devotion of the heart. There is not perhaps on earth a race of females, who talk so much, or feel so little, of love as the French; the very reverse is in general true of the English: my fair countrywomen seem ashamed of the charming ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... the legends of the Scandinavians a marvelous record of the coming of the Comet. It has been repeated generation after generation, translated into all languages, commented on, criticised, but never understood. It has been regarded as a wild, unmeaning rhapsody of words, or as a premonition ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... by association are in common discourse attributed to memory, as we talk of memorandum-rings, and tie a knot on our handkerchiefs to bring something into our minds at a distance of time. And a school-boy, who can repeat a thousand unmeaning lines in Lilly's Grammar, is said to have a good memory. But these have been already shewn to belong to the class of association; and are termed ideas ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... murder him!' I cried, and I ran along the gallery to his door, followed by Mary Quince, whose white face I shall never forget, though her entreaties only sounded like unmeaning noises in ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... most desire awaits your word; Throw wide the door and bid it enter in. Speak, and the strong vibrations shall be stirred; Speak, and above earth's loud, unmeaning din Your silent declarations shall be heard. All things are possible to God's ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a stupefied and unmeaning eye on the messenger who uttered this calamitous news; and, repeating the words, "in the dead-thraw!" as if he could not comprehend their meaning, suffered the old man to drag him towards his horse. During the ride home, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... waters; in whose bushy side The Mountain-Bees their fragrant treasure hide Murmuring; and sings the lonely Thrush conceal'd!— Then, Ceremony, in thy gilded halls, Where forc'd and frivolous the themes arise, With bow and smile unmeaning, O! how palls At thee, and thine, my sense!—how oft it sighs For leisure, wood-lanes, dells, and water-falls; And feels th' untemper'd ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... DIM', must seem to imply a defect, rather than a beauty; and to any one, not feeling the full force of that epithet, which suggests an image like 'the sleepy eye of love', the allusion to 'the lids of Juno's eyes' must appear extravagant and unmeaning. Shakespeare's fancy lent words and images to the most refined sensibility to nature, struggling for expression: his descriptions are identical with the things themselves, seen through the fine medium of passion: strip them of that connexion, and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... upon others, the painted show of various orders of nobility, even now, when the rank within the prince's gift was become an additional reason for the free barbarian despising the imperial noble. That the Greek court was encumbered with unmeaning ceremonies, in order to make amends for the want of that veneration which ought to have been called forth by real worth, and the presence of actual power, was not the particular fault of that prince, but belonged to the system ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... so far off, that Cross of Jesus, and it really is so near! For it is lifted up so high that the waves of time roll unheeded and unmeaning at its foot. It is the power ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... the beach, a narrow strip of silvery sand and variegated pebbles, and stood there long, silently watching the unknown sports, the seemingly—to us at least—unmeaning movements, and strange groupings of the small fry, which darted to and fro in the clear shallows within two yards of my feet; or marking the brief circling ripples, wrought by the morning swallow's wing, and momently subsiding into the wonted ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Leeson, and two other young ladies, who were paying one another compliments upon their dress and their looks, settling to dance in the same cotillon, guessing who would begin the minuets, and wondering there were not more gentlemen. Yet, in the midst of this unmeaning conversation, of which she remarked that Miss Leeson bore the principal part, not one of them failed, from time to time, to exclaim with great rapture "What sweet music!—" "Oh. how charming!" "Did you ever hear ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... might give him a little more, and others seeing that their comrade was obtaining that for which they had been longing, came up and held out their hands for the cup, their manner and the unmeaning look of their eyes showing that they were more influenced by the instinct of animals than the sense ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... little way already when his heart softened and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: 'The road to Heaven is repentance!' And then, after a silence, again the great shout 'Repentance!' thundered after me. Was that sternness or simplicity, I wonder? Or a mere unmeaning superstition, a mechanical thing? If there lives anybody completely honest in this world, surely it must be my ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... him that struggled forever upward and would not be repressed. It rose up constantly, seeking to break through all bounds; yet still he struggled against it; and still, as he felt himself grow weaker in the conflict, he sought refuge in fresh outbursts of unmeaning words. But amidst it all Talbot saw nothing except the man who had gone forth to die for her, and in all his words heard nothing except the utterance of that which proved the ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... person's character will come out. We saw in the last Talk how character has to come out in writing. Only a very common character would select pieces written entirely for a vain show—of rapid runs, glittering arpeggios, and loud, unmeaning chords. Worse than that, such a choice of pieces displays two common people,—three, in fact: A composer who did not write pure thought from the heart; a teacher who did not instil good thoughts into the pupil's heart; and yourself (if really ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... However important these may be, they have no place among the things which bind a soul to its Saviour. They may be helps to these things, but nothing more. The rite does not ensure the faith, else the antithesis of our text were unmeaning. The rite does not stand in the place of faith, or the contrast implied were absurd. But the two belong to totally different orders of things, which may co-exist indeed, but may also be found separately; the one is the indispensable spiritual experience which makes us Christians, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dead to vigour and delight; There's no salvation from the tresses which invest Those temples, nor from eyes swift-flashing left and right. Devotion, piety I plead not to arrest My doom, no goodness crowns the passion-madden'd wight; Thy prayer unmeaning cease, with which thou weariest, O Hafiz, the most High at ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... ignorant of their very names; very few who can spell them. It is rare that you meet with a young person who knows his own age; rarer to find the boy who has seen a book, or the girl who has seen a flower. Ask them the name of their sovereign, and they will give you an unmeaning stare; ask them the name of their religion, and they will laugh: who rules them on earth, or who can save them in heaven, are alike ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... wild jargon of unmeaning voices strikes your ear and you discover that ninety-nine people out of a hundred have forgotten how to speak English. More than this, the English signs are no more, and on the billboards and before the business offices are ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... that it has suggested many pleasant thoughts to the author—some chime of fancy 'wrong or right'—some feeling of devotion 'more or less'—and other elegancies of the same stamp. It ends with this unmeaning prophecy. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... arch maiden prattled on in this unmeaning manner, her rapid fingers entwined the flags in a confused maze, which she threw over her head in a form not unlike the ornament for which she intimated it was intended. The veteran was by far too polite to dispute a lady's taste, and he renewed the dialogue, with his slightly awakened ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... (1855) was the first Jewish Lord Mayor—a laudable proof of the increased toleration of our age. This mayor proved a liberal and active magistrate, who repressed the mischievous and unmeaning Guy Fawkes rejoicings, and through the exertions of the City Solicitor, persuaded the Common Council to at last erase the absurd inscription on the Monument, which attributed the Fire of London to a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Limners, come! who choke your house's entry With dear, unmeaning lumber, from your easels; Dull heads of the Nobility and Gentry; Full length of fubsey Belles, or Beaux ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... the uncoming shade— Shy elf, or dryad pale and cold, Or mystic lingerer from of old: Vainly. The fair and stately things, Impassive as departed kings, All still in the wood's stillness stood, And dumb. The rooted multitude Nodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed, Unmeaning, undivined. It seemed No other art, no hope, they knew, Than clutch the earth and seek the blue. 'Mid vegetable king and priest And stripling, I (the only beast) Was at the beast's work, killing; hewed The stubborn roots across, bestrewed The glebe with the dislustred leaves, And bade the saplings ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Harlequin in 'The Emperor of the Moon' several gentlemen (who inadvertently judged by the rules of nature) fancied that a great deal of the drollery, and spirit of his grimace was lost by his wearing that useless, unmeaning mask, therefore insisted that the next time of his acting that part he should play without it. Their desire was accordingly complied with, but alas! in vain—Penkethman was no more Harlequin. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... been lost, if Christmas day and Good Friday had been the only week days made holy days, and Easter the only Lord's day especially distinguished. I should also have added Whitsunday; but that it has become unmeaning since our Clergy have, as I grieve to think, become generally Arminian, and interpreting the descent of the Spirit as the gift of miracles and of miraculous infallibility by inspiration have rendered it of course of little or no application to Christians at ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... same writer, who has given so profound and complex a notion of the characters both of Alcibiades and Socrates in the Symposium, should have treated them in so thin and superficial a manner in the Alcibiades, or that he would have ascribed to the ironical Socrates the rather unmeaning boast that Alcibiades could not attain the objects of his ambition without his help; or that he should have imagined that a mighty nature like his could have been reformed by a few not very conclusive words of Socrates. ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... the reign of JamesI. (1603-25), details of classic origin came into more general use, but caricatured almost beyond recognition. The orders, though much employed, were treated without correctness or grace, and the ornament was unmeaning and heavy. It is not worth while to dwell further upon this style, which produced no important public buildings, and soon gave way to a more ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voiced elements, The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... consciousness that "whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin," simply view sin in the light of that obligation to be perfectly pure and holy which necessarily, and forever, rests upon a responsible being. If you would know that spiritual slavery is no extravagant and unmeaning phrase, but denotes a most real and helpless bondage, endeavor to get entirely rid of sin, and to be perfect as the spirits of just men ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... even in exploring it thoroughly, as it was his purpose to do. God was there, also, as he is everywhere. This our secluded man found to be a most precious consolation. Again and again, each day, was he now in the practice of communing in spirit, directly with his Creator; not in cold and unmeaning forms and commonplaces, but with such yearning of the soul, and such feelings of love and reverence, as an active and living faith can alone, by the aid of the Divine Spirit, awaken ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... there are on earth who reap and sow, Enough who give their lives to common gain, Enough who toil with spade and axe and plane, Enough who sail the seas where rude winds blow; Enough who make their life unmeaning show, Enough who plead in courts, who physic pain; Enough who follow in the lover's train, And taste of wedded hearts the bliss ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... awful, and his assurance, great as it was, not always sufficient to get him clear of his difficulties. His foreign accent, however, worked wonders for him, and whenever too hard pressed, afforded him a secure and happy retreat. An unmeaning grin, and "me not pronounce," had saved him from precipices, down which an Englishman, caeteris paribus, must unquestionably have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... vindictive lout, son of the second wife of Cymbeline by a former husband. He is noted for "his unmeaning frown, his shuffling gait, his burst of voice, his bustling insignificance, his fever-and-ague fits of valor, his froward tetchiness, his unprincipled malice, and occasional gleams of good sense." Cloten is the rejected lover of Imogen (the daughter ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... should be no absolute barrier to the presentation of any well-bred, well-behaved person, whether subject or foreigner; and, if it were as easy as visiting the Exhibition, the Queen would be required to hold a drawing-room every day, and devote the whole of it to unmeaning and useless introductions. As the matter is actually managed, those who have any good reason for it undergo the ceremony, with many who have none; while the great majority are content with the knowledge ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... answer. I then invited Galed to another room, where Asaad soon joined us with a full and heavy heart. The two brothers saluted each other with embarrassment. Asaad evidently wished to be alone, and the brother, after a few mild, unmeaning ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... leave him behind, then. Now let us see. Saint Catherine of Genoa? Her discussions between the soul, the body, and self-love are unmeaning and confused, and when in her 'Dialogues,' she treats of the operations of the interior life, she is greatly below Saint Teresa and Saint Angela. On the other hand her Treatise on Purgatory is clear. It declares that she alone has penetrated ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... vessels, but by external influence; whence the use of hot fomentation to the head in torpor of the brain; and the use of hot bath in cases of general debility, which has been much too frequently neglected from a popular error occasioned by the unmeaning application of the word relaxation to animal power. If the fluid of heat could be directed to pass through particular parts of the body with as little diffusion of its influence, as that of electricity ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... observe the small heads and unmeaning eyes of birds, we do not expect to find any great amount of intellect among them. They are, however, moved by the same passions and feelings as larger animals, and occasionally exhibit thought and reasoning power. I suspect, indeed, could ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... gallantry and deference which had arisen from chivalry, still remained on the surface, but its language was that of cold, unmeaning flattery; and, from being the arbiters of honour, they became the mere ministers of amusement. They were again consigned to that frivolity, into which they relapse as easily as men do into ferocity. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... met her in the street; she stopped me, and, after some unmeaning talk, asked if I had seen you lately; if I did not find you very absent and distracted: no wonder;—you were in love. The young lady was away on a visit, and wooed by ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... find no unmeaning gallant fribbling, but the solemn language of one who had death and judgment before his face. He conducts the inquiry with great care, as becomes a subject of such universal interest: and the great majority of Christians ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... because of convictions, than which none could be stronger or more abiding. When they said: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," they uttered no unreal words, no words that habits of careless utterance had made unmeaning. They meant just what they said. And that strong and united conviction gave hope and comfort for the future. Clouds and darkness were about them. But on those clouds there was seen the bow of promise, while beyond ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... the interest flagged considerably, especially among the older men, as to them, these characters alone, were as yet, unmeaning sounds. Some of them got up and lit their pipes, and moving around, divided their time between the lesson and the smoking. Of course I had to let them smoke. I might have found it a difficult matter to have stopped them if I had been so foolish as to have tried. So I told them some ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... of a church to a saint in the Latin Church implies the presence in the sepulchre of the altar of the relics of that saint. From the Roman point of view, a dedication without the relic is unmeaning. Among the Celts this was unknown, with them a church took its name after its founder, and the founder of a church dedicated it by a partial fast of forty days, and prayer and vigil on the spot. The early basilicas ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... by personal solicitations and memorials, to obtain an audience of the emperor and an answer to his propositions. He attended the levees of the Duc de Cadore, the Duc de Rovigo, Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia; but uniformly failed in his efforts, and was turned off with unmeaning professions. He records in his diary, with gratitude, the friendly attentions of Volney, Denon, and the Duc de Bassano; but, with these exceptions, he seems to have been treated with great coolness, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... apathy, and vacancy of ideas, vulgarly known by the name of a brown study. If confined in a room for more than half an hour by bad weather or other contrarieties, I would pace backwards and forwards, like the restless cavia in his den, with a fretful, unmeaning pertinacity. I felt an insatiable longing for something new, and a childish ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... of the civil government; but, by a whimsical perversion, the name of Civil List has remained attached to that portion of the revenue which is appropriated to the expenses of the royal household. It is still more strange that several neighbouring nations should have thought this most unmeaning of all names worth borrowing. Those duties of customs which had been settled for life on Charles and James successively, and which, in the year before the Revolution, had yielded six hundred thousand pounds, were granted to the Crown for a term ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... indulgent kindness about herself. As she looked up the clean, empty street stretching away under the shade of its thrifty young trees, it seemed made only to lead her forward into the life for which she had been so long preparing herself. Endbury, with its shops, its bustle of factories so unmeaning to her, the great bulk of its inexplicable "business," existed only as the theater upon the stage of which she was to play the leading role in the drama of life—she almost consciously thought of it in those terms—which, after some exciting and pleasurable incidents and a ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... decimated itself for a question which involved no principle and led to no result, and perhaps the history of the world may be searched in vain for any parallel to a quarrel at once so desperate and so unmeaning. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the humour, whether of Plato in the ancient, or of Pope and Swift in the modern world, is the natural enemy. Nor must we forget that in modern times also there is no fallacy so gross, no trick of language so transparent, no abstraction so barren and unmeaning, no form of thought so contradictory to experience, which has not been found to satisfy the minds of philosophical enquirers at a certain stage, or when regarded from a certain point of view only. The peculiarity of the fallacies of our own age is that we live ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... and for the heavy entablature and cornice which rest on them. The dome instead of springing from nearly the same level with the roof of the surrounding portico, is raised ten feet higher on a most ugly and unmeaning attic story, and the windows (which are quite useless) are the most extraordinary embrasures (for they resemble nothing else) that I ever saw, out of a fortress. Above all, the building is utterly unmeaning, it is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... whether the family is the basis of the State cannot be made an abstract question of political philosophy. Indeed the question is unmeaning when put as an abstract one. We might just as well ask, "Is the climate cold in a State?" or, "Is the English language spoken in a State?" It is only as we ask these questions about a particular ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... we may use such an expression.) extreme flakiness of thought. But in spite of these few exceptions to the general indifference, let it stand recorded, that when the name of SEATSFIELD returned to his own shore, it was an alien and unmeaning word. His own country, so deeply indebted to his powerful pen, absolutely knew him not. The literati stared, and the Boston Advertiser was struck aghast with wonder. What a comment upon the state of letters in America! 'Literary Emporium,' forsooth! 'Western Athens!' Medici of Manhattan! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... to love her, what right had she to blame him? The very word of "blame" was unmeaning in such reference. In this, at all events, his fatalism had become her own way of thinking. To talk of controlling love is nonsensical; dead love is dead beyond hope. But need one sink into a slough ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... burst of resurrection— loveliness is clouded, when we turn to gloomy, stifling courts and lanes in the crowded cities, where gleams of sunshine scarce ever penetrate; the lives of whose miserable inhabitants are yet more utterly devoid of brightness; to whom the voice of spring is an unmeaning sound; to sick ones in these courts, who have no easier couch for the pain-filled limbs than a heap of shavings on the hard floor of a room filled with noisy children, and disorderly men and women; to ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... awful, dismal but yet mean, With anxious bustle moves the cumbrous scene; Presents no objects tender or profound But spreads its cold unmeaning ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Are deposited the remains of one Who possessed beauty without vanity, Strength without insolence, Courage without ferocity, And all the virtues of man without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the memory of BOATSWAIN, a dog, Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstead Abbey, ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... in ruined castles and abbeys, or ancient but still flourishing cathedrals, the same invariable love of pilfering and mutilating is to be found: some knock off a nose or a finger, others deface a frieze or a mullion from sheer love of havoc, others chip off some unmeaning fragment as a relique or object of curiosity; but the most general taste seems to be that of carving names or initials, and some of the ancient figures are completely tattooed with these barbarous engravings: this propensity I believe to ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... principles, contrasted with his brother's, rendered the notice he took of me peculiarly flattering. Without any fixed design, as I am now convinced, he continued to single me out at the dance, press my hand at parting, and utter expressions of unmeaning passion, to which I gave a meaning naturally suggested by the romantic turn of my thoughts. His stay in the country was short; his manners did not entirely please me; but, when he left us, the colouring of my picture ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... rose of summer or the last run of shad, it would have had as much point in it. What he meant to say was, "Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth," but he put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning observation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him to stigmatize as "ghastly and disgusting" one of the finest scenes in the Lake District, probably unsurpassed in Europe for its perfectly balanced beauty of form and splendour of colouring. To the general reader of those times the descriptive poems of Wordsworth were probably unmeaning rhapsodies. Our ancestors, however, were very fond of "prospects." An old atlas of the counties of England, published about 1800, came into the writer's hands recently. The whole of the gentler hills, including every possible vantage point ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... WITHOUT INTENDING TO MARRY.—Nearly all this wide-spread crime and suffering connected with public and private licentiousness and prostitution, has its origin in these unmeaning courtships—this premature love—this blighting of the affections, and every young man who courts without intending to marry, is throwing himself or his sweet-heart into this hell upon earth. And ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the directions, so as to make four verses or songs; four, as already stated, being the sacred number running through most of these formulas. Four blowings and four circuits in the rubbing are also specified. The words used in the songs are sometimes composed of unmeaning syllables, but in this case dnuwa and dayuha seem to have a meaning, although neither the interpreter nor the shaman consulted could explain them, which may be because the words have become altered in the song, as frequently happens. Dnuwa appears to be an old verb, meaning "it has penetrated," ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... melody, and a picturesqueness of action, that enables it to delude, and that even draws tears from the eyes of, persons who can be won over by the eye and the ear, with almost no participation of the understanding. And this unmeaning rant and senseless declamation sufficed for the time to throw into shade those exquisite delineations of character, those transcendent bursts of passion, and that perfect anatomy of the human heart, which ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall. And as, year after year, Fresh products of their barren labour fall From their tired hands, and rest Never yet comes more near, Gloom settles slowly down over their breast; And while they try to stem The waves of mournful ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... should hide and fold her wings In bowers of yonder gleaming skies, Unmeaning then each bard oft sings Of bliss that lives on earth and dies,— I want such ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... facts of time. As for the young people, they were in the full swing of innocent enjoyment; and the girls wished that the frost would last through the whole of the winter, so that they might make up skating-parties with the boys every day, and avoid the unmeaning deadness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... wolf, and the buzzard's hoarse croak, a caracara adds its shrill note; the fiend-like chorus further strengthened by the scream of the white-headed eagle—for all the world like the filing of a frame saw, and not unlike the wild, unmeaning laughter of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... understand what kind of person poor mamma is, and how hopeless it would be to expect her to keep any secret, even if her daughter's honour was in question. I told her how she would run about, talking in her mild unmeaning way of "poor May and that shameful Mr. Scully;" and, at last, the Rev. Mother, as you prophesied she would, saw the matter in its proper light, and she has consented to receive all my letters, and if mother writes, to give her to understand that I am safe within the convent walls. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... experiment. {FN35-20} It was the commentaries of Lahiri Mahasaya which brought to light, clear of allegories, the very science of religion that had been so cleverly put out of sight in the riddle of scriptural letters and imagery. No longer a mere unintelligible jugglery of words, the otherwise unmeaning formulas of Vedic worship have been proved by the master to be full of scientific significance. . ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... decoration was so commonplace and vulgar that to attempt to describe it would be painful to the writer whilst having no sort of effect on the reader, since it was almost indescribable. From the decorative point of view, the room was the most unmeaning of failures, the ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... question the divine right of the sovereign, or the purity of the church,—when the rights of the feudal seigneurs were unchallenged, and they could head or hang, mutilate or quarter their vassals at their pleasure,—when freedom was a word as unmeaning as it is now tinder his sacred majesty, Napoleon the Third, there came to the capital, from Touraine, an artizan, named Anseau, who was as cunning in his trade of goldsmith as Benvenuto Cellini, the half-mad artificer of ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... in Town, 1742, he had, he says, but "a very small Share." Besides these, there are three hasty and flimsy pieces which belong to the early part of 1737. The first of these, Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds, was a dramatic sketch in ridicule of the unmeaning Entertainments and Harlequinades of John Rich at Covent Garden. This was ironically dedicated to Rich, under his stage name of "John Lun," and from the dedication it appears that Rich had brought out ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... glibly? He put the paper down and took a New Testament from his desk and opened it haphazard. He felt a curious wish that he could read it for the first time. It was over-familiar. Everything latterly in his theology and beliefs had become over-familiar. It had all become mechanical and dead and unmeaning to his tired mind.... ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... is traversed by the cold dictates of artificial prudence, by the impotent distinctions of rank and family. Unfeeling parents rise to thwart their wishes. The despotic hand of authority tears asunder hearts united by the softest ties, and sacrifices the prospect of felicity to ridiculous and unmeaning prejudices. Let us, my Matilda, pity those whose fate is thus unpropitious, but let us not voluntarily subject ourselves to their misfortune. No voice is raised to forbid our union. Heaven and earth command ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning luxury. To spend as much to furnish your dressing room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a greenhouse, and give ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... was more or less general, but it sounded vague and unmeaning to him. He heard a voice on his left holding forth with energy, but he did not heed it until Mrs Jefferson touched his arm and ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... it's a new man, and the company ain't most especial judges, criticise. "A leetle out o' keeping," says you. "He don't use his grays enough, nor glaze down well. That shadder wants depth. General effect is good, though parts ain't. Those eyebrows are heavy enough for stucco," says you, and other unmeaning terms like these. It will pass, I tell you. Your opinion will be thought great. Them that judged the cartoons at Westminster Hall, knew plaguey little more nor that. But if this is a portrait of the lady of the house, hangin' up, or it's at all like enough to make ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... in a private house on a rainy day. A man's definite daily work is generally run with such rigid convenience of modern science that thrift, the picking up of potential helps here and there, has almost become unmeaning to him. He comes across it most (as I say) when he is playing some game within four walls; when in charades, a hearthrug will just do for a fur coat, or a tea-cozy just do for a cocked hat; when a toy theater needs timber ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... countries—the African fetish, the American Indian sachem, the Hindu jogi, the Musalman mulla, and the Romish priest and miracle-monger—have all agreed on one point, viz., to impose on their silly victims a multitude of unmeaning ceremonies, and absurd mummeries, in order to conceal their own contemptible vacuity ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... "Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?" Opening the mouth wide gives a promise of something great to come, if nothing great does come, this is a case of [Greek: chaunotes] or fruitless and unmeaning hiatus; the transference to the ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... this—they don't. They have not, like us, waited seventeen years for a signal for revolution;—and now, before God, I believe the hour is at hand! This is no accidental insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, '32—no outbreak at a funeral—no riot of operatives—no unmeaning revolt, as in '39. It is a reform, with the first names in France as its advocates and supporters, which we will make a revolution if we can secure ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg |
