"Unimportant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mighty casual and indifferent. Did it strike you that he had a sort of a pleased-with-himself air? I got the impression that he might already have made up his mind as to who was the guilty man and considered everything else relatively unimportant." ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... keep out those who wish to go in. Cursed be ye, ye, with your semblance of holiness, who take to yourselves the houses of widows and the property of orphans under the pretence of love! Ye fools and blind guides who lead the people to petty, unimportant things, to outward observances and customs, instead of to the important things—to justice, to mercy, and to love! That is as wise as to strain out the gnat and swallow the camel. Ye snakes and vipers! Be ye cursed eternally! Even ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... particular circumstances. But we could not avoid showing at once that the BLOODY SOLUTION OF THE CRISIS, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's force, is the firstborn son of War. If when political objects are unimportant, motives weak, the excitement of forces small, a cautious commander tries in all kinds of ways, without great crises and bloody solutions, to twist himself skilfully into a peace through the characteristic ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... show the fertile imagination of the man, and his tireless energy. He experimented with electricity and made some novel suggestions upon the difference between the electric spark and the glow, although on the whole his contributions in this field are unimportant. He also first pointed out that the motions of the heavenly bodies must be looked upon as a mechanical problem, and was almost within grasping distance of the exact theory of gravitation, himself originating the idea of making use of the pendulum ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... for many to visualize the shortage abroad. We are shipping about one-third of the lard which we produce, and large quantities of oleo oil for oleomargarine. Although the exports of butter in 1917 have almost been doubled since the preceding fiscal year, it is relatively unimportant, representing only about 1 per cent of the production. We are shipping cottonseed oil also, but this requires tank-steamers, which are scarce. In general, as the oils are much more difficult to handle and impossible for ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... unimportant missive which could well have been postponed till the morning, being merely an announcement to a firm of publishers that he would pay a business call later in the week. In less than five minutes it, and another, making an appointment ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... who seems to be on every train approaches me with the now familiar phrase: "Isn't this Booker Washington? I want to introduce myself to you." Absence from the school enables me to lose sight of the unimportant details of the work, and study it in a broader and more comprehensive manner than I could do on the grounds. This absence also brings me into contact with the best work being done in educational lines, and into contact with the best ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... important degree; because, according to the experimental results, neither a nor b could conduct without being decomposed, for they are either electrolytes or else insulators, under all circumstances, except to very feeble and unimportant currents (970. 986.). Now the affinities at c are not such as tend to cause the elements either of a or b to separate, but only such as would make the two bodies combine together as a whole; the point of action is, therefore, insulated, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... Zora in her heart of hearts did not entirely approve of her sister's musical-comedy career, she tempered her sympathy with philosophic reflections. She had never taken Emmy seriously. All her life long Emmy had been the kitten sister, with a kitten's pretty but unimportant likes, dislikes, habits, occupations, and aspirations. To regard her as being under the shadow of a woman's tragedy had never entered her head. The kitten playing Antigone, Ophelia, or such like distressed heroines, in awful, grim earnest is not a conception that ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... unimportant!" said Delia, impetuously. "Nothing really matters but the vote. Aren't ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... except with onerous humiliations, some citizens from free access to the post-office. In a letter of this date, the Postmaster-General (Mr. McLean) declines to order the office to be kept out of the fort, and thus, in effect, decides against the citizens. How very unimportant a citizen is 1000 miles from the seat of government! The national aegis is not big enough to reach so far. The bed is too long for the covering. A man cannot wrap himself in it. It is to be hoped that the Postmaster-General will ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... compass upon the map, will be seen, on the west and south, to pass through the outer fringe of the system of archipelagoes which, from Australia and New Zealand, extend to the northeast toward the American continent. Within the circle a few scattered islets, bare and unimportant, seem only to emphasize the failure of nature to bridge the interval separating Hawaii from her peers of the Southern Pacific. Of these, however, it may be noted that some, like Fanning and Christmas Islands, have within a few years been taken into British possession. The distance from San ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... was lowered in 1805, and abolished altogether for healthy men in 1811, and any defect of height in the next generation is speedily repaired. Tschuriloff agreed, however, that, though the influence of war in diminishing the height of the race is unimportant, the influence of war in increasing physical defects and infirmities in subsequent generations is a very different matter. He found that the physical deterioration of war manifested itself chiefly in the children born eight years afterwards, and therefore in the recruits twenty-eight years ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... accompanying sign (1 Sam. 2:34); the warning that David received by Urim and Thummim of Saul's approach to destroy him (1 Sam. 23:9-12); the prediction that Josiah should defile Jeroboam's altar at Bethel with men's bones (1 Kings 13:2); etc. Minute events, in themselves unimportant, sometimes come within the sphere of prophetic revelation, but always in connection with and subserviency to important transactions affecting the interests of God's people. Thus when Samuel anointed Saul as the future king of Israel, he foretold to him the incidents ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... attempt to seek support from his judgment, or by convincing his reason, in important cases, where his feelings or wishes are involved, but in all such cases rest your decisions solely upon your own authority. But then, on the other hand, in unimportant cases, where no serious evil can result whichever of the various possible courses are taken, call his judgment into exercise, and abide by its decisions. Give him the responsibility if he likes to take it, but with the ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... declared to be in a state of siege; the Assembly had been dissolved; and a number of the representatives of the people had been imprisoned at Mazas. Public affairs had assumed to his mind an utterly unimportant aspect, so deeply preoccupied was ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... strange to you that I should be able to add the sequel to this story. But the coincidence is easily explained. I am the junior member of the law firm of Chudleigh & Chudleigh. We have been solicitors for the Chetneys for the last two hundred years. Nothing, no matter how unimportant, which concerns Lord Edam and his two sons is unknown to us, and naturally we are acquainted with every detail of the ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... dance? I don't dance as well as di Valdo." Nina looked up at him, suspicious and displeased, but there was no conscious deprecation in his manner, which indeed proclaimed that whether he danced well or badly was a matter unlike unimportant to him. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... they begin tomorrow. Mitchell thinks that I shall make the hit of the evening. Some of these comparatively unimportant parts, when they are really well played, are more effective than the chief characters. Mitchell says he saw before, by the rehearsals, what a tremendous lot of talent I had. But it isn't merely talent, as he said; what they all noticed was my Personal Magnetism—and I expect ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... I shall not attempt to describe my feelings of rage (for I believe I was more angry than any thing else) when the egregious oversight I had committed flashed suddenly upon my perception. The blunder itself would have been unimportant, had not my own folly and impetuosity rendered it otherwise—in my disappointment at not finding some words upon the slip, I had childishly torn it in pieces and thrown it away, it was impossible to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... idea," replied he, "we have here only a scrap of unimportant paper; the name of the legatee is not indicated, and even were it indicated, the testament would still be without force, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was making adjustments in his own mind to the humiliation he unconsciously foresaw. There were really three levels of thought in his mind. One had adopted a defensive cynicism, and one desperately insisted that he couldn't be as unimportant as his instructions implied, and the third watched the other two as the helicab flew with cushioned booming noises over the dark canyons of the city and the innumerable ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... though so wide-reaching and grand in its bearings and relations, and in the vast consequences which have flowed and which still continue to flow from it, was apparently a minute and unimportant circumstance at the time when it occurred. There were only three vessels at the first arrival. Of their size and character the accounts vary. Some of these accounts say they contained three hundred men; others seem to state that the number which arrived at the first landing was three thousand. This, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Pyramid and of the Earth require for their expression, round numbers present themselves, or such as leave no remainder, we may be sure we have arrived at primitive measures." But many small and unimportant objects, when thus multiplied sufficiently, give equally startling strings of 0's. Thus, if the polar axis of the earth be held as 500,000,000 inches, and Sir Isaac Newton's "Sacred Cubit" be held, as Professor Smyth calculated it to be, viz. 24.82 British inches—then ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... therefore, he who is resolved to adhere to truth will have few novelties to relate; or, that Dr. Browne was, by the train of his studies, led to inquire most after those things by which the greatest part of mankind is little affected; a great part of his book seems to contain very unimportant accounts of his passage from one place where he saw little, to another where ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Doree, one arcade only of what was formerly a noble portico facing the harbour; also a fine amphitheatre, now traversed by a highway, not however as perfect as those of Nimes and Arles. Fragments also remain of the ancient theatre, but they are unimportant. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... masses themselves I shall declare: 'You are the rock on which the Church of the Present is to be built. Steep yourselves in the thought of this, your mission. The vices of the oppressed, the idle indifference of the thoughtless, and even the harmless frivolity of the unimportant no longer become you.' And I shall teach them how to exact from the State the capital for co-operative associations that will oust ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... really little need, however, for these explanations of the people's unconcern at the disaster which had, in fact, befallen them. The passing of the common seemed unimportant at the time, not so much because a few short-lived advantages concealed its meaning as because the real disadvantages were slow to appear. At first the enclosure was rather a nominal event than an actual one. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... interest was done that day. A few unimportant witnesses were examined on legal points, and then ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... In some unimportant ways I acted as aid for Kilpatrick. A few hundred yards in advance of the main body rode a vanguard of two hundred men, thrown forward to warn us should we strike any considerable number of the enemy's cavalry. As is ever the case, the horses of a small force ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... unimportant to national economy, used by shallow-draft craft limited to 300 metric-ton or less ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... were better armed than they had some effect in securing peace. They acted in quite a friendly manner after we came among them, and Lieutenant Schwatka and I visited all their igloos, leaving needles, thimbles, spoons, knives, and fish-hooks with them in exchange for a few unimportant Franklin relics. The next day we interviewed an old man named Seeuteetuar, who had seen a number of skeletons near the water line in an inlet about three or four miles west from the present camp. He had also seen books and papers scattered around among the rocks along the shore and back ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... subject, if not practical and urgent, is assuredly not unimportant. The power of literature over men's minds cannot be estimated too highly. Science is a tremendous force, but its greatest influence is exercised over the human mind when it quits the merely practical task of ministering ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... "The matter was too unimportant for notice; and the more I think of his being here, the less I mind it, after all; and so, dull care, begone! When I first meet him on the sands or in the loaning, I shall say, 'Dear me, is it Mr. Macdonald! What brought you ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... as they will safely hold, having regard to the best welfare of his creative career as a whole, when, in short, he has done all that he can to ensure the fullest public appreciation of the essential in him—there still remains to be accomplished something which is not unimportant in the entire affair of obtaining contact with the public. He has to see that the work is placed before the public as advantageously as possible. In other words, he has to dispose of the work as advantageously as possible. In other words, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... mere trifling loss, that is unimportant in itself, but serves to impress upon me still more deeply how easy it is to imagine and difficult to perform," he answered. "It seems the simplest thing in the world to make a fortune ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and not unimportant, although secondary, reason for fostering and enlarging the Navy may be found in the unquestionable service to the expansion of our commerce which would be rendered by the frequent circulation of naval ships in the seas and ports of all quarters of the globe. Ships of the proper construction ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... Hence it has happened that the physical characteristics of the different races, once fixed in very early prehistoric times, have never greatly varied. They have passed out of the range of Natural Selection because they have become comparatively unimportant in ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... that our carpenter came first, though the exact sequence is unimportant. He was not exclusively a carpenter, being also a farmer during a considerable portion of the year. He would have to knock off, now and then, he said, to look after his corn and potatoes, while his assistant, it ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the soft long lines of her neck; her white dress had descended to her feet; her slender waist, which had once been a mere geographical expression, an imaginary line like the equator, was now a thing of flexible beauty. A year ago she had been a pretty girl's face sticking out from a little unimportant frock that was carried upon an extremely active and efficient pair of brown-stockinged legs. Now there was coming a strange new body that flowed beneath her clothes with a sinuous insistence. Every movement, and particularly the novel droop of her hand and arm ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... design, they would be mainly in the direction of refinement in drawing. The lettering is not what it might be, especially at the top in the name of the company, which is somewhat confused. The monogram, an unimportant feature from an advertising point of view, is given the most ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 01, No. 12, December 1895 - English Country Houses • Various
... getting," he said to himself. Then, at a twinge from the resentment that had gone too deep to be ejected in an instant, he added: "But that doesn't excuse him." His father was to blame for the whole ugly business—for his plight within and without. Still, fixing the blame was obviously unimportant beside the problem of the way out. And for that problem he, in saner mood, began to feel that the right solution was to do something and so become in his own person a somebody, instead of being mere son of a somebody. "I haven't got this shock ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... council was not yet assembled, and especially that the religious chiefs had not made their appearance. Those who were present assumed any posture imaginable, provided it gave them comfort. They talked and conversed about very unimportant matters, and laughed and joked. There was no division into separate groups, foreshadowing the drift of opinions and of interests; for no lobbying was going on. Every one seemed to be as free and easy as in his own home or in the estufa among his companions, and the greatest apparent harmony prevailed. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... coals are, with some unimportant exceptions, confined to five small fields in Eastern Pennsylvania, as shown in the following list. These fields are given in ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... a passionate desire to take her by the shoulders, but put his hand on hers instead, and she permitted it, like one disdainful but helpless. She said something unimportant about the stillness. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... as Dupont de Nemours named them, the physiocrats, formed a not unimportant wing of the philosophic phalanx, now in harmony with the Encyclopaedic party, now in hostility. The sense of the misery of France was present to many minds in the opening of the century, and with the death of Louis XIV. came illusive hopes of amelioration. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... public spirit but through a lack of political machinery adapted to modern city life. This was not all of the situation but perhaps no casual visitor could be expected to see that these matters of detail seemed unimportant to a city in the first flush of youth, impatient of correction and convinced that all would be well with its future. The most obvious faults were those connected with the congested housing of the immigrant population, nine tenths of them from the country, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... for telling about my loss of memory, which was quite an unimportant incident in itself, is merely to prove to authors how unnecessary it is to take the trouble of explaining the characters of their creations. Alexandre Dumas was certainly anxious to give us the reasons which caused Mrs. Clarkson ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... she cut out these pages and wrote the fair copy. There is no break in Mathilda in story or in pagination. This fair copy also shows signs of haste: slips of the pen, repetition of words, a number of unimportant revisions. ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... speedily adjusted myself. I had been exiled, I had come home. As our old nurse, aged and withered, but otherwise unaltered, said to me quietly by way of greeting: "Well, they didn't kill you, Master Richard!" I was, therefore, alive. It was for me, the unimportant atom, to recover my place in the parent mass. I did so. I was English. I recovered proportion. I wore the accustomed mask; I hid both my person and my new emotions, as was obviously expected of me. Having ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... field, the channel theory and the Memmert theory. The former languished for lack of corroboration; the latter also appeared to be weakened. To Frulein Dollmann the wreck-works were evidently what they purported to be, and nothing more. This fact in itself was unimportant, for it was clear as crystal that she was no party to her father's treacherous intrigues, if he was engaged in such. But if Memmert was his sphere for them, it was disconcerting to find her so familiar with that sphere, lightly talking of a descent in a diving-bell—hinting, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... turned back to his work, but before he went on with it he opened and read the note which Rosebud had thought so unimportant. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... democracy, with a large representation of Scotch-Irish, Germans, Welsh, and Huguenot French settlers, holding religious faiths unlike that of the followers of the established church in the lowlands. The movement of slaves into the region was unimportant, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... and she was co-heir to the Champneys millions. Properly trained, she should have a brilliant social career ahead of her. And here she was shut up—in a really beautiful house, of course—with nobody but an insufferable frump of an unimportant Mrs. MacGregor! The situation stirred Mrs. Vandervelde's imagination and appealed to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... that said," the lieutenant observed, "but that is unimportant now. The thing to do, if we can, is to stop this investigation by the Daily Planet. The reporters will let the cat out of the bag and the interests back of the plot will either act immediately, before we can check them, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the backfield the player sped towards his own goal. Shep Homans, his fullback, took in the impending catastrophe at a glance and dashed forward, laid the halfback low with a sharp tackle, thereby preventing a safety. The game was unimportant, the Princeton's score was large, so the unfortunate player, although the butt of many a jest, soon survived all jokes and jibes and became in ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... nothing of that sort had been seen, and he presently went away. And Brereton, after an unimportant word or two, went away too, certain by that time that the death of Stoner had some sinister connexion with ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... had its counterpart in actual life. Ned Frog, in essential points at least, represents a real man—though we have, doubtless, saddled on his broad shoulders a few unimportant matters, which perhaps did ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... typical he must be governed by his own taste or judgment; and the writer was never born who could by such personal standards forecast the judgment of time and of humanity. In a word, contemporary or "up-to-date" histories are vain attempts at the impossible; save in the unimportant matter of chronicling names or dates they are all alike untrustworthy. The student should bear in mind, therefore, that the following summary of our recent literature is based largely upon personal opinion; that it selects a few authors by way of illustration, omitting many others ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... them. They would like to order everything that exists, and rule even in the palaces of kings. Since they have the privilege and honour of confessing our monarch, they wish to impose the same bondage upon me. Heaven preserve me from it! I do not want rectors of colleges and professors to direct my unimportant conscience. I like a confessor who lets you speak, and not those who put words ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... "we have gone rather deeply into the past life of the lady in question. Your name appears, of course, in a rather unimportant interval when Margot Vernee resided in Paris. And so we come to you in the hope that you can perhaps give us some slight bit of information—something that seems insignificant, perhaps, to you, but which may put us on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... that he was right. The danger to my former self as Andivius Hedulio, implicated in a conspiracy against Caesar, appeared now far off and unimportant, in spite of the fact that the secret service might still be keen to catch me and the hue and cry out after me from the Alps to Rhegium; the danger to my present self from the enmity of Bulla, of his ruffians, of their partisans in Umbria, of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... is relative; not only books, but persons being ever at hand to solve doubts and clear up difficulties. I do by no means advise you to throw away your time in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times. Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote. And a general notion of the history of France, from the conquest of that country by the Franks, to the reign of Louis the Eleventh, is sufficient for use, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... might gush in torrents, but the end was worth the cost. Would it hurl a hundred thousand men into bloody graves? That was unfortunate, but unavoidable. Would the struggle frighten and horrify the world? It was possible. But these things were unimportant. The rebellion must be crushed. The sledge-hammer must strike until Lee's keen rapier was shattered. Hammer and rapier were matched against each other—the combat was a l'outrance—the hammer must beat down the rapier, or fall from ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... merely going to Knockers' Llyn to see the sunrise. He gave me a letter which had come on the previous evening, and had been addressed by mistake to Carnarvon. As the handwriting was new to me, I felt sure that it was only an unimportant missive from some stranger, and I put it into my ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... ordinary lives, it is interesting. Many, if not most, newspaper stories have nothing but the element of strangeness in them to give them news value, but if they are sufficiently strange and unusual they may be copied all over the country. An unusual origin or an unusual rescue will give an unimportant fire great news value. And so with every other ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... of cavalry was engaging in unimportant minor actions, or rather skirmishes (grossly exaggerated in the news of those days), the attack on the northern forts of Liege, upon which everything now depended, was opened. It was upon Thursday, August ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... when they were out in the street. Cornish made some unimportant remark, which the other did not answer. So they walked on in silence. Presently, Cornish glanced at his companion, and was startled at the sight of his face, which was grey, and glazed all over with perspiration, as an actor's face may sometimes be at the end of a great act. Then ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... thought: what queer unimportant things men think about! The early years! Wouldn't their difficulties, their sorrows be the real savour of life and make it worth remembrance, worth treasuring? But men had the right of speech. Not again would she forget that. She bowed her head ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... unimportant and trivial to the King of {2} England as his title of King of France was unreal and theatrical. The remnant of the Jacobites could not with truth call the heir to the throne a foreigner, and they could not in reason hope to make such a demonstration ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... methods. It also called for the concentration of both capital and labor. The rise of the factory system, business on a large scale, and cheap and rapid transportation, all combined to diminish the importance of agriculture and to change the city from an unimportant to a very important position in our national life. The 13 cities of 1820 increased to 44 by 1840, and to 141 by 1860. There were four times as many cities in the North, too, where manufacturing had found a home, as in the South, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... circle of our life the religious element took so preponderating a place, that it is impossible to avoid mentioning, what might otherwise seem unimportant, the theological views of Miss Marks. How my Father had discovered her, or from what field of educational enterprise he plucked her in her prime, I never knew, but she used to mention that my Father's ministrations had 'opened ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... very significant. A Class F military base around which, over the years, a straggling town had come into existence, Fort Roye was a space-age trading post linking Roye's population to the mighty mother planet, and a station from which the otherwise vacant and utterly unimportant 132nd Segment of the Space Territories was periodically and uneventfully patrolled. It was no more than that. Twice a month, an Earth ship settled down to the tiny port, bringing supplies, purchases, occasional groups of reassigned military and civilians—the latter suspected of being drawn ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... go to bed. He was anxious for the day, and the evening that was to follow. A woman had unsettled his world. His mica mountain became an unimportant reality. Barrow's greatness no longer loomed up for him. He walked until he was tired, and it was dawn when he went to his hotel. He was like a boy living in the anticipation of a great promise—restless, excited, ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the search for life. Teach me what is important and what is unimportant; what is false, and what is true. Remove the hindrances that keep me from the worthiest deeds, and grant that I may have the peace that comes with surrender of self to thy ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... indeed foreshadowing, the Duane episode by some months. "At that epoch," Wyman relates in his Principles of Administrative Law, "the first announcement of the doctrine of centralism in its entirety was set forth in an obscure opinion upon an unimportant matter—The Jewels of the Princess of Orange, 2 Opin. 482 (1831). These jewels * * * were stolen from the Princess by one Polari, and were seized by the officers of the United States Customs in the hands of the thief. Representations were made ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... have not unimportant glimpses, as our story unfolds itself, of all these transactions. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that the statesman whose great ensign was to be human freedom, was thus born in a family where the palliation of slavery must have made a daily topic. The union, moreover, of fervid evangelical ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... though I am going to do what I can to make things pleasant all round. We shall see our friends in London, of course. Jim is going to give us a jolly good motor-car, and we shall be able to dine out and go to the play and all that if we want to, and people ask us. But it is all so unimportant, Cicely, that side of it. Walter wants to get out of it. He'll be very busy, and the best times we shall have will be in our own little house alone, or going right away when we get ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Canterbury, on being questioned as to certain Roman observances carried on at St. Bartholomew's, Dover, admitted "There may be irregularities," but added "they do not appear to be of any importance." One of these "unimportant irregularities" was the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... there is an increasing, and for us jurists, a not unimportant demand for the study of psychology in its bearing on our profession. But it must be served. The spirited Abb de Bats, said at a meeting of criminalists in Brussels, that the present tendency of the science of criminal law demands ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... rebels were very humble,' the Envoy was not disposed to be too hard upon them. But one of his firm stipulations was that the defences of Khoda Buxsh's fort must be demolished, and that Gool Mahomed Khan 'should have nothing but war.' Both injunctions were disregarded by Macgregor, who, with unimportant exceptions, surrendered all along the line. The Ghilzais claimed and obtained the restoration of their original subsidies; a sum was handed to them to enable them to raise the tribes in order to keep clear the passes; Khoda Buxsh held his fort, and sold the supplies it contained to Sale's commissary ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... fact of the presence of the monsters was enough. What had preceded their presence was unimportant, save that their presence, and their near approach to the shore undetected, further proved the executive and planning genius ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... sovereignty for itself—could not fail to be manifested whenever, great negotiations with foreign powers were to be undertaken. To obtain the unanimous consent of seven independent little republics was a work of difficulty, requiring immense expenditure of time in comparatively unimportant contingencies. How intolerable might become the obstructions, the dissensions, and the delays, now that a series of momentous and world-wide transactions was beginning, on the issue of which the admission of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the races. The word is as euphonious as "amalgamation," and much more correct in meaning. It has passed into the language, and no future dictionary will be complete without it. Next, it was necessary to give the book an erudite appearance, and arguments from ethnology must form no unimportant part of this matter. Neither of the authors being versed in this science, they were compelled to depend entirely on encyclopedias and books of reference. This obstacle to a New York editor or reporter was not so great as it might seem. The public are often favored in our journals with dissertations ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... attention of scholars and reformers and thinkers to the whole Methodist history, work, and mission," while a new impulse should be given to every good work, and a more daring purpose of evangelisation kindled. The British Conference pointed out the need of frankly recognising the not unimportant differences amongst the various Methodist bodies, so as to rule out of discussion any points which had a suggestion of past controversies. The ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... sapphires, and rubies, all jumbled together, necklace after necklace. On top of her head, in front of an imitation lace cap, a park paling of diamonds sat up triumphantly; one almost saw its reflection in her shining forehead below. In spite of this splendor, my future mother-in-law had an unimportant, plebeian appearance, and as we walked down the corridor I wished I was not so tall, that ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... every recurrent jolt. Finally we saw a dim row of lights and a long, thin whistle from our engine told us that the journey was done. Again was that noticeable lack of excitement: everyone calmly took his personal belongings and prepared to get down when the guard, in an unimportant voice, should call out "Paree," which you would not hear if you ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... then passions,—some obstacles about the valuation of the fixtures,—had hitherto precluded (and I shall always think providentially) my final closes with his offer, when one of those accidents, which, unimportant in themselves, often arise to give a turn to the most serious intentions of our life, intervened, and put an end at once to my projects of wiving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is quite splenditious. I am greatly tempted, but shall, I hope, refrain from using some of your remarks in my chapter on Classification. It is very true what you say about unimportant characters being so important systematically; yet it is hardly paradoxical bearing in mind that the natural system is genetic, and that we have to discover the genealogies anyhow. Hence such parts as organs of generation are so useful ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... from time to time, we catch glimpses of the unceasing strife between each folk and its neighbours, besides many hints of intestine struggles between prince and prince, or of rivalries between one petty shire and others of the same kingdom, far too numerous and unimportant to ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... and artistic way than is done in the Egyptian representation of the Sphinx. There are also small figures of animals in terra-cotta, principally dogs and ducks. But the large and small statues of the Assyrians are their most unimportant works in sculpture. It is in their bas-reliefs that their greatest excellence is seen, and in them alone their progress in art can be traced. This sort of sculpture seems to have been used by the Assyrians just as painting was used in Italy after the Renaissance. It was their mode of expressing ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... the natural consequences of corruption, and might be promulgated, therefore, without attaching any reproach to our rulers; but they are so accustomed to the mystery adherent to tyranny, that even the most unimportant lawsuit, uninteresting intrigue, elopement, or divorce, are never allowed to be mentioned in our journals, without a previous permission from the prefect of police, who ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... has been collated with that of Ventura del Arco, and variations or additions found in the latter are indicated as above, in brackets, followed by "V.d.A."—omitting, however, some typographical and other slight variations, which are unimportant. In the Ventura del Arco transcript there are considerable omissions of matter contained in the MS. that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... reception of tradition, this may be conceived when only unimportant legends are in question, or doctrines which occupy the mind only as matters of curiosity; but when life is at stake, and the interests of our whole existence, the mind labors upon the ideas which it receives. Religion is only ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... effected chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is, in relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I formerly ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. That is the build of the man, and consequently he looks upon the matter of slavery in this unimportant light. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... unimportant where one dies. A moment after your breath is gone you are in exile for ever—or ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... studying the book which his staff was compiling. Already it formed a bulky volume of many hundred typewritten pages. Here were reports, signed statements, photographs, personal descriptions, facsimiles of finger-prints, telegrams, letters, surveyors' plans, notes—everything, important and unimportant, that might have a possible bearing on the case. The superintendent turned over the pages with a moistened forefinger, and made a note now and again on a ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... Frenchmen are so braid, Marry that will, I'll live and die a maid] [W: Marry 'em] The passage is very unimportant, and the old reading reasonable enough. Nothing is more common than for girls, on such occasions, to say in a pet what they do not think, or to think for a time what they ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... let us be cool and deliberate now. I have just had a talk with Mr. McElwin and he is still greatly distressed over—over that affair, and he thinks by putting our reasons to work we can get at a settlement. The fact is, he wonders that you would want to stay in such a small and unimportant place as this is, after your editorial that everybody ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... Commons dies in the night. You see that girl with the baby—the one on our left—she'd have had that baby just the same if the Long Parliament were still sitting. None of your laws could have made her have that baby, or stopped her. You are simply fussing in an unimportant way, raising silly little clouds of dust which will settle down again at once. She's keeping the world going and she probably doesn't even know the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... that caught her gaze was a piece of paper, detached from the leaves, with some writing on it. The writing seemed unimportant, but as she turned it, intending to replace it between the leaves of the book, she saw her father's name, and she read, holding her breath with dread, for fresh in her mind was Duncan's charge that her father had entered into an agreement with Dakota for the murder of Doubler. She ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... school, through the field of the Association. In this list many thousands of our readers will recognize familiar names, some through personal associations and others through their long-time acquaintance with the work of the Association. It is no unimportant feature of the great principle of co-operation on which our work is founded that we can reckon upon a large force of long-tried and experienced workers in the field. The Association has a wealth of wisdom in planning and carrying on its work, by its ability to call ...
— American Missionary, Vol. 45, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... earliest kind of laughter was that of pleasure, so in this revival of civilization, we often see humour regarded as having no influence beyond that of ministering to amusement. The mind was scarcely equal to regarding things in more than one light. A jest was often viewed as entirely unimportant, its levity and depreciatory character being altogether overlooked. To this and to the hostile element then very prominent, we may attribute the caricatures of the devil, formerly so common. Before the tenth ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of your convictions. Life has no value. Blanche Stroeve didn't commit suicide because I left her, but because she was a foolish and unbalanced woman. But we've talked about her quite enough; she was an entirely unimportant person. Come, and I'll ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Europe offers the best refutation of the statement that the proportions of the head mean anything intellectual.... In our study of the proportions of the head, therefore, we are measuring merely race, and not intelligence in any sense.... Equally unimportant to the anthropologist is the absolute size of the head. It is grievous to contemplate the waste of energy when, during our civil war, over one million of soldiers had their heads measured in respect to this absolute size, in view ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... entirely, Perry. Iris was determined on quarreling with me over an unimportant matter. You know she's terribly jealous, and she worked herself up into a ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... carrying their skees beyond the outskirts of the town. Country sleigh-bells chinkled down a hill; children shouted and made snow houses; elders stamped their feet and clucked, "Fine day!" New York was far off and ridiculously unimportant. Carl and Ruth reached an open sloping field, where the snow that partly covered a large rock was melting at its lacy, crystaled edges, staining the black rock to a shiny wetness that was infinitely cheerful ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... peculiarity that he always seemed to be suffering from an inability to lucid expression, and the fear of being misunderstood in regard to the most patent or equally the most unimportant details of his speech. All of which, however, was in very remarkable contrast to his perfectly ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... consumer, because the incidence on the consumer is distributed over so many trivial items. Labor leaders have always preferred an increase of money wages to a decrease in prices. There has always been more popular interest in the profits of millionaires, which are visible but comparatively unimportant, than in the wastes of the industrial system, which are huge but elusive. A legislature dealing with a shortage of houses, such as exists when this is written, illustrates this rule, first by doing nothing ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... subject, The Expulsion of the Moors, in competition with his rivals who had asserted that he could paint nothing but heads. In this competition the prize was awarded to him, but as the picture has perished we are unable to judge of its merits for ourselves. But apart from this, and such unimportant groups of figures as we have mentioned, he had been occupied wholly in painting single portraits, and it is a marvellous proof of his genius that he should produce such a masterpiece of composition as The Lances with so little practice in this branch ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... hesitation and doubt about the consistency of these. There are many points, which the mothers will teach the daughters as right, or essential, but which the fathers will teach the sons as erroneous or unimportant. Thus disputes will be conveyed to the children. In their progress through life other circumstances may arise, which may give birth to feelings of an unpleasant nature. The daughters will be probably instructed in the accomplishments ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... had filled the four preceding years with an amount of experimental work unparalleled in the history of science partially subsided in 1835, and the only scientific paper contributed by Faraday in that year was a comparatively unimportant one, 'On an improved Form of the Voltaic Battery.' He brooded for a time: his experiments on electrolysis had long filled his mind; he looked, as already stated, into the very heart of the electrolyte, endeavouring to ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... new suit of clothes every three years.' All very true; but this gaol-bird and his mate, by the direct statement of Louvois, are 'the prisoners too important to be entrusted to other hands than yours'—the hands of Saint-Mars—while Mattioli is so unimportant that he may be left ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... for General Trelawny. Knowing how he fumed and raged at being thus held helpless by an apparently impregnable fortress in the unimportant town of Elsengore, I had myself studied the citadel from all points, and had come to the conclusion that it might be successfully attempted, not by the great gates that opened on the square of the town, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... An unimportant and indecisive affair, hardly above a skirmish, occurred at Scarey Creek, July 17th, between a part of General J. D. Cox's command and forces under Henry A. Wise; the capture of Colonels Norton, Woodruff, and ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... back and stuck his legs in the air. After performing a few more similar, unimportant tricks, the stranger suddenly clutched at his head, and assuming an expression of horror, shouted: "Help! Fire! We ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was the great military power of northern Europe. The ambassadors of the Swedish kings were received with the utmost deference in every court. Her soldiers won great battles and ended mighty wars. The England of Cromwell and Charles II. was unimportant and isolated in comparison with this northern kingdom, which could pour forth armies of gigantic blond warriors, headed by generals astute as well ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... dukes of Guelders, who had changed their title of counts for one of superior rank, acquired no accession of power proportioned to their new dignity. The bishops of Utrecht became by degrees weaker; private dissensions enfeebled Friesland; Luxemburg was a poor, unimportant dukedom; but Holland, Hainault, and Brabant formed the very heart of the Netherlands; while the elder branch of the same family, under whom they were united, possessed Flanders, Artois, and the two Burgundies. To complete the prosperity ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the working of the criminal law, he would have paused before disturbing such complicated—necessarily complicated—machinery, and would not have spoken of the consequences as being so very slight and unimportant—nay, as so very beneficial. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... times, from seemingly unimportant causes, and it is, above all, to the significant details that the spirit of penetration should give unceasing and ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... upon persons and conditions are to be received with much discount. But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous note-taker; and the variety and fecundity of his material is not a little due to the trivial and relatively unimportant details which are embodied in ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... of "Erewhon" sold in about three weeks; I had not taken moulds, and as the demand was strong, it was set up again immediately. I made a few unimportant alterations and additions, and added a Preface, of which I cannot say that I am particularly proud, but an inexperienced writer with a head somewhat turned by unexpected success is not to be trusted with a preface. I made a few further very trifling ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... so much. See if you can't leave out two-thirds of the totally unimportant, uninteresting details. A tremendous amount of energy is used in talking. This habit I would not say was confined to you, by any means; it is another one of those pretty ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... it's the other side. He has got it on the brain!" said Verena, with a laugh which seemed to relegate the whole matter to the category of the unimportant. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... I have made during a somewhat adventurous life," replied the other. "I have invariably kept my ears and eyes open, captain. There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves, frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... to know all that can be known of it to-day and feel a great deal less. "Character calls forth character," said Goethe; we may add, "even from the grave." Now that the physical miracle of the Resurrection has come to seem so unimportant and uninteresting to educated men, it might be a wise economy to connect its poetry with this experience, that great and creative characters can raise men better worth knowing than Lazarus from the dead. Nietsche thought that Shakespeare had brought Brutus back to life, (though he ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... pleased, but she felt that she and Griselda Grantly could never be bosom friends—could never have anything in common between them. She felt sure that Griselda despised her, little, brown, plain, and unimportant as she was. She herself could not despise Griselda in turn; indeed she could not but admire Miss Grantly's great beauty and dignity of demeanour; but she knew that she could never love her. It is hardly possible that the proud-hearted should love those who despise them; and Lucy Robarts ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... uniform, I will dare add that, of all contemporary poets, it is his alone. For, in a less absolute sense of the word, I should certainly include Mr. Bowies, Lord Byron, and, as to all his later writings, Mr. Southey, the exceptions in their works being so few and unimportant. But of the specific excellence described in the quotation from Garve, I appear to find more, and more undoubted specimens in the works of others; for instance, among the minor poems of Mr. Thomas Moore, and of our illustrious Laureate. To me it will always remain a singular and noticeable ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... design to each various object, so, in common with every other divine act, it is characterized by divine perfections. It displays omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, holiness, justice, and benevolence. It has been sometimes contended that Providence does not extend to all things, or to unimportant events, and chiefly for four reasons. Such an all-embracing providence, it is said, would (1) be distracting to the mind of God; or (2) would be beneath His dignity; or (3) would interfere with human freedom; or (4) would render God unjust in permitting evil to exist. ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... having no expectation that his reminiscences would be received with the kind indulgence of which this Second Edition is the proof, with diffidence ventured to tell so many tales connected with his own unimportant life as he has done. Emboldened by the reception his 'Tracks' have met with, he now adds a few stories which he trusts ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... leading characters, besides St. George himself and the Dragon, which is twice killed, are a Turkish knight and the King of Egypt. It is curious thus, as Dr. Chambers remarks, to find one play, with unimportant variations, preserved traditionally by the common people in parts of the island so distant from each other, and in ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... passion for interfering in other people's private concerns. Byrde, to worship as he thought fit, and to avoid the consequences of doing it, had often to lie in hiding. But he got safely through, and composed a large quantity of splendid Church music, besides some quite unimportant secular music. His masses have a character of their own, and in his motets one finds not only a high degree of technical skill, power and sheer beauty, but also a positive white heat of passion curiously kept from breaking out. There were many others of ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... than it had been for a week. But, as you might have observed if these details were in your line, my love, which they are not, the rise was extraordinarily rapid, and there is no surer sign of unsettled weather. But Mrs. Skratdj is apt to forget these unimportant trifles," he added, with a comprehensive smile round the dinner-table; "her thoughts are very properly absorbed by the more important domestic ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... against Mr. Put were groundless, or that, being solid, there was no difficulty in waving them when a convenient partition of powers and emoluments was proposed. In either case the people must infer that the constitutional principle which can be so played with is unimportant, and that parliamentary professions are no security." —Letter from the Earl of Moira to Colonel M'Mahon, in 1797. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... leaves 1-29, stands Fletcher's Elder Brother. I have compared the MS. with Dyce's text, and find the variations to be few and unimportant. In III. 3 Dyce follows the old ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... only: "You!" He had the air of one speaking to something infinitely unimportant. It was as if I had no ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... the edge of a sensation that is new to him.] I am told that a man begins to feel unimportant from this ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... irrespective of his victory or defeat. But his chess historical references are unreliable, and he often wrongly ascribes the adoption of certain variations to different players in a manner which could have been easily rectified by taking a little more trouble. This is not unimportant, for the reputed strength of a player is evidence of the strength of an opening he favours in matches and tournaments. We can only adduce a few instances which are more within the writer's ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... irretrievable quarrel after you have ruined yourself, and because you have ruined yourself. You are already on the rack—make no doubt about it. Oh, I have seen you twitch and jump with irritation—how many times on this yacht!—for trumpery, little, unimportant things she has said and done, which you would never have noticed six months ago; or only noticed to smile at with ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... did not feel well enough to write; this is what Isa said it was, and what she believed it to be, but Charlton knew that Isa's own friendly heart had planned it. And though it ran on about this and that unimportant matter of village intelligence, yet were its commonplace sentences about commonplace affairs like a fountain in the desert to the thirsty soul of the prisoner. I have read with fascination in an absurdly curious book that people of ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... and by no means an unimportant sense, the Zero-Element or Nothing-side of the Universe or of a given Department of Being, is one whole half, or an equal hemisphere of the Totality of Being. Thus, for example, Zero (0) in the usage of the Arabic Numbers, while it is represented in an obscure ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reptile breathes by means of a vascular hood spread underneath the egg-shell and absorbing dry air from without. It is an interesting point that this vascular hood, called the allantois, is represented in the Amphibians by an unimportant bladder growing out from the hind end of the food-canal. A great step in evolution was implied in the origin of this ante-natal hood or foetal membrane and another one—of protective significance—called the amnion, which forms ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... knowledge on the part of its author. The choice of a word, the turn of a phrase, the order in which facts were arranged, the occurrence here and there of a sentence which an ordinary reader would pass over as unimportant, would to such a person be indications of trains of thought far more profound than those which appeared on the surface. And this recognition would be proportional to two things—the amount of scientific knowledge possessed by ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... consecutive narrative, composed by a single writer, and not, like the Synoptics, a compilation of memoranda, oral or written. It appears to be, in part at least, a supplementary narrative, omitting much that is contained in the other Gospels, supplying some omissions, and correcting, possibly, certain unimportant errors. Mr. Horton illustrates the supplementary work of this Evangelist by several instances. "The communion of the Lord's Supper," he says, "was so universally known and observed when he wrote that he actually does not mention its institution, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... author had already published in his second edition. Malone did not, however, correct the proof-sheets. I thought it my duty, therefore, in revising my work to have the text of Boswell's second edition read aloud to me throughout. Some typographical errors might, I feared, have crept in. In a few unimportant cases early in the book I adopted the reading of the second edition, but as I read on I became convinced that almost all the verbal alterations were Boswell's own. Slight errors, often of the nature of Scotticisms, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Teutonic tribes the Lombards were entirely unskilled in the art of attacking fortified towns; hence the only mode of siege with which they were acquainted was that of starving out the inhabitants, by cutting off all source of supply by ravaging and destroying the surrounding country. This fact, unimportant as it may seem at the first glance, materially affected the whole course of the later history of some of the Italian cities. By this means we are enabled, even at this early epoch, to divide them into two classes. First, ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... for the later day in the mountain. Yet, again, it was getting hot. It was past eight, the mist had long ago receded, and I feared delay. So I mused on the white road under the tall towers and dead walls of Viterbo, and ruminated on an unimportant thing. Then curiosity did what reason could not do, and I entered ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... been unimportant. Nigel pushed the instrument away. They both looked eagerly at the page of manuscript paper. It was numbered "8" at the top, and the few words written upon it in Lord Dorminster's writing were obviously the continuation ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cannot bear that same neighbour's ill-bred manner, and irritating moods, his awkwardness and incivility, and above all his importunity, especially if he comes just at the wrong moment to talk to us about matters which seem to us frivolous and unimportant. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Father Payne, "and of course it is a risk—a man must run the risk of sacrificing a good deal of his time and energy to recording unimportant details, perhaps quite uselessly, but with this possibility ahead of him, that he may produce an immortal book—and I grant you that the infernal vanity and self-glorification of authors is a real ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lived simply by her physical love for him. And he served the little matriarchy, nursing the child and helping with the housework, indifferent any more of his own dignity and importance. But his abandoning of claims, his living isolated upon his own interest, made him seem unreal, unimportant. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... of the instrument, it may be as well to take a glance at the peg itself and its insertion at the centre underneath the nut. This is in no respect an unimportant detail to be seen to in the fitting up and regulation of a violin. In olden times the peg was small, not half the size of those inserted in new violins of the present day. The increase in the size seems to have ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... in and about the town of Evora that this is seen, and that too although the cathedral built at the end of the twelfth century is, except for a few unimportant details, ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... round the fire, a ceremony by no means unimportant in the cold climate of these upper regions, a bell rang which summoned him to prayers. After charging the lay brother to set before us the best fare their desert afforded, he retired, and left us at full liberty to ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... report, which he would scarcely get from Count Erskyll, on this new jewel in the Imperial Crown. To be able to furnish that, he would have to remain until the Midyear Feasts, when the Convocation would act on the new constitution. Whether the constitution was adopted or rejected was, in itself, unimportant; in either case, Aditya would have a government recognizable as such by the Empire, which was already recognizing some fairly unlikely-looking governments. In either case, too, Aditya would make nobody on any other planet any trouble. It wouldn't have, at least for a long time, ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... charter granted very imperfect powers of self-government, the people contrived to live under it for a hundred and thirty-five years, until 1821. Before the Revolution their petitions succeeded in obtaining only a few unimportant amendments.[9] When the British army captured the city in September, 1776, it was forthwith placed under martial law, and so remained until the army departed in November, 1783. During those seven years New York was not altogether a comfortable place in which to live. After 1783 the city government ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... yesterday. I explained to one of my clerks what he must do when the customer came in, and, of course, expected all to be done right. Not so, however. The man, when he found that he had my clerk, and not me, to deal with, objected to some unimportant charge in his bill, and the foolish fellow, instead of yielding the point, insisted that the account was correct. The customer went away, and paid out all his money in settling a bill with one of my neighbors. ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... flow out of John Dennis and into her mind and soul and spirit; something that made the flesh and what was done to the flesh unimportant. ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... and delicacy. But Cowper's unites with an exquisiteness in the turn of thought which the ancients would have called Irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature. There is much mannerism, much that is unimportant or of now exhausted interest in his poems: but where he is great, it is with that elementary greatness which rests on the most universal human feelings. Cowper is our highest master ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... utterly alone in his views and all Almy beginning to veer over to Willett. Willett, now able at last to recognize those about him, was sitting up a little to be nursed and petted and read to, a recovery in which the ice, for which Harris had sent his Indian followers forty miles, had played no unimportant part. Willett was now the object of devoted care and unspeakable interest, for all Almy hoped to hear the story of the assault with intent to kill. But Almy was doomed to disappointment. Beyond the expression of an unalterable ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... Troy measure, Complex and Compound Fractions;[Footnote: For a more complete list of such topics, see Teachers College Record, Mathematics in the Elementary School, March, 1903, by David Eugene Smith and F. M. McMurry.] in geography, the location of many unimportant capes, bays, capitals and other towns, rivers and boundaries; in nature study, many classifications, the detailed study of leaves, and the study of many uncommon wild plants. The teaching of facts that cannot function in the lives of pupils directly ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... nation in the mountains. The Overhill and Middle towns, numbering together thirty-three and situated wholly in the mountains, comprised four-fifths of their fighting force in 1775, while the nine towns distributed in the flat lands of Georgia and South Carolina were small and unimportant. The Indians themselves distinguished these two divisions of their country, the one as Otarre or mountainous, and the others as Ayrate or low.[1259] Similarly in ancient Gaul the three strongest tribes, the Sequani, Aedui, and Arverni, all had a large mountain nucleus. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Lorenzo, it was asserted. One paper declared that a Castalani had worn the triple tiara, which a learned don of Oxford took the trouble to write and deny. And it would appear that no one who had ever borne the name had been altogether unimportant. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner |
