"Devoid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid of color. On the contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, which comes out rather brilliantly from the mass of shade round it; and a person devoid of color faculty, or ill taught, might imagine the picture to be really a fine work ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... lathed and plastered within, handsomely painted and boarded without; each has a cellar underneath, built with stones fetched also from the main: they are all of a similar construction and appearance; plain, and entirely devoid of exterior or interior ornament. I observed but one which was built of bricks, belonging to Mr.——, but like the rest it is unadorned. The town stands on a rising sandbank, on the west side of the harbour, which is very ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... question for me to solve, now youth exists no more, except in memory, whether this present method of keeping even with one's own needs and the world's has any justification. If it has, it lies in the fact that my real work was mostly done before I knew it. When energy exists devoid of self-consciousness (for self-consciousness is the beginning of death) the individual fulfils himself naturally, obeying the mandate within him. So in Australia, and at sea, or in America, lies what I sometimes call the justification of my writing to amuse myself ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Madagascar are known as caffein-free coffee trees. Just whether they are entitled to this classification or not is a question. Some of the French and German investigators have reported coffee from these regions that was absolutely devoid of caffein. It was thought at first that they must represent an entirely new genus; but upon investigation, it was found that they belonged to the genus Coffea, to which all our common coffees belong. Professor Dubard, of the French National Museum and Colonial Garden, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of this chamber was one mass of uneven projections, entirely unlike the other parts of the cave, and what was more singular still, it was fully six feet higher than the floors of the other portions, but it was absolutely devoid of any treasure, or anything which could contain such a hoard as ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... which has been caluminated as devoid of all sense of religion, law or morality, to sympathize with one whom calumny of a similar kind is about to drive from his native land, a land which he has adorned and enlightened in almost every branch of liberal literature, and of useful philosophy. The ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... he (i.e., Sin) got to Egypt, and did sow Gardens of gods, which every year did grow Fresh and fine deities. They were at great cost, Who for a god clearly a sallet lost. Ah, what a thing is man devoid of grace, Adoring garlic with an humble face, Begging his food of that which he may eat, Starving the while he worshippeth his meat! Who makes a root his god, how low is he, If God and man be severed infinitely! What wretchedness can give him any room, Whose house is foul, while ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... she noted that they always did when he spoke thus of Desert Valley or when she bespoke her hearty approval of his choice. Something prompted her to turn swiftly to Carr; his head was down; he was frowning at the horn of his saddle; Helen, not devoid of either intuition or tact, changed the conversation. But not before she noted that Howard, too, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... cry, and hastening on to the spot whence the sound came, he saw a young girl, in the dress worn by the children of the fishermen, holding on to a wet, seaweed-covered rock, on which she had fallen to save herself from slipping off into the water. He was not so devoid of good feeling as not to wish to help her, so he ran on, and taking one of her hands, he dragged her up and enabled her to reach a spot where ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... the characters which is worthy of remark. The Socrates of the Philebus is devoid of any touch of Socratic irony, though here, as in the Phaedrus, he twice attributes the flow of his ideas to a sudden inspiration. The interlocutor Protarchus, the son of Callias, who has been a hearer of Gorgias, is supposed to begin as a disciple ...
— Philebus • Plato
... a father has still the protection of friends, and of the law; he is something, and can do something,—has acknowledged rights and position; the slave has none. The law regards him, in every respect, as devoid of rights as a bale of merchandise. The only possible acknowledgment of any of the longings and wants of a human and immortal creature, which are given to him, comes to him through the sovereign and irresponsible will of his master; ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bewilderment, but I never have understood exactly how it happened. I remember Brutus' eyes on my father's hand, as it moved so gently over his coat. It must have been some gesture, smooth and imperceptible. For suddenly, my father's languor left him, suddenly his lips curled back in a smile devoid of humor, and he leapt at the lantern. He leapt, and at the same instant, as perfectly timed as though the whole matter had been carefully rehearsed, Brutus' great bulk had streaked across the deck, crashing towards Mr. Sims like an ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... in their opinion of Marie's change of character. She grew up to be a sensible woman, singularly devoid of pretense or affectation. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... both cases slave trade will flourish), thus you will be quiet in Egypt, and will be able to retreat in January 1885. If you do not do this, then be prepared for a deal of worry and danger, and your campaign will be entirely unprofitable and devoid of prestige, for the day after you leave Khartoum the Mahdi will walk in and say that he ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... of animating mood or purpose. With reference to incorporeal beings, it denotes (except in the phrase "the Holy Ghost") the reappearance of the dead in disembodied form. Spirit may denote a variety of incorporeal beings—among them angels, fairies (devoid of moral nature), and personalities returned from the grave and manifested—seldom visibly—through spiritualistic tappings and the like. "The superstitious natives thought the spirit of their chief walked in the graveyard." ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... he began carefully to avoid the eye of his host. John Ashe, a tall, dark, handsome Kentuckian, with whom even the trifles of life were evidently full of serious import, waited with a kind of chivalrous respect the further speech of his guest. Being utterly devoid of any sense of the ridiculous, he always accepted Mr. McClosky as a grave fact, singular only from his own want of ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... suggestions of mystery, cruelty, pomp, and power. In the sciences and in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly cultivated. Much Egyptian literature has come down to us, but it is unsystematic and entirely devoid of style, being without lofty ideas or charms. In art, however, Egypt may be placed next ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... waiting to have his revenge upon the sergeant. Sergeant Pasmore was a man both feared and respected by all with whom he came in contact. He was the embodiment of the law; he carried it, in fact, on the horn of his saddle in the shape of his Winchester rifle; a man who was supposed to be utterly devoid of sentiment, but who had been known to perform more than one kindly action. Her father liked him, and many a time he had spent a long evening by the rancher's ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... end becomes narrower, and its rocky shores are broken into conical and rounded eminences, destitute of soil, and of course devoid of trees. We slept at the western extremity of the lake, having come during the day nineteen miles and a half ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... necessarily be supposed that the directors of German destiny, who are not devoid of intelligence, took the ravings of Bernhardi over-seriously. He had his special uses no doubt before the day. But on the morrow of the day, when questions of responsibility came to be raised, he became one of many inconvenient witnesses; and there has scarcely been a better joke among ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... knowing nothing of literature, and often very little of the English language, as is the way of its kind, had failed to see the genius under the wild and not too temperate exterior, and had frowned on the young editor as a rather scandalous person entirely devoid of commercial instincts; but Jimmy had always stood by him, and when a sudden access of wealth, in the form of a draft for sixty pounds for a series of short stories in an American magazine, had enabled Kelly to say good-bye both to the China Coast and to his ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... was devoid of any furniture save two or three wooden chairs, which the girl and her father occupied at their work, the long wooden bench, the great coils of willow—the usual paraphernalia ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... stopped her education at that point. His intentions with regard to the child, whom he cleansed and clothed, and taught, and formed with a care which was all the more remarkable because he was thought to be utterly devoid of tenderness, were interpreted in a variety of ways by the cackling society of the town, whose gossip often gave rise to fatal blunders, like those relating to the birth of Agathe and that of Max. It is not easy for the community of a country town to disentangle the truth from the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... sympathy which Mozart always felt in the welfare of the very humblest of his brethren of the lyre, is highly creditable to him. But the extent to which he sacrificed his own interests to serve them, was often any thing but prudent. He was devoid of every sordid and avaricious feeling, and indeed carried his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... really is n't half a bad sort at bottom. But he 's English, and he lives in the country. So, a true English country gentleman, he has perhaps an exaggerated passion for the pleasures of the chase—and when questions touching them arise, seems simply to be devoid of the ethical sense. He 's not a whit worse than his human neighbours—and he 's a hundred times handsomer and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... gorget, and sash; a deal table stood in the proximity of the rusty grate, where smoked and smouldered a pile of black turf from the bog,—a deal table without a piece of baize to cover it, yet fraught with things not devoid of interest: a Bible, given by a mother; the Odyssey, the Greek Odyssey; a flute, with broad silver keys; crayons, moreover, and water-colours; and a sketch of a wild prospect near, which, though but half finished, afforded ample proof of the excellence ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to see a play the other night, one of those good old-fashioned English comedies that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. The piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its archaic stiffness, and obsolete code of morals, was devoid of interest excepting as a collection of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it through. The one thing in it that held me a pleased spectator was the graceful costume of a certain player who looked like a fine old portrait—by Vandyke or Velasquez, let us say—that had come to ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... emigrant-freighted packets which at this season are conveying thousands to our country's shores, and whose clouds of canvas occasionally loomed upon us in the distance. What were our "light afflictions" compared with those of the multitudes crowded into their stifling steerages, so devoid of conveniences and comforts! Speed on, O favored coursers of the deep, bearing swiftly those suffering exiles to the land of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... husband were surprised at his imposing appearance, as well as at the dignity and self-possession he displayed. His southern accent was not more noticeable than that of many Neapolitan gentlemen, and his conversation, if neither very brilliant nor very fluent, was not devoid of interest. He talked of the agricultural condition of the new Italy, and old Saracinesca and his son were both interested in the subject. They noticed, too, that during dinner no word escaped him which could give any clue to ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... In the volume under consideration we think we can discern the promise of the return of the good old spirit of English poetry—of solid honest thought expressed in straight forward Saxon. The story, which is one of the chivalrous days of Spain, while it is devoid of trick is full of thrilling interest, and its style, while it is eminently poetical, neither swells into bombast nor descends to the foppery so common among the verse-makers of our day. There is a stately, old-fashioned tread in the diction, as of a man in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... outsider, the average Inupash courtship is devoid of romance. The first mating of young people is usually suggested and arranged by the mothers, yet there are slight indications noticeable to the initiated that will often point to the intentions of the persons interested. ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... and life-like transcript from several phases of society. Devoid of literary affectation and pretense, it is a wholesome American novel well worthy of the popularity which ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... violin: that made it easy for the rest. His bride and the handsome young man flirted with ardor, yet quite transparently: there was a smile wholly devoid ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... sophisticated and complex man. His letters reveal him as remarkably creative, fascinated by the arts, principled, religious and devoted to his father. He had an energetic personality that was almost completely devoid of any cynicism, pessimism or discouragement from creating music. While rumors suggest that he was a lascivious individual, there is no evidence of this at all in his letters. Quite the contrary, the evidence seems overwhelmingly to suggest the opposite, and that Mozart may ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... force and power, practical and resolute. To one of his sporting tastes she suggested a mettled steed whose high spirit was kept in check by thorough training. Her conversation was piquant, at times a little brusque, and utterly devoid of sentimentality. But now her choice of poetic thought and her tones revealed a wealth of womanly tenderness, and he was compelled to feel that her religion was not legal and cold, a system of duties, beliefs, and restraints, but something that seemed to stir the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... faith alone Build up for Christ an everlasting throne Deep in the inmost heart, devoid of shame: But watchful ever must His servants be, Lest the dark power of sated gluttony Should bind about the abode of faith ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... devoid of reason, he pursues no point either of morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... I must protest against any such idea. A superior performer!—very far from it, I assure you. Consider from how partial a quarter your information came. I am doatingly fond of music—passionately fond;—and my friends say I am not entirely devoid of taste; but as to any thing else, upon my honour my performance is mediocre to the last degree. You, Miss Woodhouse, I well know, play delightfully. I assure you it has been the greatest satisfaction, comfort, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Evidently she had no inconsiderable pleasure in display; but she made on the whole a very good wife, only one to be protected by him from every care, and not one to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in his dreams. Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control. For instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed Marmion in the Edinburgh in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was then considered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... done in all these directions. Much has been accomplished already. The worst that can happen is that a separate legislature should be set up in Dublin, devoid of the requisite means, as it would most certainly be (unless, indeed, it had recourse to the rates, or the taxpayer) of financing Irish Education; swayed from side to side by the exigencies of the party programme of the moment; and temperamentally ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... studied care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude. The first glance of the eye told his former friends, that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. His eye was glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression. His features were a little more sunken and strongly marked than formerly; but there, all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said to have ceased. His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any positive disease, but had been a gradual and ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... only heathens, but are also, so far as we could observe, devoid of every conception of higher beings. There are, however, superstitions. Thus most of them wear round the neck leather straps, to which small wooden tongs, of wooden carvings, are fixed. These are not parted with, and are not readily shown to foreigners. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... citizens were a wild crew, but with all their violence and their villainy, they were picturesque beings, and were by no means devoid of redeeming traits. Frank Vine, who evidently thought nothing of robbing his employers and was drunk more than half the time, had an equable temper which nothing apparently could ruffle, and a good ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... properties of the oil of anda. The specimen with which the experiments were tried had not been freshly prepared, and had indeed been long regarded as a curiosity. Twelve ounces were alone available, and it was a yellowish oil, quite bright, about the consistence of oleum olivae, devoid of smell, and free from the viscid qualities of castor oil. There was a small supply of anda fruits differing a good deal in appearance one from the other, but we are not aware whether these were utilized and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... other orders of endopterygote insects will illustrate this point. The campodeiform type is relatively unusual, but most of the Neuroptera have larvae of this kind, active, armoured creatures with long legs, though devoid of the tail-processes often associated with similar larvae among the Coleoptera. Such are the 'Ant-lions,' larvae of the exotic lacewing flies, which hunt small insects, digging a sandy pit for their unwary steps in the case of the best-known ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... pale than flushed; his nose—if a sketch of his features be de rigueur for a person of his pretensions—was artistically beautiful enough to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... looked gratified at the compliment, and prepared himself to obey. First, however, he cast a hurried glance to windward not altogether devoid of anxiety. I looked in the same direction. There, gathering thickly and close overhead, was the black mass of clouds which had long been driving towards us, the seas looking white and more broken in the increasing gloom. I thought he was about to ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... may be verse, rime, and meter, but not poetry. There is much in literature that is beautiful and sublime in thought and artistic in construction, which is yet not poetry, because quite devoid of the element of song, whereby poetry differs from the most lofty, beautiful, or impassioned ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... desire a softer bed than the air, where we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers"! Of the latter he finds somewhat more difficulty in disposing,—"and here it is considerable, that, since our bodies will then be devoid of gravity and other impediments of motion, we shall not at all spend ourselves in any labour, and so, consequently, not much need the reparation of diet, but may perhaps live altogether without it, as those creatures have done, who, by reason ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... in looking to his belt-guns was that of a man who expected to have recourse to them speedily and by whom the necessity was neither regretted nor feared. Stooping low, he entered the thicket of spruces. The soft, spruce-matted ground, devoid of brush or twig, did not give forth the slightest sound of step, nor did the brushing of the branches against his body. In some cases he had to bend the boughs. Thus, swiftly and silently, with the gliding steps of an Indian, he approached the cabin till the brown-barked logs loomed before ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... I think had there been one it would have proved that there was a flaw in her. Perhaps, when good-bye came she was weeping because all the pretty things were said and done with, or she was making doleful confessions about herself, so impulsive and generous and confidential, and so devoid of humour, that they compelled even a tragic swain to laugh. She made a looking-glass of his face to seek wofully in it whether she was at all to blame, and when his arms went out for her, and she ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the face of an old man with enormous mouth pinched together, and devoid of lips, but giving the idea that it was about to smile; nose there was none, save a little puckering in its place, but as if to make up for the want, the ears were largely developed, rounded, and stood out on either side in a pronounced fashion. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... at length to two hundred and fifty a year. Himself a small and slow person, he had every reason to be satisfied with this progress, and hoped for no further advance. He was of eminently sober mind, profoundly conscientious, and quite devoid of social ambition,—points of character which explained the long intimacy between him and Stephen Lord. Yet one habit he possessed which foreshadowed the intellectual composition of his son,—he ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... though naturally the effect of a mind devoid of all genuine resources, was dignified by herself with the appellation of sorrow: nor was this merely a screen to the world; unused to investigate her feelings or examine her heart, the general compassion she met for the loss of her husband, persuaded her that ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... had just been arrested in the neighborhood, and among them was a certain Yan Yost Cuyler, a queer, half-witted fellow not devoid of cunning, whom the Indians regarded with that mysterious awe with which fools and lunatics are wont to inspire them, as creatures possessed ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... Talamacco for Wora, near Cape Cumberland, a small station of Mr. D.'s, Mr. F.'s neighbour. What struck me most there were the wide taro fields, artificially irrigated. The system of irrigation must date from some earlier time, for it is difficult to believe that the population of the present day, devoid as they are of enterprise, should have laid it out, although they are glad enough to use it. The method employed is this: Across one of the many streams a dam of great boulders is laid, so that about the same amount of water ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... It resembles in its effects the harmattan of the north of Africa, and at the time the missionaries first settled in the country, thirty-five years ago, it came loaded with fine reddish-colored sand. Though no longer accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture as to cause the wood of the best seasoned English boxes and furniture to shrink, so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped. The verls of ramrods made in England are loosened, and on returning to Europe fasten again. This wind is in such ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... mist, brought with him only a pallid, lifeless twilight. It was not that his rays were impeded by cloud or haze; he had lost his power to shine. He hung there in the heavens like a great white shield, and looked down on us as rayless and powerless and devoid of life ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... in Washington though brief, was monotonous. Time hung heavily on our hands. And yet, it was not devoid of incident. There is, perhaps, little of this that is worth recounting, of those things, at least, that appeared on the surface. Had one been able to reach the penetralia—the inmost recesses—of official and military life, he might ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... venison was offered by the Indians to the first who landed from the ships. Some families lived wholly on venison for nine months of the year. In Virginia were vast numbers of red and fallow deer, the latter like those of England, except in the smaller number of branches of the antlers. They were so devoid of fear as to remain undisturbed by the approach of men; a writer of that day says: "Hard by the Fort two hundred in one herd have been usually observed." They were destroyed ruthlessly by a system of fire-hunting, in which tracts of forests were ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... disguised in drink, a young Jew, and myself completed the company, which was allowed to make itself free of a flagged and whitewashed hall, absolutely devoid of furniture, and smelling at once sour and stale. I am sorry and ashamed to remember that the Jew was the only person of my four fellows in misfortune who kept up any semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed, markedly from the others, not ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the previous deeds of man, (3) that the Sarvastivadins believed that everything existed. From the discussions found in the Kathavatthu also we may know the views of some of the schools on some points which are not always devoid of philosophical interest. But there is nothing to be found by which we can properly know the philosophy of these schools. It is quite possible however that these so-called schools of Buddhism were not so many different systems but only differed from one another on some points of dogma ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... feeble street-lamplight, she appeared, with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up and expanded his heart—devoid of such a mastering emotion before. He believed this was love! Perhaps it was love—real, true, indubitable love—but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling has fought long ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... discharge of this office he carried the same qualities of assiduous attention to duty, and of close devotion to details of professional progress, which characterized him when afloat; but, while far from devoid of importance, there is but little in this part of his story that needs mention as distinctive. Perhaps the most interesting incidents, seen in the light of afterwards, are that one of his earliest appointments to a ship was given to ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... It was devoid of anything in the way of furniture, and only a few rough boxes were scattered about. On a stone hearth were the gray and blackened embers of a fire, and in one corner was ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... as an epitome of Jackson's military character. "He was essentially," says Swinton, "an executive officer, and in that sphere he was incomparable; but he was devoid of high mental parts, and destitute of that power of planning a combination, and of that calm, broad, military intelligence which distinguished General Lee."* (* Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Others were imprisoned, scourged, and then put to death; while others again were tortured for days, weeks, and even months, with the most frightful torments. Again, some came to their martyrdom totally devoid of any previous virtue; some even loaded with sin, and unbaptized: but they received a baptism of blood—which made them pure, and deserved for them the high honors of heaven. Nevertheless, the glory ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... grows near the sea coast. Trunk 9-12 high, straight, many-branched, devoid of thorns. Leaves alternate, ovate, acutely serrate, glabrous, short-petioled. Flowers greenish-white, axillary, perfect. Calyx 5-toothed, inversely conical. Corolla, 5 petals, smaller than the teeth of ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... the road at the Bank of England, devoid equally of dignity and sensation, and then turned and looked at the Royal Exchange. A pigeon flew up from the ground and perched among the figures carved over the portico, and as he watched it, he read the inscription beneath ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... relief against the white-washed walls and bare flooring. The chairs and sofas are all cane-backed and cane-bottomed. Tables are not plentiful, and curtains are employed as adornments for some of the doors instead of the windows, which are also devoid of glass. An elegant gas chandelier is suspended from one of the cross-beams of the sloping roof, and a couple of unserviceable console tables, with their corresponding pier-glasses, complete the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... have said, was stern and uncompromising, but his nature was not entirely devoid of feeling, and as he heard the brave admission, his eye ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Infinite, Eternal Love—alone of all beings devoid of self-love! Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, for ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... comparatively innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers. If history does not teach this it teaches nothing, and as the rules of morality; whether for individuals or for nations, are simple and devoid of mystery; there is the less excuse for governments which habitually and cynically violate the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... transportation, other than the railroad, which is guarded at all dangerous points, yet is liable to interruption at any moment, by the tearing up of a rail by the disaffected inhabitants or a hired enemy. These regiments are composed of good materials, but devoid of company officers of experience, and have been put under thorough drill since being in camp. They are generally well clad, and provided for. Beyond Green River, the enemy has masked his forces, and it is ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... lowered by a line. But some of the gulls, of whose eggs we wanted specimens also, built so cleverly onto the actual faces of the cliffs, that we had to adopt the old plan of hanging over the edge and raising the eggs on the back of one's foot, which is an exploit not devoid of excitement. The chief difficulty was, however, with one of our number, who literally stuck on the top, being unable to descend, at least in a way compatible with comfort or safety. The upshot was that he had ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... wools go to the weaving they are treated to a beauty-bath in the dye-room. Hanks of wool and skeins of silk are but neutral matters, coming to the factory devoid of individuality, mere pale, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... are the psalms and hymns of the Scriptures; they are good thoughts presented in pleasing words. Some songs, though expressed in charming words, are worldly and carnal; while others presenting good thoughts are at the same time expressed in words inappropriate, unattractive and devoid ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... hills, between whose tops the summits of some distant blue mountains appeared. Our reliance on the information of the guides, which had been for some time shaken was now quite at an end, and we feared that the sea was still far distant. The flat country here is covered with grass, and is devoid of the large stones, so frequent in the barren grounds, but the ranges of trap hills which seem to intersect it at regular distances are quite barren. A few decayed stunted pines were standing on the borders of the river. In the evening we had the gratification ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... stomach, lungs, and kidney. But in a small animal the circulatory system is often unnecessary and fails. Breathing and excretion take place through the whole surface of the body. The body of the frog is devoid of scales, so that the blood is separated from the surrounding water only by a thin membrane, and it breathes and excretes to a certain extent in the ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... it was only by virtue of the old home associations and the inertia of indifference. Practically, it was without religion. The Reform Synagogue, though a centre of culture and prosperity, was cold, crude and devoid of magnetism. Half a century of stagnant reform and restless dissolution had left Orthodoxy still the Established Doxy. For, as Orthodoxy evaporated in England, it was replaced by fresh streams from Russia, to be evaporated and replaced in turn, England acting ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... recall two typical episodes. Neither had been remarkable, perhaps, for a boy devoid of fear or imagination; but I was one shrewdly influenced by both qualities. There was a roomy cabin under the Ariadne's starboard counter, which served the Fane family as a sort of sitting-room or day nursery. It had two circular port-holes, brass-rimmed, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... however, which exists at present to learn even the minutest particulars connected with Greece and Turkey, and the possibility that some of his hurried notices might not be altogether devoid of interest, have induced the author to submit them to the public attention. In so doing, he has preferred giving them in their original state, with all their defects, to moulding them into a connected narrative; his object being not to "make a book," but to offer ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... Senne and numerous canals, belonged to the rich, industrious citizens, the skilful artisans, and the common people; the upper, which occupied a hill, contained the great Brabant palace, the residence of the Emperor Charles. This edifice, which, though its exterior was almost wholly devoid of ornament, nevertheless presented a majestic aspect on account of its vast size, adjoined a splendid park, whose leafy groups of ancient trees merged into the forest of Soignies. Here also stood the palaces of the great ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... To those who take interest in the efforts of that age when Christianity, devoid at once of artistic knowledge and of mechanical, strove from among the material and moral wreck of Paganism to create for herself a school of Art which should, despite of all short-comings, be the exponent of those high feelings which inspired her mind, the Royal Chapel of Palermo offers a delightful ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... tawdriness and witch-like ugliness, and an underlying identity about the crowd of Polish, Russian, German, Dutch Jewesses, mutually apathetic, and pressing forwards. Some of them had infants at their bare breasts, who drowsed quietly with intervals of ululation. The women devoid of shawls had nothing around their necks to protect them from the cold, the dusky throats were exposed, and sometimes even the first hooks and eyes of the bodice were unnecessarily undone. The majority wore cheap earrings and black wigs with preternaturally polished hair; where there was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... comparison Gopher Prairie was a model of daring color, clever planning, and frenzied intellectuality. From her teacher-housemate she had a sardonic description of a Middlewestern railroad-division town, of the same size as Gopher Prairie but devoid of lawns and trees, a town where the tracks sprawled along the cinder-scabbed Main Street, and the railroad shops, dripping soot from eaves and doorway, rolled out ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... which was not devoid of dignity Cleggett drew from an upper waistcoat pocket a card and flung it on Wharton's desk. After which he stepped back and ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... stuff. And he never even mentions me, who gave him a top, when he should have had the whip. I will not pretend to understand him, for he always was beyond me. Dark and excitable, moody and capricious, haughty and sarcastic, and devoid of love for animals. You remember his pony, and what he did to it, and the little dog that crawled upon her stomach towards him. For your sake I would have put up with him, my dear, and striven to improve his nature, which ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... differs from man, so differ these souls' years. The most material life is not devoid of them; the story of the most spiritual is told in them. And it may chance that some, looking back, see the past cut ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Squires, a man of learning, and a general purchaser of new books,) who knew anything of them. Before I left Norfolk in the year 1760, the Ramblers were in high favour among persons of learning and good taste. Others there were, devoid of both, who said that the hard words in the Rambler were used by the authour to render his Dictionary indispensably necessary. BURNEY. We have notices of the Rambler in the Carter Corres:—'May 28, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... was going to answer the first. While not objecting to the nomination of Mr Bayley,[49] she wanted to point out the importance of, at a future vacancy, not to confine the selection to respectable parish priests, but to bear in mind that the Bench of Bishops should not be left devoid of some University men of acknowledged standing and theological learning; it would be seriously weakened if, in controversies on points of doctrine agitating the Church, no value were attached to the opinions at least of some of those who are to govern her. Lord Palmerston may now have an opportunity ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... world devoid of all knowledge and understanding. His mind, though at the beginning a blank, is a potential seedbed in which we may plant what teachings we will. The babe born into our home to-day can with equal ease ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... retain the idea of a holy God, and a holy law, in its knowledge. Therefore the knowledge continually diminishes; the light of natural reason and conscience grows dimmer and dimmer; and the soul sinks down in the mire of sin and sensuality, apparently devoid of all the higher ideas of God, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... his hand, entered the wigwam for the purpose of cooking them, while Hans Vanderbum himself went lounging on through the village, it being his purpose not to seem too anxious and hurried in his effort to gain his news regarding the captive. He was, despite his stupidity, not devoid ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... great fortress had been stripped of all its stores for the service of the Duke of Brunswick's army before Jena. Hohenlohe, therefore, was compelled to retreat towards the Oder. He was defeated in a variety of skirmishes; and at length, finding himself devoid of ammunition or provisions, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; 20,000 surrendered with the Prince. His rear, consisting of about 10,000, under the command of the celebrated General Blucher, were so far ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... chaste man has an unspeakable radiance. Brown eyes with lively pupils brightened the irregular features, which were surmounted by a broad forehead. His glance wielded a power which came of a gentleness that was not devoid of strength. The arches of his brow formed caverns shaded by huge gray eyebrows which alarmed no one. As most of his teeth were gone his mouth had lost its shape and his cheeks had fallen in; but this physical destruction was not without charm; even the wrinkles, full of pleasantness, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... his humor is almost always of the impatient, disgruntled, cynical type, Lenau reminds us not a little of Heine in his "Reisebilder" and some other prose works. Hoelderlin, on the other hand, may be said to have been utterly devoid of humor. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... property, considered so at least in that day—a spacious old house in Purchase Street together with a well-established malt business. For business, however, the young man, and not so young either, was without any aptitude whatever, being entirely devoid of the acquisitive instinct and neither possessing nor ever being able to acquire any skill in the fine art of inducing people to give for things more than it cost to make them. These deficiencies the younger Adams had already exhibited before the death of his father, from whom he ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... this point, so fundamental in his thought, Bergson turns to music. "Let us listen," he says, "to a melody, letting ourselves be swayed by it; do we not have the clear perception of a movement which is not attached to any mobility—of a change devoid of anything which changes? The change is self-sufficient, it is the thing itself. It avails nothing to say that it takes time, for it is indivisible; if the melody were to stop sooner, it would not be any longer the same volume of sound, but another, equally ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... the false shepherds are devoid of sympathy. "The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick." Selfishness always tends to benumbment. Humaneness is fostered by sacrifice. Our sympathetic chords are kept refined by chivalrous deeds. Drop the deeds ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... of the Hundred Years' War, which, indeed, was not yet entirely ended by the Peace of Tours, was the existence of bands of men trained to nothing but war and rapine, and devoid of any other means of subsistence than freebooting on the peasantry or travellers, whence they were known as routiers—highwaymen, and ecorcheurs—flayers. They were a fearful scourge to France in the early part of the reign of Charles VII., as, indeed, they had been ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was so simple, the evil so great and so glaringly evident that the only possible explanation of its continued existence was that the majority of his fellow workers were devoid of the power of reasoning. If these people were not mentally deficient they would of their own accord have swept this silly system away long ago. It would not have been necessary for anyone to teach them ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... North was still calling Hudson, and he persuaded the Muscovy Company to let him go off again. This he did in the following year. Only three of his former crew volunteered for service, and one of these was his son. But this expedition was devoid of result. The icy seas about Nova Zembla gave no hope of a passage in this direction, and, "being void of hope, the wind stormy and against us, much ice driving, we weighed and set ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... of the Dardanelles offered natural positions of enormous advantage to a defending force. On the Gallipoli side were a tangled mass of rocks and hills, almost devoid of vegetation except for stubby yellow bushes. In a few of the little valleys, stray clusters of olive trees relieved the monotony of the view. Heights rose upon heights and along the shores of the peninsula ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of the company, seated in a place of honour near the host, whose demure garb and gentle countenance seemed to indicate her as a Lady Pacifist, but denied all further identification. The mild, ecclesiastical features of a second guest, so entirely Christian in its expression as to be almost devoid of expression altogether, marked him at once as An Eminent Divine, but, while puzzlingly suggestive of an actual and well-known person, seemed to elude exact recognition. His accent, when he presently spoke, stamped him as British and his garb was that of the Established ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... was reasonable. Gaius said that it was unjust that the fault of children or slaves should be a source of loss to their parents or owners beyond their own bodies, and Ulpian reasoned that a fortiori this was true of things devoid of life, and therefore incapable of fault. /1/ This way of approaching the question seems to deal with the right of surrender as if it were a limitation of a liability incurred by a parent or owner, which would ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... have pointed out between the Biblical and the Talmudic commentaries. For the Biblical commentaries there had been no precedent, and if they possess the merit of originality, they also illustrate the errors of a man who tries his powers in a field of work devoid of all tradition. For the Talmudic commentaries, on the contrary, models were not lacking. The example of Gershom was sufficiently notable to evoke imitation, though his work was not so complete as to discourage it. We must not forget Rashi's predecessors because he eclipsed them. This would ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... worships. Should there be no belief in higher powers, true worship cannot continue. If it be continued in outward act, it has lost reality to the mind of the worshipper, and the result is an apparent or a sham religion, a worship devoid of one of the essential conditions of religion. This is true at every stage. But in the second place, these powers which are worshipped are "higher." Religion has respect, not to beings men regard as on a level with themselves or even beneath themselves, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... steadily ascending from its adamantine foundation, gave signs that it was to encircle the globe, some imagined him too prudent. Some thought him devoid of sensibility; a cold, colossal mass, intrenched in taciturnity, or enfolded in a mantle of dignity. The sequel disclosed that his complete mastery over passion, moving in harmony with his other powers and faculties, lent its essential aid towards his unrivalled ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... and profit among the participants in the joint undertaking can be assured, and harmony and successful working be rendered possible? Then, our best-informed Irish critics assured us that voluntary association for humdrum business purposes, devoid of some religious or political incentive, was alien to the Celtic temperament and that we should wear ourselves out crying in the wilderness. We were told that Irishmen can conspire but cannot combine. Economists assured us that even if we succeeded in getting farmers ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... stepped into a small vestibule, Hopalong close at his heels. Red hitched his holster and walked heavily into a room at his left. With the exception of a bench, a table, and a small altar, the room was devoid of furnishings, and the effect of these was lost in the dim light from the narrow windows. The peculiar, not unpleasant odor of burning incense and the dim light awakened a latent reverence and awe in Hopalong, and he ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... upward, but can grow without limit in all lateral directions. There is always a little more of him than his clothing can hold, and it spreads out in rolls about his collar. He has a yellowish face, which turns red easily. He has small, shiny eyes, he speaks atrocious English, he is as devoid of culture as a hairy Ainu, and he smells money and goes after it like a hog into ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... a poor passive creature, whose life was a mere round of almost mechanical action. This, to be sure, so far as regarded her own domestic duties, and in general every matter in which her husband's opinions and her own could clash, was perfectly true. She was naturally devoid, however, of neither heart nor intellect, when any of her fellow-creatures happened to come within the range of her husband's enmity or vengeance, as well as upon other occasions too, and it was well known that she ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Val d'Arno—in speaking of a famous colleague, declared, "Oh, X——! Why, X—— is merely a collector." The implication is, of course, that the one who loves art truly and knows it thoroughly will find full satisfaction in an enjoyment devoid alike of envy or the desire of possession He is to adore all beautiful objects with a Platonic fervour to which the idea of acquisition and domestication is repugnant. Before going into this lofty argument, I should perhaps explain the collection ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Tartar. Originally applied to certain tribes in Chinese Tartary, but here used for Mongolian. Look up etymology and trace relation of the word to Turk.—steppes. A Russian word indicating large areas more or less level and devoid of forests; these regions are often similar in character to the American prairie, and are ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... attach entire credit to the pleasing descriptions of the muses, we must admit, that the earliest ages of the world deserved the epithet of "golden" as exhibiting man devoid of those artificial wants which refinement and luxury have superinduced, and divested of those violent prejudices, that selfishness and that arrogance, which have filled the cup of human wo to the brim: we should see him inhabiting a tent of the simplest construction, furnishing himself with necessary ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... its strength with no maternal object in view and for the sole pleasure of work. I have come across several reeds stopped up with flock though containing nothing at all, or else furnished with one, two or three cells devoid of provisions or eggs. The ever-imperious instinct for gathering cotton and felting it into purses and heaping it into barricades persists, fruitlessly, until life fails. The Lizard's tail wriggles, curls and uncurls after it is detached from the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... of portrait-painting. He would dwell upon his subject lovingly, describing it in minute detail, and then forget all about it, while some one else went and painted it, and won money and fame thereby. Being of an easy temper, and entirely devoid of ambition, Mr. Clair was unable to sympathise with Eddie's impatience; but though not enthusiastic about art, he had a thorough knowledge of its technicalities, and Eddie might have learned much ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... after I saw a tall, thin, yellow-looking man coming up to the house. He had a narrow smooth face, and two very dark eyes that seemed to have been squeezed close up to his nose—a sharp nose—and a very projecting much-pointed chin. His face was as devoid of hair as a baby's, and taking him altogether, if Tom had not told me he was curious, I should have said at once that he was a man who ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... spot, some to congratulate the youth who slew the dog, others to gaze upon the horrible spectacle the animal presents as he lies there devoid ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... consists of an endless monologue, full of prophecy, and overladen with obscure mythology, these productions of a subtle dilettantism must have been extremely inanimate and untheatrical, and every way devoid of interest. The creative powers of the Greeks were, in this department, so completely exhausted, that they were forced to content themselves with the repetition of the works of their ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... as an expression of the true praise which should be accorded to them, it is, I think, inferior to these few words of Jouy's: Without women, the beginning of our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure; and the end, of consolation. The same thing is more feelingly expressed by ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... elements with rage resound, And fury blindly fans war's lurid flame,— When in the strife of party quarrel drowned, The voice of justice no regard can claim,— When crime is free, and impious hands are found The sacred to pollute, devoid of shame, And loose the anchor which the state maintains,— No subject there ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... poet—had as yet denied him, in love, the "baptism of sorrow" which has wrung immortal verse from the lips of frailer men. It may even be questioned whether all Browning's poetry of love's tragedy will live as long as a few stanzas of Musset's Nuits,—bare, unadorned verses, devoid of fancy or wit, but intense and penetrating as ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... branches like battledores, joined by their ends; the Epiphyllum and Phyllocactus, with flattened leaf-like stems; the columnar spiny Cereus, with deeply channelled stems and the appearance of immense candelabra. Totally devoid of leaves, and often skeleton-like in appearance, these plants have a strange look about them, which is suggestive of some fossilised forms of vegetation belonging to the past ages of the mastodon, the elk, and the dodo, rather than to ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... she knew it in spite of the difference in their years they were friends As William King said, she was lonely, and Sam's devotion was at least an interest. Besides, she really liked the boy; he amused her, and her empty days were so devoid of amusement! "I can't read novels all the time," she complained. In this very bread-and-butter sort of interest she had no thought of possible consequences to Sam. A certain pleasant indolence of mind made it easy not to think of consequences ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... protest, but he rushed on, giving her no opportunity. "Senorita, I am not a man devoid of culture. I am not a sailor or a trapper like those ruffians below. Nor a keeper of shops. Senorita, I will give up gambling and become a ranchero. If—" he ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... for it. Convinced that the welfare of her dominions depended on the security of the Protestants, this politic princess had never swerved from the principle of promoting every enterprise which had for its object the diminution of the Austrian power. Her successor was no less devoid of capacity to comprehend, than of vigour to execute, her views. While the economical Elizabeth spared not her treasures to support the Flemings against Spain, and Henry IV. against the League, James abandoned ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... those original Parisian characteristics which strike us so forcibly in the paupers whom Charlet was fond of representing, with his rare luck in observation,—coarse faces reeking of mud, hoarse voices, reddened and bulbous noses, mouths devoid of teeth but menacing; humble yet terrible beings, in whom a profound intelligence shining in their eyes seems like a contradiction. Some of these bold vagabonds have blotched, cracked, veiny skins; their foreheads are covered with wrinkles, their hair scanty and dirty, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... saw his eyes and learned more about him. She was frightened, but clear-seeing, and she was startled by the disappearance of all depth of light and shadow in his eyes. They showed surface only—a hard, bright surface, almost glazed, devoid of all expression save deadly seriousness. Bert's eyes showed madness. The eyes of the Irishmen were angry and serious, and yet not all serious. There was a wayward gleam in them, as if they enjoyed the fracas. But in Billy's eyes was no enjoyment. It was as ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... surprise, and the happy ride home, and many and many a joyful day after it—a month of complete happiness, of days devoid of care, and filled with perfect love and health and friendship, and made beautiful with the sunshine and airs ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... of his hopes, the foundation of his fears, he would find that it very frequently happens, those objects, or those ideas which move him most powerfully, either have no real existence, or are words devoid of meaning, which terror has conjured up to explain some sudden disaster; that they are often phantoms engendered by a disordered imagination, modified by ignorance; the effect of an ardent mind distracted by contending ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... organs, and only manifesting its vitality to ordinary observation by thrusting out and retracting from all parts of its surface long filamentous processes, which serve for arms and legs. Yet this amorphous particle, devoid of everything which in the higher animals we call organs, is capable of feeding, growing, and multiplying; of separating from the ocean the small proportion of carbonate of lime which is dissolved in sea-water; and of building up that substance into a skeleton ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... dame, devoid of fear: "What words, my son, have passed thy lips severe? Deep in my soul the trust shall lodge secured; With ribs of steel, and marble heart, immured. When Heaven, auspicious to thy right avow'd, Shall prostrate to thy sword the suitor-crowd, The deeds ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... vaults, approached by eight steps. One of them was 18 feet by 12, the other 12 feet by 7.5. They received little light through iron-barred windows. Above were two rooms. One was 18 feet by 10, the other 10 feet by 9. Adjoining these two rooms, devoid of fire-grate or windows, were two cells, each 5 feet by 6 feet high. The prisoners in this dreadful place, were herded together, unemployed in any way, and dependent entirely upon their friends for food. It was a disgrace to humanity. It was ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... homeward way, and she had quite broken down. She had cried terribly over it night and day—so much, indeed, that Margaret, who had been astonished at her strength of mind over her loss of fortune, now began to regard her as devoid of it altogether. For days and days she fretted, eating scarcely anything, caring for nothing. It was when Margaret was almost in despair about her that she grew better, and let herself be amused by the ordinary ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... of the elephant have no attachments to connect them with the pulp lodged in the cavity at their base, from which the peculiar modification of dentine, known as "ivory," is secreted[1]; and hence, by inference, that they would be devoid of sensation. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... agency in the effects of tea. It is present in teas that are devoid of essential oils—so far as the senses go—and it then still refreshes, stimulates, sustains, and even exhilarates, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... grater upon the fresh berry. In spite of the greatest care numbers of the beans in a sample, on close examination, will be found scratched or pecked; and when the closest attention is not paid, or the person superintending the process is devoid of mechanical skill, the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... written to Lestrade asking him to supply us with the details which are now wanting, and which he will only get after he had secured his man. That he may be safely trusted to do, for although he is absolutely devoid of reason, he is as tenacious as a bulldog when he once understands what he has to do, and indeed, it is just this tenacity which has brought him to ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seemed a mystery; to McClellan—a vain man, full of himself—the President who would merely smile at this bullyragging on the part of one of his subordinates seemed indeed a spiritless creature. Meanwhile Lincoln, apparently devoid of sensibility, was seeking during the anxious months of 1862, in one case, merely how to keep his petulant Secretary in harness; in the other, how to quicken ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... eyes, devoid of all hardness now, caressed Michael and disturbed his nerves. The woman was very beautiful, and he was conscious that her mind was set on her desire to win him. He knew that it was not love; he knew that their intimacy was not one of wholesome friendship. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... flowers and foliage. She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of hope. She turned back into the room and began to walk to and fro down its whole length, without stopping, without resting. She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin |
