"Conventional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do not come seeking absolution for any sins. Such shortcomings as I have are so personal, so really a part of dear me, that I should scarcely be complete without them. They are vixenish plagues of character that distinguish me from more conventional saints. But now that I have willed myself away from you, I need no longer conceal my heart. My love has been shriven, and, like a little white ghost out of heaven, must hark back to you ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... temporary liberties of 1783, and the United States authorities acknowledged the soundness of the principle that any privileges extended to the republic in British territorial waters could only rest on "conventional stipulation." The convention of 1818 forms the legal basis of the rights, which Canadians have always maintained in the case of disputes between themselves and the United States as to the fisheries on their own coasts, bays, ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... in age—Dolly—was the most commonplace member of the family. Her character seemed to be set on absolutely conventional lines, and the whole family, with the exception of her father, who did not concern himself with such mundane things, secretly hoped that she would marry a young parson who had lately "made friends with her." As is often the case with that type of young woman, Dolly ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... Miss Rice reflectively, "it is always the woman who is sacrificed." And her thought went back for a moment to the novel she was writing. It seemed to her pale and conventional compared with this rough page torn out of life. She wondered if she could treat the subject. She passed in review the names of some writers who could do justice to it, and then her eyes went from her bookcase ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... This entry includes all forms of the country's name approved by the US Board on Geographic Names (Italy is used as an example): conventional long form (Italian Republic), conventional short form (Italy), local long form (Repubblica Italiana), local short form (Italia), former (Kingdom of Italy), as well as the abbreviation. See the Terminology note regarding the use ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... deal behind (that bay horse of John's never could walk with White Stockings), I could not help thinking how much I had misunderstood Captain Lovell's character. What a deal of feeling—almost of romance—there was under that conventional exterior which he wore before the world! I liked him so much more now I came to know him better. I was quite sorry when we had to wish him "good-night" and John and I rode thoughtfully home through the quiet streets. I thought my cousin's manner ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... of Berlin liberty of conscience and civil rights are assured to all strangers in Bulgaria. As the United States have no distinct conventional relations with that country and are not a party to the treaty, they should, in my opinion, maintain diplomatic representation at Sofia for the improvement of intercourse and the proper protection of the many American citizens who resort to that country as missionaries ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... it happens that for years one sees a family cover themselves over with a conventional cloak of decorum, and preserve the real relations of its members a secret from every eye! How often, too, have I remarked that, the more impenetrable (and therefore the more decorous) is the cloak, the ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... of offering her these civilities was somewhat stiff and conventional—the manner of one who had been brought up among country gentry of the old school, apart from London and the beau monde. But it struck Laura that, for the first time, he was speaking to her as a man of his breeding might be expected to speak to a lady visiting ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I had one of those dreamy periods of existence in which people doubt whether they are awake or asleep. The world seemed all turning topsy-turvy. I was filled with curiosity, which I could with difficulty keep within the limits of conventional propriety. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... regards two consecutive feet at least, the sum of the times of the syllables in one, shall be equal to the sum of the times of the syllables in the other. Beyond two pulsations there is no necessity for equality of time. All beyond is arbitrary or conventional. A third or fourth pulsation may embody half, or double, or any proportion of the time occupied in the two first. Rhythm being thus understood, the prosodist should proceed to define versification as the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... man and man, this feeling attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice, which are the products of our affections and sympathies, and which we term moral; while it may be, and often is, perverted, to give the same sanction to acts of narrow and conventional utility which are really immoral,—as when the Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner starve than eat unclean food; and looks upon the marriage of adult females ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the least beautiful, even when she was young. Now on the middle line, between forty and fifty, she looked as if her face had been chopped out of the marble by a rude but determined artist, one who knew what he wanted and would tolerate no conventional work. So that her face, at all events, was, if not unique, at least unlike any other face one had ever seen. Most faces, we know, can be reduced to certain general types—even Iris's face might be classified—while of yours, my brother, there are, no doubt, multitudes. ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... poet, as all were shepherds, when he wanted to represent the life of peace and letters, so all were knights or the foes and victims of knights, when his theme was action and enterprise. It was the custom that the Muse masked, to use Spenser's word, under these disguises; and this conventional masquerade of pastoral poetry or knight errantry was the form under which the poetical school that preceded the dramatists naturally expressed their ideas. It seems to us odd that peaceful sheepcotes and love-sick ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... objective sort of way, it is fitting to emphasize the importance of what is called naturalness, or more correctly, simplicity. Everybody desires this sort of result. It can readily be seen, however, that about everything we do is a second nature; is done, that is to say, in the acquired, acceptable, conventional way. Voice and speech are largely determined by surrounding influences, and what we come to regard as natural may be only an acquired bad habit, which is, in fact, quite unnatural. Voice should certainly be what we call human. Better it should have some human faults than be smoothed ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... though faithful, Saxon translation of [Greek: euaggelion] be retained? Why not 'good tidings?' Why thus change a most appropriate and intelligible designation of the matter into a mere conventional name ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... the point where silence is no longer thinkable: there is no going any farther without you. I will neither exaggerate nor have recourse to conventional phrases: I will not speak of passion nor say that it could not be helped. It is just barely possible that everything can be helped; that a man could always have done differently if he had begun soon enough. But who can ever tell what the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... was provided with a very conventional aunt—the kind of woman you meet with everywhere; most frequently in church squabbles and hotel parlors, however. Mrs. Corwin was this lady's name, and she was to enact the role of chaperon to Miss Andrews. With Mrs. Corwin, ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... taste of grown people for biography are suggested in three little books, of two of which the author was Mrs. Pilkington, who had already written several successful stories for young ladies. Her "Biography for Girls" contains various novelettes, in each of which the heroine lives the conventional life and dies the conventional death of the period, and receives a laudatory epitaph. They are remarkable only as being devoid of any interest. Her "Biography for Boys" does not appear to have attained the same popularity as that for girls. A third book, "The Juvenile ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What exquisite genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their lesser statues is known to all who have seen those most precious specimens in the museum at Cairo, which were wrought before the conventional type was adopted in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Mr. Hosmer, the world is certainly to-day not prepared to stand the lopping off and wrenching away of old traditions. She must take her stand against such enemies of the conventional. Take religion away from the ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... [Footnote 218: This conventional attitude of one engaged in thought or a prey to sadness has been referred to by G.L. Hamilton in "Ztsch fur ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... last, "I suppose, from the books I've read, I should make some fine speeches about the honor you are bestowing on me, and all that. I'm too tired and sad for anything conventional and appropriate. I'm just going to answer you like a simple, honest girl. One of my chief reasons for sadness is that you feel as you do. I see no reason for it. I'm glad you say I've given you no encouragement, I know I have not. Why should you care so for me when I do ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... from any which it was May's intention to arouse. Then she would give pain; wouldn't it be better gradually, not roughly or rudely but by slow degrees, to diminish the time she spent with Quisante and the attention she bestowed on him? Mrs. Baxter's remonstrance, if somewhat conventional, yet ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... equal and wonderful saliency. We are accordingly struck with two classes of social facts, which do not often arrest the attention in old communities. We see, for example, the most singular combination of simplicity and sagacity in the same person; simplicity in conventional respects, and sagacity in all that affects the absolute and real in life, nature and the human sensibilities. The rude man, easily imposed upon, in his faith, fierce as an outlaw in his conflicts with men, will be yet exquisitely alive to the nicest consciousness of woman; will as delicately appreciate ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... pointed at and ridiculed in the character of MacTurk. (Abbotsford MSS.) It is interesting to have the picture of contemporary manners from Scott's hand—Meg Dods remains among his immortal portraits; but a novel in which the absurd will of fiction and the conventional Nabob are necessary machinery can never be ranked so high as even "The Monastery" and "Peveril." In Scotland, however, it was infinitely more successful ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of his own, whilst he scoffed at conventional elegance. Thus, he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, the grit of gravel; and therefore never willingly walked in the road, but in the grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were acute, and he remarked that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... witnessed my terrible distress. His words well-nigh made me despair. He did not attempt to offer conventional consolation, and put the gravity of my responsibilities unsparingly before me, but I had no need of a spur. The conscience within me spoke loudly enough already. A woman had placed a generous confidence in ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... addressing some conventional compliment to Stenius upon the perfection of the arrangements, came as an intense relief, for the others all turned toward the speaker, and, a moment later, the slaves passed around with silver basins and ewers, pouring scented water upon ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... manned from the navy, and Engineer Melville, destined to bear a name great among Arctic men, together with two navy lieutenants, were assigned to her. The voyage planned was then unique among American Arctic expeditions, for instead of following the conventional route north through Baffin's Bay and Smith Sound, the "Jeannette" sailed from San Francisco and pushed northward through Bering Sea. In July, 1879, she weighed anchor. Two years after, no word having been heard of her meanwhile, the inevitable relief expedition was sent ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... in subtler argument! Naked shoulders gleamed at every turn beneath their diamonds! Silk stockings bared their sheen at each new rompish step! And through the dizzy mystery of it all—the haze, the maze, the vague, audacious unreality,—grimly conventional, blatantly tangible white shirt-fronts surrounded by great black blots of men went slapping by—each with its share ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... everywhere to let, and a general cry to parliament for aid rang through the land. Dutton called at the office upon business, accompanied by a young woman of remarkable personal comeliness, but, as a very few sentences betrayed, little or no education in the conventional sense of the word. She was the daughter of a farmer, whom—it was no fault of hers—a change of times had not found in a better condition for weathering them. Anne Mosely, in fact, was a thoroughly industrious, clever farm economist. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... present England? Such powerful agencies of change have been at work during the last thirty years; and it is difficult, nay impossible, to ascertain in what degree they have affected the national character, thus far. One notes the obvious: decline of conventional religion, free discussion of the old moral standards; therewith, a growth of materialism which favours every anarchic tendency. Is it to be feared that self-righteousness may be degenerating into the darker vice of true hypocrisy? For the English to lose belief in themselves—not ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... pen. Here are a few excerpts from these entries:—"1597. The VIth of July I received a privie seale to lend the Q. matie [Elizabeth] LXX. for a yere."—"1602. Sept. the 27th day in ye mornying the Bell did goe for mother [a conventional epithet] Tiffeyn, but she recouered." This decides a matter which has sometimes been disputed,—that, while with us, in our old times, "the passing bell" indicated the progress of a funeral train, anciently in England ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... walked to and fro. At the bottom, at the end opposite the door, was a long table furnished with benches, which occupied the whole width of the wall, behind which sat the "bureau." "Sitting" is merely the conventional term. The "bureau" did not "sit;" like the rest of the Assembly it was on its feet. The secretaries, M.M. Chapot, Moulin, and Grimault wrote standing. At certain moments the two Vice-Presidents mounted on the benches so as to be better seen from all points of the room. The ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... did not belong to the florid, white-haired, hearty school of sea-dogs which is more common in works of fiction than in the Navy List. On the contrary, he was the representative of a much more common type which is the antithesis of the conventional sailor. He was a thin, hard-featured man, with an ascetic, acquiline cast of face, grizzled and hollow-cheeked, clean-shaven with the exception of the tiniest curved promontory of ash-colored whisker. An observer, accustomed ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thousand to fifty thousand acres were established on the old Spanish grants in the valleys of the Coast Range and in the interior, and for a time wheat-raising on a grand scale took its place along with the more conventional forms of gambling, with the disadvantage that small holders were excluded, and the region occupied was ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... who had liked it I found extremely objectionable. They were not the right sort of people, I felt forlornly.... So I endured my plaudits without undue elation, for I always held The Apostates to be, at best, a medley of conventional tricks and extravagant rhetoric, inanimate by any least particle of myself,—and its success, say, as though the splendiferous trappings of an emperor were hung upon a clothier's dummy, and the result accepted as an adequate ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the conventional mode of greeting a skunk,—and instead of hurling a stone in its direction and fleeing, place, if the opportunity present itself, bits of meat in its way evening after evening, and you will soon learn that there is nothing ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... it is young but the tender feeling which continues in her breast towards the child after it has grown up is sustained by association, or, where the child is continually absent, by conscious intelligence in the form of considerations of conventional approbation which in time merge into a habit or a sense of duty which is hardly recognised as such. Many white people think that although the average Native mother is capable of the greatest devotion for her young children she ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... the same laws as himself; secondly, because the course of human evolution has reversed the psychology of the sexes, attributing to women the psychological results of masculine sexuality. This is the origin of the conventional lies which by a sort of social suggestion have intimidated women. They have, in appearance at least, accepted the rule of shame imposed on them by men, but only custom inspires the modesty for which they are praised; it is really an ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... rather conventional, rather fixed, for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, to which our country owes the beginning of the aesthetic awakening, had not yet taken place. It may seem strange to this generation that we were limited to the wood-cuts ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... acquired something of it, should not presume too much on this gift of fortune. General opinion of a man is during his lifetime often wrong, for some time after his death almost always so: and the absolute balance is very seldom reached till a full generation—something more than the conventional thirty years—has passed. Meanwhile, though all readers who have anything critical in them will be constantly revising their impressions, it is well not to put one's own out as more than impressions. It is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... are undermining all these distinctions; the habits or disabilities which chained people to their hereditary condition are fast wearing away, and every class is exposed to increased and increasing competition from at least the class immediately below it. The general relaxation of conventional barriers, and the increased facilities of education which already are, and will be in a much greater degree, brought within the reach of all, tend to produce, among many excellent effects, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... as exquisite as her means of expressing them? The iron bands of distrust were loosened from his spirit, and he blushed for his cheap scepticism of the morning. In a woman so evidently nurtured in dependence, whose views had been formed, and her actions directed, by the most conventional influences, the mere fact of coming alone to Westmore, in open defiance of her advisers, bespoke a persistence of purpose that put his doubts ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... could get a speed of 35 miles an hour, and his estimate was correct. Two six-bladed propellers were placed side by side between the two main planes of the machine, which was supported on a triangular wheeled undercarriage and steered by fairly conventional tail planes. Moy realised that he could not get sufficient power to achieve flight, but he went on experimenting in various directions, and left much data concerning his experiments which has not yet been deemed worthy of publication, but which still contains ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Some of it is wonderful. I never thought about it that way. In a conventional, indifferent fashion I've believed that if I'm good I'll go to a place called heaven when I die. It hasn't interested me very much—what I've heard has sounded rather dull—the people supposed to be on the express trains there have, many of them, been people ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... of shoulders, the raising of eyebrows and the expression of the face—all appealing graphically to the accustomed eye. The signs of which it is made up are partly natural, and partly arbitrary or conventional; and the whole system as now practiced has been codified, as it were, for experienced users. By the deaf it can be employed rapidly and with ease, and is readily and clearly understood. Many of them become such masters of this silent tongue that it may ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... but you can see for yourself now, this is all a result of your being so discontented and not appreciating the dear good people here. And another thing: People like you and me, who want to reform things, have to be particularly careful about appearances. Think how much better you can criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously. Then people can't say you're attacking them to excuse ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... entombed, without hope of resurrection, in a mass of them. Cowley is generally instanced as a wonder of precocity. But his early insipidities show only a capacity for rhyming and for the metrical arrangement of certain conventional combinations of words, a capacity wholly dependent on a delicate physical organization, and an unhappy memory. An early poem is only remarkable when it displays an effort of reason, and the rudest verses in which we can trace some conception of the ends of poetry, are worth all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the key to sea mastery in the shape of a new ship that would take sail and answer her rudder beyond anything the maritime world until then had known. Shreve, like Hawkins, flagrantly ignoring the conventional wisdom of his day and craft, built the Washington to sail on the water instead of in it, doing away altogether with a hold and supplying an upper deck in ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... suggestions for new stanza forms and fresh verse in general. The use of the ballade variant may be found in Kipling. When varied the triolet may give exactly the right ring for some idea which refuses to fit itself into the conventional molds. When one has served his apprenticeship he may arrange and rearrange as he sees fit, bending the stanza to his purpose. Of the forms he is not the slave ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... written, taken as a whole, is of an amateurish and uneven quality. In it, however, that loveable freshness of personality, which his philosophical dejection never quenched, is everywhere in evidence. It is clear that he did not set himself to master the poet's art, yet through the mask of conventional verse which often falls into doggerel, the voice of a true poet is heard. In selecting the pieces for this volume I have put in the vigorous sea verses of John Marr in their entirety and added those others from his Battle ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... power of color,—not the conventional significance whereby certain colors have been associated arbitrarily with mental conditions. This last has often violated all the principles of natural relation; yet no fact is more generally accepted than this,—that colors, from the intensity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... created him, and that in a sense more than figurative, he himself is the child of God. There stand the two relations, as declared in Paganism and in Christianity,—both probably true. In the former, man is the essential enemy of the gods, though sheltered by some conventional arrangement; in the latter, he is the son of God. In his own image God made him; and the very central principle of his religion is, that God for a great purpose assumed his own human nature; a mode of incarnation which could not be conceivable, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... at all, you see, but really a beginning! For there is the tree; and if you climb it, who knows what new landscape, what lively adventure, will open before you? At any rate, you will get away from the tyranny of the commonplace, the conventional, the methodical, which transforms the rhythm of life into a logarithm. Even a small variation, a taste of surprise, will give you what you need as a spring tonic: the sense of escape, a ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... in the conventional way as a new philosophy, though in truth it is almost as old as humanity. Most of the great thinkers of the world, in all ages and in all countries, have been transcendentalists; but in the original way in which the doctrine was presented by Emerson it seemed like a new ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... them, the dramatist usually simplifies the struggle in his plays by throwing the balance of right strongly on one side. Hence, from the ethical standpoint, the simplicity of theatre characters. Desdemona is all innocence, Iago all deviltry. Hence also the conventional heroes and villains of melodrama,—these to be hissed and those to be applauded. Since the crowd is comparatively lacking in the judicial faculty and cannot look upon a play from a detached and disinterested point of view, it is either all for or all against a character; and in either ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... grey eyes. She held out a hesitating hand—and Jacques de Wissant, before placing his gift in it, took that soft hand in his, and, bending rather awkwardly, kissed it lightly. In France, even now, a man will often kiss a woman's hand by way of conventional, respectful homage. But to Claire the touch of her husband's lips was hateful—so hateful indeed that she had to make an instant effort to hide the feeling of physical repulsion with which that ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was neither losing his mind, nor had he been drowning his sorrows in the conventional dram. The simple fact of the matter was that he had not slept fifteen minutes consecutively all night long, and his brain was not likely to clear up until he had given it a chance to recuperate. By the time he had left the car and climbed the castellated side of Pine Bluff he was still ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... have so pleasantly adapted ourselves, becomes "very tolerable and not to be endured;" when the world seems to be made of our vices, and our virtues seem to be looking on, or if they enter into the fray are too tame and conventional for the selfish fire and unscrupulous industry of their rivals; and when to our excited sensibility there is a taint in the moral atmosphere, and we long to escape if only to breathe more freely. This is ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... is badly wanted, or that it is our duty to preach the fact without a theory, or that the Atonement is such a mystery that no theory is possible and we must just accept it on faith. This confession of helplessness shows that there is something seriously wrong with the conventional presentation of the doctrine. But I do not think the Atonement is such a very great mystery after all, and it ought to be possible to get at the heart of it without stultifying the intellect. Anyhow, let ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... hear any allusion to a passage in 'King Victor and King Charles' which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence, revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, while its occasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery, the frequent hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that in which Polixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for duty's sake to retain the crown, though he will earn, by so doing, neither ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Central American nations had calendars substantially the same in principle as the Mexican, is well known. This of itself would indicate a common origin not so very remote; but when we see two contiguous or neighboring peoples making use of the same conventional signs of a complicated nature, down even to the most minute details, and those of a character not comprehensible by the commonalty, we have proof at least of a very intimate relation. I cannot attempt in this place to discuss the question ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... from his study of the dog-fish. His nature was a poetic one, though much choked with the weeds of the conventional and commonplace, and he had seen and felt something of what Hester intended. But he was not alive enough to understand hate. He was able to hate and laugh. He could not feel the danger of hate as Hester, for hate is death, and it needs life to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... unless it be that it is shoddy? Yet the man who would stand well in the eyes of society must not whisper a word against pharisaism; for the Pharisee is a highly respectable person, and observes the proprieties; he typifies the conventional righteousness and religion of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... and man she declared Urbain Grandier innocent, saying that all the hatred which she and her companions had felt against him arose from the baffled desires which his comeliness awoke—desires which the seclusion of conventional life made still more ardent. M. de Laubardemont threatened her with the full weight of his displeasure, but she answered, weeping bitterly, that all she now dreaded was her sin, for though the mercy of the Saviour was great, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... introduction of oneself. Her moral warmth was ready and waiting for the instigating subject, but of course she was unconscious of the goad within. Excitement wafted her out of herself, as we say, or out of the conventional vessel into the waves of her troubled nature. He had not yet given her an opportunity for dissenting; she was compelled to agree, dragged at his chariot-wheels ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bourgeois nature, equally scorned by the classes above and below it as the embodiment of vulgar ease and selfishness, contains precisely the elements of true heroism which are wanting alike in those who set conventional rules above moral laws and in those who revolt against all restrictions. The book is thus an apology for a class which is no favorite with poets or romancers; but, as we have said, the design is only to be inferred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... groomed and well mannered, and his demeanour towards herself was all that the most conventional could have demanded. When she reflected that she herself represented in a way the possible destruction of his hopes of magnificent fortune, she felt almost tenderly towards him, and thought his easy politeness wonderful. Mrs. Osborn, too! How interesting and how ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... encounter was pure accident. Elaine had no intentions whatever of following the man who had left Arles with such boorish brusqueness, without even the conventional good-bye at the breakfast-table. She had come to Nimes because she was a worker, because this town contained special material necessary to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... these lines. Hence we see that any effort to define or describe coal, lignite, or anthracite accurately must be a failure, because neither has a fixed composition, neither is a distinct substance, but simply a conventional group of substances which form part of an infinite ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... country: conventional long form: Islamic State of Afghanistan conventional short form: Afghanistan local long form: Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan local short form: ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... "The idea of a man with my experience with women—" And then his voice died away and his hand relaxed, an expression of disgust crossing his face. He sank into a chair by the table and leaned his head on his hand. It was true that he was a man of the world, and that for conventional morality he had felt the contempt it deserved. Nevertheless, in loving this girl the finest and highest instincts of his nature had been aroused. He had felt for her even more of sentiment than of passion. When a man loves a girl whose mental purity is as absolute as ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... together scarcely three weeks, and yet so much has been uncovered that we stand face to face with our real selves. All that was conventional has been laid aside in our intercourse, and the best and sweetest and most sacred phases of our lives laid bare, so that we have had a clear glimpse of God's children as they are, not as they usually appear; and indeed it gives ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... while I thought over what she had said to me and while she herself apparently thought. I confess that even close at her side and under the strong impression of her sincerity, her indifference to the conventional graces, my imagination, my constitutional scepticism began to range. Queer ideas came into my head. Was the comedy on HER side and not on the girl's, and was she posturing as a magnanimous woman at poor Linda's expense? Was she determined, in spite of the young lady's preference, ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... solace of tea and basking in the mild spring air wafted to me through my opened windows, the telephone bell rang. Arising promptly, I went to where the instrument is affixed to the wall and responded to the call in the conventional manner by placing the receiver to my ear, applying my lips to the transmitter and uttering the word "Halloa!" twice, or possibly thrice repeated. Over the wire then a female voice spoke, enquiring if this were Doctor Fibble? Upon my stating ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... dear M., I have spent three weeks in the American Valley, and I returned therefrom humbled to the very dust when thinking of my former vainglorious boast of having "seen the elephant." To be sure, if having fathomed to its very depths the power of mere existence, without any reference to those conventional aids which civilization has the folly to think necessary to the performance of that agreeable duty, was any criterion, I certainly fancied that I had a right to brag of having taken a full view of that most piquant specimen of the brute creation, the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... ugly even and repulsive, this peculiar weakness, usually paired with good nature, which indicated in an almost imperceptible manner that the parting wall of modesty would fall at my first assault, I already felt myself lost from the beginning in spite of all conventional restrictions. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... poor Polly sadly. "Jo hates me for it and refuses to think I am sincere or that there is any good in the movement, but I declare that she is the insincere one in not trying to see the good in the cubist movement. Jo is very hard-headed and conventional at heart, in spite ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... conventional idea of a successful lawyer,—withered, non-committal, and a little fusty; but technicalities had failed to harden his heart or obscure his good sense. He had a sunny smile, which refreshed my sad spirit when I called upon him shortly after the funeral to inform him of my ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... in the staging of her comedies that fate shows herself superior to mere human invention. While we, with careful regard to scenery, place our conventional puppets on the stage and bid them play their old old parts in a manner as ancient, she rings up the curtain and starts a tragedy on a scene that has obviously been set by the carpenter for a farce. She deals out the parts with a fine inconsistency, and the jolly-faced little ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... to represent these difficult and noble inquiries as having nothing in view beyond ascertaining the conventional meaning of a name. They are inquiries not so much to determine what is, as what should be, the meaning of a name; which, like other practical questions of terminology, requires for its solution that we should enter, and sometimes enter ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... retired to the bald deserts of feminine society, was usually his time of triumph. His mental stays were then unfastened. He could breathe forth his stories freely. His wittiest jokes, nude, no longer clad in the shadowy garments of more or less conventional propriety, danced like bacchanals through the conversation, and kicked up heels to fire even the weary men of society. He expanded into fantastic anecdote, and mingled many a bon mot with the blue spirals of his mounting cigarette smoke. But to-night Mr. Smith's gentle, "I never smoke, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... business, which obliges them to find a hotel in the commercial quarter of the Chinese town. But they do not leave without receiving my compliments. Major Noltitz and I go up to this amiable couple, and the conventional politenesses are ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the last and mellowest fruit from Peacock's tree, was, like most mellow fruit, not matured hastily. In saying this I do not refer to the long period—exactly a generation in the conventional sense—which intervened between Crotchet Castle of 1831 and this of 1861. For we know as a matter of fact, from the preface to the 1856 edition of Melincourt, that Peacock was planning Gryll Grange at a time considerably nearer ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... and thoughtless differentiation between the "bad" and the "good" feeble-minded, we find new evidence of the conventional middle-class bias that also finds expression among some of the eugenists. We do not object to feeble-mindedness simply because it leads to immorality and criminality; nor can we approve of it when it expresses itself in docility, ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... adapted to cause those who have to do with children to feel all the emancipating and renovating power of their trust. It cannot leave us satisfied with any conventional arrangement which brings to plausible maturity a limited per cent. There are, indeed, minds strong enough to pass through the bitter years of unlearning what has been taught amiss, and then, bating no jot of heart or courage, to begin education for themselves in middle life. But often ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... solving of this particular variety of triangle "A Bachelor Husband" will particularly interest, and strangely enough, without one shock to the most conventional minded. ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... graveyards in France, no religious dogma or supernatural hope intrudes upon the little wooden crosses. On these, for the most part, you can read only the bare conventional attributes of each little handful of dust, which has passed through its quivering agony into the still sleep of decay,—its name and regiment, its civilian home, the place and date of its death. A few have more than this. Here lie the two brothers Bellina in one grave, with a cross ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... sweeping disregard of conventional approaches, he plunged boldly into the matter with which their thoughts were at once occupied. "So this was why Dr. Melton insisted I should take this car. Well, I'm grateful to him! It gives me a chance to relieve my mind of a weight of remorse ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... words of conventional regrets, and, truth to tell, I was bitterly disappointed. I turned ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... away near the lake shore. As they left the house and passed through the city streets the respect accorded the Chemist became increasingly apparent. The three strangers with him attracted considerable attention, for, although they wore the conventional robes in which the more prominent citizens were generally attired, their short hair and the pallid whiteness of their skins made them objects of curiosity. No crowd gathered; those they passed stared a little, raised their hands to their ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... given (as, indeed, I believe it was), would have amounted to the 10/3-5000th, or less than the 15,000th part of the depth of any given color. It would be interesting to see a picture painted by the critics, upon this scientific principle. The aerial perspective usually represented is entirely conventional and ridiculous; a mere struggle on the part of the pretendedly well-informed, but really ignorant, artist, to express distances by mist which he ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... prisoners must have learned to be pretty good gardeners, for certainly the grounds were in good condition. The grass was green and trimly mowed; there were conventional beds of flowers in very ugly shapes; in the distance I saw a gang of men in striped overalls mending a roadway. The guide led me to an attractive cottage to one side of the main building. There were two children playing outside, and I remember thinking that ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... repel or repulse. Repulse is stronger and more conclusive than repel; one may be repelled by the very aspect of the person whose favor he seeks, but is not repulsed except by the direct refusal or ignoring of his suit. A certain conventional modern usage, especially in England, requires us to say that we drive in a carriage, ride upon a horse; tho in Scripture we read of riding in a chariot (2 Kings ix, 16; Jer. xvii, 25, etc.); good examples of the same usage may be found ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... his brother to utter the conventional farewells; his lips were set, and his brows drawn together; but ever and anon, as if against his will, his eyes shot anxious glances towards the window of the room where Margot lay. Edith moved a few steps ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... campaigns to Africa, and the traditional battle-fields there. He embarked for the land of Kush on the vessel of Ahmosi-si-Abina "for the purpose of enlarging the frontiers of Egypt." It was, we may believe, a thoroughly conventional campaign, conducted according to the strictest precedents of the XIIth dynasty. The Pharaoh, as might be expected, came into personal contact with the enemy, and slew their chief with his own hand; the barbarian warriors sold their lives dearly, but were unable to protect their country ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... yearning for our common birthplace appealed to me strongly. I was very much inclined to think that in spite of the horrible life she led she was a good girl. To hold this sort of opinion about a woman of her kind seemed to be an improper thing to do. I knew that according to the conventional idea concerning women of the street they were all the most hideous creatures in the world in every respect. So I would tell myself that I must consider her, too, one of the most hideous creatures in the world in every respect. But I did not. For I knew that at heart she was ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... possess in such marked degree. The Court of the Universe will never be the resting place of the masses of the people, in spite of the recently added attraction of the band stand, a mixture of Roman and Arabic architecture out of keeping with the surroundings. The conventional architectural motives of this great court do not help very much in tempting one to stay, and if it were not for the great arches on the east and west and the very fine view toward the Column of Progress, I would feel tempted to classify it as a piece ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... which the present version differs from a merely literal translation are the following: (1)in a rather broad interpretation of pregnant words and phrases; (2)in a conception of some of the Old English compounds as conventional phrases in which the original metaphorical sense is dead; (3)in a free treatment of connecting words; (4)in frequent substitution of a proper name for an ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... we two started for London on the same day, but from different railway stations, and, until some weeks afterwards, one knew nothing of the other's exodus. I arrived at King's Cross Railway Station with the conventional half-crown in my pocket; literally and absolutely, half-a-crown; I wandered about the Great City till I was weary, fell in with a Thief and Good Samaritan who sheltered me, starved and struggled with abundant happiness, and finally found myself located at 66, Stamford Street, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the progress of civilization done for humanity. It is not until a recent period, that a more generous spirit has operated; that a fellow-creature has been understood not to forfeit his rights as a man, because he is an enemy; that conventional laws have been established, tending greatly to mitigate the evils of a condition, which with every alleviation is one of unspeakable misery; and that those who hold the destinies of nations in their ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... sure that his sprightly talk and free participation in the good things of the table, formed a favorable contrast to the deep depression of Jules Favre at the same board the day before. "M. de Bismarck," he says, "is not at all like the conventional statesman. He is not solemn. He is very gay, and even when discussing the gravest questions often makes jokes, though under his playful sallies ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... asked you to, and you thought you might as well be civil; perhaps you really did think it would be pleasant to see us again—but it wasn't the same thing. Oh, I saw it in your face directly—you became conventional and distant and horrid, and it made me horrid too; and you went away determined that you wouldn't see any more of us than you could help. That's why I was so furious when I heard that papa had been to see you, and ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... card at Miss Loraine's door at exactly five o'clock. A Japanese page dressed in uniform ushered me into a conventional but well-furnished reception-room. There sat a young woman in a handsome silk negligee, who invited me to be seated, remarking that Miss Loraine was out, but would soon return, and that she was to entertain me in the interval. In a few minutes there came up the steps and then entered the room ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... a considerable contrast to the other two plays here presented. It belongs to the school of Scribe and the "soliloquy," and the author avails himself of the recognised dramatic conventions of the day. At the same time, though the characters may be conventional in type, they are, thanks to Bjornson's sense of humour, alive; and the theme of the estrangement and reconciliation of the "newly-married couple" is treated with delicacy and charm. It is true that it is almost unbelievable that the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... unconventionality; I liked it. It was so different from the straight-jackets and the hypocrisy I'd been living among and hating. But I soon found out that—well, Miss Stevens, the average human being ought to be pretty conventional in his morals of a certain kind. If he—or SHE—isn't, they begin to get unconventional in every way—about paying their bills, for instance, and about drinking. I got sick and tired of those people. So, I put 'em all out—made a sweep. And now I've become quite ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... his gaze, its atmosphere of pain reek around him, and the detestable turmoil of its experience rage in his breast. The selfishness of his character, in steep contradiction to the public disinterestedness belonging to the divine will, must invert every proper experience of heaven. Could any conventional arrangement, or accident of locality, save such a man, while his character remained unchanged? No; such a spirit carries and radiates hell, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... But the reader at last takes an easy way with these maddening interruptions; wherever "the historians" are mentioned he knows that several pages can be turned at once; Tolstoy may be left to belabour the conventional theories of the Napoleonic legend, and rejoined later on, when it has occurred to him once more that he ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... I know you didn't write it, or it wouldn't have been so stupid. I could stand anything except the charge that I've lost my naturalness and become conventional." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... without appearing to work much, he accomplished a good deal. She had an impulse once to thank him, but she restrained it, and she gave him a good-bye that was neither cool nor warm, just sufficiently conventional to leave no inference whatever. But when the train was gone and Mr. Grayson and he were riding back in the cab to the hotel, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... me, standing in the middle of the dusty road, with my impedimenta around me, and as he spoke he dropped both babies on the platform in a bunch, and the small trunk on the other side. Then he just stood and looked, and I had to straighten the roar that was arising in me at the sight of him into a conventional smile of greeting, suitable to bestow on ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... interested for or against Christianity, but for a public who study life in the subtle and highly wrought novels of modern times. He appeals from what is probable to those representations of human nature which aspire to pass beyond the conventional and commonplace, and especially he dwells on neglected and unnoticed examples of what is sweet and soft and winning. But it is hard to recognise the picture he has drawn in the materials out of which he has composed it. The world is tolerably familiar ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the things which I have to overcome are just little fussy woman things—but they are big to me because I am breaking away from family traditions. All the women our household have followed the straight and narrow path of conventional living. Even Grace does it, although she rebels inwardly—but Aunt Frances keeps her to it. Once Grace tried to be an artist, and she worked hard in Paris, until Aunt Frances swooped down and carried her off—Grace still speaks of that time in Paris as her year out of prison. You see she worked ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... forth, nor is the mosque which it overlooks unworthy to have been called Kuwwet-el-Islam, the Might of Islam. To make room for it the Hindu temples, erected by the Rajput builders of the Red Fort, were torn down, and the half-effaced figures on the columns of the mosque, and many other conventional designs peculiar to Hindu architecture, betray clearly the origin of the materials used in its construction. But the general conception, and especially the grand lines of the screen of arches on the western side, are ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... counterpart of S'ruti is "smriti," i.e. recollection, tradition. This embraces the Sutras or works dealing with ceremonial in the way of short rules gathered from the older literature, with the exposition of the Vedas, with domestic rites and conventional usages. The law books, the epics, and the Puranas, or ancient legendary histories, also belong to ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... as it has happened to many a man fed upon conventional religion and accustomed to walk an aisle in public and eminent godliness. In the moment that he overbalanced public approval his whole edifice crumbled and collapsed, leaving him no stay. He was down from his eminence—down with the wild beasts; and among them the worst was ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rising to its height. It may be a very trivial matter, yet it is certain that fancy dress gives a peculiar charm, freedom, and brightness to festivities of the kind; and men who in the ordinary mournful black evening-suit would be taciturn of speech and conventional in bearing, throw off their customary reserve when they find themselves in the brilliant and becoming attire of some picturesque period when dress was an art as well as a fashion; and not only do they look their best, but they somehow manage to put on "manner" with ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... word, in the absence of any fitter one,—the impressionism which makes his own writing on art in this volume so effective, is, in short, the secret both of his likes and dislikes, his hatred of what he thinks conventional and mechanic, together with his very alert and careful evaluation of what comes home to him as straightforward, whether in Reynolds, or Rubens, or Ruysdael, in Japan, in Paris, or in modern England."—Mr. Pater ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... being under law to God and under law to no man, except in the Lord. Presbyterianism honors every honest man as a real king, clothed with innate majesty, crowned with native dignity, and exalted far above the conventional office of earth's highest monarch. Yet does Presbyterianism sustain all rightful rulers as ministers of God, and enjoin upon all people ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... form: none conventional short form: Clipperton Island local short form: Ile Clipperton local long form: none former: sometimes ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... enjoy its seclusion. The dances there were universally considered the most agreeable functions in the county. The conversation of many of the inmates was of the widest range and the most refreshing originality, and the demeanour of all, even when most free from the conventional trammels of outside society, bore evidence of an expensive, and in some cases of a Christian, upbringing. This is scarcely to be wondered at, when beneath one roof were assembled the heirs-presumptive to three dukedoms, two suicidal marquises, an odd archbishop or so, and the flower of the ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... doubtless, to bring back the Church to the condition in which he supposed it had been when born. But one cannot reduce an adult to the simplicity and innocence of childhood by stripping off all his clothes, and denying him the conventional figleaf. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Patience reason; and, believe me, in translating his words into our conventional language, I am robbing them of all their grace, all their fire, and all their vigour. But who could repeat the exact words of Patience? His was a language used by none but himself; it was a mixture of the limited, though forcible, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... State, then amongst all the constellations in the political sky whose movements it has to compute, those must be included which arise when the nature of its relations imposes the necessity of a great War. It is only if we understand by policy not a true appreciation of affairs in general, but the conventional conception of a cautious, subtle, also dishonest craftiness, averse from violence, that the latter kind of War may belong more to ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... floors and brought her water. It was a woman's tragedy, but written by a woman in man's attire, determined to write a very masculine, vigorous work, but succeeding in producing only a plated piece, in which everything was puerile, artificial, and conventional, from the first word to the last line. It was an olla podrida, in which Shakspeare hobnobbed with Campistron, Theophile Gautier locked arms with Dorat, Plutarch was dovetailed with the Mantua-Makers' Journal of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The galleries would be crowded every night as they were in the French Revolution; for instead of seeing a printed story for a penny they would be seeing an acted drama for nothing. But the, people know in their hearts that journalism is a conventional art like any other, that it selects, heightens, and falsifies. Only its Nemesis is the same as that of other arts: if it loses all care for truth it loses all form likewise. The modern who paints too cleverly ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... the sheep which it washes, and turning all its fish into 'John Dorees.' And in doing this, far from injuring the practical and market value of either, it positively improves them. For genius is always general and human, and rises intuitively above conventional poetry and conventional science, to that higher region where fact and fancy become identified in truth. And such is the characteristic of the lecture before us, in which solid, nutritive learning loses none of its alimentary value for being cooked with all the skill of a Ude or of a Francatelli. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... woman. It's the solemn truth that you are the first to possess me. It's queer, all the same. Directly I set eyes on you I wanted you. Quite suddenly I felt I must have you. I felt it somehow. What? I should find it very hard to say. Oh, I didn't stop to think. With your conventional, stiff, frigid manners, and your appearance, like a curly-haired little wolf, you pleased me, that was all! And now I could not do without ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... very formidable looking criminal," commented Ashton-Kirk, quietly. "However, you can seldom judge by appearances. The most astonishing crime that ever came to my notice was perpetrated by the meekest and most conventional man I ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... of course no attempt among them at military uniform, officers in no wise being distinguished from men. The conventional dress of eighteenth-century borderers was an adaptation to local conditions, being in part borrowed from the Indians. Their feet were encased in moccasins. Perhaps the majority of the corps had loose, thin trousers of homespun or buckskin, with a fringe of leather thongs down each outer ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... The English sportsman, however, does not cut, or carve, or in any way shape his gun-stock to his imagination. The stock is as smooth and as plain as polished wood can be. There is a sort of speckling on the barrels, and there is a conventional design on the lock-plate; conventional, indeed, in the most blase sense of the word—quite blase and worn out, this scratch of intertwisted lines, not so much as a pheasant even engraved on the lock-plate; it is a mere ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... backgrounds of red or blue serving to throw the sculptural adornments into vivid relief. Buffalo was in this a commentary on classic art, revealing what fine effects may be produced by out-of-door coloring when suited to surroundings. We saw that in our timid, conventional avoidance of exterior colors we had missed something; that cheerful colors might well supplant on our houses the eternal sombre of gray and brown, as they so often and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... representative of his country on the Supreme Council, in which capacity he is even more important than as Ambassador, represents a new strain in American politics. His mental habits bewilder the President, shock the proper and somewhat conventional Secretary of State, and throw such repositories of national divinity as Senators Lodge and Knox into ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... not realised then (as Shelley did not till his death), the terrific inertia of people, their content, even, with the cramping and conventional ideas and beliefs that ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... and agitate the heart of Tancred; the haunting thought that, all this time, he was perhaps the dupe of boyish fantasies, was laid to-day. Sometimes he had felt, Why does no one sympathise with my views; why, though they treat them with conventional respect, is it clear that all I have addressed hold them to be absurd? My parents are pious and instructed; they are predisposed to view everything I say, or do, or think, with an even excessive favour. They think me moonstruck. Lord Eskdale ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... you understand, I'll have to go back some time. Everybody round this place knows what I am now, but I believe I was rather a promising youngster before I left the old country, a bit of a rebel though, and inclined to kick against the ultra-conventional. In fact, I think honesty was my ruin, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... people, if you don't. Off you go now! and do old Herapath's funeral—it's at noon, at Kensal Green. There'll be some of his fellow M.P.'s there, and so on. Get their names—make a nice, respectable thing of it on conventional lines. And no fireworks! This thing's ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... superbly mounted, came trotting out of one of these driveways, talking and laughing gayly. Honora took a good look at the man. He was not handsome, but had, in fact, a distinguished and haunting ugliness. The girls were straight-featured and conventional ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
