"Inordinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desperate; glaring, flagrant, stark staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c 642; unsurpassed &c (supreme) 33; complete &c 52. august, grand, dignified, sublime, majestic &c (repute) 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, excessive, extravagant, exorbitant, outrageous, preposterous, unconscionable, swinging, monstrous, overgrown; towering, stupendous, prodigious, astonishing, incredible; marvelous &c 870. unlimited &c (infinite) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... without moderation, and God moderately. For love toward God should be without measure, and that for the creature should be measured by that for God, and not by the measure of one's own consolations, either spiritual or temporal. So do, then, that thou lovest everything in God, and correct every inordinate affection. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... bitter animosity he excited.[87] Both seem to be the work of several persons, one of whom, there can be little doubt, was Cotton Mather; for it is not easy to mistake the mingled flippancy and pedantry of his style. He bore the governor a grudge, for Dudley had chafed him in his inordinate vanity and love ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... away "distracting noises," and thou wilt hear Him. First, however, find the image of sin, which thou bearest about with thee. It is no bodily thing, no real thing—only a lack of light and love. It is a false, inordinate love of thyself, from whence flow all the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... shalt find the Cross; and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou desirest to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which evil being once overcome and subdued, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a good story of a rebuke that Richardson's amiable but inordinate egotism on one occasion received, much to Johnson's secret delight, which is certainly worth quoting before we dismiss the old printer altogether. "One day," says Boswell, "at his country house at Northend, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... discovered by practise that wood has a grain which sets bounds to the possibilities of technique. You have yet to learn that it has also an inordinate capacity for swallowing light. Now, as it is by the aid of light that we see the results of our labor, it follows that we should do everything in our power to take full advantage of that helpful agency. It is obvious that work which can not be seen is only so much labor thrown ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... a fiftieth of an inch in length. The creature is unable to make use of them, not only in the liquid honey upon which it lives, but even on a solid surface. If we take the larva from the cell and place it on a hard substance, to observe it more readily, we see that the inordinate protuberance of the abdomen, by lifting the thorax from the ground, prevents the legs from finding a support. Lying on its side, the only possible position because of its conformation, the larva remains motionless or only makes a few lazy, wriggling movements of the abdomen, without ever stirring ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... justified the innovation. After long and careful observation, Phillips's conclusion was that it was likely to be productive of irretrievable disaster and consequently an unpardonable error of judgment "to put men of poor ability in an Indian regiment." Primitive man has an inordinate respect ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... searching questions blithely. She told a little story about her large family of brothers and sisters, their extreme poverty and her own inordinate love of music. Then there was a pathetic touch when sickness, poverty and hunger darkened the poor little home, and she, a mite of eight, had stood at a street corner in a foreign city and sung a simple song. A crowd had soon collected, and a keen-eyed, bent-shouldered man had been passing ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... twice he had met him coming out of a stockbroker's office in Threadneedle Street, and, improbable though the statement at first appeared, some colour of credibility began to attach to it when we reflected upon the dog's inordinate passion ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate degree—The less they understood of the matter the greater was their wonder about it—they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied—saw their doctors, the Parchmentarians, the Brassarians, the Turpentarians, on one side—the Popish doctors on the other, like Pantagruel ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to be injured by the severity of the winter; the harnesses of deerskin were in good condition; perfect reliance could be placed on the equipment, which the Greenlanders at Upernavik had sold in conscience. These six animals alone could draw a weight of two thousand pounds without inordinate fatigue. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... parallel for Caius Caesar, we must look for it in the history of Christian VII. of Denmark, and Paul of Russia. In all three we find the same ghastly pallor, the same sleeplessness which compelled them to rise, and pace their rooms at night, the same incessant suspicion; the same inordinate thirst for cruelty and torture. He took a very early opportunity to disembarrass himself of his benefactors, Macro and Ennia, and of his rival, the young Tiberius. The rest of his reign was a series of brutal extravagances. We have lost the portion ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... himself to Lord Henry chiefly by the inordinate beauty of his person, his exuberant health, and his modesty. He was wealthy and the only son of a wealthy father. All the "loot" of the de Porvilliers had come to him through his mother, and to Lord ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... in her strong nature, inherited from strong, full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter inordinate passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished at any moment? What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... perdocet artes, poverty instructs a man in all arts; it makes a man hardy and venturous, and therefore is it called of the poets paupertas audax, valiant poverty. It is not so much subject to inordinate desires as wealth or prosperity. Non habet, unde suum paupertas pascat amorem;[35] poverty hath not wherewithal to feed lust. All the poets were beggars; all alchemists and all philosophers are beggars. Omnia mea mecum porto, quoth Bias, when he ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... to read, regardless of consequences. During the entire period of my depression, every publication seemed to have been written and printed for me, and me alone. Books, magazines, and newspapers seemed to be special editions. The fact that I well knew how inordinate would be the cost of such a procedure in no way shook my belief in it. Indeed, that I was costing my persecutors fabulous amounts of money was a source of secret satisfaction. My belief in special editions of ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... we believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-sighted policy. Nevertheless, the common sense of mankind, which in questions of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize a distinction between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... manifold, even to the ruin of families, are the evils arising from this inordinate love for dress. They derive their fashions from the French and the Americans—seldom from the English, whom they far surpass in the neatness and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... mind that there was any reason I should not have it. I paid for it. I could pay for a thousand cocktails each day if I wanted. And what was a cocktail—one cocktail—to me who on so many occasions for so many years had drunk inordinate quantities of stiffer stuff and ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... keen, quick brain behind the dark and lovely eyes, a faultless knowledge of the courtesies of finer folk. Mic-co had wrought generously and well. Only the girl's inordinate shyness and the stern traditions of her tribe, Diane fancied, kept her chained to ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... side of the war-regime (already done justice to by many writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one deny that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to admit for a moment that war may ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the 1st of August, and at his departure, the powers of government devolved on lieutenant-governor Hutchinson, a native of the province; a man of great abilities, but influenced in his conduct by a grasping ambition, and an inordinate love of office and aggrandisement. On his return, Sir Francis had no very favourable report to make of his province. Notwithstanding every precaution had been adopted, smuggling was still carried on to a very great extent. The Bostonians had even adopted the practice of tarring and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... himself High officers were doing the work of private, soldiers Highest were not necessarily the least slimy His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments His own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies His insolence intolerable His inordinate arrogance Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence History is but made up of a few scattered fragments History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments Holland was afraid to give a part, although ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to our view a series of all the crimes which usually arise from inordinate ambition; scenes of jealousy and perfidy, treason, ingratitude, and flagrant abuses of sovereign power; cruelty, impiety, an utter oblivion of the natural sentiments of probity and honour, with the violation ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... manner which may prevent obtaining the means and materials of enjoyment, as well as the making use of them. Immoderate self-love does very ill consult its own interest: and, how much soever a paradox it may appear, it is certainly true that even from self-love we should endeavour to get over all inordinate regard to and consideration of ourselves. Every one of our passions and affections hath its natural stint and bound, which may easily be exceeded; whereas our enjoyments can possibly be but in a determinate measure and degree. Therefore ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... lightening, and the country grew visible for miles around. In the camp of Gian Maria he observed a coming and going of men that argued an inordinate bustle for so early an hour. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... like pursuivants about a herald, he solemnly proclaims all reigning women to be traitoresses and rebels against God; discharges all men thenceforward from holding any office under such monstrous regiment, and calls upon all the lieges with one consent to "STUDY TO REPRESS THE INORDINATE PRIDE AND TYRANNY" OF QUEENS. If this is not treasonable teaching, one would be glad to know what is; and yet, as if he feared he had not made the case plain enough against himself, he goes on to deduce the startling corollary that all oaths of allegiance must be incontinently ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and to show that the ordinary numbers of abnormal phenomena were supposed to be present in the ancient civilisations. In the Middle Ages—the 'dark ages'— modern opinion would expect to find an inordinate quantity of ghostly material. But modern opinion would be disappointed. Setting aside saintly miracles, and accusations of witchcraft, the minor phenomena are very sparsely recorded. In the darkest of all 'dark ages,' when, on the ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... not for this variability, it would be difficult to conceive the inordinate variety of human nature. But when you consider that all the important tendencies of the creature, his appetites, his loves, his hates, his curiosity, his sexual cravings, his fears, and pugnacity, are ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... It has been stated in former reports, that since the first establishment of this society, in the year 1843, and essentially through its influence, great ameliorations have been secured; that the inordinate hours of work formerly prevalent had, speaking generally, been greatly reduced; that Sunday labor had been abolished; that the young people were rarely kept up all night; and that, as a consequence of these ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... favorite with four emperors of widely differing character,—Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. The suicide of Otho had now made him emperor himself, and he gave way without stint to the peculiar vice which has made his name despicable, that of inordinate love of the pleasures of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... strength, and the destruction of your faithfullest servants?' His fury against Ralegh seems too excessive to have been genuine. In part it may be explained by his knowledge, on which Sir John Pope Hennessy has laid inordinate stress, that Ralegh was the most strenuous opponent of his Irish policy. He would detect the voice and hand of Ralegh in all the hindrances to, and in every criticism upon, his measures. He would imagine he heard him arguing adversely at sittings of the Council, to which he was informally ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... ought to be steadily maintained. If indulgence be shewn to such conduct, and the offenders know that in a longer or shorter time they shall be received as well as if they had not contaminated their blood by a base alliance, the great check upon that inordinate caprice which generally occasions low marriages will be removed, and the fair and comfortable order of improved ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... men of base birth and of euill conditions. Also he sought by vnlawfull meanes to bereaue his wealthie subiects of their goods and riches, so to inrich himselfe and impouerish his people. For the which his inordinate dooings, his nobles conspired against him, and finallie depriued him of all his honor and kinglie dignitie, after he had reigned about the space of ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... consente to those conditions, nor chuse me into office, but indeede apointed them to chose them they did chose. But he and they will rue too late, they may now see, & all be ashamed when it is too late, that they were so ignorante, yea, & so inordinate in their courses. I am sure as they were resolved not to seale those conditions, I was not so resolute at Hamton to have left ye whole bussines, excepte they would seale them, and better ye vioage to ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... two ears, and then the ground, exclaimed: "I, who have read books upon the duties of religion, and am freed from inordinate desires, have forsaken such an evil practice; and, indeed, even amongst those who dispute with one another about the authority of the Sastras, there are many by whom this sentence: 'Not to kill is a supreme duty,' is ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... it. "The constitution of his body," he writes in the third of his letters that bear date Nov. 28th (Hardwick, State Papers, i. 156), "is such, as the physicians do say he cannot be long-lived: and thereunto he hath by his too timely and inordinate exercise now in his youth, added an evil accident; so as there be that do not let to say, though he do recover this sickness, he cannot live two years; whereupon there is plenty of discourses here of the French ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry." "Mortify," I need not say, is to make dead, to destroy. "Ye are dead;" therefore let your members on earth be dead; "fornication, uncleanness, inordinate ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... sir," exclaimed Augustus in an inordinate fit of enthusiasm, at the supposed sympathy of his companion, "I never met with a gentleman so peculiarly to my fancy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... companies of men, are parties, they are in the highest degree ceremonious; they require a variety of symbolical acts and words intended to impress the business on the memory of all who take part in it; and they demand the presence of an inordinate number of witnesses. From these peculiarities, and others allied to them, springs the universally unmalleable character of the ancient forms of property. Sometimes the patrimony of the family is absolutely inalienable, as was the case with the Sclavonians, and still oftener, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... down through some twenty years. Carved upon limestone and granite, now it seems engraven also on every Egyptian heart that beats not only with the movement of shadoof, or is not buried in the black soil fertilized by Hapi. Thus can inordinate vanity prolong the true triumph of genius, and impress its own view of itself upon the minds of millions. This Rameses is believed to be the Pharaoh who oppressed the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... loved her when they came to know her well. "My dear," she wrote, "Aunt Hannah has surpassed herself lately. You know what vigorous likes and dislikes she takes, all of a sudden? Well, now Auntie has conceived an inordinate aversion for poor Mrs. Stapleton, and seems inclined not only to give her the cold shoulder, but to hound her down by saying the nastiest things about her, just as the other people in the county did when she first came to live among us. I rather believe that she had this feeling all along, more ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... ago, when Justice is in doubt, it requires the same inordinate loss of time and money to obtain the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... giving her daughter-in-law a cold, keen glance in which she allowed her hatred, repressed for the last six months, to overflow; "you, to whose inordinate love we owe this death, you will now go to reign in your Scotland, and you will start to-morrow. I am regent de facto." The three physicians having made her a sign, "Messieurs," she added, addressing the Guises, "it is agreed between Monsieur ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... become victims to inordinate passion, without power to discern between reality and illusion, ignorant of what is true happiness, living for mere sense, with their moral nature enclosed in the iron mail of superstition, while the good seeds ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... avarice of which I am accused, it seems easily justified by the constant necessity I was under of satisfying the inordinate cupidity of the Ottoman ministry, which incessantly made me pay dearly for tranquillity. This was a personal affair, I acknowledge, and so also is the accumulation of treasure made in order to support the war, which the Divan ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar to his nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallow nominalistic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regard all questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, as still open; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to be the Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other words, he passed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferentism with regard to Christianity, into ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... well aware that this is not the experience of many others, my wife among the number, on whose nervous system tea acts mischievously, producing inordinate wakefulness, and its continued use, indigestion. But this is one of the things that people should learn, and act upon, namely, to take such things as suit them, and avoid such as do not. It is said that Mithridates could live and ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... outburst as a result of this, for she shrank slightly back; but he did not move. He seemed too crushed, and pressed his hands more violently against his face, murmuring from the depths of inordinate suffering: ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... seven hundred years, however, inordinate ambition inflamed the heart of Jemshid, and, having assembled all the illustrious personages and learned men in his dominions before him, he said to them:—"Tell me if there exists, or ever existed, in all the world, a king of such magnificence and power as I am?" They unanimously replied:—"Thou ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... latter genus has an equal right with Scalpellum, to be divided into sub-genera, three in number. Hence, no less than eight genera might be made out of the twelve recent species of Scalpellum and Pollicipes, and their formation, in some degree, be justified; but, in my opinion, this inordinate multiplication of genera destroys the main advantages of classification. At one time, I even thought that it would be best to follow Lamarck, and keep the twelve recent species in one genus; but considering the ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... sweet child's influence was bound, slowly but surely, to permeate the entire household. Her mother would cease to care only for "the world and its fine things," and would even endeavour to curb her inordinate love of dress. Her father would practically abandon betting, and, should he have been fortunate enough to have backed a winner, would at once rush on conscience-stricken feet to pour the whole of ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... became a victim to revenge, an inordinate taste for magnificence, and superstition. Kenneth, it appears, for reasons well pleasing to the Church, visited the shrine of St. Palladius at Fordun; and on returning home he fell into a snare laid for him. Around the castle of Fettercairn were grounds well stocked with beasts of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... "many" perhaps, but, alas, one eminent Mason at least, none other than a Past Grand Master, the Duke of Wharton, who, piqued at an act of the Grand Lodge, had turned against it. Erratic of mind, unstable of morals, having an inordinate lust for praise, and pilloried as a "fool" by Pope in his Moral Essays, he betrayed his fraternity—as, later, he turned traitor to his faith, his flag, and his ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... a club of Equality and Fraternity. Any passer-by was at liberty to enter and take part in the debates, his only qualification for this temporary membership being an inordinate love ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... beast he always detailed to his few cronies in camp: the other gunbearers, and one or two from his own tribe. He always used the first person plural, "we" did so and so; and took an inordinate pride in making out his bwana as being an altogether superior person to any of the other gunbearer's bwanas. Over a miss he always looked sad; but with a dignified sadness as though we had met with undeserved misfortune sent by malignant gods. If there were any possible alleviating ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... people who treated us so well. A very short while sufficed to prove that this apparent kindness of disposition was only the result of a deeply laid plan for our destruction, and that the islanders for whom we entertained such inordinate feelings of esteem, were among the most barbarous, subtle, and bloodthirsty wretches that ever contaminated ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a slight creepy sensation under that lonely far-off gaze. "Your eyes look awful big at night, Minty," he said. He would have added "and pretty," but she was his sister, and he had the lofty fraternal conviction of his duty in repressing the inordinate vanity of the sex. "Ye're ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... in the control of the Treasury had been brought to light only a short time before! Even the great philosopher, who in his writings is so zealous against bribes, contracted during his administration the stain of receiving them. That he might stand on an equality with the great lords, he incurred inordinate expenses, which these bribes assisted him to meet. Edward Coke was wholly in the right when he exclaimed that a corrupt judge was 'the grievance of grievances.'[410] Two-and-twenty cases were proved ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... little Eve Edgarton. "Only—" ruggedly the soft little chin thrust itself forth into stubborn outline again. "Only, Father," she articulated with inordinate distinctness, "you might just as well understand here and now, I won't budge one inch toward Nunko-Nono—not one single solitary little inch toward Nunko-Nono—unless at London, or Lisbon, or Odessa, or somewhere, you let me fill up ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Committee in the House was appointed. The creation of this committee, which had been pending since 1913, was now finally granted in September, 1917. To be sure this was accomplished only after an inordinate amount of time, money and effort had been spent on a sustained and relentless campaign of pressure. But the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... United States, and adverse to its adoption; and "that his avowed opinions tended to national disunion, national insignificance, public disorder, and discredit." Under the garb of democratic simplicity, and modest retiring philosophy, he covered an inordinate ambition which grasped unceasingly at power, and sought to gratify itself, by professions of excessive attachment to liberty, and by traducing and lessening in the public esteem, every man in whom he could discern a rival. To this aspiring temper they ascribed, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... slippery night-life of the Gipsy; his familiarity with deep ravine and lonely wood-path, moonlight and field-lairs; his use of a secret language, and his constant habit of concealing everything from everybody; his private superstitions, and his inordinate love of humbugging and selling friend and foe, tend to produce in him that goblin, elfin, boyish-mischievous, out-of-the-age state of mind which is utterly indescribable to a prosaic modern-souled ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... tyrants of this city were less ferocious than were those of the other dynasties of that age, perhaps because their domain was too small a stage for the dark deeds inspired by inordinate ambition—although the human spirit does not always develop in harmony with the influences of nature. One of the most hideous of evil doers was Sigismondo Malatesta of mild and beautiful Rimini. The Sforzas of Pesaro, however, seem ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... and drew herself up in lonely pride. It was a privilege for these girls to be intimate with her, to call her 'Lena, great as might be their social superiority over the many in San Francisco whose names she had never heard. In her inordinate pride of birth, in her intimate knowledge of the fact that she was the daughter of a Californian grandee who still possessed the three hundred thousand acres granted his fathers by the Spanish crown, she in all honesty believed no one of these friends ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... what is meant by saying that General Charles Lee had "inordinate vanity."—Is "inordinate" used ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... more easily corrected, and fortunately for the possessor, punish themselves more often. This favours truthfulness in the mind and humility in the soul—the spirit of the Confiteor. Its dangers are those of too easy assent, of inordinate pursuit of particular good, of inconstancy and variability, of all the humanistic elements which lead back to paganism. The history of the Renaissance in Southern Europe testifies to this, as it illustrates in other countries the development of the spirit of Nonconformity ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... kinds of provisions. There was, however, a persistent rumour that Valens himself had been bought with a heavy bribe. He had long been in mean circumstances and ill concealed his sudden accession of wealth. Prolonged poverty had whetted his inordinate desires, and the needy youth grew into an ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... observes on this subject, that the union of the soul with the body is so intimate, that they reciprocally share the good or evil which happens to either of them. The mind cannot put forth its powers when the body is tired with inordinate exercise and too close application to study destroys the body by dissipating the animal spirits which are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... governments—a support which was hedged round with conditions—made necessary a system of petty expedients under which practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid asset it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the market was flooded with a worthless currency which it was unable to absorb. The Provincial leaders, being powerless to introduce improvement, ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... away from it," she counseled her daughter, Minnie. "Don't you be a rube like your pa," she cautioned John, the older boy. And they profited by her advice. Minnie went to work in Commercial when she was seventeen, an overdeveloped girl with an inordinate love of cheap finery. At twenty, she married an artisan, a surly fellow with roving tendencies. They moved from town to town. He never stuck long at one job. John, the older boy, was as much his mother's son as Minnie was her mother's ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... terms with the world is to forfeit God's love. The Church has lost much of the heroic heart, the militant power, the iron nerve, and the fire of the Holy Spirit, by reason of ease, indulgence, compromise, and inordinate desire for the friendship of the world. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... largest and most sophisticated desalination facilities provide much of the water; air and water pollution; desertification natural hazards: sudden cloudbursts are common from October to April, they bring inordinate amounts of rain which can damage roads and houses; sandstorms and duststorms occur throughout the year, but are most common between March and August international agreements: party to - Climate Change, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... were. But after the little affair in Marseilles I don't trust them," replied The Sparrow. "When anyone makes a slip, either by design or sheer carelessness, or perhaps by reason of inordinate avarice, then I always have to safeguard myself. I suspect—and my suspicion usually ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... you're all coming to my ball to-night," said she. Mr. Prohack had never heard of any ball. In an instant she told him that she had remarked two most charming ladies with him in the box—(inordinate faculty of observation, mused Mr. Prohack)—and in another instant she was selling him three two guinea tickets for a grand ball and rout in aid of the West End Chorus Girls' Aid Association. Could he refuse, perceiving so clearly as ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... should attempt to encroach upon the executive power: as was fatally experienced by the unfortunate king Charles the first; who, having unadvisedly passed an act to continue the parliament then in being till such time as it should please to dissolve itself, at last fell a sacrifice to that inordinate power, which he himself had consented to give them. It is therefore extremely necessary that the crown should be empowered to regulate the duration of these assemblies, under the limitations which the English constitution has prescribed: so that, on the one hand, they may frequently and regularly ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... which represents her as a lovely and interesting woman. The truth is that she is fearfully homely, both in face and figure, while her eccentricities are such that in America, for instance, she would be described as a "crank." Thus she distinguishes herself through her inordinate fondness for cats, goats and rabbits; escorted by whole herds of which she is wont to wander through the gloomy streets of Breslau. Her costumes are invariably as queer as the one in which she appeared on the platform of the Socialist Congress. Compare ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... arguments. Some were more successful in appealing to the signs of the times, the clear evidences of that corruption and decay to which heathenism had led. They pointed to the degradation of women, the prevalence of vice, the inordinate indulgence in pleasures, the love of excitement, the cruel frenzy of the gladiatorial shows, the unrest and pessimism and despair of all society. One of the most remarkable appeals of this kind is found in a letter of Cyprian to his friend Donatus. "He bids ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... keeping on hand a good stock of parts (although on many of the cars the parts were not interchangeable), the owner was lucky. But if the repair man were a shiftless person, with an adequate knowledge of automobiles and an inordinate desire to make a good thing out of every car that came into his place for repairs, then even a slight breakdown meant weeks of laying up and a whopping big repair bill that had to be paid before the car could be taken away. The repair men were for a time the largest menace to the automobile ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... Abuse of Curiosity.—While curiosity is needful for the welfare of the individual, an inordinate development of this instinct is both intellectually and morally undesirable. Since curiosity directs attention to the novel in our surroundings, over-curiosity is likely to keep the mind wandering from one novelty ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... but without adequate regulation of law whereby the public money can be secured against the casualties and excesses, revulsions, suspensions, and defalcations to which from overissues, overtrading, an inordinate desire for gain, or other causes they are constantly exposed. The Secretary of the Treasury has in all cases when it was practicable taken collateral security for the amount which they hold, by the pledge of stocks of the United States or such of the States as were in good credit. Some of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... conscientiously vote to saddle the people with another Civil War debt. It was well for the State, he hinted, that those committees were composed of stanch men who would do their duty in all weathers, regardless of demagogues who sought to gratify inordinate ambitions. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... simplicity of an animal. In the pursuit of vengeance and the commission of murder he is self-reliant, coolly calculating, fierce and fatal as a tiger. Yet his religious fervour is sincere; his impulses are generous; and his heart on the whole is good. His vanity is inordinate; and his unmistakable courage is impaired, to Northern ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... spend those leisure hours idly, but employed them in calling many things to mind, especially the life I had led in the slaughter-house, and also that of my master and all his fellows, who were bound to satisfy the inordinate humours of their mistresses. O how many things I could tell you of that I learned in the school of that she-butcher, my master's lady; but I must pass them over, lest you should think me tedious ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of character: an easier attitude towards the accidents of life. Your whole scale of values has undergone a silent transformation, since you have ceased to fight for your own hand and regard the nearest-at-hand world as the only one that counts. You have become, as the mystics would say, "free from inordinate attachments," the "heat of having" does not scorch you any more; and because of this you possess great inward liberty, a sense of spaciousness and peace. Released from the obsessions which so long had governed them, will, heart, and mind are now all bent to ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... acknowledged our artists as a body have wandered in another direction. The Discourses speak to cultivated minds only. They will scarcely be available to those who have habituated their minds to lower views of art, and have, by a fascinating practice, acquired an inordinate love for its minor beauties. It is true their tendency is to teach, to cultivate: but in art there is too often as much to unlearn as to learn, and the unlearning is the more irksome task; prejudice, self-gratulation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... craving for Alcoholic drinks, it prostrates the | | system to such an extent that nature calls for aid by stimulants, | | hence the craving for drinks, peppers, mustards, &c., &c. | | | | 14. It creates an inordinate desire for excitement such as Noose and | | Novel reading, and a loathing of Science and Philosophy. | | | | 15. The smoke has a wonderful tendency to weaken and impair the | | eye-sight. | | | | 16. Its use is an evil ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... and a Scourge for me: But thou do'st in thy passages of Life, Make me beleeue, that thou art onely mark'd For the hot vengeance, and the Rod of heauen To punish my Mistreadings. Tell me else, Could such inordinate and low desires, Such poore, such bare, such lewd, such meane attempts, Such barren pleasures, rude societie, As thou art matcht withall, and grafted too, Accompanie the greatnesse of thy blood, And hold their leuell with thy Princely ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Lightness, exhilaration, and sense of energy are all there; but the re-action comes surely, and only a stronger dose next time accomplishes the end desired. Nervous headaches, hysteria in its thousand forms, palpitations, and the long train of nervous symptoms, own inordinate tea and coffee drinking as their parent. Taken in reasonable amounts, tea can not be said to be hurtful; and the medium qualities, carefully prepared, often make a more wholesome tea than that of the highest price, the harmful ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... power and admired those who possessed it. Political power especially had that charm for her which it has for most English people of the upper class. There is some quality in the English race which breeds an inordinate admiration for all kinds of superiority: it is certain that if one class of English society can be justly accused of an over-great veneration for rank, the class which is rank itself is not behindhand in doing homage to the political stars of the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... did in Egypt, so the book of India utilizes the leaves of that important tropical tree, the palm. The sheets of the book before me are strips of palm-leaf two inches wide and two feet long. They are written on both sides and, following the run of the grain, lengthwise. This makes an inordinate length of line, but, owing to the small number of lines on the page, the confusion of the eye is less than might be expected. The leaves composing the book are clamped between two boards of their ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... beauties of art or nature, to all the unnatural ironies. Leech did but finish him in the same spirit, with dots for the childish eyes, and a certain form of face which is best described as a fat square containing two circles—the inordinate cheeks of that ignominious baby. That is the child as Punch in Leech's day preserved him, the latest figure of the then prevailing ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... of Elizabeth's character was fully balanced by her feminine foibles. Her vanity was inordinate. Her love of adulation and passion for display, her caprice, duplicity, and her reckless love- affairs, form a strange background for the calm, determined, masterly statesmanship under which her ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... notable part in developing the political consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties; so that Mr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from his inordinate travel and habit of taking too much ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... truth, Kory-Kory's mother was the only industrious person in all the valley of Typee; and she could not have employed herself more actively had she been left an exceedingly muscular and destitute widow, with an inordinate ate supply of young children, in the bleakest part of the civilized world. There was not the slightest necessity for the greater portion of the labour performed by the old lady: but she seemed to work from some irresistible impulse; her limbs ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... long years cherished a great and almost inordinate desire, and have had that desire gratified to the limit of their expectation, can enter into the deep thankfulness and content that filled the heart upon the descent of this mountain. There was no pride of conquest, no trace of that exultation ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... last, Paris, upon whose monuments the German shells had scarce been able to inflict more than a scratch! and he was there to see it burn, and in the spectacle found compensation for all his grievances, the inordinate length to which the siege had been protracted, the bitter, freezing weather, the difficulties they had surmounted only to see them present themselves anew under some other shape, the toil and trouble they had had in mounting their heavy guns, while all the time Germany from ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... here gladly drop the subject, lest I give offense; but duty compels me to remark, what can not be denied, that an inordinate attachment to certain systems and forms of religion, has occasioned all the strifes, animosities, and persecutions, that have so long agitated the Christian world; and if God be just, every one must drink of the ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... with a peculiar madness and became the passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as "the Seeker," and by no other name. As none could remember when he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... found himself in presence of the same party of boon companions; who had just dispatched their huge bowl of punch. To Alan's surprise, the liquor had made but little innovation on the brains of men who were accustomed to drink at all hours, and in the most inordinate quantities. The landlord indeed spoke a little thick, and the texts of Mr. Thomas Trumbull stumbled on his tongue; but Nanty was one of those topers, who, becoming early what bon vivants term flustered, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... time forward, however, Munnich's life was a continuous chain of vexations and mortifications. As his inordinate ambition was known, he was constantly suspected, and was reprehended with inexorable severity ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... above its station by being called The Day Nursery and another room equally dingy and uninviting was known as The Night Nursery. The slice of a house was inhabited by the very pretty Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, its inordinate rent being reluctantly paid by her—apparently with the assistance of those "ravens" who are expected to supply the truly deserving. The rent was inordinate only from the standpoint of one regarding it soberly in connection with the character of the house itself ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suspect a hidden generosity in that By-law; they may think it is there to protect the Official Reader from the suspicion of having written the poems himself. Such do not know Mrs. Eddy. She does an inordinate deal of protecting, but in no distinctly named and specified case in her history has Number Two been the object of it. Instances have been claimed, but they have failed of proof, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... refinement of a woman's heart. Their devotion is characterized by a singular variety. The loyal love of noble women is sacrificed to please the whims of those unblushing creatures who pursue such men with indelicate attentions and enslave them by flattering their inordinate vanity, and they, to preserve their self-love unhurt, pierce and mortally wound the generous hearts that live upon their affection and revere their very names—these they strike without pity and without remorse. And then when the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... three honest Republican Senators declaring in his favour, and so depriving the prosecution of the two-thirds majority. Each Senator gave a separate opinion in writing. These documents are of great historical interest; Sumner's especially—which is of inordinate length and intensely characteristic—should be studied by anyone who thinks that in these pages I have given an unfair idea of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... reassurance; a condition resembling peace of mind again returned. As much as possible, against the elements of danger, was in his favor. He might have had a wife who, on the prevalent tide of gin and orange juice, of inordinate luxuriousness, degraded him with small betrayals. Or he might have been any one of a hundred unfortunate things. He took life too seriously, that was evident; a larger degree of mental irresponsibility ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shameless part of the process was not complete, indeed, until the end of the eighteenth century, when Protestantism was already passing into scepticism. Indeed a very decent case could be made out for the paradox that Puritanism was first and last a veneer on Paganism; that the thing began in the inordinate thirst for new things in the noblesse of the Renascence and ended in the Hell-Fire Club. Anyhow, what was first founded at the Reformation was a new and abnormally powerful aristocracy, and what was destroyed, in an ever-increasing ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... temperance, in our American colleges, can never be known; perhaps it is as well that it never will be; for if it were, there would be a rush to the other extreme, which would "upset society." And here be it noted that, with all our inordinate national or international Anglo-Saxon sense of superiority to everybody and everything foreign, we are in the main thing—that is, the truly rational enjoyment of life and the art of living—utterly inferior to the German and Latin races. We are for ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... forget that you have entered your fifteenth year, and as you grow older you will gradually lose your inordinate fondness for pets. Your childish tastes will change as ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... small, hardy, fishing and pastoral people. The profiteers will leave us, like rats and their parasites. We shall be able to feed ourselves by our industry. We shall be contented, and as happy as men with inordinate desires and subordinate capacities can ever hope to be. There is no reason to suppose that we need cease to be a nursery of heroes, that our old men will not see visions or our young men dream dreams. Neither ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett |
