"Lesser" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Fourteen Points, their immediate effect was slight. The Austrians, and to a lesser extent the Germans, professed interest, but it was soon apparent that the Germans at least were not ready to approach the allied point of view. And the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, forced upon Russia on March 3, was in such ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... and Mr. Travilla looked fondly into the sweet face so bright and happy, where the beauties of rare intellect and moral worth were as conspicuous as the lesser ones ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be superstitious or useless, prove to-day on examination to have been of immense value to mankind. Probably no superstition ever existed which did not have some social value; and the most seemingly repulsive or cruel sometimes turn out to have been the most precious. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... Colorado River. It is more than two hundred miles long; and from rim to rim its walls measure in places twenty miles across. It is not a clean-cut open channel from wall to wall, but, on the contrary, it is filled with castellated peaks, buttes, pinnacles, ridges, seams, and lesser canyons. Down deep in its lowest part, hurrying onward with impetuous ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... evident desire to make progress in his studies,—wherein he had a stimulus unsuspected by any one but Bill,—his sturdy truthfulness, and general obedience to rules and regulations, won him golden opinions from those in authority. Ambition, whether for greater or lesser aims, was Jim's ruling passion, and now he had so many spurs to urge him on; for, added to his own personal aspirations and the determination to prove himself a credit to his benefactors, was the overwhelming desire to outstrip Theodore, and wrest from ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... short of; not pass, not come up to; want. become smaller, render smaller &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) 195; hide its diminished head, retire into the shade, yield the palm, play second fiddle, be upstaged, take a back seat. Adj. inferior, smaller; small &c. 32; minor, less, lesser, deficient, minus, lower, subordinate, secondary; second-rate &c. (imperfect) 651; sub, subaltern; thrown into the shade; weighed in the balance and found wanting; not fit to hold a candle to, can't hold a candle to. least, smallest &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... undignified as the submission of England then was, that Lord Auckland was right, that the delay of a single day might very probably have separated the two peoples for ever. The terms submission and fear are galling terms when applied from the lesser nation to the greater; but it is the plain historical truth, it is the natural consequence of injustice, it is the predicament in which every country places itself which leaves such a mass of hatred and discontent by its ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... truth of rational religion is that into which all that is true in lesser faiths resolves itself. Where they agree with it they are in agreement amongst themselves. Where they depart from it, there begins discord—sure sign of error—the confusion and strife of tongues, the jangling contradictions of men. Are we then ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... carried on apart, Everard had almost forcibly detained by his own side his follower, Wildrake, whose greater curiosity, and lesser delicacy, would otherwise have thrust him forward, to get, if possible, into the secret. But when he saw the Doctor turn into the coppice, he whispered eagerly to Everard—"A gold Carolus to a commonwealth farthing, the Doctor has not only come to preach a peace, but has brought ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... as the thought is developed. His verse was intended to be read aloud or chanted. He himself says that his verse construction is "apparently lawless at first perusal, although on closer examination a certain regularity appears, like the recurrence of lesser and larger waves on the seashore, rolling in without intermission, and fitfully rising and falling." There is little doubt that he carried in his ear the music of the waves and endeavored to make his verse in some measure conform to that. He says specifically that while he was listening ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... dispirited state which had been hers from the beginning of our flight. Indeed now, when I was so soon to bid her farewell, she seemed more tired and melancholy, pale and drooping, than I had yet seen her. As I was sadly noticing this, we came to a place where a lesser road ran from the highway toward a long stretch of woods at the right. The Countess drew in her horse, and said, indicating the ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... night, or the sacred sacrificial fires of human flesh were lighted, then Tu-Kila-Kila could lay aside his tomahawk and spear, and become for a while as the islanders, his fellows, were. At other times, too, when he went out in state to visit the lesser deities of his court, the King of Fire and the King of Water made a solemn taboo before He left his home, which protected the sacred tree from aggression during its guardian's absence. Then Tu-Kila-Kila, shaded by his divine umbrella, and preceded by the noise of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... however which has attended the efforts of many of the States of the Union, who at an early period of our national history were encumbered by the same evil in a lesser degree but who have since been successful in removing it, induce a hope in your memorialists that slavery may be abolished in the District of Columbia. That if possible it ought to be, some interesting considerations of a local character, peculiarly ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the peace, nor would they allow other people to do so. Though they had their capital in Guadaloupe, they extended their military enterprises in every direction, and Cuba, Porto Rico, Hayti, Jamaica, and the lesser islands suffered from their assaults. They were trained to fight from childhood, and attained to great proficiency in arms. Being active voyagers, they had some knowledge of astronomy. When operating in the waters of a hostile country it was their custom to mask their boats with palm ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... this side adjoins ours. In September and October it goes dry, but in November it is full of water, the volume of which would be greatly increased by a partial clearing of the forest, so as to send all the lesser streams to join it. As it is, its waters do no good; but if one or two dams were made between the two hills on either side of it, as they have done at Riquet, and at Saint-Ferreol—where they have made immense reservoirs to feed ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... enormous fan, ogled the various occupants of the dining-room through her eyeglass as she advanced. The remainder of the retinue included the Duke of Wellington, an old nobleman of threescore and ten, and a half-dozen lesser peers, nearly all of whom were on the shady side of sixty. Lord Gladstone Churchill, Paran Paget, and Sir Humphry Davy, who were always in attendance on the person of the sovereign, were the only youthful spirits. It was the former of these who had furnished ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the first kiss. She had trembled and sighed, when he ran to her and bent over her: it was the one expression left of all her joy and all her love. But it passed away as other lesser agitations had passed away. One last reserve of energy obeyed the gentle persuasion of love. Silent towards all other friends, she was ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... is nearly illegal. This applies, in a lesser degree, to marriages where children, dressed in Charles the First costumes, are not employed to hold up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... same manner, but perhaps in a lesser degree, the elephant will remember those whom it dislikes, and during the season of "must" it would be exceedingly dangerous for such persons to venture within reach of the animal's trunk. Stories are numerous concerning the animosity of elephants against ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... formerly in possession of M. Henry Delamarre, who in the days of the Empire enjoyed a short period of most remarkable success, having won the French Derby no less than three times within four years. His choice of colors was a maroon jacket with red sleeves and black cap. He had some lesser triumphs last year, at the autumn meeting in the Bois de Boulogne, where his mare Reine Claude won the Prix du Moulin by two lengths, his horse Vicomte, who up to that time had been running so badly, taking the Prix d'Automne, while the second prize ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... was a favorite with the public before the curtain, she was no less popular with her fellow artists on the stage. Jealousy and ill-will not seldom reign among the surroundings of a star. It is a trial to human nature to be but a lesser light revolving round some brilliant luminary—but the setting to adorn the jewel. But Mary Anderson won the hearts of every one on the boards, from actors to scene-shifters. And at Christmas, in which she is a great believer, every one, high ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... to make woman simply a lesser man, weaker in body and mind,—an affectionate and docile animal, of inferior grade. That there is any aim in the distinction of the sexes, beyond the perpetuation of the race, is nowhere recognized by them, so far as I know. That ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... any rate it stretched out its neck and extended its muzzle, so that head and neck were nearly in a straight line, and uttered a shrill, squealing whinny, which was answered at once by the donkey with a sonorous trumpeting bray, as the lesser animal came cantering up with tail ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... and cream (y'clept bread-sauce), each to each giving double grace, do mutually illustrate and set off (as skilful goldfoils to rare jewels) your partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, struggling with my carnal and fleshly prudence (which suggests that a bird a man is the proper allotment in such cases), yearneth sometimes to have thee here to pick a wing or so. I question if your Norfolk ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... when he lies low! He flashes out emeralds and rubies, amethystine flames and sapphirine colours, in a manner quite marvellous to behold, and this is only one star! So, too, do Arcturus, and Capella, and lesser luminaries. . . . But I tire ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... paid a tribute to the rights of peoples as against expediency. The same may be said of the decision to provide for plebiscites in East Prussia and in upper Silesia. On the other hand, the refusal to permit the incorporation of the new, lesser Austria within Germany was at once unjust and unwise—a concession to the most ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... seem, are not of equal force in the South American States, owing, in part, perhaps, to a former degradation, produced by colonial vassalage; but principally to the lesser contrast of colours. The difference is not striking between that of many of the Spanish and Portuguese Creoles and that of many of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... each tumbler whose contents have been returned to the bucket. Just so the qualities developed by the experience of a single lion will become the common property of all lions who are in the future to be born from that group-soul, though in a lesser degree than that in which they existed in the individual lion who ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... of a loyal Englishman had not been wholly eradicated from the mind of this biographer by a few years of plebeian institutions. With equal truth he goes on, however, to say that what was "of an Importance swallowing up the Lesser Matter of Lineage and Station, Richard Twining was an upright and a God-fearing man, and Mary, his wife, patterned in all things after the Behaviour of her godly Ancestor." Either Richard or Mary, his wife, must have something "patterned" after a liberal and occasionally ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Macquarie discovered and named after the governor of that name. But Sturt's famous discovery of the river Darling and his descent of the Murray River rank among the most noteworthy of a bewildering number of lesser expeditions. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... feet, and the faults reach even a greater magnitude. There is also an abundance of volcanic rocks and extinct volcanoes, and while the principal eruptions have occurred about the borders of the region, extending but slightly into it, traces of lesser disturbances can be found throughout the country. It has been said that if a geologist should actually make the circuit of the plateau country, he could so conduct his route that for three-fourths of the time he would be treading upon volcanic materials ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... passed, to grow into weeks and then, months, Florel wandered over the land. Sometimes, he took service with a captain, who would engage in a campaign. Sometimes, he took service with one of the lesser nobility. A few times, he ran with the bands of the forest and road, to rob travelers. But he was cautious to avoid the great Earls, realizing ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... in stacks by Balder's ship; And every God went home to his own house. But when the Gods were to the forest gone, Hermod led Sleipner from Valhalla forth And saddled him; before that, Sleipner brook'd No meaner hand than Odin's on his mane, On his broad back no lesser rider bore; Yet docile now he stood at Hermod's side, Arching his neck, and glad to be bestrode, Knowing the God they went to seek, how dear. But Hermod mounted him, and sadly fared In silence up the dark ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... colonel, and said they wanted an interview too. It means the temporary resumption of a species of diplomatic life. I suppose it is in the air, and everybody likes the change. Yesterday, too, came another despatch from Prince Ching and others—as these letters are now always curiously signed, the lesser men hiding their identity in this way—asking the Ministers once more to do something impossible; and once more a despatch has gone back, saying that we are perfectly happy to remain where we are, only we would like some vegetables and fruit.... And so, to-day, four cartloads of melons ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... split and began to gape. Ed found himself looking down a manhole-sized gullet into a shallow puddle of slime with bits of bone sticking up here and there. Toward the near end a soggy mass of fur that might have been the rabbit seemed to be visibly melting down. At the same moment, the tangle of lesser monsters sorted themselves out and a wave of stingers came ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... fortunes with an iron hand, dealing out misfortune, or withholding it, at his will. It is only through the medium of the Angakok, or conjurer, that the people can learn what to do to keep Torngak and the lesser spirits of evil, with their varying moods, in good humor. Stewart has led some of the Eskimos to at least outwardly renounce their heathenism and profess Christianity. In a few instances I believe they are sincere. If he remains upon the field, as I know he wishes to do, he will ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... up the St. Paul's river on a pleasure excursion, with the Governor, and several men of lesser note. We touched at the public farm, and found only a single man in charge. The sugar-cane was small in size, was ill-weeded, and, to my eye, did not appear flourishing. The land is apparently good and suitable, but labor is deficient, and my impressions were ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... chartists were just; all classes of liberal politicals felt that the people were entitled to a wider distribution of the franchise, but many who thus felt were deterred from the concession by the intemperate language and impracticable schemes of Fergus O'Connor and the lesser leaders of the confederacy. Whatever might be supposed imprudent as a measure of political agitation in a rich country, and where the vast mass of the people had a strong aversion to all constitutional, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is great,—but, you tell me, affinity greater. Ah, my friend, there are many affinities, greater and lesser, Stronger and weaker; and each, by the favour of juxtaposition, Potent, efficient, in force,—for a time; but none, let me tell you, Save by the law of the land and the ruinous force of the will, ah, None, I fear me, ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... British Mission. "It is incomprehensible," says he, "how officers and men could attack the very post that they had been sent to defend. Moreover, they were over 100 strong and fully armed, whereas the French garrison was small and had no intention of putting up a defence." One of the lesser outrages described by Father Macdonald, since it was not attended with fatal results, was that which happened to Captain Gaillard, who from his window saw an Italian lieutenant shoot and kill with his revolver an unarmed Annamese. The captain cried out with rage, and when his room ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Landed by cuttar when wee saw a sail. Lesser Kay N. of Gable. Get open water between two kays S.W. and W. by S., and N. inner point of Gable (where is green patch, good watering) in line with white rock (birds), neer as posble. S. a point E. 3 feet ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... dangerous. There seem to be some irregularities in her state. What a torture to hear his professional jargon, when every word he utters seems to threaten the life of the beloved woman. I told the doctor the position we are in, and he said that between two dangers he preferred the lesser one. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... her bad turns. The Pope, who made her a saint, and Mark Twain, who made her human. It is difficult to say, off-hand, which did her the worse service. Some way, it seems to me, she could live in our hearts more beautifully in the remote and noble company of myths like the lesser gods, made by men to express their deepest yearnings for the beautiful in life. The pleasant land in which she lived, the gentle hills whereon she watched her flocks, and the tender sky of France, all made me happy, and if Joan did not get to me, perhaps it was because one ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... planning to become a trained nurse, and had paid for a course of instruction in massage. I tell you this merely to illustrate a fact I fully believe, that any girl who is determined to live an honourable life and retain her self-respect can make her way in the world and rise from lesser to higher positions, if she is patient and willing to do what is termed menial work as a stepping-stone. You tell me that scores of girls are kept in poorly paying, inferior positions when capable of filling better places, simply because they will not accept the dishonourable attentions of some ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... portraiture, the personages in Landor's talk seem half asleep and terribly given to twaddle. His view of Dante is less equivocal. In the whole 'Inferno,' Petrarca (evidently representing Landor) finds nothing admirable but the famous descriptions of Francesca and Ugolino. They are the 'greater and lesser oases' in a vast desert. And he would pare one of these fine passages to the quick, whilst the other provokes the remark ('we must whisper it') that Dante is 'the great master of the disgusting.' He seems really to prefer Boccaccio ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... perhaps somewhat conventional, and allowing one to see, through its meshes, the simple fact that she was looked up to as a good and dutiful parent, who had worshipped her son from his birth, and perfectly fulfilled his ideas of feminine excellency. From her he had learnt the lesser Catechism and the Lord's Prayer, since discarded, but useful in their proper season. Although he had ceased to be an orthodox Christian, he felt that he was the better for having been trained in that creed. He had a perfect faith in the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... waved their front hair and made it into an enormous roll over the forehead, with the help of some padding. And then she had made three puffs of the back hair, which she had placed at the top of the head. The only difference between them all was the greater or lesser quantity of hair they had, and the colour of the little bow placed coquettishly on the ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... ships being of lesser build than the Spanish invaded the Spaniards with great dexterity and having discharged their ordnance withdrew into the open sea and leveled all their shot with a certain and successful aim at the ponderous ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... the causes alone for murder of last year amount to more than all those of any of the years of the first five years, and it is incredible that at that time they neglected to try people for homicide, although they did dissimulate in regard to lesser crimes. The second thing which arrests the attention is the tendency to theft, since the greater part of the homicides have been committed by robbers, and further one sees a great multitude of causes for theft. For among those ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... Highlands to Loch Katrine; though it was represented as difficult and dangerous by the guide who wished to accompany us, we determined to run the risk of being enveloped in a cloud on the summit, and so set out alone, the path appearing plain before us. We had no difficulty in following it up the lesser heights, around the base. It wound on, over rock and bog, among the heather and broom with which the mountain is covered, sometimes running up a steep acclivity, and then winding zigzag round a rocky ascent. The rains two days ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... fine affections and indolences, he paralleled the conflict of my life. He saw and thought widely and deeply; but at times it seemed to me his greatness stood over and behind the reality of his life, like some splendid servant, thinking his own thoughts, who waits behind a lesser master's chair.... ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... sex; and he had said likewise truly, that no woman can be an artist—that is, a great artist. The hierarchies of the soul's dominion belong only to man, and it is right they should. He it was whom God created first, let him take the preeminence. But among those stars of lesser glory, which are given to lighten the nations, among sweet-voiced poets, earnest prose writers, who, by the lofty truth that lies hid beneath legend and parable, purify the world, graceful painters and beautiful musicians, each brightening their generation—among ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... against the other two. It is, however, equally available for four players acting independently, in which case each scores his individual points, whereas in the partnership game, as with only two players, the lesser number of points is taken from the greater, and the difference only is scored by the winner. With three players it is also necessary to score independently, although in all these independent scorings it is sometimes decided that the lowest scorer shall not ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... crumb passed into my mouth till the Sunday, and afterwards all through Lent I did not allow myself a drop of oil, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I did not touch a morsel at all. It was the same in the lesser fasts. Sometimes in St. Peter's fast our factory lads would have fish soup, while I would sit a little apart from them and suck a dry crust. Different people have different powers, of course, but I can say of myself I did not find fast days hard, and, indeed, the greater the zeal the easier it ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... their larger neighbors, but always escaping as though by a miracle. Beautiful pleasure-planes soared and dipped and wheeled like giant gulls; and, cleaving their stately way through the numberless lesser craft; immense multiplane passenger liners partially supported by helicopter screws turned aside from their scheduled courses to pay homage to the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser divinities shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the clear water which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades into the lake at the place called Le Mole, because here were established the mills of the modern ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must appeal to you who merely read of it. It is beyond my powers to convey the sense of the uncanny which the episode created. Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree, the chill which seemed to creep through my ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... when God found in the hollow of His hand This ball of Earth among His other balls, And set it in His shining firmament, Between the greater and the lesser lights, He chose it ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of the disgusting alligator, that lay beneath, divided from the sea by a narrow mud bank, where a group of pelicans, perched on the wreck of one of our boats, were pluming themselves before taking wing. In the east, the deep blue of the firmament, from which the lesser stars were fast fading, all but the "Eye of Morn," was warming into magnificent purple, and the amber rays of the yet unrisen sun were shooting up, streamer-like, with intervals between, through the parting clouds, as they broke away with a passing shower, that fell like a veil of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... Royal library at Windsor; outlines of heads, features, flowers, backgrounds, strange engines of war, wings of birds—the debris, almost, of the studio—are there piled up in confusion. And in a lesser degree the same is true of all such collections, though perhaps this shows that one is more interested in personality than in ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and another when he wrote; one man in private and another in public. He was made all things to all men, not by the craft of a deceiver, but from the affection of a sympathiser, succouring the diverse diseases of souls with the diverse emotions of compassion; to the little ones dispensing the lesser doctrines, not false ones, but the higher mysteries to the perfect—all of them, however, true, harmonious, and divine.' The exquisite irony of Socrates comes into my mind in this connection, and will not ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... to Elim Meikeljohn's political enmity for the South a fervor closely resembling fanaticism. Even now when, following South Carolina, six other states had seceded, he did not believe that war would ensue; he believed that slavery would be abolished at a lesser price; but he was a supporter of drastic means for its suppression. His Christianity, if it held a book in one hand, grasped a sword in the other, a sword with a bright and unsparing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... speak of a cotyledon and hereafter of a leaf as sleeping, only when it rises at night to an angle of about 60o, or to a still higher angle, above the horizon, or sinks beneath it to the same amount. Not but that a lesser diminution of radiation may be advantageous to a plant, as in the case of Datura stramonium, the cotyledons of which rose from 31o at noon to 55o at night above the horizon. The Swedish turnip may profit by the area of its leaves being reduced at night by about 30 ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... strength of the Imperialists was broken and divided among different garrisons, while he would bring against them one by one his whole united force. If he was to be opposed by the fanaticism of the Roman Catholics, and the awe in which the lesser states regarded the Emperor's power, he might depend on the active support of the Protestants, and their hatred to Austrian oppression. The ravages of the Imperialist and Spanish troops also powerfully ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... legendary subjects for his tragedies, so also he followed classical precedent in drawing the line between tragedy and comedy. "Tannhauser," "Tristan und Isolde," "Der Ring des Nibelungen," "Parsifal," and, in a lesser degree, "Lohengrin," are examples of the old tragedy type. To them the restrictions of time and space do not apply. They deal with large passions, and their heroes are gods or godlike men who are shattered against the rock of immutable law—the "Fate" of the ancient tragedians. His only significant ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... evading self-denial also is just that we get the lesser instead of the larger good. The punishment of sin is inseparably bound up with itself. To refuse to deny one's self is just to be left with the self undenied. When the balance of life is struck, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... ever a free way with women of a class below his own, and he did not find it easy to relinquish it. When he was with the Lady Eva he felt that under those innocent, loving eyes a man could have no desire for a lesser thing than her love; but when he rode away, the first pretty girl he met on the road he held in chat that ended with a kiss. He was always for kissing a pretty face, and found the habit hard to break, though there ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... The first of these mighty archways is the Pont Cysylltau aqueduct which carries the Ellesmere Canal across the wide valley of the Dee, known as the Vale of Llangollen; the second is the Chirk aqueduct, which takes it over the lesser glen of a minor tributary, the Ceriog. Both these beautiful works were designed and carried out entirely by Telford. They differ from many other great modern engineering achievements in the fact that, instead of spoiling the lovely mountain scenery into whose midst they have been thrown, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... be said Was my condition, till with open war Britain opposed the liberties of France. [E] 175 This threw me first out of the pale of love; Soured and corrupted, upwards to the source, My sentiments; was not, as hitherto, A swallowing up of lesser things in great, But change of them into their contraries; 180 And thus a way was opened for mistakes And false conclusions, in degree as gross, In kind more dangerous. What had been a pride, Was now a shame; my likings and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... sons of the reigning king. It soon became manifest that a very lion had been begotten and was growing to strength in the precincts of the royal court. All the graces of the love-born offspring seem to have been present at Jugurtha's birth. A mighty frame, a handsome face, were amongst his lesser gifts. More remarkable were the vigour and acuteness of his mind, the moral strength which yielded to no temptation of ease or indolence, the keen zest for life which led him to throw himself into the hardy sports of his youthful compeers, to run, to ride, to hurl the javelin with a skill known ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... frequently grazed his knees in doing so; and that in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe, he generally got his leg over the scraper.[2] Other similar memories of childhood have dropped from him occasionally in his lesser writings; whose readers may remember how vividly portions of his boyhood are reproduced in his fancy of the Christmas-tree, and will hardly have forgotten what he says, in his thoughtful little paper on Nurses' ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... part of it is I don't know the Rockies so well—" with an emphasis on the word Rockies that led one to think his more noteworthy feats of altitude had been accomplished about the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Andes, and the lesser Appalachians. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... idea of reclaiming and appropriating solely to herself the man who, for good or for evil, had grown into the all-predominant object of her life, gained more and more the mastery over her mind, it expelled the lesser and the baser passions, and the old mean revenge against an infant faded away before the light of that awakening conscience which is often rekindled from ashes by the sparks of a single better and worthier thought. And in the resolute design to reclaim Jasper ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... over-hanging boughs by glimmering shadows that wove lace in their sleep. Between the stream and the steep ground ran an abandoned road fringed with ferns, its brown pine-fallings flecked with a sunlight that fell through the twined arms and myriad green fingers of all-namable sorts of great and lesser trees. You would have said the forest's every knight and lady, dwarf, page, and elf—for in this magical seclusion all the world's times were tangled into one—had come to the noiseless dance of some fairy's bridal; chestnut and hemlock, hazel and witch-hazel, walnut and willow, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... direction in which no precautions are usually adopted to bind it fast,—for the existence of the force itself is not taken into account,—the greater bed of the stone must be just ten times over a worse bed than its lesser one; and on a tempestuous foam-encircled coast such as ours, this aerial upheaving force is in reality, though the builder may not know it, one of the most formidable forces with which he had to deal. And so, on these principles, I ventured to set my stones on end,—on what was deemed ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the man for whom the waste places of earth are a goodly heritage, and who would sooner contribute a new name to the world's atlas than rule a kingdom. Higher up the twenty-foot walls, heads of sambhur, markor, and the lesser deer of the Himalayas showed dimly in the light of one lowered lamp. Skins of bear and leopard, and one or two costly Persian prayer-rugs, partially hid the groundwork of dusty matting, taken over with the bungalow from its former occupant, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... swiftly, and swirled round some of the bends, at times well open, at others so close did the forest come that we seemed to be going along between two huge walls of verdure; and I don't know whether they would have noticed it, but just before we turned into our lesser river, something induced me to begin talking rather rapidly to both Pomp and Hannibal, for we were passing the place where the slaver had lain, and as we came by, it seemed to me that the poor fellows must begin thinking of ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... sights, I am reminded that the seeing of spring come, not only upon the great wings of the geese and the lesser wings of the pigeons and birds, but in the many more subtle and indirect signs and mediums, is also a part of the compensation of living in the country. I enjoy not less what may be called the negative side of spring,— those dark, dank, dissolving days, yellow sposh and mud and water everywhere,—yet ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... armies were beaten on every occasion where they met the Allies. No military country could stand up erect under such crushing blows as had been delivered at the Alma, at Inkermann, at the Tchernaya, and at Sebastopol, not to name lesser Allied successes, or to count the victories of the Turks. Nicholas died in the course of the war, falling only before the universal conqueror. His successor submitted to the decision of the sword, and in fact performed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... when we came in sight of it, was a large castellated building with many lesser turrets and one lofty octagonal tower, covered entirely with ivy, which, being apparently unshorn for years, hung in long trailers down the walls, and gave the whole pile the appearance of a huge moss-covered rock of the sea planted on a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Dragons of East Asia, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth. Three decades ago its GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. Today its GDP per capita is seven times India's, 13 times North Korea's, and already near the lesser economies of the European Union. This success through the late 1980s was achieved by a system of close government business ties, including directed credit, import restrictions, sponsorship of specific industries, and a strong labor effort. The government promoted ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... summer night without a moon, but spangled with stars. Among those which the Dordogne reflects and holds as if they were its own, is the planet Mars, which gleams readily in the midst of a swarm of lesser yellow lights. The river here is broad and still; there is not ripple enough to make a beam tremble. If the stars in the water flash, it is because the rays are flashed from above. Just below the village there are rapids, and a faint murmur comes up from them, but it is borne under by the shrilling ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... drop in one by one. The poet Emilius—the comedian Bassus—the proconsul Sardesus—others of lesser note; but not one who had not a claim to be present, by reason of intimate acquaintance or else some peculiarly valuable trait of conviviality. In collecting these, the armor bearer had made no mistake; and knowing his master's tastes and intimates, he had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have foreseen that he would get off so?" said the lesser man, still endeavouring ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... lee, that to them murmurde low, As he would speake, but that he lackt a tong, Yet did by signes his glad affection show, Making his streame run slow. And all the foule which in his flood did dwell Gan flock about these twaine, that did excell The rest, so far as Cynthia doth shend{28} The lesser stars. So they, enranged well, Did on those two attend, And their best service lend Against their wedding day, which was not long: Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the political prisoners, and have CHARGE D'AMES in that riotously absurd establishment, Apia Gaol. The twenty-three (I think it is) chiefs act as under gaolers. The other day they told the Captain of an attempt to escape. One of the lesser political prisoners the other day effected a swift capture, while the Captain was trailing about with the warrant; the man came to see what was wanted; came, too, flanked by the former gaoler; my prisoner offers to ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aloud, lifting her white face as if in appeal to heaven. "Do not say that, lord! Do not think it! If I, the lesser one, should be chosen of death, surely you would live for our ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... border between England and Scotland. The boundary generally follows the line of greatest elevation, but as the slope is more gradual southward and northward the larger part of the range is in Northumberland, England, and the lesser in Roxburghshire, Scotland. The axis runs from N.E. to S.W., with a northward tendency at the eastern end, where the ridge culminates in the Cheviot, 2676 ft. Its chief elevations from this point south-westward fall abruptly to 2034 ft. in Windygate Hill, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... hope, for anything," said Fleda, gently; "but I have been apt to think that, after a crushing sorrow, the mind may rise up again, but that a long-continued though much lesser pressure in time ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... you notice, for the new avenues of beauty which we had opened out for him; no gratitude for the great revelation that art was not bounded by aspidistras nor comfort by chiffoniers; nothing but that old reactionary spirit to which, if I may speak of lesser things, the Russian Revolution was due. Like Mr. Perkins, the Bourbons learned nothing and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and, fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father! only taste! Oh!" with such like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hereditary marquis for being unselfish and generous, or an earl for being a man of peace, and a benefactor in the things which make for peace, such as a good husband and father and comrade, has, so far as I know, never been tried. Some of the so-called lesser honours, such as knighthood, are reserved for these. However, an order of knightly citizens, so long as they are real knights, is, after all, little more than the gold key of the Phi Beta Kappa, or the red triangle of the Y.M.C.A. worker, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of it is," Lord Henry pursued, "the adherence of a man like Borridge, makes lesser men imagine that the creed to which he lends his support, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... bareheadedness. He put on his cap and they trudged along the road like gipsy man and wife, saying not a word to each other. For two miles they proceeded thus, sometimes in utter blackness when the road wound between thick oak plantations, sometimes in the lesser dimness of the open when it passed by the rolling fields; and not a sign of human life disturbed the country stillness. Then they turned into the London road and passed through a village. Lights were in the windows. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... less thoughtful; he gives himself to games as to a business, striving to excel, but is not readily transported by imagination; the type remains with me as cleaner in mind and body, more active, fonder of eating, endowed with a lesser and a less romantic sense of life and of the future, and more immersed in present circumstances. And certainly, for one thing, English boys are younger for their age. Sabbath observance makes a series ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as great carriers by sea, and they made many treaties with different powers, stipulating that goods carried in their ships, not being contraband, should be free. In 1778 France, in order to injure England, declared its adoption of the principle that neutral ships made neutral goods. The lesser Baltic nations, which largely exported naval material, were anxious to protect their commerce from England, specially as she was rigorous in her view with regard to contraband goods; and they looked ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... rendering any neutral vessel liable to capture, which should attempt to enter them. The legality of a blockade, where there is not a naval power off the coast competent to maintain such blockade, has always been denied by the lesser maritime powers. Its effect, in the present instance, was virtually to exclude the United States from foreign commerce. In these extreme measures, Napoleon and England were equally censured; but the policy of the latter affected the Americans far more than the former. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... the last of the lesser prophets, says that "the Lord will send his angel, who will prepare the way before his face."[424] This angel is St. John the Baptist, who prepares the way for Jesus Christ, who is himself styled the Angel of the Lord—"And soon the Lord ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... our modern notions of a churchman. To us this conduct on the part of a prelate is scandalous beyond words; that it was scandalous even then is obvious from the Pontiff's letter; but that it was scandalous in an infinitely lesser degree is no less obvious from the very fact that the Pontiff wrote that letter (and in such terms) instead of incontinently ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... with Phebe Marlowe. All her earthly luminaries, the greater lights and the lesser lights, were under an eclipse, and a strange darkness had fallen upon her. For the first time in her life she found herself brooding over the sin of one who had been her guide, her dearest friend, her hero. From the time when as a child she had learned to look up to him as the paragon of all ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... wherein the king, queen, the royal family, and the whole court were to enter immediately after. I was conducted to a box by M. de Cury, and which belonged to him. It was very spacious, upon the stage and opposite to a lesser, but more elevated one, in which the king sat with ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... centralization, but in Germany, in spite of the temporary ascendancy of Charles V, finally issued in a provincial centralization in which the princes were de facto independent monarchs. The Imperial Constitution of 1495, forbidding private war, applied, it must be remembered, only to the lesser nobility and not to the higher, thereby placing the former in a decidedly ignominious position as regards their feudal superiors. And though this particular enactment had little immediate result, yet it was none the less resented ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... work,—though not necessarily for poetry,—his success as a reputed dramatist and as a manager, all his history and traditions, very clearly indicate. And conceding him that, why is not the situation fully satisfied by considering that he was the lesser, or one of the lesser, rather than the greater of the collaborators; and that his knowledge of the stage and his talent for conceiving proper dramatic effects or situations, made his labors valuable to the greater poet, aiding him to give to his works a dramatic form and movement ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... plants which are poisonous. The water hemlock (Cicuta virosa) produces symptoms not unlike those of hemlock; it has been mistaken for parsnip and celery. It contains an active principle, cicutoxin, which in some respects is allied to strychnine and picrotoxin. The fool's parsley, or lesser hemlock (AEthusa cynapium), is another member of this group, although doubt has been expressed as to whether it is really poisonous. The water dropwort (Oenanthe crocata) is undoubtedly poisonous, especially to cattle. In man it produces abdominal pain with diarrhoea and vomiting; dilated ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... day had been refitted with new words for the occasion. As poetic compositions they were not remarkable, but sung with enthusiasm by several hundred sturdy voices they answered the purpose. Robinson replied in kind, but in lesser volume, and the preliminary battle, the war of voices, went on until three persons, a youth in purple, a youth in brown, and a man in everyday attire, met in the middle of the field and watched a coin spin upward in the sunlight and fall to the ground. Then speedily the contesting ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... verse from the Bible, grows up a more dutiful son or daughter to its parents? Are domestic charities on the increase amongst families under this system? In a great town, in our present state of society, perhaps such schools may be a justifiable expedient—a choice of the lesser evil; but as for driving these establishments into the country villages, and breaking up the cottage home education, I think it one of the most miserable mistakes which the well-intentioned people of the day have yet ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... ticket punched so often that there is very little left of it, we proceed to Rostoff, where we shall strike the main line from Moscow to the Caucasus. Here is a comparatively new city—not unlike the shambling lesser Western cities of the United States of America, with plenty of tumbling-down, made-anyhow fences, and empty tin cans lying everywhere. The streets are unpaved, and the consequent dust blinding, the drinking saloons ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... common style of organization and a common mode of administrative procedure. In virtually every instance the department is presided over by a single responsible minister, assisted as a rule by one or more parliamentary under-secretaries and, more remotely, by a greater or lesser body of non-political officials who carry on the actual work of the department and whose tenure is not affected by the political ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... then human creatures walking English earth. The captains, statesmen, corsairs, merchant-adventurers, poets, dramatists, the great Queen herself, the Cecils, Raleigh, Walsingham, Drake, Hawkins, Gilbert, Howard, Willoughby, the Norrises, Essex, Leicester, Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare and the lesser but brilliant lights which surrounded him; such were the men who lifted England upon an elevation to which she was not yet entitled by her material grandeur. At last she had done with Rome, and her expansion dated from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the window and looked out upon the silent, frosty night. Low down upon the horizon myriads of stars were twinkling merrily, but high up in the heavens the moon shone with a brilliant radiance that totally eclipsed all lesser lights. The night was very still, very beautiful, but the silence and the beauty failed to bring peace to the mother's heart. She looked up into the heavens. How placidly cold the moon looked back at her, the same moon that was probably shedding its beams upon her boy at that moment and could tell ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... in possession when we went our several ways, and it was all that I could do to drag Raffles up to my rooms, though, as I have said, they were just round the corner. He consented at last as a lesser evil than talking of the burglary in the street; and in my rooms I told him of his late danger and my own dilemma, of the few words I had overheard in the beginning, of the thin ice on which he ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... false streak, which appears in the beginning to dart from the luminous hole, does not fade, but seems to suffer a sudden and total eclipse; whereas the second streak flashes out suddenly in situ, but at a lesser brilliancy than the other, and very ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... exceptions, of which we are always proud,) we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which the gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real metropolis in this country, until the biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth.—I have observed, by the way, that the people who really live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller cities situated within the intellectual ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... about the loss; and Christabel hoped that the bad impression as to Elizabeth would wear out in the young minds of the lesser children; but David's whole nature seemed to have been disorganized by the disappointment. Instead of being a pattern child for diligence and good behaviour, very fond of Miss Fosbrook, and not only inoffensive, but often keeping John and Anne in order, he seemed absolutely stupid ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in shining faculty, not in piercing vision into mystery, not in the eloquence of honeyed tongue, nor the power of a swift hand, not in any of the lesser and subordinate gifts which the world exclusively honours as inspiration, is the power of the indwelling Spirit to be manifested. If the Spirit of God is in you, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... morphological method was his conception of the living organism as a colony of lesser units, which were themselves real "organisms." "By organism the author means a complex of organs which taken together suffice to constitute, ideally or actually, a complete animal. An 'organism' is, as it were, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... on capital. In fact, the additional prices charged, when properly analyzed, are not for the goods, but for the risk on the credit and for interest on capital. The net selling price of the commodity is not increased. Experience has proven that men who sell for the lesser price for cash in hand are more apt to succeed than those who charge the higher rate ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... that has gone up for so long from the East of London has, thank God, touched many a heart, and led some to carry God's answering messages in person to the suffering poor, and others to help in the lesser service of gifts. ...
— 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
... in importance, and a few years earlier it had been a small country town in an uncommonly aristocratic neighborhood. The gate of Towneley Park opens now almost upon the town itself, and in former times there were many other seats of the greater or lesser squires within a radius of a very few miles. It is a common mistake in the south of England to suppose that Lancashire is a purely commercial county. There are, or were in my youth, some very aristocratic neighborhoods in Lancashire, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... angelic spirits, they are next, from their externals, led into their internals, and in this case into the concupiscences with which they had been ensnared in the world, and the angelic spirits into theirs, to the intent that it may appear in what degree they had been ensnared; and if a lesser degree, that after they have been let into them, they may be let out again, and may be covered with shame. But those who had been principled in this malignant lust to such a degree as to be made sensible of its eminent delight, and to make a boast of those thefts ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the source from which spring all civil laws and the laws of nations. If God grants man the power of life and death, he certainly also grants power in matters of lesser importance—power over property, family, wife, children, servants and fields. God wills that these things shall be under the control of certain men, who are to ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... and one which demands an answer. There must have been a reason, and a deep-rooted one, for this remarkable reaction and volte-face which has characterized Christianity, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, other both earlier and later cults like those of the Buddhists, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, (1) ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... influences have established the permanence and independence of the smaller states of Europe. Through the Monroe Doctrine we hope to be able to safeguard like independence and secure like permanence for the lesser among the New ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... thought had crossed my own mind, for I have heard a similar though lesser din come from a pack of otter hounds when they had overtaken their prey and were tearing it to pieces. Sick at heart, I drew my sword with the determination that, if we were too late to save our companion, we should at least revenge him upon the four-footed ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. O me! for why is all around us here As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would, Till the High God behold it from beyond, And enter it, and make it beautiful? Or else as if the world were wholly fair, But that these ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... pursued France into the succeeding reign of Louis XVI., for in April, 1782, Rodney's great victory over Count de Grasse off Dominica transferred the Lesser Antilles from French to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... itself sadly puckered and patched, a wide, rough scar, of changing color, as his temper went, cut a great swath in his wiry hair, curving clear over the crown of his head. A second scar, of lesser dimension and ghastly look, lay upon his forehead, over the right eyebrow, to which though by nature drooping to a glower, it gave a sharp upward twist, so that in a way to surprise the stranger he was in good humor or bad, cynical or sullen, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... a curious costume, representing the devil carrying off his corpse; but I recognised him at once as the lesser lion of a London evening party last season. Then he had just returned from a Polar expedition, and wore the glacier of civilisation on his breast. To-night he was among the maddest of the mad, dancing savagely with the Bacchantes of the Latin ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... that no lesser wound than the one she had dealt herself could hurt her, flinched. But she did not defend herself. "I think it does excuse him to some extent, and that is why I have come to ask you to ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the massive beams of the ceiling. The floor of the warehouse, which was partly of stone, was covered with thick matting, and spread upon it were rugs and carpets of Karadagh, Kermanshah, Sultan-abad, and Khorassan, with lesser-known loomings of almost equal beauty. Skins of rare beasts overlay the divans. Furniture of ivory, of ebony and lemonwood, preciously inlaid, gave to the place an air of cunning confusion. There ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... and noble, and the servant is sometimes to be distinguished from the mistress only by her dress and by her labor-coarsened hands; certainly not always by her dirty finger-nails and foul teeth, for though the clean shirt is now generally in Italy, some lesser virtues are still unknown: the nail-brush and tooth-brush are of but infrequent use; the four-pronged fork is still imperfectly understood, and as a nation the Italians may be said ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... this chapter of Magna Carta, and pretends that after all it only required that felonies should he tried before the king's justices, on account of their superior Iearning; and that it permitted all lesser offenses to be tried before inferior officers, (meaning of course the king's inferior officers.) 2 Inst., ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... with which the Pioneer usually met the wide-eyed criticism of the Eastern tourist or "greenhorn," and reddened under the bold scrutiny of a pair of black inquisitive eyes behind an eyeglass. That annoyance was communicated, though in a lesser degree, even to the bearded Demorest and Stacy. It was an unexpected contact with that great world in which they were so soon to enter. They felt ashamed of their appearance, and yet ashamed of that feeling. They felt a secret satisfaction when Barker said, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... these we did not know, for those purposes were too great for us, not knowing the end from the beginning; and the hearts of men were too great for us. We comprehended the evil sometimes, but never fathomed the good. And how could we know the lesser things which were working out God's way? for some of these even the angels did not know; and it has happened to me that our Lord Himself has come in sometimes to tell me of one that none of us ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... the market, at the bottom of Skinner-street, the two friends rounded the corner, and verged towards Ludgate-hill by the Fleet Prison. Here a fresh claim, though of lesser magnitude, obtruded itself on their benevolence. "Pity the poor debtors, having no 96 allowance!" exclaimed an emaciated being, gazing with an eye of wistful expectancy, through the thrice-grated window of a small apartment on a level nearly with the street; "Pity the poor debtors;" ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the sky was flame from sea to zenith across Manila Bay. It was like a great Flame of the Forest tree in full bloom. Against this sky of flaming sunset-clouds, hundreds of ships, anchored in the bay, lit their lesser crimson lights; while, now and then, a battleship which was signaling to another ship, flashed its message of light against the fading glow of glory ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... and would have released thee from the quarrel; for never would I have meddled any more in the matter." "Duke," says Cliges, "what may be your pleasure? Is it not meet that he who cannot make good his claim yield it, one of two evils; when one has to choose, one ought to choose the lesser. When your nephew picked a quarrel with me, he acted unwisely. I will serve you in the same way—be assured of it—if I ever can, if I do not receive submission from you." The duke, to whom it seems that Cliges was growing in strength every moment, thinks that it is much better for him to stop short ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes |
