"Casual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and worldly experience Peter should not have fallen into it; but all men are children when they are sick, heart sick or body sick, and Peter was a very sick man at that minute. He had been addressed in such a frank and casual manner. His own brain shot off at queer tangents and led him constantly into unexpected places. The narrow side lane that opened up came into view so suddenly that Peter, with the innocence of a four-year-old, turned with military ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... with the red-headed vagrant, the following paragraph appeared in one of the local papers: "Pocklingham. In the casual ward of the Union house for this district a tramp, name unknown, died last night. He had been admitted on the previous evening, but, for some unexplained reason, it was not noticed until the next morning that he suffered from illness, ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... the sun, and the full day came, extremely hot and clear. Harry turned into a little restaurant, and spent half of his well-earned dollar for breakfast. Neither proprietor nor waiter gave him more than a casual glance. Evidently they were used to serving countrymen. Harry, feeling refreshed and strong again, paid for his food and ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was observable on the eve of nearly every battle of the war. Whether it was due to the peculiar characteristics of the race, or to other causes, we shall not pause here to inquire; but the fact was plain to the most casual observation, and was never more striking than just before Fredericksburg, unless just ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... their separation. They found many opportunities, even in public, of carrying on their secret courtship. In the swimming turn of the waltz, hands clasped hands with more impassioned earnestness than the formula of the round dance required: in the casual meetings in the fashionable promenades of the beautiful summer ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... shade of linden trees, the drip of the fountain, the monumented corner where Goldsmith rests, awake even in the most casual and prosaic a fleeting touch of romance. And the wide steps with balustrades sweeping down in many turnings to the gardens, cause vagrant and hurrying steps to pause, and wander about the library and through the gardens, which lead with such charm of way to the open spaces ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... he planed his foot, so that no cracking of dry bushes should give warning of our approach. In fact, so well had the men improved under Fred's hints and observations, that they would have passed for old Indian hunters to a casual observer. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the army, and having been wounded in the leg while still a sous-lieutenant, had been pensioned, and had thus been interdicted from treading any further the thorny path that leads to glory. For the last fifteen years he had resided under the roof of Madame Bauche, at first as a casual visitor, going and coming, but now for many years as constant there as she ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... vanished from the loftier and more exposed sides of the hills. The farm-house or mansion-house, (for, from its size and appearance, it might have been the one or the other,) was a large but low building, and the walls of the out-houses were sufficiently strong to resist any band of casual depredators. There was nothing, however, which could withstand a more powerful force; for, in a country laid waste by war, the farmer was then, as now, obliged to take his chance of the great evils ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a fond dream—alas, how wide of the cruel reality! The casual relation of a traveller may discover to us where one of them resided or resides. The page of an obituary may accidentally inform us how long one of them lingered on the bed of sickness, and by what ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Monroe Doctrine on all these contentions and counter contentions is not at once evident to the casual observer.... Of course with changing times its meaning has changed also, for no one attempts to declare it to be as immutable as the law of the Medes and Persians. It is applied in various ways to meet varying ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... by the passage giving entrance to the hall. The eastern half was built when Nevile was master between 1593 and 1615, and the library designed by Sir Christopher Wren occupies the river frontage. To the casual observer this building is a comparatively commonplace one, built in two stories, but although it allows space for the arcaded cloister to go beneath it, the library above consists of one floor and the interior does not in the ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... in his library before a brisk wood fire with the day's papers in a heap on the floor beside him. In repose, the one dominant expression of the judge's face was pride, an austere pride, which manifested itself even in the most casual intercourse. Yet no man in Mount Hope combined fewer intimacies with a wider confidence, and his many years of public life had but augmented the universal respect in which ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... wife and child to the railway. They were going on a Christmas visit to East Chester deanery. He had been leaning back, not noticing the passers-by, not attending to the other inmates of the carriage, probably absorbed in the consideration of some law case. Such were the casual glimpses Ellinor had of one with whose life she had once ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the civil affairs were transacted by Opilius Macrinus, who, by his dexterity in business, had raised himself, with a fair character, to that high office. But his favor varied with the caprice of the emperor, and his life might depend on the slightest suspicion, or the most casual circumstance. Malice or fanaticism had suggested to an African, deeply skilled in the knowledge of futurity, a very dangerous prediction, that Macrinus and his son were destined to reign over the empire. The report was soon diffused through the province; and when ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... processes of investigation and comparison. But the largest part of science is found in its method of approaching the truth as compared with religion, philosophy, or disconnected knowledge obtained by casual observation. In many ways it is in strong contrast with speculative philosophy and with dogmatic theology, both of which lack sufficient data for scientific development. The former has a tendency to interpret what is assumed to have ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... foliage ceased to sing. The only sounds were those of the elements, and the world seemed to have returned to the primeval state that had endured for ages. It was the kingdom of fur, fin and feather, and, so far as the casual eye could have seen, man had ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fundamental principle of one's life, around which all others properly arrange and subordinate themselves, is not, as a casual observer might think, and as he sometimes suggests, an argument against one's own growth and development, against the highest possible unfoldment of his entire personality and powers. Rather, on the other hand, is it one of the greatest reasons, one of the greatest arguments, in ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... who have fewest wants. As if, on the contrary, that action which he describes as the true element of man, were not directly connected with the incessant multiplication of wants. We may take this, however, as a casual lapse into the common form of moralists of ascetic ages. In substance the System of Nature is essentially a protest ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... head he classes; (1) Books of which few copies were printed; (2) Books which have been suppressed; (3) Books which have been almost entirely destroyed by casual fire, or other accident; (4) Books of which a large portion of the impression has been wasted—usually for want of success when published; (5) Volumes of which the printing was never completed; (6) Copies on large paper ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... contemplate the terrors of changing. Her second thought, "Who is to provide for the children?" She felt quite certain that that important point had never entered into their mother's calculations, and she felt distinctly annoyed with her sister for the abrupt and casual way in which she threw such a great responsibility on others' shoulders, and in her letter she ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... be—but perhaps they could give us a date. Suppose you come over to my house this evening and we'll send a letter off to their captain. And I'm sure"—Barclay threw the remark out in the most casual manner—"Mr. Upton will be glad to approach them for us ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... The memories of my forty days of happiness have in a manner colored all the rest of my life, memories that are all the fairer and fill the greater space in my thoughts because since then it has been my fate never to be understood. To this day there are scenes of no special interest for a casual observer, but full of bitter significance for a broken heart, which recall those vanished days, and the love ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... impressive personalities, active wills and all their faculties at the service of the will; but he belonged to those who like Wordsworth, like Coleridge, like Goldsmith, like Keats, have little personality, so far as the casual eye can see, little personal will, but fiery and brooding imagination. I cannot imagine him anxious to impress, or convince in any company, or saying more than was sufficient to keep the talk circling. Such men have the advantage that all they write is a part of knowledge, but they are ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... business, of which I could here give you full particulars, if it were worth while. She came from Liverpool to London over the Great Western Railway, and is now on her way to Paris. All this, of course, is obvious to the most casual observer, and so, my dear Smith, we may discuss our case with as much security as ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... straits! We go in with a flowing sail, and now we are at Corsica, Napoleon's home. Let us stop at Sardinia, with its wealth of tropical fruits; and we will even down to Sicily,—for this mimic ocean teems with subjects to delight the eye even of the most casual observer, with its majestic boundary of Alps and Apennines, and the velvet carpet of its romantic shores, while its broad breast is dotted with the sails of the picturesque craft whose rig is peculiar ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... the civil law of his native State, speaking French and Spanish, soon plunged in the vexatious land litigation of his generation. Mere casual occupancy gave little color of title to the commoner Mexicans. Now, the great grant owners are, one by one, cited into court to prove their holdings; many are forced ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... make their owner rich. To be rich, is to have more than is desired, and more than is wanted, to have something which may be spent without reluctance, and scattered without care, with which the sudden demands of desire may be gratified, the casual freaks of fancy indulged, or the unexpected ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... terrific aspects of nature and disdained mankind. Different indeed was the genial heart of Howell, who was at pains to hire lodgings in Paris with windows opening on the street, that he might study every passerby,[398] but who spoke of mountains in Spain in a casual way as "not so high and hideous as the Alps," or as "uncouth, huge, monstrous Excrescences of Nature, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... to the knowledge of Anda, and seriously aroused his jealousy. Fearing conspiracy against his ambitious projects, he left his camp at Polo, and hastened to interrogate Villa Corta, who explained that he had only made casual remarks in the course of conversation. Anda, however, was restless on the subject of the succession, and sought the opinion of all the chief priests and the bishops. Various opinions existed. Some urged that the decision be left to the Supreme ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... universally prone to the belief in omens, and the casual occurrence of certain contingent circumstances soon creates the easiest of theories. Should a bird of good omen, in ancient times, perch on the standard, or hover about an army, the omen was of good import, and favourable to conquest. Should a raven ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... hung about nonplussed for a few minutes, till Marie Louise came out. She had waited only to make sure that Tom and Polly got away. When she came down the steps she cast a casual glance at Jake and her sister, who came toward her eagerly. But she assumed that they were looking at some one else, for they meant nothing ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... many days at home, Beth found that her mother had made a new acquaintance, who came to the house often in a casual way like an intimate friend. He came in on the day of her arrival after dinner, and was introduced to Beth by her mother as "the doctor." Beth broke into smiles, for she recognised her long-ago acquaintance of the rocks, the doctor of her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... unshored sea, And sudden disarrangement of the years. But now I know that nothing interferes With the fixed forces when a tired man dies; That death is only answerings and replies, The chiming of a bell which no one hears, The casual slanting of a half-spent sun, The soft recessional of noise and coil, The coveted something time nor age can spoil; I know it is a fabric finely spun Between the stars and dark; to seize and keep, Such glad romances as we read ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... tell him that I sent you—that you are my A.Z.—and he will understand. What you tell him is casual; your objective is to find out all about the standing of Shirley Wells. Shirley is surely a bankrupt, but is he a murderer? Are indictments pending? Can he be cleared of these charges? And what about the Wells National Bank? And where is Carson ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... be known that it was part of a house standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid, London thoroughfare, was exceptionally clean and well-cared-for. A casual stranger, more particularly one of a Superior class to their own, on suddenly opening the door of that sitting-room; would have thought that Mr. and Mrs. Bunting presented a very pleasant cosy picture of comfortable married ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... poor old Bicky was always more or less on the rocks. To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I mean, it may sound a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but the trouble about old Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy old buster, owning half London and about five counties ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... they did not clearly see the mode of its accomplishment. The General Government has seized upon none of the reserved rights of the States. AS far as any open warfare may have gone, the State authorities have amply maintained their rights. To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring. They move in their respective orbits in perfect harmony with the central head and with each other. But there is still an undercurrent ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... laugh with which Daddy read this was quite consistent with his responsive, emotional nature; so, too, were the ready tears that sprang to his eyes. He put the candle down unsteadily, with a casual glance at the sick man. It was notable, however, that this look contained less sympathy for the ailing "big brother" than his emotion might have suggested. For Daddy was carried quite away by his own mental picture of the helpless children, and eager only to relate his ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... began to cause very severe suffering—in portraying to himself the changes in Ida's mind and character from the hour of their first meeting, and it seemed to him very mysterious indeed that the thread of his life should have been caught in hers by that mere casual glance at the concert garden, and then that it should have been so strangely and intimately woven with hers only to be snapped at last in this untimely and meaningless fashion. He groaned, "its all ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... exchanging their goods for those eastern wares he had acquired. Buyers from the city and from the surrounding hills had come to him, to exchange their coin for his goods. He glanced back into the booth, satisfied with what he saw, then resumed his casual watch of the plaza. No one ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... apartment, and while busying herself on pretence of setting it in order, talked in her garrulous way of the little incidents of daily life in the Chateau, and finished by a mention, as if it were casual, of the arrival of the wise woman of the city, who knew everything, who could interpret dreams, and tell, by looking in a glass or in your hand, things ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... you, Mr. Kirkwood!" at the end of the passage. But that would be no less than his deserts; he was not to forget that he was interfering unwarrantably; the girl was in her father's hands, surely safe enough there—to the casual mind. If her partnership in her parent's fortunes were distasteful, she ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Doctor Timpany's school, where he was first placed by his aunt, Miss Honeyman, he was speedily removed to that classical institution in which Colonel Newcome had been a student in earlier days. My acquaintance with young Clive was at this school, Grey Friars, where our acquaintance was brief and casual. He had the advantage of being six years my junior, and such a difference of age between lads at a public school puts intimacy out of the question, even though we knew each other at home, as our school phrase was, and our families were somewhat acquainted. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... enactments made at different times in the different States of Flatland, in order to minimize this peril; and in the Southern and less temperate climates where the force of gravitation is greater, and human beings more liable to casual and involuntary motions, the Laws concerning Women are naturally much more stringent. But a general view of the Code may be obtained ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... undertaker had retired. "When you go, I wish you would ascertain, particularly, what has been done with the child. If a neighbour has taken her home, make inquiry as to whether she will be retained in the family; or, better still, adopted. You can hint, in a casual way, you know, that her parents have left property, which may, some time or other, be valuable. This may be a temptation, and turn the scale in favour of adoption; which may save me a world of trouble ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... The casual relation between the pioneer building and journey of the Griffin and these statistics cannot, of course, be established, but what no inspired human prophecy could have divined, or even the wildest dreaming of La Salle have imagined, is as sequential ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... during those three years had he shown a disposition to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But the backsliding was repented of almost as soon as committed, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... I referred to Abraham Lincoln—in a casual way—as one "inspired of God." I was taken to task for this and thrown upon my defense. Knowing less then than I know now of Mr. Lincoln, I confined myself to the superficial aspects of the case; to the career of a man who seemed to have lacked the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... substitution of sounds from one's own language in speaking a foreign tongue, and the changes in voice-inflection, are more numerous and more marked if the man who learns the new language is uneducated and acquires it in casual intercourse from an ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... decision on some question of vital import. Sometimes, too, there are reasons, well known to all members of a Government but not yet in the knowledge of the public, which incline a Ministry to find a reason for resigning office in the result of some casual division which cannot be said to amount to a vote of want of confidence. Not many years have passed since a Liberal Government, which might have seemed to ordinary observers to be secure in its position, thought it well to accept ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... from the name of the occupation, and another rank, much higher, from the splendor of the domestic mnage. I warn the reader, therefore, (or, rather, my explanation has already warned him,) that he is not to infer, from any casual indications of luxury or elegance, a corresponding elevation ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a parrot so strangely disguise itself and belie its ancestry? The reason is plain. It found a place for it ready made in nature. New Zealand is a remote and sparsely-stocked island, peopled by mere casual waifs and strays of life from adjacent but still very distant continents. There are no dangerous enemies there. Here, then, was a clear chance for a nightly prowler. The owl-parrot with true business instinct saw the opening thus clearly laid before it, and took to a nocturnal ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... mean—resulting in how many tricky deals and harmless tosses in the heather and the mud. But if you follow my lead there is plenty of pure joy in Old Andy, and the most and the best of it perhaps is to be found in the remarks of grooms, servant-girls and casual country folk, who as often as not have no kind of connection with the thread of the tale. "'If meself an' the Masther wasn't rowlin' rocks all the day yestherday, he would be within long ago,' replied the covert keeper." "If there is one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... flowed a wide and sluggish river. Its unfamiliarity puzzled him. Slowly he followed it with his eyes, winding in wide sweeps among the bleak, bare hills, bleaker and barer and lower-lying than any hills he had yet encountered. Slowly, deliberately, without excitement or more than the most casual interest, he followed the course of the strange stream toward the sky-line and saw it emptying into a bright and shining sea. He was still unexcited. Most unusual, he thought, a vision or a mirage—more ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... following resolutions:—"That it appears to this house that the most notorious bribery and corruption were practised at the last election of members to serve in parliament for the borough of Penryn, and that such practices were not new or casual in the borough, the attention of the house having been called to similar practices in the years 1807 and 1819. That the said bribery and corruption deserved the most serious consideration of parliament. That leave ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... go to work for me, I don't want you to take it up as a casual experiment," went on the man of medicine. "I haven't any time for experiments. But, if you'll declare positively that you're going to make a useful man of yourself, and that you'll live up to what I expect of you, I'll take you on. I won't have an idler about my place, and I won't ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... the coats of arms, the most casual examination makes it clear that they were painted by another hand than executed any part of the portraits. In all probability they were done after the canvases reached Spain, and the inscriptions and signatures would naturally have been added at the same time. Stuart would ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... of perpetual youth, has this time-table. Other time-tables that I buy become dissipated-looking wrecks in about a week. This book looks as fresh and new and clean as it did on the day when it first lured me into purchasing it. There is nothing about its appearance to suggest to the casual observer that it is not this month's Bradshaw. Its evident aim and object in life is to deceive people into the idea that ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... over a vast sweep of country—the Citadel of Nuremberg should seem to have bid defiance, in former times, to every assault of the most desperate and enterprising foe. It is now visited only by the casual traveler—who is frequently startled at the echo of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... She's not a woman! She's a Regimental Institution. I can't think what the men see in her to make such a fuss about! A plain, badly-made Irishwoman, who dresses abominably. And she's much too casual with all of them—especially with Theo, even if she did save his life ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... away before all was over, though he, as well as Henry, knew that to this Averil would never have consented. He had always been a great reader of travels, and he became absolutely eager in planning their life in the wild, as if where they were he must be, till the casual mention of the word 'rifle' brought him to sudden silence, and the consciousness of the condemned cell; but even then it was only to be urgent in consoling his brother, and crowding message on message for his sisters; begging Henry not to stay, not to consider him for a moment, but ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'Autumn,' to which he gives the first place 'for its perfection,' one may remark that Keats did not entitle it an Ode, and the omission may be something more than casual. Certainly its three stanzas seem to me to exhibit very little of that progression of thought and feeling which I take to be one of the qualities of an ode as distinguished from an ordinary lyric. The line is notoriously hard to draw: but I suppose ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... casual omens Divination by dreams Divination by geometrical figures The vine omen The rattan omen Divination by suspension and other methods The suspension omen The omen from eggs Divination by sacrificial appearances ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... not know all the circumstances, we have no ground to infer an uniformity. When neither Deduction, nor the Method of Difference, can be applied, the only way of inferring that coincidences are not casual, is by observing the frequency of their occurrence, not their absolute frequency, but whether they occur more often than chance would (that is, more often than the positive frequency of the phenomena would) account for. If, in such cases, we could ascend to the causes of the two phenomena, ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... only part of the whole interior of the building to which strangers can be admitted: those who desire to do so can attend mass there on Sundays. The casual visitor, when permitted to enter it, is not allowed to pass beyond the pillars which support the gallery of the choir above him; for if he advanced farther, the nuns who might then be occupying it, might see him ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... instant. He would have given a great deal to be able to just once shout a glad, cheerful, heart-felt "good morning" to Diggs—or to any one of the servants, for that matter—but custom and the surprising dignity of his employees compelled him to utter the greeting in a casual, bored manner, quite as if he did it automatically and always as if he was on the point of clearing his throat. He sorely missed Melissa's spontaneous, even vulgar "Morning, Mist' Bingle," and the rattle of cutlery and chinaware. Melissa had acquired ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... strand Of those, where the departed roam, she falls, Here learns her destin'd path. Soon as the place Receives her, round the plastic virtue beams, Distinct as in the living limbs before: And as the air, when saturate with showers, The casual beam refracting, decks itself With many a hue; so here the ambient air Weareth that form, which influence of the soul Imprints on it; and like the flame, that where The fire moves, thither follows, so henceforth The new form ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... to be alone with you. You are mine, are you not? Or, I should say, I am yours. Isn't it true? I spend my life in looking for opportunities to meet you. Our love is made up of chance meetings, of casual bows, of stolen looks, of slight touches—nothing more. We meet on the avenue in the morning—a bow; we meet at your house, or at that of some other acquaintance—twenty words; we dine somewhere at the same table, too far from each other to talk, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... saw the posse skirting rapidly on his side of the river, behind him and close to the cliff. They rode at an easy lope, and he could see that their heads were bent to watch the ground. Even at this casual gait they would reach the point at which he and the gray must swing onto the floor of the valley before him unless he urged Molly to top speed. He must get there at a sufficient distance from them to escape close rifle fire, and certainly beyond point-blank revolver range. Accordingly ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... don other people's clothes! Yes, I remember how, during her stay here in the third and fourth moons of last year, she used to wear cousin Pao's pelisses. She even put on his shoes, and attached his frontlets as well round her head. At a casual glance, she looked the very image of cousin Pao; what was superfluous was that pair of earrings of hers. As she stood at the back of that chair she so thoroughly took in our venerable ancestor that she kept on shouting: ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... said that Fielding disregards probability, he certainly strains it considerably. Money is conveniently lost and found; the naivest coincidences continually occur; people turn up in the nick of time at the exact spot required, and develop the most needful (but entirely casual) relations with the characters. Sometimes an episode is so inartistically introduced as to be almost clumsy. Towards the end of the book, for instance, it has to be shown that Jones has still some power of resisting temptation, and he accordingly ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... and Babylonian kings when compared with the historical books of the Old Testament. For some centuries the inhabitants of Palestine were subject to periodical attacks from the warlike inhabitants of Mesopotamia, as even the most casual reader of the Bible is aware. When it became known that the accounts of these invasions formed a part of the records preserved in the Assyrian libraries, historian and theologian alike waited with breathless interest for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... day after day in his office in the Raleigh Block, trying to discover where his money had gone and how he could get some of it back. He was a widower, and found very little congenial companionship in this casual Western city. Lena's good looks and gentle manners appealed to him. He said her voice reminded him of Southern voices, and he found as many opportunities of hearing it as possible. He painted and papered her rooms for her that spring, and put in a porcelain bathtub ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... companions did to attend at propaganda meetings where one knew the speeches by heart beforehand. In this way, I was able, by the help of neutral interpreters, mostly English or American, to have many conversations with casual people whom I met in the streets or on village greens, and to find out how the whole system appears to the ordinary non-political man and woman. The first five days we spent in Petrograd, the next eleven in Moscow. During ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... problem, but how it was to be solved no one knew. There was, indeed, great speculation as to what might happen should another landing be attempted, but month after month passed without any indication of this, and the little population had settled down to a dull monotony. Except for a casual reference to the stirring times, the smugglers and their emissaries were apparently all but forgotten. The Preventive men were secretly as much on the alert as when the smugglers were most active. They purposely adopted an apparent indifference with the idea of luring the rovers into over-confidence. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... for she did not fail to recognise the newcomer. She could see from a casual glance that it ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... with a stenographic report of your conversation of Thursday night with Mayor Poundstone. That will not be a long, hard row to hoe, Uncle Seth, for in addition to the stenographer, I have another very reliable witness, Judge Moore. Your casual disposal of my sedan as a bribe to the Mayor will be hard to explain and rather amusing, in view of the fact that Bryce Cardigan managed to frighten Mr. Poundstone into returning the sedan while you were ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... had finished eating, the range-rider turned in at the smoking compartment and enjoyed a cigar. He fell into casual talk with an army officer who had served in the Southwest, and it was three hours later when he returned to his own seat ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... The man's footsteps were so noisy on the echoing stones that he was unwilling to add the sound of his own. But when they had passed the turning and were in the darkness of the dark corner leading to the terrace, he made after them with such indifferent appearance of being a casual passenger on his way, as ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a glance at the great panorama, busying himself in refolding the reeking saddle blankets and tightening girths, then lighted a casual cigarette. Terry, impatient of the necessary halt, paced the shadowed space restlessly after his first appreciation of the sun-drenched Gulf. He turned to the Macabebe with the first words they ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... right across the high road, and had to go some way round over rough ground and across a creek to avoid it. This did not excite any astonishment in the mind of the gentleman who drove us, and he seemed to think it was a casual alteration owing to the new line; but on a dark night the unexpected obstruction might prove inconvenient. When the top of the hill where the opals are to be found was reached, we all got out and set to work to pick up large and heavy stones with traces of opals in them, as well as ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... them out of sight of the lineman, and stopped at the shady avenue leading up to Nils Hansen's farmstead. Little Hans Nilsen had disappeared by the simple method of cutting across lots. Bettina's girlish instinct called for something more than the casual good-by which would have sufficed yesterday. She lingered, standing ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... among the list of accomplishments mentioned by those writers who pretend to know all about her," remarked Chilvers. "I have been forced to learn from a casual reading of society events that this remarkable heiress is without an equal as an equestrienne, that she paints, sings, drives a sixty-horse-power Mercedes with a skill and a courage which discourages the French chauffeurs, and does other athletic and artistic feats, but I have yet ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... sang and foraged among the trees; song-sparrows and chippies trilled from the fence at one side: bluebird and thrasher searched the ground, and paid in music for the privilege; pewees and kingbirds made war upon insects; and from afar came the notes of redwing and meadow-lark. Others there were, casual visitors, and of course it did not escape the squawks and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... holding, as he did, that no good work could be adequately adjudged without a thorough knowledge of it, he was disinclined to be introduced to fresh musical names at all, on the bare chance, that might never occur, of what had been a casual acquaintanceship ripening into intimate friendship. He had in early days found time and opportunity to comprehend certain masters, Corelli, Handel, Haydn, Romberg, Mozart, and Beethoven, but Schubert, ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... — N. friend, friend of one's bosom; alter ego; best friend, bosom friend, soulmate, fast friend; amicus [Lat.]; usque ad aras [Lat.]; fidus Achates [Lat.]; persona grata. acquaintance, neighbor, next-door neighbor, casual acquaintance, nodding acquaintance; wellwisher. favorer, fautor^, patron, Mecaenas; tutelary saint, good genius, advocate, partisan, sympathizer; ally; friend in need &c (auxiliary) 711. comrade, mate, companion, familiar, confrere, comrade, camarade^, confidante, intimate; old crony, crony; chum; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the branches more especially entitled to the public patronage a preference is obviously claimed by such as will relieve the United States from a dependence on foreign supplies, ever subject to casual failures, for articles necessary for the public defense or connected with the primary wants of individuals. It will be an additional recommendation of particular manufactures where the materials for them are extensively drawn from our agriculture, and consequently impart ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... day was as rich in adventure as this; but this is not a bad sample. If Phil had been a prig or fresh or impertinent, she would not have been the idol of Main Street. A genius for being on the spot when events are forward must be born in one, and her casual, indifferent air contributed to a belief in Main Street that she was leagued with supernatural agencies. If there was a fire, Phil arrived ahead of the department; and if a prisoner broke out of jail, Phil knew it before the "Evening ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... pass through the little Cornish valley there is one tree on which my eye always dwells. It is of no greater size than many other trees in the valley, nor even, it may be to a casual glance, of any marked peculiarity; one might say, indeed, that in this alien environment, so far from its home on the other side of the world, it manifests a certain unfamiliar shyness, or a well-bred condescension to the ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... superb spot, and Burton was much inclined to stay right there and prospect the near-by mountains. So far as a mere casual observer could determine, this country offers every inducement to prospectors. It is possible to grow potatoes, hay, and oats, together with various small fruits, in this valley, and if gold should ever be discovered in the rushing mountain ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... with their hands, and Warwick fought with his rifle, and the native slashed again and again with the long knife that he carried at his belt. To a casual glance, a crocodile is wholly incapable of quick action. These two found him a slashing, darting, wolf-like thing, lunging with astounding speed through the muddied water, knocking them from their feet and striking at them ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... climax of the book. He meets Lucian the aged, who for a moment darkens his dawning faith, but that which has come to him has been no casual emotion, no forced or spectacular conviction. He does not leap to the recognition of Christianity at first sight, but very quietly realises and accepts it as that secret after which his pagan idealism had been all the time groping. The story closes amid ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... absolutely content to rest upon their old laurels, the fragrance of which can hardly ever be exhausted; but nevertheless that does not relieve them of the obligation of working up new problems in a new way. There is so much religious and other sentiment woven into their art that to the casual observer much of the pleasure of looking at the varied examples of applied art is spoiled by the necessity of having to read all of the longwinded stories attached to many of them. The freshness of youth, the spirit of progress, ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... fact, the law, that your power, your high commission, is inward—vital—formative, and casual. Bring all questions of choice or duty to this test, will it work at the heart of things, among the realities and forces? Try your own life by this; remember that mere external is falsehood and death. The letter killeth. Give up all that is only of the appearance—or even ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... essentially different in which men lend themselves to the propagation of defamatory anecdotes, the impulses are so various to an offence which is not always consciously perceived by those who are parties to it, that we cannot be too cautious of suffering our hatred of libel to involve every casual libeller, or of suffering our general respect for the person of the libeller to exonerate him from the charge of libelling. Many libels are written in this little world of ours unconsciously, and under many motives. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... them, and at the paltry shilling a day which they received for the first really hard work they had ever done. They appeared to regard England as a miserly employer, exacting their last ounce of energy for a wretchedly inadequate wage. To the casual observer, theirs was not the ardor of loyal sons, fighting for a beloved motherland. Rather, it seemed that of irresponsible schoolboys on a long holiday. They said nothing about patriotism or the duty of Englishmen ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... of the Hydrophobic Skunk when we rode down Hermit Trail. The casual visitor to the Grand Canon first of all takes the rim drive; then he essays Bright Angel Trail, which is sufficiently scary for his purposes until he gets used to it; and after that he grows more adventurous and tackles Hermit Trail, which is a marvel of corkscrew convolutions, gimleting ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... progressing by excessively slow changes toward the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface, becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark pits in a brilliant atmosphere, a souvenir of the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of organization. The race will perish, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... against the young laird and his associates a thousand-fold, which actually roused the party to temporary madness. They were, perhaps, a little excited by the wine and spirits they had swallowed; else a casual quarrel between two young men, at tennis, could not have driven them to such extremes. But certain it is that, from one at first arising to address the party on the atrocity of the offence, both in a moral and political point of view, on a sudden there were six ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... aristocracy seriously. It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... groups of men who confronted much the same economic conditions. Between the farmer who tilled his sterile hillside acres in the interior of New England and the cultivator of the richer soil of the Piedmont in Virginia and the Carolinas, a greater identity of economic interests existed than the casual observer would have suspected. The feeling of hostility which circumstances bred in the followers of Daniel Shays toward the merchants of Boston was akin to that which the farmers of middle and western Pennsylvania ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... can explain away the vision as a matter of the technique of double exposure, double printing, trick-turning, or stopping down. And having reduced it to terms and shown the process, he expects us to become secular and casual again. But of course the sun itself is a mere trick of heat and light, a dynamo, an incandescent globe, to the man in the laboratory. To us it must be a fire upon ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Secretary's Office; L200 for the Registrar of the Province; L620 for the Inspector General's Office; L620 for pensions to wounded officers; L400 for four clergymen; L50 for one minister of the Gospel; L200 for repairs to Government House; and L500 for casual and incidental expenses; an Act to establish a market in the town of Niagara; an Act to repeal, amend and extend the Act granting pensions to persons disabled in the service, and to the widows and children of persons killed in war; an Act granting L1,576 0s. 8d. for ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... Homer's time this familiar intercourse was a thing of the past—a tradition of a golden age that had passed away. Their forms were no longer seen, their voices no longer heard. In these later and more degenerate times the recognized modes of divine communication with men were by oracles, and by casual and unusual sights and sounds, as thunder and lightning, a sudden tempest, an eclipse, a flight of birds,—particularly of birds that mount to a great height, as these were supposed to know the secrets of the heavens,—the appearance or action of the sacrificial victims, or any strange ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... little bushes broken and at the dark stain on the ground where its life flowed out. They dragged the body to the other side of the thicket, and cut it up there. Nothing could be plainer, the traces are so numerous. They were casual hunters, and it is not worth our while ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... always pleased when strangers mistook him for a country gentleman, the owner of a landed property. He had a broad figure, and emphasised its breadth by wearing on his holiday loose jackets of rough tweed. He had strong, stout legs which looked well in knickerbockers and shooting stockings. A casual observer, not knowing the man, would have set him down as an ardent sportsman, and would have been perfectly right. The judge loved fishing, and was prepared to go long distances in the hope of catching salmon. He liked yachting, and owned a small cutter which was one of the crack ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... back into memory like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope, like a fiery column before thee, the dark pillar not yet turned ... How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, (while he weighed the disproportion between the 'speech' and the 'garb' of the mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Iamblichus [14] or ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... that will ensure healthy, worthy children. We must, therefore, sooner or later devise a system of scientific regulation of marriage, and it is at this point we stumble against the problem that has prompted the ebullitions of the wit and the sarcasm of the critic. A casual reference to the science immediately suggests to the layman an impossible or quixotic system of marriage by force. Even the word "eugenics" is associated in the minds of many otherwise estimable old ladies, and others who should ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... a wholesome rebellion is afoot, it has steadily and powerfully tended to straiten character, to make action mechanical, and to impoverish art. As if there were nothing admirable in a man save unbroken obedience to the letter of the moral law, and that letter read in our own casual and local interpretation; and as if we had no faculties of sympathy, no sense for the beauty of character, no feeling for broad ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... should be driven here, it was probable they went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix here upon any occasion; that the most I could suggest any danger from was from any casual accidental landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely, if they were driven hither, were here against their wills, so they made no stay here, but went off again with all possible speed; seldom staying one night on shore, lest they ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... uncorked the whiskey bottle. He was still a trifle dubious about the transaction, but on the sound principles of doing all things thoroughly, poured out a liberal dose of raw, red liquor. Then, with his fingers clamped tightly about the bottom of the glass, the better to conceal its contents from any casual but inquisitive passer-by, he quickly filled it with soda and placed it before Blinky, accompanying the action with the sweetest of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... finish which they lacked. It was an effect of keenness, of aliveness to the zest of the passing moment. He spoke of himself sometimes as a collector of impressions; and it was a true characterization. His slight, casual glance invariably took in more than the stare of other people; his nostrils quivered constantly, like those of a hound, as if they, too, were busy gathering impressions. It was a rather interesting face; a little vague in drawing about the chin and lips, but mobile, sensitive, vivid; distinctly ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... If the casual gods send inquiring strangers into my camp, let them (the intruders) be civil, please, or at least be male. Citizens I can at once wave away with a regretful nescio vos; foot-officers are decently reserved in their thirst for knowledge of an essentially Secret Service; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... always been light, trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual amusement. I will not say, without a little vain ambition of showing some parts, but never with industry sufficient to make me apply to anything solid. My studies, if they could be called so, and my productions, were alike desultory. In my latter age I discovered the futility ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... much better off than in Poland. He would have been glad of such an income himself in those terrible first days of English life when he saw his wife and his two babes starving before his eyes, and was only precluded from investing a casual twopence in poison by ignorance of the English name for anything deadly. And what did he live on now? The fowl, the pint of haricot beans, and the haddocks which Chayah purchased for the Sabbath overlapped into ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this; casual phrases of goodwill, spoken at a moment of conviviality, the outcome of genuine but perhaps not very deep feeling, except for that trifle of the kisses almost an ordinary accompaniment or conclusion of an evening's entertainment. I was a good fellow; ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... a casual examination on the part of one who had done considerable experimenting with explosives to disclose the fact that it had every characteristic of a dangerous bomb. Only the pulling out of the fuse had ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... Zwart Kop opened on Vaalkrantz as soon as the detached battery was seen to be in motion; and the other batteries came into action as they arrived from the Brakfontein demonstration. There was some annoyance from casual rifle fire and a Maxim posted on the heights S.E. of the loop, but it did not seriously interfere with the work of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... casting a casual eye around, spied the poor mastless, derelict-looking little yacht, rolling about in the heavy tide-race that was taking her on to ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all Hamilton supposed me to have taken was written: he himself, who read almost everything, knew nothing about it until after I did. I cannot prove what I say about my knowledge of Lambert: but the means of doing it may turn up. For, by the casual turning up of an old letter, I have {337} found the means of clearing myself as to Ploucquet. Hamilton assumed that (unconsciously) I took from Ploucquet the notion of a logical notation in which the symbol of the conclusion is seen in the joint ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... childlike resumption of hope as they gazed at this conclusive evidence of Nature's bounty. The gold had been there—THEY had only missed it! And if there, more could be found! Was it not a proof of the richness of Heavy Tree Hill? So strongly was this reflected on their faces that a casual observer, contrasting them with the thoughtful countenances of the real owners, would have thought them the lucky ones. It touched Barker's quick sympathies, it puzzled Stacy, it made Demorest more serious, it aroused Steptoe's active contempt. Whiskey Dick alone ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... certain! it was a miserable thing to have this awful forbidden ground of discourse; to guess at each other's thoughts, when eyes were averted, and cheeks blanched, and words stood still, arrested in their flow by some casual allusion. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... lived in a time when men are slaughtered like pigs in massed formation; when their little boys are driven to war; when young girls—and widows!—are forced to bring more males into the world with the sanction of neither love nor marriage; when those too young for the trench or the casual bed wail incessantly for bread. Oh, no! The German man's day of any but legal dominion is over. Of course there is always the danger of spies and ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... after the Christmas recess Beverly made some casual allusion to this fact, and at once started a new and livelier interest. Why couldn't a party of girls be chaperoned there by one of the teachers, ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... previous to adoption, or it will involve this country in inevitable destruction. To talk of it, as a thing to be subsequently obtained, and not as one of your unalienable rights, is leaving it to the casual opinion of the Congress who shall take up the consideration of that most important right. They will not reason with you about the effect of this constitution. They will not take the opinion of this committee concerning its operation. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... these early experiences on the formation of his opinions, Marshall himself has testified. "I am," said he on a certain occasion, "disposed to ascribe my devotion to the Union, and to a government competent to its preservation, at least as much to casual circumstances as to judgment. I had grown up at a time ... when the maxim, 'United we stand, divided we fall' was the maxim of every orthodox American; and I had imbibed these sentiments so thoroughly that they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the numbers of the court and cellar population, are taken from Dr. Duncan's evidence. He thinks, from extensive data in his possession, that the numbers, as given in this enumeration, are under the mark. And it is suggested that, possibly, casual lodgers have been omitted. Dr. Duncan then gives some further details which enable us more fully to understand what ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... facts, dates, names, places, accompanied with narrations, anecdotes, reflections and arguments, until the matter was thoroughly sifted and laid bare in all its parts and properties, to the understanding of the most casual observer. The tenacity and correctness of his memory was proverbial. Alas, for the man who questioned the correctness of his statements, his facts, or dates. Sure discomfiture awaited him. His mind was ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward |
