"Apt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them moved, and a man, crouching slightly, came out of a screened dug-out shaft into the trench. It must be remembered that neither of our warriors had a rifle, and that bombs and ammonal charges are not weapons with which to tackle a man you can touch. They are apt to be impartial to friend and foe alike. . . . Resource was necessary, and it is at moments such as these that the national instinct for games is so invaluable. There was a psychological moment as the crouching man came up into the trench with his rifle and bayonet, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... health food. When the National Playground Association was organized President Roosevelt cautioned its officers against too frequent use of the word "supervision" on the ground that supervision and direction were apt to defeat the very purpose of games and to stultify the play spirit. Is the little girl on the street who springs into a hornpipe or a jig to the tune of a hurdy-gurdy, or even the boy who runs before automobiles or trolley cars ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... we are apt to sink too much under unreasonable fears, so we are too soon inclined to be raised by groundless hopes (according to the nature of all consumptive bodies like ours) thus, it hath been given about for several days past, that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... represented in the conduct of so gifted a child. An old lady who visited his mother, and was characterized in the family as 'Aunt Betsy', had irritated him by pronouncing the word 'lovers' with the contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid is sometimes apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen why a certain 'Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a baby to imagine what a 'lover' was; he supposed the name denoted a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy resented Aunt Betsy's manner ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... your hoe—here is my gallant Scot that will fight for you, and you shall only have the trouble to pay him. And you, my most serene duke, my illustrious count, and my most mighty marquis, e'en rein up your fiery courage till it is wanted, for it is apt to start out of the course, and to hurt its master; here are my companies of ordnance—here are my French Guards—here are, above all, my Scottish Archers, and mine honest Ludovic with the Scar, who will fight, as well or better than you, will fight with ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... give judgment too glibly. I have heard many say that he is a brave man. But he was not out on an exploring voyage; he was sailing from Iceland to Greenland, to visit his father, and lost his way. And he is a man not apt to be eager in new enterprises. Besides, it may be that he thought the land was ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... I can. Have you noticed that it is people who are materially minded in their tastes and habits that are apt to ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... kinds of memories rising from the natural aptitudes of different individuals—(1) First Impressions are apt to be feeble and the power to revive them weak—a poor memory. (2) First Impressions are usually weak but the power to revive them is strong—still a poor memory. (3) First Impressions are usually vivid but the power ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... am not apt at the chase. Also it irks me to squat on a branch all day above a path, bearing a rock upon my thighs. Those words did but awaken within me when I ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... admit that it is a tough proposition to mine here," said Mr. Brewster. "A land-slide is apt to happen any moment and bury all the apparatus. All previous efforts will be wiped out and you must begin all over again. Then consider the difficulty of transportation, from this peak down the long trail, and over miles of rough country to the ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... not achieve unconcern, she kept to her petulance, jerking her cloak away from the hand that detained it. "Should I be apt to blame him for starving me if he did it because no better cheer was to be had? Nor do I think you have proved much more liberal. Let me by to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... pleasant it may be to you to enlarge upon the risks you have run, others may not find such pleasure in listening to your adventures. Avoid provoking laughter also: it is a habit from which one easily slides into the ways of the foolish, and apt to diminish the respect which your neighbors feel for you. To border on coarse talk is also dangerous. On such occasions, if a convenient opportunity offer, rebuke the speaker. If not, at least by relapsing into silence, colouring, ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... well. Nothing human is wholly sad, until it is effete and dying out. Where there is life there is promise. "Vitality is always hopeful," was the verdict of the most refined and clear-sighted woman who has yet explored the rough mining villages of the Rocky Mountains. There is apt to be a certain coarse virtue in rude health; as the Germanic races were purest when least civilized, and our American Indians did not unlearn chastity till they began to decay. But even where vigor and vice ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... with his sister in a watering-place, is apt to form to himself regular habits, of which one of the most regular is the walking to the station in quest of his newspaper. Here, then, it was that the tall, grey-haired, white-moustached General Mohun beheld, emerging on the platform, a slight figure in ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hospital or Lazar-House, filled with Persons lying under all kinds of mortal Diseases. How finely has the Poet told us that the sick Persons languished under lingering and incurable Distempers, by an apt and judicious use of such Imaginary Beings as those I mentioned in my ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... will be remembered that in one of their meetings the hermit had informed Erling of his having already taught the meaning of the strange characters which covered his parchments to the Norse maiden, and that she had proved herself an apt scholar. Erling said nothing at the time, except that he had a strong desire to become better acquainted with the writing in question, but he settled it then and there in his heart that Hilda, and not the ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... carry the drawing-room with you into the bush. That side of life, with much of the refinement belonging to it, is swept completely out of your reach. And what is of more importance still, your existence is apt to grow somewhat unintellectual. Yet these are matters that are already remedying themselves. As comfort and competence are gradually achieved, and as society becomes large, so do the higher results of civilization follow. And as pioneering progresses into the more advanced ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... satisfaction in his good looks, and she loved the openness of his smile. She had striven with all her might to keep away from him the troubles that oppressed her, and had determined that nothing, if she could help it, should disturb his radiant satisfaction with the world. She knew that he was apt to lean on her, but though she chid herself sometimes for fostering the tendency, she could not really prevent the intense pleasure it gave her. He was young yet, and would soon enough grow into ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... fact which few but the despisers of their race like to acknowledge, and which those despisers of their race are therefore apt to interpret wrongly, and are enabled to make too much of—that it is perfectly natural,—so natural as to appear necessary,—that when young people first meet, the possibility of their falling in love should occur to all the ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... good fellow—nay, no occasion to snatch at your knife in that threatening fashion; it is dangerous, for I am a hasty man, and apt to use these without much reflection," and I heard the click of a pistol-lock. "I am sorry if I have wounded your delicate sense of honour, but when a man sells his own countrymen for gold, one is a little—just a trifle, you know—apt to be ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... in the way of this proposal, for he knew that his uncle's displeasure, though hot at first, was apt to evaporate in exclamations; and he thought it likely that his good nature, his partiality for his ward, his dislike to causing pain to his daughter, and, above all, his wife's blind confidence in Guy, would, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... acquaintance, entered into conversation. In answer to an inquiry made as to the progress of the good cause in the valley, the old man replied very despondingly. "There was," he said, "a great lack of faith, of zeal, of earnestness, amongst the rising generation. They were too fond of pleasures, too apt to be led away by the fleeting vanities of this world." It was only the old story—the complaint of the aged against the young. When this old peasant was a boy, his elders doubtless thought and said the same of him. The generation growing old always think the generation ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the men of the house are apt to appear worldly. The wife, as she puts on her new bonnet before church, is apt to sigh over that assiduity which enabled her husband to pay the milliner's bill. And in the household of the Smiths and Stevensons ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... red book represented, what they stood for and concretely symbolised. They represented all the vast conscious world of men outside himself; they symbolised something that in his studious solitariness he was apt not to believe in. He could stand at Piccadilly Circus, could watch the crowds shuffle past, and still imagine himself the one fully conscious, intelligent, individual being among all those thousands. It seemed, somehow, impossible ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... burned with that flaming sword, not burned up or consumed, we may enter into Paradise, and give thanks unto the Lord who hath brought us into a place of refreshment." This opinion of theirs is, in the main of it, very uncertain; relying upon the sense of some obscure place of Scripture is only apt to represent the great severity of the Judge at that day, and it hath in it this only certainty, that even the most innocent person hath great need of mercy, and he that hath the greatest cause of confidence, altho he runs to no rocks to hide him, yet he runs to the protection of the cross, and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... a weather sign, although the sun rose clear and the sky was blue. Nightcaps are apt to mean a showery day. (Note 22.) We took our wet rub, ate breakfast, policed the camp and killed the fire, and General Ashley put camphor and cotton against little Jed Smith's back tooth, to stop some aching. Maybe there was a hole in the tooth, or maybe Jed had just caught cold in it, ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... Mr. Pope took place, "which naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of mankind. All those who made their entrance into the world with the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own deserts. Those who were once his equals envy and defame him, because they now see him the superior; and those who were once his superiors, because they look upon him as their equal." Did Mr. Addison, justly perhaps thinking ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Some one with childe by him? my cosen Iuliet? Luc. Is she your cosen? Isa. Adoptedly, as schoole-maids change their names By vaine, though apt affection ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... way of youthful genius to aim at novelty of form in its first essays, while yet in treatment it falls unconsciously into a vein of reminiscence; afterward it is apt to return to established forms, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... briar-root, as he goes swinging along through the hissing deluge with his chin upon his breast and his fierce eyes sullenly fixed upon the goal ahead, recalls, even more vividly than upon Sunday, the angry buffalo of Lady Hannah's apt analogy. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... drama, so as to correct my conceptions by those of the actors; and though I was, as a rule, absurdly wrong, there can be no doubt that any method of independent study is of enormous importance, not only to youngsters, but also to students of a larger growth. Without it the mind is apt to take its stamp from the first forcible impression it receives, and to fall into a servile dependence upon traditions, which, robbed of the spirit that created them, are apt to be purely mischievous. What was natural to the creator ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... as so many of us do—not perhaps, intellectually, though I am afraid there is a very considerable dimming of the clearness, and a narrowing of the place in our thoughts, of the hope of a future blessedness, in the average Christian of this day—but practically we are all apt to lose sight of the recompense of the reward. And if we do, the faith and love, and the work and toil, and the patience will suffer. Faith will relax its grasp, love will cool down its fervour; and there will come a film over Hope's blue eye, and she will not see the land ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... can still remain a question of doubt about this, I beg the attention of the doubters to the further words of the Constitution, to be found in the XV. Amendment. And here I am met with the apt inquiry, "Why, Mr. Riddle, if women are a part of 'all persons,' colored men are also a part of the same 'all persons,' and if women are made citizens and clothed with the immunities and privileges of citizenship ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Squire, and then replaced the more apt and alliterative word "Bible" by the general word "superstition." He was himself a robust rationalist, but he went to church to set his tenants an example. Of what, it would have puzzled him ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... grandfather, and seemed to have inherited a good deal of the old gentleman's character, mixed with gentler traits. He was a fair, fine boy, tall and stout for his age, with the Captain's regular features, and, he flattered himself, the Captain's firm step and martial bearing. He was apt—like his grandfather—to hold his own will to be other people's law, and happily for the peace of the nursery this opinion was devoutly shared by his brother Nicholas. Though the Captain had sold his commission, Robert continued to command an irregular force of volunteers in the nursery, and never ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... sufficiently that warmth was a necessity of life, and that young creatures more especially required a certain brooding tenderness to develop their faculties. No one had ever given him love but God; and he was too apt to suppose that religion could be fostered only in that way which had cherished his own. His light burned bright to Godward, but it was not sufficiently visible ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... I broke in, with a moist, tingling feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in colour. Ukridge's breezy way of expressing himself is apt ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... Jellia Jamb, for a time, to know what to do with the animal. The green maiden was much astonished at the sight of so unusual a creature, for horses were unknown in this Land; but those who lived in the Emerald City were apt to be astonished by queer sights, so after inspecting the cab-horse and noting the mild look in his big eyes the girl decided not to ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... connection between a college education and business. I've always made it a rule to buy brains, and I've learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised. The fellow who hasn't had the training may be just as smart, but he's apt to paw the air when ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... as to let down on deck when desired. When ready for service, with guns and stores on board, these boats drew from five to seven feet of water; but they were so weakly built as to be dangerous and comparatively inefficient vessels, quickly "disabled," as is apt to be the case with such preparations for war as are postponed to the time of its outbreak. The contingency of civil war on our inland waters was not indeed to be anticipated nor prepared for; but what was the history of the ocean navy, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... heart upon it!" said she, "and I tell you I must receive an invitation to this ball. Madame de Fleury positively shall not exclude me. I have already set in motion a number of influential pulleys, and I am not apt to fail when I ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... dinner; a book or a newspaper will be company to him, but he wants the comfort that comes only through his wife; and if she gets burdened with the mystery of the universe or stretches her thoughts toward matters too high for her, or even if she takes an interest in politics, she is apt to lose sight of the hundred and one things that make up the every-day comfort that ought to pervade a house like the atmosphere. Perhaps this is the reason that good wives in an ordinary way are so thickly sown, for which let us be truly thankful. But, though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... by it, and he continued to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... yourself will find it most prudent to act without remonstrating, or appearing to be aware of this little anecdote. Julia is very like a certain friend of mine; she has a quick and lively imagination, and keen feelings, which are apt to exaggerate both the good and evil they find in life. She is a charming girl, however, as generous and spirited as she is lovely. I paid her the kiss you sent her with all my heart, and she rapped my ringers for my reward with all hers. Pray return as soon as you can. Meantime rely upon the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fascinating path. It is not merely fanciful to feel that the place expresses itself appropriately as the place where the great Christian King hid himself from the heathen. Though a marshland is always open it is still curiously secret. Fens, like deserts, are large things very apt to be mislaid. These flats feared to be overlooked in a double sense; the small trees crouched and the whole plain seemed lying on its face, as men do when shells burst. The little path ran fearlessly forward; but it seemed ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... as soon as he surmised that I should break away altogether from my leading strings, unless he relaxed them, 'young folk are apt to commit follies which draw down the wrath of their elders upon their heads, and you may happen to want money at some time or other; if so, come to me. Your father helped me nobly once upon a time, and I shall always have a few crowns to spare ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... outflank—if the ground does not afford positions where the flanks may be protected by natural obstacles that make outflanking impossible or exceedingly arduous, if the enemy be greatly superior in mobility, in such conditions retreat from each successive stand is apt to be precipitate—dependent less upon one's own will than upon the enemy's energy—and the retiring army may reach its ultimate goal under an accumulation of retrograde impulse not far distinguishable from rout, deteriorated in morale and diminished ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... for that purpose, but were originally employed as nouns or verbs, from which they have been corrupted by use. And he seems to admit this fact when he says,[19] "abbreviation and corruption are always busiest with the words which are most frequently in use. Letters, like soldiers, being very apt to desert and drop off in a long march, and especially if their passage happens to lie near the confines of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... sent a staff officer north to release every prisoner who was said to be confined by my order. There were many citizens at home who deserved punishment because they were soldiers when an opportunity was afforded to inflict an injury to the National cause. This class was not of the kind that were apt to get arrested, and I deemed it better that a few guilty men should escape than that a great ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... policy to hear patiently and discuss frankly until the last shred of evidence is on the table, before trying to reach a conclusion and to decide finally upon a course of action. In working with so many partners, the conservative ones are apt to be in the majority, and this is no doubt a desirable thing when the mere momentum of a large concern is certain to carry it forward. The men who have been very successful are correspondingly conservative, since they have much to lose ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... produce in all a certain similarity in those characteristics and habits of thought that pertain to the material things of life. We are all imitative, and therefore we tend to imitate each other; but the inferior is more apt to imitate the superior than vice versa. Particularly are we prone to imitate those actions and qualities by which others have attained material success. So it is to be expected, it is already a fact, that the methods ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... honoured by others. People act according to their nature just as they open and shut their eyelids; and it is only the learned that pay respect to others. The man that is respected should think so. They again, in this world, that are foolish, apt to sin, and adepts in deceit, never pay respect to those that are worthy of respect; on the other hand, they always show disrespect to such persons. The world's esteem and asceticism (practices of Mauna), can never exist together. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fail to throw it in the end. And there is something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity with which he thus exposes the process as well as the result, the works as well as the dial of the clock. Withal he has his hours of inspiration. Apt words come to him as if by accident, and, coming from deeper down, they smack the more personally, they have the more of fine old crusted humanity, rich in sediment and humour. There are sayings of his in which he has stamped himself into the very grain of the language; ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they found there, the gods, were inherent in Nature, and distinct. They did not, like the monks, place one spiritual power, omnipotent and omnipresent, above all, and see in Nature lessons of Divine government. We ourselves having somewhat overstrained the latter point of view, are now apt to return vaguely to Greek fancies. Perhaps, too, we talk so much about scenery because it is scenery to us, and the life has ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to the missionaries that the practice of handshaking has been introduced in the Congo. Formerly the custom was to clap hands when exchanging greetings. The blacks saw the Anglo-Saxons grasp hands when they met and being apt imitators in many things, they started to do likewise. One of the first things that impressed me in Africa was the extraordinary amount of handshaking that went on when the people met each other even after a separation of only half ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... of his wife, praising it above measure: and after no long time, since it was destined that evil should happen to Candaules, he said to Gyges as follows: "Gyges, I think that thou dost not believe me when I tell thee of the beauty of my wife, for it happens that men's ears are less apt of belief than their eyes: contrive therefore means by which thou mayest look upon her naked." But he cried aloud and said: "Master, what word of unwisdom is this which thou dost utter, bidding me look upon my mistress naked? When a woman puts ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... distance of thirty or forty yards. But there, they are making a move. They are going to drink the coffee and vodka standing, which is wise, for after standing in the snow for four hours, as they have been doing, they are apt to get so sleepy after a warm meal that if we were to stop here much longer you would find half the number would not make a start ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... felt to this man who had been sent to prison and to Siberia just for writing a beautiful book about poor people. They could smile at him, of course; they could and they did. But if you smile too constantly, the smile is apt to get fixed like the smile of the hyaena. And then it no longer looks friendly, but simply silly. So they tried other ways, and brought him flowers till the place where he sat was surrounded by little fading bunches of clover ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... remain on foot by the young men who had comfortable places; no one dreamed, apparently, of offering to give up his seat. But, on the other hand, a superior civilization is shown in what I may call the manual forbearance of the trolley and railway folk, who are so apt to nudge and punch you at home here, when they wish your attention. The like happened to me only once in England, and that was at Liverpool, where the tram conductor, who laid hands on me instead of speaking, had perhaps been corrupted by the unseen ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... else pity you?" asked Tommy Shackel, the smallest midshipman on board, who was apt to take a malicious pleasure in seeing his seniors have a ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... be a bully, because great big people are very apt to be bullies, and though I haven't seen him, I guess Buster Bear is big enough from all I have heard, but I don't see how he is a ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... first in importance. Its character, though capable of much enrichment, reminds us of how much devotional beauty the Prayer Book has from ancient sources. In our jealous zeal for more beauty we are, perhaps, apt to underrate much that we already possess. God won't give us more than we have until we have learnt to ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... custom. I am obliged to conclude that these incidents in Lynwood's career are absolutely true, for certainly nothing less than absolute truth could excuse their appearance in print; but at the same time I must confess that any attack upon our Navy is apt with me to act as an irritant. The more reason that I should honestly admit Mr. MORGAN'S merits and say that he writes with a nice sense of style, and that his book does not derive its only interest from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... only one, did comfort them. Blythe wore no double-breasted vest; he wore no vest at all. But in the downward path of tramp life and poverty, the vest is very apt to disappear. Against this little gleam of forlorn hope was the fact that Blythe did wear a gray suit. And that suit was very old and shabby; as old as the notice with the picture, surely. For the rest, the printed description seemed ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the bounds like Bumble the Beadle" is an apt one. Mr. Frederick Sessions has selected as one of his Folk-Lore Topics the subject of "Beating the Bounds" (352), and in his little pamphlet gives us much interesting information concerning the part played by children ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... of your age; the writing best calculated to please a false taste is what has something of the air of good writing, without being really so. For to the vulgar eye the specious is more striking than the genuine. The best writing is apt to be too plain, too simple, too unaffected, and too delicate to stir the callous organs of the generality of critics, who see nothing but the tawdry glare of tinsel; and are deaf to every thing but what is shockingly noisy to a true ear. ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... the fabulous ages, I was completely conversant with each of their circumstances, and for this reason. I must acknowledge, that, as the hour approached for punishment, I was apt to be troubled in mind, similarly to a patient about to undergo a disagreeable operation; but no sooner had I opened Lempriere's classical dictionary, than every unpleasing anticipation was dissolved, and I became totally unconscious of vulgar realities, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... breakfast, reading all manner of fortunes (that is to say, of married and flourishing fortunes) in the grounds of her teacup, a step was heard in the workshop, and Mr Edward Chester was descried through the glass door, standing among the rusty locks and keys, like love among the roses—for which apt comparison the historian may by no means take any credit to himself, the same being the invention, in a sentimental mood, of the chaste and modest Miggs, who, beholding him from the doorsteps she was then cleaning, did, in her maiden meditation, give utterance ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... said the commodore a trifle coldly, "and if I made a sucker of myself once it don't stand to reason that I'm apt to do it again. Remember, Mac, a burnt child dreads the fire. To-morrow morning, right after breakfast, we'll turn the guns loose and pepper the bush for a mile or two in every direction. If there's a native within range he'll have business in the next county ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Bohemians and Near-Bohemians, and if you are like the young woman mentioned you are apt to miss the real and take the imitation for the ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... never could get within hailing distance of the French j and u, and teetered awkwardly between Jilly and Jelly. He was apt to relax sickeningly into plain Julia—especially before folks, when he was nervous anyway. Only they did not say "before folks" now; the Grouts never said "before folks" now—they said, "In ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... some frequency. It was easy enough to run down from London or over from Welwyn (home of G.B.S.) or from Oxford or Cambridge. It was most conveniently central. Gilbert's brethren of the pen were especially apt to appear at all seasons and always found friendly welcome. For he continued to call himself neither poet nor philosopher but journalist. Father O'Connor had tried to persuade him, as he neatly puts it, to "begin to print ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... run for the sake of the experience. And, of course, you know how it is with masters—they like to think they're selecting their own mates, and always resent any interference from their owners. And if you do ask them to take a certain mate they're apt to suspect he's a spy from the office, and—well, you understand. I'd prefer to have this lad I have in mind go aboard as if you had ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... though it was some time before he could face the prospect of marrying the one who had so greatly interested him; as she was not only in humble circumstances, but was encumbered with a child concerning whose parentage the neighbors professed ignorance, and she had nothing to say. But, as is very apt to be the case in an affair like this, love and admiration soon got the better of worldly wisdom. Taking his future in his hands, he offered himself as her husband, when she immediately proved herself worthy of his regard by entering at once into ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... people of God, even when under oppression, lift not the hand, but possess their souls in patience, says Knox, in 1558-59. But the idolatrous shall be temporally punished—by other hands. "And what instruments can God find in this life more apt to punish you than those" (the Anabaptists), "that hate and detest all lawful powers? . . . God will not use his saints and chosen people to punish you. For with them there is always mercy, yea, even although God have pronounced a curse ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... with a tendency of her nature and with the habits nourished in her by her father. Millard thought he had reached the depths of her life in coming to know about her work among the poor, but a woman's motives are apt to be more involved than a man imagines or than she can herself quite understand. Below the philanthropic Phillida lay the devout Phillida, who believed profoundly that in her devotions she was able to touch hands with the ever-living God himself. Under the stimulus of Mrs. Frankland's words ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... assail. Thee powers of darkness ne'er shall smite In tranquil sleep or wild delight. No one is there in all the land Thine equal for the vigorous hand. Thou, when thy lips pronounce the spell, Shalt have no peer in heaven or hell. None in the world with thee shall vie, O sinless one, in apt reply, In fortune, knowledge, wit, and tact, Wisdom to plan and skill to act. This double science take, and gain Glory that shall for aye remain. Wisdom and judgment spring from each Of these fair spells whose use I teach. Hunger and thirst ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... "People aren't apt to die in batches or by the half-dozen," he replied, coolly. "If you were all by yourself, it would be more like it, I suppose, but you are taking quite a slice of your own world along with ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only—What ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... its mingled humor and pathos, written for the thirtieth reunion of his class, is one of the best of the many poems which he was so frequently asked to compose for special celebrations. No other poet of his time could equal him in furnishing to order clever, apt, humorous verses for ever ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the table would take away her appetite. Love does not change the palate, give you a taste for cheap claret when you have been accustomed to dry champagne. We have bodies to think of as well as souls; we are apt to forget ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... modes [coitus interruptus] is physically injurious, and is apt to produce nervous disorder and sexual enfeeblement and congestion, from the sudden interruption it gives to the venereal act, whose pleasure moreover it interferes with. The second, namely the sheath, dulls the enjoyment, and frequently produces ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... Yet on his way (no sign of grace, For folks in fear are apt to pray) To Phoebus he preferr'd his case, And begg'd ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... out-of-place men, the Sinking Fund, to the parish-clerk, who mortgages his fees at the chandler's; and that my countrymen seem to have resolved to increase their own enjoyments at the expense of posterity, with whose provision, even Swift thinks we have no concern. Again; I have thought that we are apt to over-rate our national advancement, by supposing the present race to be wiser than the previous one, without once looking into our individual contributions to this state of enlightenment. Proud as we ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... task—with haste, with speed, or with despatch? "With winged expedition, Swift as the lightning glance, he executes His errand on the wicked." Why is it that this use of expedition in Milton's lines is apt? Would despatch have served as well? ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... called out once or twice, words of warning. He also suggested that it would be wise for the adventurous one to turn back; because, if appearance went for anything the animal had a bad temper, and would be apt to give him more or ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... accustomed to refer the Reformation to the time of Luther in Germany, as the grand religious turning-point in modern history, that we are apt to underrate, if not to forget, the religious movement in this most important era of English history. Chaucer and Wiclif wrote nearly half a century before John Huss was burned by Sigismond: it was a century after that that Luther burned ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... solitary woes," says the poet—on the contrary, they are ever apt to be treading each other's heels; and it was so with the hero of this biography in the present instance. The school had been undertaken as a temporary resource, during the pendency of the legal measures necessary to obtain his estates. It had now been suddenly broken up, and ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... according to your notion, is to be our own jailers, think you?" said Macloud. "Well, we can chew on it—the manner of procedure is apt to keep us ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... the age and education of the defendant,[860] the conduct of the court or the prosecuting officials,[861] and the complicated nature of the offense charged and the possible defenses thereto[862]—render criminal proceedings without counsel so apt to result in injustice as to be fundamentally unfair, the latter group [majority] holds that the accused must have legal assistance under the amendment whether he pleads guilty or elects to stand trial, whether he requests counsel or not. Only a waiver of counsel, understandingly made, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... get some wood for supper. Cut it short enough so the door'll shut tight. And fetch in another pail of water—water's apt to get bad, standing around that way. And while you're out along this little creek pull some of this water cress and bring it in—didn't you know it's good to eat? And, Henry, if you've got any cows, you see that one of them is brought over here, and a churn—we got to have some butter. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... shall be free from noise and the hurryings of this life. All states are full of noise and confusion, only the Valley of Humiliation is that empty and solitary place. Here a man shall not be so hindered in his contemplation, as in other places he is apt to be. This is a valley that nobody walks in but those that love a pilgrim's life; and I must tell you that in former times men have met with angels here, have found pearls here, and here in this place found ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... could have furnished the broken coin which had deceived mademoiselle?—had a singularly inspiriting effect upon me. I felt every muscle in my body grow on the instant; hard as steel, my eyes more keen, my ears sharper—all my senses more apt and vigorous. I stole off like a cat from the balustrade, over which I had been looking, and without a second's delay began the search for mademoiselle's room; reflecting that though the garrison now amounted to four, I had no need to despair. If I could release the ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... her child; and displayed, before they were thirty, such a consummate villainy as few wretches grown hoary in vice have perpetrated. This act of scandalous notoriety injured the Irish reputation very much in this country; for here, as in many other places, inconsiderate people are apt to judge a whole nation according to the behaviour of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... from the Cataract, where she had been bought when the family of Alypius accompanied the child Cleopatra to the island of Philae. Anukis was given to Charmian, who at the time was just entering womanhood, as the first servant who was her sole property, and she had proved so clever, skilful, apt to learn, and faithful, that her mistress took her, as her personal attendant, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... sure that whenever a marriage of any mark takes place, male acquaintances are likely to pity the bride, female acquaintances the bridegroom: each, it is thought, might have done better; and especially where the bride is charming, young gentlemen on the scene are apt to conclude that she can have no real attachment to a fellow so uninteresting to themselves as her husband, but has married him on other grounds. Who, under such circumstances, pities the husband? Even his female friends are apt to think his position retributive: ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... which I confess myself less edified than by other things, which are thought more lightly of. Systems and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is the moral and didactic tone of the Spectator which makes us apt to think of Addison (according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as "a parson in a tie-wig." Many of his moral Essays are, however, exquisitely beautiful and quite happy. Such are the reflections on cheerfulness, those in Westminster Abbey, on ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... apt to accompany a spirit of just his high-strung, petulant, and spleenful sort. Beyond doubt he must have suffered keen torments at the disdain with which he was everywhere met in English society, and chiefly among the military officers whom his very conduct, renegade though it was, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Paiute, I do not know, but Mono Lake, because of its saline water and its lack of any fish life, is thought of with some fear and awe. Today I get the impression that some Washo still keep a bit of this material with their fishing gear, although they are apt to rationalize it as a lure rather than real medicine. It should be remembered that hook-and-line or spear fishing accounted for a much smaller percentage of the total annual take than did trapping, damning, netting, or other communal ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... smiles and is a villain still. He was in my dormitory year before last and kept it in a constant turmoil. And yet if you have any sense of humor at all you can't help being amused by him—even sympathizing with him—though it's apt to be at your ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... which fish is so scarce, subjects these poor creatures to great distress, at least we were apt to believe so; they were frequently found gathering a kind of root in the woods, which they broiled on the fire, then beat it between two stones until it was quite soft; this they chew until they have extracted ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... admirers of those two pre-eminent poets, Hopkins and Sternhold. The pew-opener is a very prominent and principal figure; two old women adjoining Miss West's seat are so much in shadow, that we are apt to overlook them: they are, however, all three making the dome ring ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... right, the tribunes were declared to be inviolable. Whoever used violence against them was to be an outlaw. The power of the tribunes at first was merely protective. But their power grew until it became controlling. One point where their authority was apt to be exerted was in the conscription, or military enrollment. This, if it were undertaken in an unfair way, they could stop altogether, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... is exactly the old argument of the pulpit against the atheist who 'does not believe because he does not want to believe'. The writer is only too well aware that even scientific minds, when bent on these topics, are apt to lose balance and sanity. But this tendency, like any other mental bad habit, is to be overcome, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... guarded against, I do not know a greater proof of ignorance than refusing to believe anything because it does not exactly coincide with one's own ideas. The more confined these may be, from want of education or knowledge, the more incredulous people are apt to become. Two of the most enterprising travellers of modern days, Bruce and Le Vaillant, were ridiculed and discredited upon their return. Subsequent travellers, who went the same track as the former, with a view to confute, were obliged to corroborate his assertions; and all who have ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and witty. "The love of liberty and independence does not seem to be rooted out of the national character by centuries of subjugation. They love to command; but though they are loyal to a good government, they are apt readily to rise when their rights and liberties are infringed. As there is little love of obedience among them, so neither is there any toleration of aristocratic pretensions."—Encyc. Brit., ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... impoverished their blood, made them wan and haggard, and stamped disgrace upon their looks. Some of them scarcely retained the semblance of humanity. They might have been taken for brutes; yet they were notoriously intelligent, apt at business, resigned to their lot, good-tempered, kind-hearted, devoted to their families, and ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... is, to a monster composed of numberless heads, amongst which there is scarcely one open to reason." [Memoires de Montmorency.] "Whoso has to do with a people that considers nothing difficult to undertake, and, as for the execution, makes no sort of provision, is apt to be much hampered," writes the Duke of Rohan in his Memoires (t. i. p. 376). It was this extreme embarrassment that landed him in crime. One of his emissaries, returning from Piedmont, where he had been admitted to an interview with the ambassador of Spain, made ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the Proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to Free Negroes. I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the Negroes should cease helping the Enemy, to that extent it weakened the Enemy in his ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... determined perseverance, will be a good foundation to start with. Good sense and attention have more to do with the good music of ordinary persons (as opposed, we mean, to remarkably clever ones) than people are apt to think. It was said of Mendelssohn that music was the accident of his being; and there are many of whom the same could be said, with this meaning—i.e., that the powers which make them succeed in music would enable them to succeed in ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... have to concoct a far better story than that, my friend, before you face Sheridan," he said insolently, "or you will be very apt to learn how a rope feels. He is not inclined to parley long with such fellows as you. Bind his hands, men, and take him out with you ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... over myself, against the good and ill of this earth, you knew already that of late years I have lived only for moral joys, and I must say that, touched by my efforts, doubtless, the Lord, who is the sacred fount of all that is good, has rendered me apt in seeking them and in tasting them to the full. God is ever near me, as formerly, and I find in Him the sovereign principle of the creation of all things; in Him, our holy Father, not only consolation and strength, but an unalterable ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the greater part of her display of temper, was really directed against herself, because deep down in her sub-consciousness she knew that she alone was responsible for the present predicament. But anger is unreasoning, and, when one is angry at oneself, one is only too apt to seek for another person upon whom to visit the consequences. Patricia made her appearance just in time to offer herself as a target for Miss Brunswick's wrath; and Beatrice, totally unmindful of Sally's presence, loosed her tongue, and permitted words to flow, which, had she stopped to ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... change of voice, lo, and behold, she had them nearly crying in the same breath. Under the pressure of these jumbled emotions, brethren began to rise up in their pews and say what they would give. The wonderful woman had something smart and apt to say about each fresh contribution, and used it to screw up the general interest a notch further toward benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes and impromptu exhortations and prayers she kept the thing whirling, until a sort of duel ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... is too divine a philosophy for me to grasp at once. As the world goes now, I think you are founding a school of your own. You will find me an eager listener, if not an apt scholar, whenever you will honor me with your company." And smiling his thanks he rose and left ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... But the result was scarcely what he expected. 'Owd Sammy' stood his ground like an old soldier. The fear of man was not before his eyes, and 'parsens' were his favorite game. He was as contumacious and profane as such men are apt to be, and he delighted in scattering his clerical antagonists as a task worthy of his mettle. He encountered the Reverend Harold with positive glee. He jeered at him in public, and sneered at him in private, and held him up to the mockery of the collier men and lads, with ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... desire to make money in the shortest time possible. He was by nature a thinker, a philosopher, a reader, a man who belonged to the best class of students, those who understand that one's mind wants continually improving and that it is apt to rust when not kept active. His companions in those first years which followed upon his arrival in South Africa would certainly not have appreciated any of the books the reading of which constituted the solace of the young man who still preserved in his mind the traditions ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... when he ought to have dared everything. 'Tis with a sort of rage at his inaptitude that one thinks of his melancholy story. Do the Fates deal more specially with kings than with common men? One is apt to imagine so, in considering the history of that royal race, in whose behalf so much fidelity, so much valor, so much blood were desperately and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the King's conduct and to lessen him in all his discourses, and to possess the English with an aversion to the Dutch, who, as he pretended, had a much larger share of the King's favour and confidence than they,"—the English, I suppose,—"had. This was a point on which the English, who are too apt to despise all other nations, and to overvalue themselves, were easily enough inflamed. So it grew to be the universal subject of discourse, and was the constant entertainment at Marleburrough's, where there was a constant randivous of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the box. I have sent to you by the "Duke of York" packet, commanded by Lieut. Snell, to Falmouth two large casks containing fossil bones, a small cask with fish and a box containing skins, spirit bottle, etc., and pill-boxes with beetles. Would you be kind enough to open these latter as they are apt to become mouldy. With the exception of the bones the rest of my collection looks very scanty. Recollect how great a proportion of time is spent at sea. I am always anxious to hear in what state the things come and any criticisms about quantity or kind of specimens. In the smaller ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... bit of carelessness," said Pierre, but his smile held little of life. "He might have known that if he had shot close—by accident—I might have turned around and shot him dead—on purpose. But when a man stops thinking for a minute, he's apt to go on for a long time making ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... it is to provide for a fine of three hundred dollars. A fine that is too small fails to impress the prisoner, and it begets contempt for the law and the courts! A fine that is altogether too high is apt to be set aside by the court as "excessive." In my opinion, the best fines for wild life slaughter ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... at Somersetshire; made several discoveries in the application of electricity; he was a zealous scientist, and apt ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the barge, "be sure to go down slow, and come up slow. Whatever you do, do it slow, for if you do it fast—especially in comin' up—you'll come to grief. If a man comes up too fast from deep water, the condensed air inside of him is apt to swell him out, and the brain bein' relieved too suddenly from the pressure, there's a rush of blood to it, and a singin' in the ears, and a pain in the head, with other unpleasant symptoms. Why," continued Baldwin, growing ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Acknowledgment of the Governor's Principles and a Submission to the fatal Effects of them. What will be the Consequence of this Controversy, Time must determine. If the Governor enterd into it of his own Motion, as I am apt to believe he did, he may not have the Approbation of the Ministry for counteracting what appears to me to have been for two years past their favorite Design, to keep the Americans quiet & lull them into Security. Could your Health or Leisure admit of it, a publication of your ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... Darrah Brown, was your first and most important conquest," observed the major. "Phoebe has a white rock heart but a crystal cracked therefrom is apt to turn into a jewel of price. Hers is a blood-ruby friendship that pays for the wearing and cherishing. But it's time for the nap Mrs. Matilda decides for me to take and I must leave you ladies to your dimity talk." With which he betook himself to his room, ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Sovereign can display in the entertainment of his guest, all the resources of enthusiasm which he can lead his people to display in welcoming him, all his tricks of apparent good-will, all the fascination of a mind which is apt to dazzle those who meet it for the first time (although later on it is apt to inspire them with weariness by its very excesses), every manifestation of a wistful friendship ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... every one that with the two most potent causes, the formal (that which gives moral value to an act) and the ultimate one, disguised, an eloquent man could extol such a wretched shadow of a virtue? But a man apt in logic will readily discover the deception; he will observe the absence of the formal cause, namely the right principle, there being no true knowledge of God nor of the proper attitude toward him. He sees, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... great mountain Hirgonqu was anciently situated the kingdom of Larbidel. Geographers, who are not apt to make such just comparisons, said, it resembled a football just going to be kicked away; and so it happened; for the mountain kicked the kingdom into the ocean, and it has never ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... far from thinking that we here are perfect in our habits as a nation. We are apt not to keep in view how what we do is likely to look to others. We are somewhat deficient in the faculty of self-examination and self-criticism. Want of clarity of ground-principle in higher ideals is apt to prove a hindrance to more than the individual only. It generally ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... art, which is unlike all other artistic absorptions, because it seems literally to check the growth of other qualities and interests. In fact, in many ways Lestrange was like a pious child. He was apt to be snubbed by Father Payne, but he was wholly indifferent to all irony. I used to listen to him playing the organ in the evenings, and a language of emotions and visions certainly streamed from his fingers which he was never able to put ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... years old at this time—an age when one is apt to ask inconvenient questions and to make strange observations—when one is struggling to understand life through the mist of novelties about one, and the additional confusion of falsehood which it is so common to speak or to insinuate without ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... love. l. 222. The younger love, or Cupid, the son of Venus, owes his existence and his attributes to much later times than the Eros, or divine love, mentioned in Canto I. since the former is no where mentioned by Homer, though so many apt opportunities of introducing him occur in the works of that immortal ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... said I, rather grimly, "when a woman loves a man, it is apt, I regret to say, to become a fact, not a theory; and facts are stubborn things, you know. It is not easy to set aside a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... but it loses its force when we try to apply it to cases that lie without the province of ethics. The man who has no permanent interest in historical literature, and who is impelled to begin a six-volume history because he conceives it to be his "duty" to read it, is apt to conclude, before he has finished the second volume, that his is a case where inclination (or in this instance ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... happens shows how credulous, and how unenquiring we are; and in all cases out of our particular sphere, how extremely apt most are to give excessive credit, where a moderate only is due. It is a generous failing which it is difficult to condemn, particularly with regard to our travellers in this direction. Instance Connolly, and certainly ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... prayers, he persisted in asking the reason of his refusal. She replied, that a god could not wed with a mortal, because the vast difference of their natures prevented any bond of intercourse. Also the gods sometimes used to break their pledges; and the bond contracted between unequals was apt to snap suddenly. There was no firm tie between those of differing estate; for beside the great, the fortunes of the lowly were always dimmed. Also lack and plenty dwelt in diverse tents, nor was there any fast bond of intercourse between gorgeous ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... anticipate his personal wants. He is a stoutly built, rather ponderous sort of individual, with a full, rotund face and a heavy, unintellectual, but good-natured expression; one's first impression of him is apt to be less flattering to his head than to his heart. He is a person, however, that improves with acquaintance, and is probably more intelligent than he looks. He seems to be living here in a very plain and unpretentious manner; no gaudy stained glass, no tinsel, no mirror-work, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Mme. Lillian made an apt quotation which terminated with a Delsartean gesture and a rising inflection that seemed to exact something from somebody; the comedienne struck one of her property attitudes, so irresistibly comic that every one applauded, and Mme. Lillian laughed herself to ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... was no answer, then Claire recognized Martha's voice, with what was, undeniably, a chuckle tucked away in its mellow depths, where no mere, literal child would be apt to ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... hunger and fatigue, and are better able to sustain the hardships of a long and painful journey, than free men; and on their reaching the Coast, if no opportunity offers of selling them to advantage, they can easily be made to maintain themselves by their labour; neither are they so apt to attempt making their escape, as those who have once tasted ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... sex Are curious? That they're patient, I'll be sworn; And reasonable—very reasonable— To look for twenty answers in a breath! Come, thou shalt be enlightened—but propound Thy questions one by one! Thou'rt far too apt A scholar! My ability to teach Will ne'er keep pace, I fear, with ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... its beneficial effect upon the attitude of the people toward one another and toward their social group or their country. Through singing together in this informal way, each individual in the crowd is apt to be drawn closer to the others, to feel more interested in his neighbors; and in the case of "sings," where the dominating note is patriotism, to become imbued with a deeper spirit of loyalty to country. In very many cases, individuals ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... had a brace of grand-dukes and a bomb or two, we could fancy ourselves in Russia," said the facetious hotel-porter. He asserted that it was well for the country when abundant snow came down early in the year. It seems that Grantown is apt to suffer from drought in a hot summer following on a rainless spring. A copious fall of snow early in the year is retained in the mountains, and ensures plenty of moisture during the months of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... a little study in the psychology and genesis of an attempted correlation. Mr. Musgrave says: "I found a very apt opportunity to mention the name 'kangaroo' in allusion to the report then current." He says that he had no faith in the kangaroo-story himself, but was glad "that a kangaroo was in the wind," because it opposed "a dangerous, degrading, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... general to meet the demand for further explanation only by the above general reference to my other books, by the addition of a few notes, and by appending to each chapter some suggestions for more extended reading. These might of course have been indefinitely enlarged, but a long list of books is apt to defeat its own purpose: people with a limited time at their disposal want to know which book to make a ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... them. For see!" said she, aside to me— "For see! them powdered numskulls would spoil all—they'd be taking it too high or too low, and never hit the right kay, nor mind when to laugh or cry in the right place; moreover, when they'd get frighted with a cross-examination, they'd be apt to be cutting themselves. Now, the ould one himself, if he had me on the table even, I'd defy to get the truth out of me, if not convanient, and I in the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... by the impetuous course of the spirits. The air is a kind of food that nourishes the animal, and by means of which he renews himself every moment of his life. Nor is digestion less necessary to prepare sensible aliments towards their being changed into blood, which is a liquor apt to penetrate everywhere, and to thicken into flesh in the extreme parts, in order to repair in all the members what they lose continually both by transpiration and the waste of spirits. The lungs are like great covers, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... worshipping her bottom, and had taught her its divine use. She even cautioned him against any imprudence on my return, for she said she had her suspicions that I had a letch for men, and if I discovered their liaison, would be apt to ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... destruction of a vessel by her beating against rocks, the shore, &c.—too often including loss of life. In early times the seizure of goods, and even the murder of the mariners, was apt ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... credit Scott with whatever enchantment invests Scotland in the eyes of the English, and of foreigners. And doubtless a large portion of it is due to him, but perhaps not quite so much as we are apt to fancy. We commonly suppose that it was he who first discovered the Trossachs and Loch Katrine, and revealed them to the world in 'The Lady of the Lake.' Yet they must have had some earlier renown, enough to make Wordsworth, travelling two years before the appearance ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... apt to be silent on its own merits," he said. "My cousin has learned the usual rudiments; and in addition to those the art ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... understanding them vanishes. The study of man is physical in its lower branches; metaphysical only in its highest and last analysis. The study of the Monad is metaphysical from start to finish. The two studies are apt to be confused, because metaphysically they are often joined for study, the teacher taking it for granted that the pupil fully understands the simple and easy physics of the problem ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... ideas are hazy, inaccurate, and ill-defined. He has never developed unaided any idea of drawing or making a tally or record for any purpose, but he readily understands a sketch or plan when shown him. He soon becomes mentally tired, and is apt to break down ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ground there, not to speak of several field Batteries." Therefore, I conclude, "If it eventually becomes necessary to take the Gallipoli Peninsula by military force, we shall have to proceed bit by bit." This will vex him no doubt. He likes plans to move as fast as his own wishes and is apt to forget, or to pretend he has forgotten, that swiftness in war comes from slow preparations. It is fairer to tell K. this now, when the question has not yet arisen, than hereafter ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair object of reprisal. This consideration, while it serves to reconcile an apparent contradiction in the moral character of the islanders, should in some measure alter that low opinion of it which the reader of South Sea voyages is too apt to form. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... set it down by the side of him, about where you want to stand to mount him; step up on this, raising yourself very gently; horses notice every change of position very closely, and if you were to step up suddenly on the block, it would be very apt to scare him; but by raising yourself gradually on it, he will see you, without being frightened, in a position very near the same as when you are on ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... and on occasions savage, but with kindly hours also. His greatest weakness was that he was not quite mentally able to recognize that there were mental and social differences between prisoners, and that now and then one was apt to appear here who, with or without political influences, was eminently worthy of special consideration. What he could recognize was the differences pointed out to him by the politicians in special cases, such as that of Stener—not ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... may use in convincing the laity in many cases where they themselves are convinced that circumcision is absolutely necessary; but, having nothing in their text-books to back up their opinion with, their explanations are too apt to pass for their mere unfounded personal view of the matter. If the patient, or the parents of the patient, ask the physician for his authority, he is at a loss, as there is nothing that deals with the subject ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... things in reading this sentence. An ounce of alcohol, or a few whiffs from an opium-pipe, may easily make a day memorable by bringing on this imaginative delirium, which is apt, if often repeated, to run into visions of rodents and reptiles. A coarser satirist than Emerson indulged his fancy in "Meditations on a Broomstick," which My Lady Berkeley heard seriously and to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... day of the month. Each street has its own band ready to parade the various quarters of the city and fight with the bands of rival streets. If the rivalry is good-humoured, little harm accrues; but if, as is sometimes the case, feelings of real resentment are cherished, heads are apt to be broken and the leaders find themselves consigned to the care of the Police. It is difficult to see the connection between these brawling street-companies and the lamentation for Hasan and Husein; but the rivalry of the mohollas recalls the free-fighting which used once to take place ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... seems a rather impulsive young lady," said Miss Davis disapprovingly. "I wish she had taken a fancy to some one else than my pupil. You must try to forget her, Hetty. Girls like her, with wealth and power and nobody to control them, are apt to become capricious, and work mischief with people who have business to attend to. I hope ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... delay his musing fancy. A dull smart like that of a healing wound drew his mind to a succession of scenes on the frontier. He dwelt with that strange fascination which belongs to the memory of hardships—and which we are all too apt to mistake for regret—upon his life of toil and danger in the wide desolation of the West. There he met, one horrible winter, the sister-in-law of a brother captain, a tall, languid, ill-nourished girl of mature years, with tender ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... We are apt to console ourselves on this side of the ocean with the idea that these social problems appertain only to the effete monarchies of Europe, and have no application with us. But, though I readily admit that the keenest point of this satire is directed ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland |
