"Easiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a mountain land, but its characteristic features, as distinguished from Judea, are the easiness of approach through open gateways among the hills, and the fertility of the broad vales and level plains which lie between them. The Kingdom of Israel, in its brief season of prosperity, was richer, more luxurious, and weaker than the Kingdom ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... ALMORAN, he thought, was too volatile and warm; but he suspected, that HAMET would sink into inactivity for want of spirit: he feared alike ALMORAN'S love of enterprize, and HAMET'S fondness for retirement: he observed, in HAMET, a placid easiness of temper, which might suffer the reins of government to lie too loose; and, in ALMORAN, a quickness of resentment, and jealousy of command, which might hold them too tight: he hoped, therefore, that by leaving them ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... room with an easy gracefulness which would at once command the respect of any lunatic, for easiness is one of the qualities mad people most respect. She walked over to him, smiling pleasantly, and held ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Perhaps he was repenting his rash outpourings of the previous day; perhaps only trying, in his clumsy way, to conform to Selden's counsel to behave "as usual." Such instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the photographer's behest to "look natural"; and in a creature as unconscious as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to maintain a pose was sure to result in ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... was akin to his generosity; he gave money (or rather allowed it to be taken) freely when he had it, from indolence and easiness of temper; he hated the sight of distress in any individual, because it occasioned trouble, and was, in short, a bore. He therefore made haste to relieve his sister's alarm by assuring her that these were mere ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... thought proper" five circumstances would explain "a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counter balance a great one in others." These in his words were: "First, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... monster, custom, who all sense doth eat Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this: That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock, or livery, That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night: And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy: For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either curb the devil, or throw him ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... not faithful. The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they do live well abroad; they do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one American to the death, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... consecrated to the paying off the young gentleman's obligations. At this price, many a worthy youth and respected reader would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more subject to mistake and disappointment than anticipated judgment concerning the easiness or difficulty of any undertaking, whether we form our opinion from the performances of others, or from abstracted contemplation of the thing to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Pope tells us himself, cost much attention and labour; and, from the easiness that appears in it, one would be ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... made, both by the senators and their wives, into the grounds upon which it is desired; and even when they are satisfied concerning the reasons of it, they go on but slowly, for they imagine that too great easiness in granting leave for new marriages would very much shake the kindness of married people. They punish severely those that defile the marriage-bed. If both parties are married they are divorced, and the injured persons may marry one another, or whom they please; ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... regular, and of a manly beauty. As his soul was well lodged, so its rational and animal faculties excelled in a high degree. He had a quick and fruitful invention, a deep penetration, and a large compass of thought, with singular dexterity and easiness in making his thoughts to be understood. He was master of most parts of polite learning, especially the classical authors, both Greek and Latin; understood the French, Italian, and Spanish languages, and spoke the first fluently, and the other two ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... greatest benefit of all, according to Dryden, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; he is tempted to say many things which might be better omitted, or at least shut up in fewer words. But when the difficulty of artificial rhyming is interposed; where the poet commonly confines his verse to his couplet, and must continue that verse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... is explicitly set forth. "Lazy Lawrence," we are told, illustrates the advantages of industry, and demonstrates that people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed; while "Tarleton" represents "the danger and the folly of that weakness of mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pass for good nature"; "The False Key" points out some of the evils to which a well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy. For imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it out-run the judgment. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; he is tempted to say many things, which might better be omitted, or at least shut up in fewer words; but when the difficulty of artful rhyming is interposed, where the poet commonly confines ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Phidippus in good time! I'll learn from him The cause of this.— (Going up to him.) Phidippus, though I own Myself indulgent to my family, Yet my complacency and easiness Runs not to that extreme, that my good-nature Corrupts their morals. Would you act like me, 'Twould be of service to both families. But you, I see, are ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... does well under gilding-work, and takes black equal with the pear-tree: Both fir, and especially pine, succeed well in carving, as for capitals, festoons, nay, statues, especially being gilded, because of the easiness of the grain, to work and take the tool every way; and he that shall examine it nearly, will find that famous image of the B. Virgin at Loretto, (reported to be carved by the hands of St. Luke) to be made of fir, as the grain easily discovers it: The torulus (as Vitruvius terms it) and heart ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... and told him. "I'm going to buy a rhinoceros." But for all the easiness of it her tongue nearly tripped. "And ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... My easiness to give credit to what I heard in the course of our tour was too great. Dr Johnson's peculiar accuracy of investigation detected much traditional fiction, and many gross mistakes. It is not to be wondered at, that he was provoked by people carelessly telling ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... intricate easiness, this obvious paradox, this sub-division and con-addition of a One, must have taken place, so soon as ever eternal benevolence found itself alone; that is, in eternity, and not in any imaginable time. So then, the Being or Beings ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... afforded a communication by water-carriage, not only between all the great towns, but between all the considerable villages, and even to many farm-houses in the country, nearly in the same manner as the Rhine and the Maese do in Holland at present. The extent and easiness of this inland navigation was probably one of the principal causes of the early improvement ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... full-court ceremonial, and with the serene, easy smile of a courtier. To die, to meet death was now a distinction, an honor for which each almost envied the other. When at ten o'clock in the morning the gathering took place in the large room, the conversation was of the most cheerful and unaffected easiness; they joked, they laughed, they speculated on politics, though it was well known that in a few minutes yonder door was to open, and that on its threshold the jailer would appear, list in hand; that from this list he would call out with his loud, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... pedlar's license—perhaps one of the most dangerous permits ever allowed by a government, and which has been the cause of much of the ill-will and discontent fomented among the lower classes. Latterly, the cheapness of printing and easiness of circulation have rendered the profession of less consequence: twenty years ago the village ale-houses were not provided with newspapers; it was an expense never thought of; the men went to drink their beer and talk ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... very humble student of physiology, but as a parish priest of thirty years' standing, I have seen so much unnecessary misery; and I have in other cases seen similar misery so simply avoided; that the sense of the vastness of the evil is intensified by my sense of the easiness of the cure. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... injury to her that Mrs Lookaloft should be successful in her hunt after such honours. She had abused and ridiculed Mrs Lookaloft to the extent of her little power. She had pushed against her going out of church, and had excused herself with all the easiness of equality. 'Ah, dame, I axes pardon; but you be grown so mortal stout these time.' She had inquired with apparent cordiality of Mr Lookaloft after 'the woman that owned him,' and had, as she thought, been on the whole able ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... had now taken was of comparatively easy ascent; and it was this, perhaps, that had tempted Wilder to take it. But like most things within the moral and physical world, its easiness proved a delusion. They had not gone twenty paces further up when the sloping chasm terminated. It debouched on a little platform, covered with large loose stones, and there rested after having fallen from the cliff above. But at a single glance they saw that ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... intact his own life. Only the simple, superficial fact of living persisted. He was still healthy. He lived. Therefore he would fill each moment. That had always been his creed. It was not instinctive easiness: it was the inevitable outcome of his nature. When he was in the absolute privacy of his own life, he did as he pleased, unscrupulous, without any ulterior thought. He believed neither in good nor evil. Each moment was like a separate little island, isolated from time, and blank, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... do him good rather than harm. He was a kindly, good-tempered, easy-going young fellow, a little deficient, perhaps, in strength of will, but very generally liked, and with the making of a fine man about him; and yet he was likely, from sheer easiness of temper and disinclination to settle down to anything, to drift with the stream till he ruined his life. That is how I read his character from what I have heard of him, and that being so, I think this complete break in his life may ultimately be ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... easiness of my disposition, I went to bed for a week, after receiving this letter. During the whole of such time, London was bereft of the usual fruits of my labour. When I resumed it, I found that Henrietta was married to the artist ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... of the year 1635, the Count de Linares resigned the government of India to Pedro de Silva, who was usually called Mole or the Soft, on account of the easiness of his disposition. He disliked the government so much, that he was often heard to exclaim, "God forgive those who appointed me viceroy, as I am not fit for the office." He held the government, however, nearly four years, and died in the end of June ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... which I did not like the tone. When I had to provide a curate for my new church at Littlemore, I engaged a friend, by no fault of his, who, before he entered into his charge, preached a sermon, either in depreciation of baptismal regeneration, or of Dr. Pusey's view of it. I showed a similar easiness as to the editors who helped me in the separate volumes of Fleury's Church History; they were able, learned, and excellent men, but their after history has shown, how little my choice of them was influenced by any ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Sir, what could 'see, (speak boldly, and speak truly, shame the Devil,) in my behaviour of such easiness that you durst venture to ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... inadequate, and useless lives in the fullest sense of the word. How can those who preach to the soul hope to be heard by those who do not even make the best of their bodies? but alas, the convenience and easiness, or pleasure, of the present moment is allowed to become the cause of an endless series of terrible effects, which go down into the distance of the future, multiplying ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and said a few courteous words, but he had soon gone away. At first she wondered if it was because of Nigel, who at the time was making himself rather ostentatiously amiable to her. Afterwards she saw him dancing, talking, being presented to people, being, with a tactful easiness, taken care of by his host and hostess, and Lord Westholt. She was struck by the graceful magic with which this tactful ease surrounded him without any obviousness. The Dunholms had given a lead, as Lady Alanby had said, and the rest were following it and ignoring intervals ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which, low as it was, was slippery and unsympathetic. Davies, in a loose canvas shirt, with the sleeves tucked up, and flannels rolled up to the knee, hung over me with a rope's end, and chatted unconcernedly about the easiness of the job when you know how, adjuring me to mind the paint, and talking about an accommodation ladder he had once had, but had thrown overboard because it was so horribly in the way. When I arrived, my knees and elbows ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... personal concerns, in everything except his basal ideas, he was pliable to a degree. He could be talked into almost any concession of interest. He once told Herndon he thanked God that he had not been born a woman because he found it so hard to refuse any request made of him. His outer easiness, his lack of self-assertion,—as most people understand self-assertion,—persist in an amusing group of anecdotes of the circuit. Though he was a favorite with the company at every tavern, those little demagogues, the tavern-keepers, quickly found out that he could ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Chancery. Suitors did there what people did everywhere else; they acknowledged by a present the trouble they gave, or the benefit they gained. It may be that Bacon's known difficulties about money, his expensive ways and love of pomp, his easiness of nature, his lax discipline over his servants, encouraged this profuseness of giving. And Bacon let it be. He asked no questions; he knew that he worked hard and well; he knew that it could go on without affecting his ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the advantages of the situation, now followed their comrade's example, coming out from their burrows and squatting on the turf of the sloping glade in a semicircle opposite the children; while, the more poor Puck tried to express his indignation at their free-and- easiness, the more nonchalantly they regarded him, sitting up comfortably and combing away, enjoying themselves as thoroughly as if there was no such thing as a dog in existence, Puck's faint coughing bark being utterly thrown away ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... here alone, the baggage not having yet been heard from. Mr. G., being found in London, confessed that he delayed sending it by the proper train. In short, Mr. G. is what is called an easy man, and one whose easiness makes everybody else un easy. So because he was easy and thought it was no great matter, and things would turn out well enough, without any great care, we have had ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the principles of judgment, and the ballancing of opposite causes be the same as at the very beginning; yet their influence on the imagination, and the vigour they add to, or diminish from the thought, is by no means equal. Where the mind reaches not its objects with easiness and facility, the same principles have not the same effect as in a more natural conception of the ideas; nor does the imagination feel a sensation, which holds any proportion with that which arises from its common ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... this my latest work, which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen, judged, and to my crown, approved; wherein I have laboured for their instruction and amendment, to reduce not only the ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last, the doctrine, which is the principal end of poesie, to inform men in the best reason of living. And though my catastrophe may, in the strict rigour of comic law, meet with censure, as turning back to my promise; I desire the learned and charitable critic, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... of body and sweetness of flesh, their horns a yard between the tips.' Cows had doubled in price in his time, from 26s. 8d. to 53s. 4d. 'Our horses are high, but not of such huge greatness as in other places,' yet remarkable for the easiness of their pace; and 5 or 6 cart-horses will draw 30 cwt. a long journey, and a pack-horse will carry 4 cwt. without any hurt,—a statement which is one more proof of the poorness of the roads. The chief horse fairs were at 'Ripon, Newportpond, Wolfpit, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... far more consonant with reason, but scarcely less affecting when considered at large, was the execution of Samuel, a black man: he was transported for theft, from the Cape of Good Hope, and was remarkable for the quiet easiness of his disposition. For some violation of penal discipline he was ordered to be flogged: when approaching the triangle, he attacked one of the officers in attendance, who was slightly wounded; for this he forfeited his life—justly, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... were hardly of a kind to please the two ladies: he would have shone more brightly in Peter Van Degen's set than in his wife's. But neither Clare nor Mrs. Fairford had expected a man of conventional cut, and Moffatt's loud easiness was obviously less disturbing to them than to their hostess. Undine felt only his crudeness, and the tacit criticism passed on it by the mere presence of such men as her husband and Bowen; but Mrs. Fairford' seemed to enjoy provoking him to fresh excesses of slang and hyperbole. Gradually ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... entered Washington. The Capitol, White House, and several public buildings were burned by them; the navy yard and vessels by the American authorities. Ross, accustomed to European warfare, did not feel Drummond's easiness concerning his position, which technically was most insecure as regarded his communications. On the evening of June 25 he withdrew rapidly, and on that of the 26th regained touch with the fleet in the Patuxent, after a separation of only four ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... foundation for establishing the most profitable trade of any we have. And considering the commanding situation of our colonies along the seacoast, the great convenience of navigable rivers in all of them, the cheapness of land, and the easiness of raising provisions, great numbers of people would transport themselves thither to settle upon such improvements. Now, as people have been filled with fears that the colonies, if encouraged to raise rough materials, would set up for ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... now take a summary View of the Inhabitants of Ireland, in their respective Ranks: And to begin with the Peers: Are they not such Personages, as, by their Munificence, Affability of Manners, Easiness of Comportment, Propriety of Appearance, and Generosity in dealing, reflect true Honour on Nobility; and, Reality, derive their superior Rank, as much from the Pre-eminence of their Virtues, as from the constitutional Dignity of ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... allowed by the bird to take the water and sprinkle the stone-changed folk, and call them to life again, just as they were before." This the king's children thought no hard task. The brothers, however, were the most outspoken about the easiness of the thing. They thanked the old man much for his story and took leave ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and Labienus tell How twice in Parthian plains their legions fell, Since Rome hath been so jealous of her fame, That few know Pacorus, or Monaeses name. And 'tis much safer to leave out than add * * * * * Abstruse and mystic thoughts, you must express, } With painful care, but seeming easiness; } For truth shines brightest, thro' the plainest dress, } Your author always will the best advise, Fall when he falls, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... their clothes, and holding mysterious consultations regarding etiquette and entertainments, just as if royalty were about to drop down in similar fashion on Bude or Tobermory. There were amusing attempts to bring about a practical reconciliation between the free- and-easiness of Republican notions and the respect due to a sovereign who reigns by "the will of the people" as well as by "the grace of God," but eventually the tact of the king made ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... lamp, took off his coat, turned up the bicycle, and set speedily to work. Miriam came with the bowl of water and stood close to him, watching. She loved to see his hands doing things. He was slim and vigorous, with a kind of easiness even in his most hasty movements. And busy at his work he seemed to forget her. She loved him absorbedly. She wanted to run her hands down his sides. She always wanted to embrace him, so long as ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... chief nervous system, by means of both of which qualities we keep our equilibrium. The more massive cerebellum with woman, together with the comparative shortness and tenderness of her bones, explains her comparative quickness and easiness of motion, her quicker and higher co-ordination of the muscles for their functions, and her knack of quickly sizing up a situation, and finding her way in the midst of a confusion of associations. Woman is furthermore aided in the latter faculty through ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... islanders, and the less incommoded either on board or when on shore, by the natives following them as at first. Into every house they wished to enter, they always experienced a kind reception. The Otaheitans, we are told, have the most perfect easiness of manner, equally free from forwardness and formality; and that 'there is a candour and sincerity about them that is quite delightful.' When they offer refreshments, for instance, if they are not accepted, they do not think of offering them a second ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... and that shall lend a hand of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either curb the devil, or throw ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... with T. Cholmondeley Frink as a neighbor, as a borrower of lawn-mowers and monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was also a Famous Poet and a distinguished advertising-agent; that behind his easiness were sultry literary mysteries which they could not penetrate. But to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... induced thirst, which, being allayed by a couple of pints at Faircloth's Inn, induced desire for a certain easiness of costume. His waistcoat hung open—he had laid aside his coat—displaying a broad stitched leather belt that covered the junction between buff corduroy trousers and blue-checked cotton shirt. On his head, a high thimble-crowned ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... it were but the experiment of an afternoon, in the out-of-doors. Like all fine artists, she has brushed away from sight all aspects of labour, and presents you, with astounding ease, the apparent easiness of the thing. She is powerfully built, and her muscles are master of coordination, such as would be the envy of multitudes of men, and with all this power, she is as simple in her manner and appearance as is the young debutante at her coming out function. You ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the same material might be used in the most delightfully amusing way as the basis of a poem far Punch. Everybody knows the kind of verses that are contributed to Punch by Sir Owen Seaman and Mr. Charles Graves and men of that sort. And everybody has been struck, as I have, by the extraordinary easiness of the performance. All that one needs is to get some odd little incident, such as the revolt of the Sultan of Kowfat, make up an amusing title, and then string the verses together in such a way as to make rhymes with all the odd words that come into the narrative. In fact, the ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... return and give her one more chance. She would just have suited him. And as for her,—would it not be a heaven on earth for her if she would only consent to forget that foolish, unmeaning little episode. Could Clary have forgotten the episode, and been content to care little or nothing for that easiness of feeling which made our Ralph what he was, she might, probably, have been happy as the mistress of the Priory. But she would not have forgotten, and would not have been content. She had made up her little heart stoutly that Ralph the heir should ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... economy, that generally wages, salaries, remunerations of all kinds, are in pretty exact relation to the value of the services performed—this value being of course determined, in a great degree, by the easiness or difficulty of the work, the commonness or rarity of the faculties and skill required for it, the risk of non-success in the profession, and so forth. Many a good fellow who feels that his income is inconveniently small, and wonders why it is not greater, might have the mystery ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... may be as well to state here that—contrary to my usual custom of working from the lowest to the highest animal form—I have written upon birds out of their proper natural order; the reason being that birds are always selected because of easiness of treatment for the student's first lessons in taxidermy, before his teacher allows him to "try his 'prentice hand" on the more difficult branches of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... writers, I say, have tried to turn the Fabre episode into something extremely disgraceful to Mme. d'Albany. Massimo d'Azeglio, partly out of hatred to the Countess, who was rather severe and acrimonious upon his youthful free-and-easiness, partly out of a desire to amuse his readers, has introduced into his autobiography an anecdote told him by Mme. de Prie (the niece of Alfieri's famous Turin mistress, and the lady who took it upon herself to send him a priest without consulting the Countess), to the effect that she had watched ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... poetic vanity of Voltaire must be taken into full account, when he thus talks of the easiness of producing a (modern) Sophocles, or an Euripides; perhaps he thought his own tragedies equal, or superior to theirs; and for what follows, the French national prejudice in favour of their own dramatic writers, and which is far more laudable than the English indifference to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... a freedom from constraint, a simplicity, and a directness, which are the capital traits of a good style. Of Shakspeare it is said, in the preface to the first edition of his works: 'His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... language of it as if he could not have arrived to the knowledge of it but by his own industry. But the Holy Spirit assisted him after an extraordinary manner, on those occasions, as we have formerly observed. And we may say, that the easiness wherewith he learnt so many tongues, was almost equivalent to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... direction. He too frequently resorts to vulgar gaudiness. For example, there is in one place a certain description of an alleged practice of Addison's. Swift had said of Esther Johnson that 'whether from easiness in general, or from her indifference to persons, or from her despair of mending them, or from the same practice which she most liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot determine; but when she saw any of the company very warm in a wrong ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... His articles on the currency and corn-laws were full of racy hits and striking points—his criticisms on the existing state of art worthy of the artist's best attention. The temper of Mr Planner was such as might be expected from such a mass of arrogance and conceit. A man who, in the easiness of his heart, would listen humbly, patiently, approvingly to Mr Planner, must pronounce the ardent character an angel. The remarkable docility which Mr Planner evinced under such treatment, was only to be equalled by the volubility and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the person in command of the constabulary was not only unfit for his duty, but ignorant of anything like military discipline or manoeuvring. He must have completely lost his presence of mind, otherwise his easiness of belief and simplicity are utterly unaccountable. As it was, in two or three minutes after the hollow assurances of good-will uttered by those whom he saw bristling at the same time with vengeance about him, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... that he flinched. "Yes. Pierre did rightly love me. He gave me his best as he knew it. Oh, he was ignorant, a savage, I guess, like I was. But he did rightly love me. He was not trying to break my spirit nor to tame me, nor to amuse himself with me, nor to give me a longing for beauty and easiness and then leave me to fight through my own rough life without any of those things. Did you really think, Prosper Gael, that I would stay in your house and live on your money till you should be caring to come back to me—if ever you would care? ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... almost as much charm for a young man in a first flirtation as there is in first love. The certainty of success is a source of happiness to which men do not confess, and all the charm of certain women lies in this. The desire of conquest springs no less from the easiness than from the difficulty of triumph, and every passion is excited or sustained by one or the other of these two motives which divide the empire of love. Perhaps this division is one result of the great question of temperaments; ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While I—good Heaven!—have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... that look easy and are easy, puzzles that look easy and are difficult, puzzles that look difficult and are difficult, and puzzles that look difficult and are easy, and in each class we may of course have degrees of easiness and difficulty. But it does not follow that a puzzle that has conditions that are easily understood by the merest child is in itself easy. Such a puzzle might, however, look simple to the uninformed, and only prove to be a very hard nut to him after ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... think it is possible to overrate the hardness of the first close struggle with any natural passion," said my aunt earnestly; "but indeed the easiness of after-steps is often quite beyond one's expectations. The free gift of grace with which GOD perfects our efforts may come in many ways, but I am convinced that it is the common experience of Christians ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... things only be observed: (1) That the nation under the Second Temple was given to magical arts beyond measure; and (2) that it was given to an easiness of believing all manner of delusions beyond measure... It is a disputable case whether the Jewish nation were more mad with superstition in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious arts: (1) There was not a people upon earth that studied ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Dr. Johnson and these cudgellings would have been too severe a chastisement for the offences, which, after all, argued no heavier delinquency than a levity in examining his chance authorities, and a constitutional credulity. Dr. Johnson's easiness of faith for the supernatural, the grossness of his superstition in relation to such miserable impostures as the Cock Lane ghost, and its scratchings on the wall, flowed from the same source; and his conversation furnishes many proofs that he had ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... slipped away beneath the even beat of the steadily cantering hoofs. The creek, forded slowly, sank into the distance behind them; before, the line of timber grew darker and more definite. Jim's pony was not far inferior to Bobs in pace and easiness, and his swinging canter required no effort to sit, but a great weariness began to steal over his rider. Dick Stephenson, glancing at her frequently, saw the pallor creeping upon the ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... Bookes, holding ever a gentle hand over me, concerning other regular studies. For, the chiefest thing my father required at their hands (unto whose charge he had committed me) was a kinde of well conditioned mildnesse and facilitie of complexion. [Footnote: Easiness of disposition.] And, to say truth, mine had no other fault, but a certaine dull languishing and heavie slothfullnesse. The danger was not, I should doe ill, but ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... his Indolence, and the weak and wicked Ministration of Jeflur had alienated, he caused it to be declared, that he was resolved to head his Army in Person: Surprising Turn, fortunate Instance of the Easiness and Loyalty of his Subjects. All the King's Deviations, though of such bad Consequences, were instantly forgotten. He had now been on the Throne near thirty Years, yet they made this generous Change the AEra of his Inauguration. ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... Chancery for her sterling qualities. Parson Frank, on the other hand, though a thorough gentleman, was as ruddy and weather-browned as any farmer, and—albeit his features were handsome and refined, and his figure well poised and athletic—he lost something of dignity by easiness of gesture and carelessness of dress, except on state occasions, when he discarded his beloved rusty old coat and Oxford mixture trousers, and came out magnificent enough for an archdeacon, if not an archbishop; while ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with him on his too great openness and easiness to fall into Mrs. Jewkes's snares: told him my apprehensions of foul play; and gave briefly the reasons which moved me: begged to know what he had said; and intimated, that I thought there was the ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... The versus politici, those common prostitutes, as, from their easiness, they are styled by Leo Allatius, usually consist of fifteen syllables. They are used by Constantine Manasses, John Tzetzes, &c. (Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. iii. p. i. p. 345, 346, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Two dangers, they tell us, have to be avoided. In compiling a Liturgy from Ancient Sources, one danger will be that of "too much stiffness in refusing" new matter—i.e. letting a love of permanence spoil progress: another, and opposite danger, will be "too much easiness in admitting" any variation—i.e. letting a love of progress spoil permanence. They will try to avoid both dangers. "It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England to keep the mean between the two extremes," when ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... air of courtly politeness, by alleging a business appointment. Very elegantly dressed, tightly buttoned up in clothes of an English cut, he had the carriage of a man about town, relieved by the retention of a touch of artistic free-and-easiness. Immediately on sitting down he grasped his neighbour's hand, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel. Sec. 110. Thus, whether a family by degrees grew up into a common-wealth, and the fatherly authority being continued on to the elder son, every one in his turn growing up under it, tacitly submitted to it, and the easiness and equality of it not offending any one, every one acquiesced, till time seemed to have confirmed it, and settled a right of succession by prescription: or whether several families, or the descendants of several families, whom chance, ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... had taken a fresh step in the shameful irregularity of his life; on the 15th of April, 1764, Madame de Pompadour had died, at the age of forty-two, of heart disease. As frivolous as she was deeply depraved and baseminded in her calculating easiness of virtue, she had more ambition than comported with her mental calibre or her force of character; she had taken it into her head to govern, by turns promoting and overthrowing the ministers, herself proffering advice to the king, sometimes to good purpose, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was a gem of his kind, and even the nearness of a tragedy and the rigidness of the rules that governed his daily life had not crushed out of him that little touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin. Thanks to the easiness of my manner and his own ready stumbling into the trap I had not set for him, he now looked upon me as nothing more than a love-sick youth with no eyes for anyone or anything save the girl who occupied ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... The easiness of his victory appeared to prove of itself that the hearts of the people were with him; and the parliament that he hastened to summon confirmed by law the revolution achieved by a bloodless sword. [Lingard, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as they are full of very idle easiness, sith there is nothing of so sacred a majesty, but that an itching tongue may rub itself upon it: so deserve they no other answer, but instead of laughing at the jest, to laugh at the jester. We know a playing ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... from the troughs and ran—anywhere and everywhere—like spilled quicksilver. It was a most extraordinary spectacle, for men and horses were in all stages of easiness, and the carbine-buckets flopping against their sides urged the horses on. Men were shouting and cursing, and trying to pull clear of the Band which was being chased by the Drum-Horse whose rider had fallen forward and seemed to be ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... without more adoe. Then fully, so as others may thoroughly conceiue us. And last of all, handsomely, that those to whom we speak may take pleasure in hearing us: So that whateuer Tongue will gain the Race of Perfection must run upon these four wheeles, SIGNIFICANCIE, EASINESS, COPIOUSNESS, and SWEETNESS; of which the two former import a Necessitie, the two latter a Delight. Now if I can proove, That our English Language for all or the most part is comparable if not preferable to any other in use at this day, I hope ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... her a look full of surprise, and touched with a curious sort of gratification; curious to her, that is, since she could not know how a well-known Labor Commissioner had taxed this man with "easiness." ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wanderer; but now at last the destined road was clear; I was no longer astray; I was no longer inventing duties and acts for myself, but I had in very truth a note of the way. It was not the path I should have chosen in my blindness and easiness. But there could no longer be any doubt about it. How the false ambitions, the comfortable schemes, the trivial hopes melted away for me in that serene certainty! What I had pursued before was the phantom of delight; and though I still desired ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... carefully matched, were new and glittered in the sun. Trying to seem grave and sedate he pursed up his face and puffed out his cheeks, and he smelt of spirits. Probably he had visited the refreshment bar at every station. And again there was a free-and-easiness about the man—something superfluous and out of place. Then Anisim had lunch and drank tea with the old man, and Varvara turned the new coins over in her hand and inquired about villagers who had gone to live ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... great Qualities of Caesar: neither his Military Virtue, nor Science, nor his matchless Renown, nor his unparallell'd Victories, his unwearied Bounty to his Friends, nor his Godlike Clemency to his Foes, his Beneficence, his Munificence, his Easiness of Access to the meanest Roman, his indefatigable Labours, his incredible Celerity, the Plausibleness if not Justness of his Ambition, that knowing himself to be the greatest of Men, he only sought occasion to make the World confess him such. In short, if Brutus, after ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... than coldly towards his knapsack, when he is half in a mind to throw it bodily over the hedge and, like Christian on a similar occasion, "give three leaps and go on singing." And yet it soon acquires a property of easiness. It becomes magnetic; the spirit of the journey enters into it. And no sooner have you passed the straps over your shoulder than the lees of sleep are cleared from you, you pull yourself together with a shake, and fall at once into ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same time, that it will be to a very little purpose for you to frequent good company, if you do not conform to, and learn their manners; if you are not attentive to please, and well bred, with the easiness of a man of fashion. As you must attend to your manners, so you must not neglect your person; but take care to be very clean, well dressed, and genteel; to have no disagreeable attitudes, nor awkward tricks; which many ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... copiousness, and perspicuity of Cicero; and all the elegance and accuracy of composition which is admired in Isocrates, with much greater variety and freedom. According as his subject requires, he has the easiness and sweetness of Xenophon, and the pathetic force and rapid simplicity of Demosthenes. His judgment is exquisite, his images noble, his morality sensible and beautiful. No man understands human nature ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... generously yielded it. And indeed he could not have bestowed it more properly; for Tommy had the best ear for music I ever knew; and in less than a twelvemonth could far outdo me, his instructor, in softness and easiness of finger; and was also master of every tune I knew, which were neither inconsiderable in number, nor ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... this opinion of the easiness of secrecy, they seem to have considered it as opposed, not to treachery, but loquacity, and to have conceived the man, whom they thus censured, not frighted by menaces to reveal, or bribed by promises to betray, but incited by the mere ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore |
