"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God, sees the world in a new light. This great Universe is no longer a mere machine, wound up and set going six thousand or sixty millions years ago, and left to run on afterward forever, by virtue of a law of mechanics created at the beginning, without further care or consideration on the part ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... administration of Government really rests with the Chief Secretary in recent times, although it was not so before the advent of Mr. Foster. Men like Lord Naas, Sir Robert Peel the younger, and Mr. Chichester Fortescue—afterwards Lord Carlingford—were mere official cyphers, but after Mr. Gladstone's 1880 ministry this has never been ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... palpable that she had specially dressed herself up to coax that order out of me. Till that moment, I had never viewed Bimala's adornment as a thing apart from herself. But today the elaborate manner in which she had done up her hair, in the English fashion, made it appear a mere decoration. That which before had the mystery of her personality about it, and was priceless to me, was now ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... touch," he says, "a string of much delicacy—the political character of the Review. It appears to me that this should be of a liberal and enlarged nature, resting upon principles—indulgent and conciliatory as far as possible upon mere party questions, but stern in detecting and exposing all attempts to sap our constitutional fabric. Religion is another slippery station; here also I would endeavour to be as impartial as the subject will admit of.... The truth is, there is policy, as well as morality, in keeping our swords clear ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It is a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest, best, and noblest life that is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... giants were got together, very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incontestable superiority of the very tallest of the party; and so I have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stubble was of a dirty yellow; the ground, parched, cracked, and dry, of a cheerless brown. By the roadside the dust lay thick and grey, and, on either hand, stretching on toward the horizon, losing itself in a mere smudge in the distance, ran the illimitable parallels of the wire fence. And that was all; that and the burnt-out blue of the sky and the steady ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... bullet-holes, spattered all over. "Hurrah for Grant!" cried a stripling shrill; Three urchins joined him with a will, And some of taller stature cheered. Meantime a Copperhead passed; he sneered. "Win or lose," he pausing said, "Caps fly the same; all boys, mere boys; Any thing to make a noise. Like to see the list of the dead; These 'craven Southerners' hold out; Ay, ay, they'll give you many a bout" "We'll beat in the end, sir" Firmly said one in staid ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... spoken, the vision vanished, but the bridal gift which I still held in my hand shewed me that it had not been a mere dream. It was of gold, but to me more precious than the most prized of all metals. Unto you I will shew it when I am permitted to see your faces, and to converse with you freely. Till that earnestly wished-for time, I ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... until He left Vraja to meet Kamsa, we find Him ever chasing away every form of evil that came within the limits of His abode. We are told that when He had left Vraja and stood in the tournament field of Kamsa with His brother, His brother and Himself were mere boys, in the tender delicate bodies of youths. After the whole of the Lila was over They were still children, when They went forth to fight. From that time onwards He met, one after another, the great incarnations of evil and crushed them with His ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... he replies, "arose from mere stubbornness; the devil inspired them with this constancy you speak of, just as he prompted Judas to hang himself. These heretics are not real but counterfeit martyrs (perfidiae martyres). But while I may approve the zeal ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... 1503 the hostile forces came face to face again, Gonsalvo being forced by the exigencies of the campaign to encamp in a deplorable situation, a region of swamp, which had been converted by the incessant rains into a mere quagmire. The French occupied higher ground and were much more comfortably situated. But Gonsalvo refused to move. He was playing his old waiting game, knowing that the French dared not attack his intrenched camp, and that time would work ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... ancestors, after their settlement in this island. One of the four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity, and was called the "Irmin-street." The name Arminius is, of course, the mere Latinized form of "Herman," the name by which the hero and the deity were known by every man of Low German blood, on either side of the German Sea. It means, etymologically, the "War-man," the "man of hosts." No other explanation of the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... all of them reference to the throne he is soon to ascend, without which they would be the mere ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... fortunate that there was no special significance to Myrtle in the name of Clement Lindsay. Since the adventure which had brought these two young persons together, and, after coming so near a disaster, had ended in a mere humiliation and disappointment, and but for Master Gridley's discreet kindness might have led to foolish scandal, Myrtle had never referred to it in any way. Nobody really knew what her plans had been except Olive and Cyprian, who had observed a very kind silence about the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for their share of the land, had parted with them long since, either to their own officers or to the trafficers in such bonds, who had sprang up by hundreds, and who obtained them from the needy soldiers often for a mere trifle. Sharp-sighted speculators like Dr. Petty, by whom the well-known Survey of Ireland was made, acquired immense tracts of land at little or no outlay. Of those soldiers, too, who did receive grants of land many left after a while. Others, despite ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... of mere laws in favour of the subjects, in the case of the administration of them falling into the hands of persons hostile to the spirit in which they had been provided, had been so fatally evinced by the general history of England, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game now forever discredited, of the balance of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... you, sir," replied the captain, "for the people out this way are nearly all venturesome sailors, and for any number of years have put to sea in the most crazy of bamboo craft, and set sail to land where they could, some of them even going in mere canoes. So you see we may come upon people in the most unexpected places. But I have several islands in my mind's eye, between here and the east end of New Guinea, where you gentlemen may ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... will rise. His private character is altogether suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has got. If you examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features, because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor—mere effects of a great spirit upon a weak body—mere accidents of a great career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues, and he practises them all—secretly—always secretly. You all know him so well that there is no need for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... haste to abase himself. "It is mere snobbery our making so much of London. A kind of despicable cant, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... the space ship, and insulated well; and the thin atmosphere of this wild world could cut a blast of sound to a mere fraction of its volume! But the walls were admitting a fragmental echo of what must have been a reverberating voice. They were quivering to the ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... luggage has unfortunately been lost. His portmanteau, pauvre petit, was so small. A poor widower, I did what I could. I am but a mere man, madame." ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... was mere lightness of speech. Oliver's inclusion of him in his remark shook him to the depths of his sensitive nature. The man who despises the petty feelings and frailties of mankind is doomed to remain in awful ignorance of that which there is of ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... was laid before Congress, who immediately passed the acts necessary on our part to secure to France the commercial advantages conceded to her in the compact. The treaty had previously been solemnly ratified by the King of the French in terms which are certainly not mere matters of form, and of which the translation is as follows: WE, approving the above convention in all and each of the dispositions which are contained in it, do declare, by ourselves as well as by our heirs and successors, that it is ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... aback, stopped dead. The five canoas, and one of the periaguas, got under her stern, and so plied her with shot that her decks were like shambles, running with blood and brains, five minutes after she came to the wind. Meanwhile Richard Sawkins ran his canoa—which was a mere sieve of cedar wood, owing to the broadside—alongside the second periagua, and took her steering oar. He ordered his men to give way heartily, for the third Spanish ship, under old Don Peralta, was now bearing down to relieve the admiral. Before she got near enough to blow the ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... leading, take up the measure, Turn with the tune again,—clarinets clear Answer their pleading,—harps full of pleasure Sprinkle their silver like light on the mere. Semiquaver notes, Merry little motes, Tangled in the haze Of the lamp's golden rays, Quiver everywhere In the air, Like a spray,— Till the fuller stream of the might of the tune, Gliding like a dream in the light of the moon, Bears them all away, and away, ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... recited in the claim, or containing some of them, and mechanical equivalents for the rest of them. Were it not for this liberal doctrine, the pioneer inventor could gather little fruit from his patent, for the patent could be avoided, perhaps, by the mere substitution of a wedge for the screw or lever called for by the claim. The court, having ascertained from the prior art that the inventor is entitled to invoke the doctrine of equivalents, will proceed to ascertain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... to tell you, sir—I was a mere automaton, a machine, in the hands of others. A new publication was sent to me, with a private mark from my employer, directing the quantum of praise or censure which it was to incur. If the former were allotted ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason,—this man is to be called the principal offender; while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human understanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd; so shocking to the soul; so ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... belligerent soul), agonize—and disappear.... The world is full of incomprehensible things.... Last of all, on our way back, I discovered near the park gate—saw it before She did—one of those invincible beasts called hedge-hogs, the mere sight of which brings us dogs to bay. What madness to realize that an animal is hiding under that pin-cushion and laughing at me, and that I can do nothing, nothing! I implored her—She can do nearly everything—to pluck him for me. She began by turning him over with ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... still showing plenty of visible gold on the face of the slopes. Yet to these alleged Jews this gold was of no account. Imagine it; as Quick said, such a topsy-turvy state of things was enough to make a mere Christian feel cold down the back and go to bed thinking that the world must ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... I lay my hand upon the part affected; at other times I breathe into the eye, ear, or mouth of the patient. Then, again, on other occasions I am able to banish the disease by a mere word or gesture." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... in conclusion, permit me to say under the guise of fiction, I have essayed to weave a story which I hope will subserve a deeper purpose than the mere amusement of the hour, that it will quicken and invigorate human hearts and not fail to impart a lesson of ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... right to throw suspicion on Bartlett Cloud by mentioning the small occurrence on the football field so long before? It was inconceivable that Cloud would go to such a length in mere spite. And yet—Remsen ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a church and piously pursue his devotions. There are a few curious stories in which amatory matters play only a subordinate part or none at all, though it must be confessed that this last is a rare thing. Some are mere anecdote plays on words (sometimes pretty free, and then generally told by Nomer-fide), or quasi-historical, such as that already noticed of the generosity of Francis to a traitor, or deal with remarkable trials and crimes, or merely ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... are not for the better," replied Mr. Touchwood, eagerly. "I left your peasantry as poor as rats indeed, but honest and industrious, enduring their lot in this world with firmness, and looking forward to the next with hope—Now they are mere eye-servants—looking at their watches, forsooth, every ten minutes, lest they should work for their master half an instant after loosing-time—And then, instead of studying the Bible on the work days, to kittle the clergymen with doubtful points of controversy ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to leave it, Tom," he said slowly, his eyes roaming over the bright, little room. "I don't like to leave it even to hobnob with crowned heads, and to take tea with dukes, earls, princes and kings, to say nothing of mere lords. My world is right here; and it's all the world I want, Tom. It's bounded on the south by the sound, on the north by the property of the municipality, on the east and west by somebody else's worlds, and above by eternity." ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... and can be easily introduced by dropping a few plants about the borders at the time of the ripening of the seeds. In many localities, it is found growing in spontaneous abundance; and one of the best and most healthful of salads may be obtained for the mere labor of gathering. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... much higher degree of skill to paint two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas Lawrence, so that nobody who had ever seen them could for a moment hesitate to assign each picture to its original. Here the mere caricaturist would be quite at fault. He would find in neither face anything on which he could lay hold for the purpose of making a distinction. Two ample bald foreheads, two regular profiles, two full faces of the same oval form, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... much for Lou. What with lonesomeness for her brother and anger at the mere thought of anyone suspecting him, she gave way to a ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... only Number 3. A mere closet, gentlemen," responded the landlord in a pleasant voice. "To be sure, we sometimes use it as a sleeping-room when we are hard pushed. Jake, the clerk you saw below, used it last night. But it's not on our regular list. Do you want a peep ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... we are taught by the subject, as thus considered, that the mere sense of duty is not Christianity. If this is all that a man is possessed of, he is not prepared for the day of judgment, and the future life. For the sense of duty, alone and by itself, causes misery in a soul that ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... and the witnesses, one after another, who went to the box in an effort to swear his life away. He went again through the agony of the new freedom—the freedom of a man imprisoned by stronger things than mere bars and cells of steel—when first he had gone into the world to strive to fight back to the position he had occupied before the pall of accusation had descended upon him, and to fight seemingly in vain. Friends had vanished, a father had gone to his grave, believing almost ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... The stillness awed him. There had not been a shell all night. He put his head up over the parapet and waited. Nobody fired at him. He felt that the night was waiting for him. He heard voices going along the trench: some one said it was a black night: the voices died away. A mere phrase; the night wasn't black at all, it was grey. Dick Cheeser was staring at it, and the night was staring back at him, and seemed to be threatening him; it was grey, grey as an old cat that they used to have at home, and as artful. Yes, thought Dick ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... whole baronage is well expressed in the story of how Earl Warenne, unsheathing a rusty sword, declared to the commissioners: "Here is my warrant. My ancestors won their lands with the sword. With my sword I will defend them against all usurpers." Nor was this mere boasting. The return of the king's officers tells us that Warenne would not say of whom, or by what services, he held his Yorkshire stronghold of Conisborough, and that his bailiffs refused them ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... "Mere evasion, baron!" replied Joseph, angrily. "Even if you had not written the words in that letter, I should still ask of you, who it is that ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... way he had come. Once in the road, he glanced back at the house, but the whole place seemed to be in pitchy darkness. There was nothing for it now but to make his way to the nearest police station, and get all the assistance possible. There was no trouble at the station across the Common, the mere mention of Field's name being sufficient. A few minutes later half a dozen constables in silent shoes were on their way to the scene of action. There was to be no fuss and bother; they decided to enter quietly and unostentatiously by the larder window, which ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... fluids. As in other forms of oesophageal obstruction, the difficulty of swallowing varies quite remarkably from time to time, presumably from variations in the degree of congestion of the mucous membrane and of spasm of the muscular coat, but also from mere nervousness, the patient having greater difficulty when in a hurry, as in a railway refreshment room, or embarrassed by ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... looks as if the tales, or tales from which they had been derived, had been originally believed as true, and, having ceased to be thus received, had continued to be repeated, in a shape more or less altered, for mere amusement. If we may venture to affirm this and to generalize from such cases, this is the way ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... a kinder purpose than they imagined. She wanted no more of Burt's forced allegiance, and was much too good-natured to permit mere pique to cause unhappiness to others. "Let Gertrude win him if she cares for him," was her thought, "and if she can't hold him his case is hopeless." She could not resist the temptation, however, to tease ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... she felt she had steadily lost, rather than gained, ground; and the flash of anger that had colored her cheeks, lit twin beacons in her eyes, which she resolutely fought down until they faded to mere gleams of resentment and determination. But she forgot to control her lips; and they are the truest indices to a woman's character and temperament; and Kirkwood did not overlook the circumstance that their specious ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Telemachus answered, "Father, I have always heard of your renown both in the field and in council, but the task you talk of is a very great one: I am awed at the mere thought of it; two men cannot stand against many and brave ones. There are not ten suitors only, nor twice ten, but ten many times over; you shall learn their number at once. There are fifty-two chosen youths from Dulichium, and they have ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... white labor could be substituted. But it is not so with the more Southern States. I would like to see a Louisiana sun shining upon your New England States for a while—how quickly you would fit out an expedition for Africa. It is the mere accident of climate that makes your States ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... discord in God's providence. Then, in the early years of the fifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy plastered the gate of the chatelet, as you now see it, over the sunny thirteenth-century entrance called Belle Chaise, which had treated mere military construction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will know what a chatelet is when you meet another; it frowns in a spirit quite alien to the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; it forebodes wars of religion; dissolution ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... if an American, having captured a title and worn it for five years, would renounce it for mere good looks and brains; in other words, if Lady Carnath, formerly Miss Edith Ingoldsby, of Washington, and still earlier—before her father had found leisure to crown a triumphant financial career with the patriotic labors ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... of Nations will be a natural, nameless league of human hearts. The broad sympathies and discerning insight needed for the healing of earthly woes cannot flow from a mere intellectual consideration of man's diversities, but from knowledge of man's sole unity-his kinship with God. Toward realization of the world's highest ideal-peace through brotherhood-may yoga, the science of personal contact with the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... others if they could not. Always she thought of it now when she looked at Jamie. She saw again the agony on his face, the crimson stain on the palms of his hands. Her heart ached for him, and because it did so ache, his mere presence had come to be a pain to her. Remorsefully she confessed to herself that she did not like to be with Jamie now, nor to talk with him—but that did not mean that she was not often with him. She was with ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... end to all our fighting," said Detricand aloud at last. "But he is right. It is now a mere waste of life. I know my course. . . . Even to-night," he added, "it shall ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... keep back your scoldings now, to please YOURSELF by pleasing your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... immediately before our arrival in Bruges, leaving the whole of his property to me, and appointing me sole executor. I have never understood why Alresca did this, and I have always thought that it was a mere kind caprice ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... of this, nothing at all remains for me to be done ('And not exert myself, and contribute thereto this nothing, my all, which remained for me to do.'—Ozell.). In my opinion, little honour is due to such as are mere lookers-on, liberal of their eyes, and of their crowns, and hide their silver; scratching their head with one finger like grumbling puppies, gaping at the flies like tithe calves; clapping down their ears like Arcadian asses at the melody of musicians, who ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... dispatched envoys to the Swedish camp, offering to surrender important fortresses to Oxenstiern, and to join him against the emperor. It was an atrocious act of treason, and so marvellous in its aspect, that Oxenstiern regarded it as mere duplicity on the part of Wallenstein, intended to lead him into a trap. He therefore dismissed the envoy, rejecting the offer. His officers now abandoned him, and Gallas, who was appointed as his successor, took command of ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... otherwise. These sewing-women must have been deprived of work, or the consumers of clothing must have immediately begun to purchase and wear double or treble as much as they had been accustomed to. I do not doubt that the consumption increased from the mere fact of increased cheapness. I believe it is an invariable law of trade, that consumption increases as price diminishes. If silks were to fall to a shilling a yard, everybody would turn away from cotton shirts. As it was, shirts were made without collars, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... great Museum. The journey up the Nile was postponed until our return. It was a pleasant break and gave Bickley, a most omnivorous reader who was well acquainted with Egyptian history and theology, the opportunity of trying to prove to Bastin that Christianity was a mere development of the ancient Egyptian faith. The arguments that ensued may be imagined. It never seemed to occur to either of them that all faiths may be and indeed probably are progressive; in short, different rays of light thrown ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... despised. At the last he retreated to Catana without having achieved anything, save that he demolished Hyocara, a humble town of the barbarians, out of which the story goes that Lais the courtesan, yet a mere girl, was sold amongst the other prisoners, and carried thence ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... is the hall of their island home two years later. This sturdy log-house is no mere extension of the hut we have seen in process of erection, but has been built a mile or less to the west of it, on higher ground and near a stream. When the master chose this site, the others thought that all he expected from the stream was a sufficiency of drinking water. ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... good generalized summary," Dr. Harnosh of Hosh grudged, unwilling to give a mere layman too much credit. He dipped a spoon into a tobacco humidor, dusted the tobacco lightly with dried zerfa, and rammed it into his pipe. "You must understand that our modern Statisticalists are the intellectual heirs of those ancient materialistic thinkers who denied the possibility ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... truly beautiful or venerable; we reverence the religious sentiment in all its forms, the family and whatever else has its foundation either in human nature or Divine Providence. The work we are engaged in is not destruction, but true conservation; it is not a mere resolution, but, as we are assured, a necessary step in the progress which no one can be blind enough to think ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... fact, he was the most perfect type of the artist. Nothing escaped his mind. From life and from books he drew his material, each time reshaping it with a master-hand. Creation is a divine prerogative. Re-creation, infinitely more wonderful than mere calling into existence, is the prerogative of the poet. Shakespeare took his colours from many palettes. That is why he is so great, and why his work is incredibly greater than he. It alone explains his unique achievement. Who was he? What education did he have, what opportunities? ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... that the motive-power was missing, and that unless something deeper than mere desire of achievement stirred him, he would probably never attain. He needed a goal that should make everything else in the world pale before it, and something that seemed almost as life and death to hang on his success. But how get it for him? If he loved, and was bidden wait until he had ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... "A mere nothing; but I am so gentle. D'Artagnan reckons his duels by hundreds. It is very true he is a little too hard and sharp—I have often ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a noxious drug'—that is the terminology which describes the offence—will be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... 'A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no swine to keep, and no husks to share with them? Eh?' pursued the client, rocking one leg over the other, and searching the ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... was the daughter of Sophie-Victoire Delaborde milliner, the grandchild of a certain bird-seller on the Quai des Oiseaux, who used to keep a public-house, and she was the great-granddaughter of Mere Cloquart. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... life if anything not unpleasant HAPPENED between me and Charles. Nothing happens. Something happens in my relationship to my dog. I pat him and he is pleased; he barks for joy when I go out. I cannot live with anybody with whom I am always on exactly the same even terms—no rising, no falling, mere stagnation. I am dead, but it is death without its sleep and peace. Fool, fool that I was! I cannot go on. What shall I do? If Charles drank I might cure or tolerate him; if he went after another woman I might win him back. I can lay ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... perhaps, she had come at last without asking, and as a consequence Luc returned to the world, a mere bundle of bones. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of an empty world came back forcibly upon him,—a world as empty as a hollow shell! Houses there were around him, and streets, and a noble edifice consecrated to the worship of God,—nevertheless there was a sense of absolute desertion in and through all. Was not the Cathedral itself the mere husk of a religion? The seed had dropped out and sunk into the soil,—"among thorns" and "stony places" indeed,—and some "by the wayside" to be devoured by birds of prey. Darker and heavier grew the cloud of depression on the Cardinal's soul,—and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... attach us all to you in these days than before, when you were perhaps more conscious of being liked. Liking is not loving, Howard. There is no pain about liking; there is infinite pain about loving; that is because it is life, and not mere existence." ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... upon the fundamental principles which have now been discussed as merely the foundation for his life work, as the entrance portal to his cosmology. Posterity has judged otherwise; it finds his chief work in that which he considered a mere preparation for it. The start from doubt, the self-certitude of the thinking ego, the rational criterion of certitude, the question of the origin of ideas, the concept of substance, the essential distinction between conscious activity and corporeal being, and, also, the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... arrested?" Charles Rambert asked, the mere sound of the name seeming to wake all his former enthusiasm on the subject ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the Golden Bull was not correct, and that it was proclaimed in 1336, during the reign of the Emperor Charles IV. 'That is true, Sire,' replied the Prince Primate I was mistaken; but how does it happen that your Majesty is so well acquainted with these matters?'—'When I was a mere sub-lieutenant in the artillery, said Napoleon,—at this beginning, there was on the part of the guests a marked movement of interest, and he continued, smiling,—when I had the honor to be simply sub-lieutenant in the artillery I remained three years ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... He would stand in front of his house, jingling his money—our money—in his pockets, and watch us depart with the greatest serenity, whether we went east or west. I thought him at one time the most genial of Bonifaces (for it was his profession to wear a smile), and at another a mere mocker of human woe. When I grew up, I perceived ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... which gave the place its name, "Willow Lake." The house had formerly been owned by two maiden women with much sentiment, the sisters of the present owner. The place was "Willow Lake." The pond was the "Willow Mere," in defiance of the name of the place. The little rustic bridge was the "Bridge of Sighs," for some obscure reason, perhaps buried in the sentimental past of the sisters. And the little hollow which was profusely sprinkled with violets ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and is not a mere educational task. Anybody could teach boys trades and give them an elementary education. Such tasks have been done since the beginning of civilization. But this task had to be done with the rawest ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... him enter the carriage and drive away, and thirteen years passed before I looked upon him again. Of course the reported illness was a mere ruse to lull his apprehensions. His father received him with a hurricane of reproaches, threats, maledictions. He taunted, jeered him with having been hoodwinked, cajoled, outwitted by a 'wily old washwoman,' ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Even at this age, when she was, as one might suppose, a mere slip of a girl, she was deeply conscious of herself, her sex, her significance, her possible social import. Armed with a fair skin, a few freckles, an almost too high color at times, strange, deep, night-blue, cat-like eyes, a long nose, a rather pleasant mouth, perfect teeth, and a really good ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Ascanius, yea, and all that manner held. Then from that council to the tomb that duke of men did pass; Mid many thousands, he the heart of all that concourse was. There, worshipping, on earth he pours in such wise as was good Two cups of mere wine, two of milk, and two of holy blood, And scatters purple flowers around; and then such words he said: "Hail, holy father! hail once more! hail, ashes visited 80 Once more for nought! hail, father-shade and spirit sweet in vain! Forbid with me that Italy to seek, that fated plain, With me Ausonian ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the grant of a constitutional charter. The king, Frederick, convoked the Estates, to whom he, on the 15th of March, 1815, solemnly delivered the newly enacted constitution. But here, as elsewhere, was the government inclined to grant a mere illusory boon. The Estates rejected the constitution, without reference to its contents, simply owing to the formal reason of its being bestowed by the prince and being consequently binding on one side alone, instead of being ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... himself would have charge of the food and the wine and therefore that no powder could be mixed with the food, no drug with the wine. As to getting him drunk, the duke couldn't hope to do that, and he laughed at the mere thought of it. Then an idea came ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... guzzlers and gormandizers ate and drank. They forgot all about their homes, and their wives and children, and all about Ulysses, and everything else, except this banquet, at which they wanted to keep feasting forever. But at length they began to give over, from mere incapacity ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dingy wilderness; but when you had discovered him in some remote recess he would take pleasure in exhibiting his treasures. He would take down his excellent copy of Eliot's Indian Bible, a book so faithfully made in every respect that I question if, as a mere piece of book-making, it could now be matched in the United States. He lived to see this rarity command in New York the price of fourteen hundred and fifty dollars. He would show you forty-one works, in the original editions, of Increase and Cotton Mather, the most ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... journalist, and poet. His one universally known poem is "Abou Ben Adhem." The secret of its appeal is no doubt the emphasis placed on the idea that a person's attitude toward his fellows is more important than mere professions. The line "Write me as one that loves his fellow men" is on Hunt's tomb in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... love," says he, "you are twice blessed being not only witty yourself but a cause of wit in others; was that bit of Primitive Lee with which M'Clare regaled us really not from the hand of the mistress, or was it a mere pastiche?" ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... told Lawson it was an impertinence to exhibit stuff which should never have been allowed out of his studio; he was not less contemptuous when the two heads were accepted. Flanagan tried his luck too, but his picture was refused. Mrs. Otter sent a blameless Portrait de ma Mere, accomplished and second-rate; and was hung in a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of delight in either power, that delight of the sensitive appetite is accompanied by a bodily transmutation, whereas delight of the intellectual appetite is nothing but the mere movement of the will. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 6) that "desire and joy are nothing else but a volition of consent ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... undressing, and fixed his eyes alternately on the door and his watch. Perhaps the unwonted seriousness of his attitude struck him, but a sudden sense of the preposterousness of the whole situation, of his solemnly ridiculous acceptance of a series of mere coincidences as a foregone conclusion, overcame him, and he laughed. But in the same breath ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... young man in business to-day is nothing more nor less than a plodder,—a mere automaton. He is at his office at eight or nine o'clock in the morning; is faithful in the duties he performs; goes to luncheon at twelve, gets back at one; takes up whatever he is told to do until five, and then goes home. ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... badly, Leonore thought, for meeting Dorothy the next day at a lawn party, after the mere greetings, he said: ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Mercadet Madame, these are mere petty details; don't bother about the means to an end. You, a little time ago, were trying to control your servants by kindness, but it is necessary to command and compel them, and to do it ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride, that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just because man can measure himself, his littleness, his brevity of existence, with this growth out of the earth, that he is more personally impressed by it than he might be by the mere variation in the contour of the globe which is called a mountain. The imagination makes a plausible effort to comprehend it, and is foiled. No; clearly it is not mere size that impresses one; it is the dignity, the character in the tree, the authority ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... taste to refuse to remove his hat when other heads were bared, and little better to refuse to pledge in company the name of Pitt, because he preferred Washington, cannot admit of a doubt; but that he deserved to be written down traitor, for mere matters of whim or caprice, or to be turned out of the unenvied situation of "gauging auld wives' barrels," because he thought there were some stains on the white robe of the constitution, seems a sort of tyranny new in the history of oppression. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... they belong, they form a connected narrative of the development of architecture, in which the history and progress of the art can be authentically traced. Care has been taken to popularize the theme as much as possible, to make the descriptions plain and vivid, to render the text free from mere technicalities, and to convey a correct and truthful impression of the various ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... influence has been dominant until the present day, or at least until the advent of Islam. In another large area comprising China, Japan, Korea, and Annam it appears as a layer superimposed on Chinese culture, yet not a mere veneer. In these regions Chinese ethics, literature and art form the major part of intellectual life and have an outward and visible sign in the Chinese written characters which have not been ousted by an Indian alphabet[3]. But in all, especially in Japan, the influence of Buddhism ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... what it means, Olivetta?" she concluded in a benumbed voice. "It means that, except for less than a thousand which I have on hand,—a mere nothing,—I am penniless until more dividends are due—perhaps months! I cannot go to Europe! I ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... third phase (a common European currency) of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), but Denmark has decided not to join 12 other EU members in the euro; even so, the Danish Krone remains pegged to the euro. Given the sluggish state of the European economy, growth in 2003 was a mere 0.3%. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... before Kazan had looked upon a similar scene when he had returned into the north from Broken Tooth's old home. It had not interested him then. But a quick and thrilling change swept through him now. The beavers had ceased to be mere water animals, uneatable and with an odor that displeased him. They were invaders—and enemies. His fangs bared silently. His crest stiffened like the hair of a brush, and the muscles of his forelegs and shoulders stood out like whipcords. Not a sound ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... "Are people beasts—mere cattle of the fields to be trampled upon by a horse?" she gasped, as soon as she had ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... spoke up Helen, with all of her mother's bluntness. "Dal always was love-sick over Daren, when she was a mere kid. She never got over ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... he constantly calls them to their faces; he insists, as Carlyle says, that "Cash Payment is the only nexus between man and man." Even the relation between himself and his wife is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, mere "Cash Payment." Money determines the worth of the man; he is "worth ten thousand pounds." He who has money is of "the better sort of people," is "influential," and what he does counts for something in his social circle. The huckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... my best to get Ellador's point of view, and naturally I tried to give her mine. Of course, what we, as men, wanted to make them see was that there were other, and as we proudly said "higher," uses in this relation than what Terry called "mere parentage." In the highest terms I knew I tried ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... mere etoit madame Marie Butler, soeur du duc d'Ormond, viceroi d'Irlande, et grand maitre de la maison ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... misanthrope and satirist—to-morrow, learning, with implicit obedience, to fold a shawl, as a Cavaliere—the same man who had so obstinately refused to surrender, either to friendly remonstrance or public outcry, a single line of Don Juan, at the mere request of a gentle Donna agreed to cease it altogether; nor would venture to resume this task (though the chief darling of his muse) till, with some difficulty, he had obtained leave from the same ascendant quarter. Who, indeed, is there that, without some previous clue to his transformations, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... my dear madam," he said. "Let me make my defence for what, otherwise, you might consider mere boyish folly. I am passionately fond of athletic sports of all kinds, and indulge in them as a pleasure. No real man is without some sort of pleasure, more or less harmless. Nay, even your fanatic is a man who makes ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of Racine as mere tours de force; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. For, as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. But the notion of 'a mere tour de force' ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the day's heat, what with the thieving Indians, the sand-storms and the cats, our nights by no means gave us the refreshment needed by our worn-out systems. By the latter part of the summer, I was so exhausted by the heat and the various difficulties of living, that I had become a mere ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... asserted that we have two sorts of poetry so entirely separate and distinct the one from the other, that the one is purely native and untinged with foreign influence, while the other springs from mere imitation. The two sorts are not so utterly contrasted as that. Even the secondary poetry is not without originality. On the other hand the primary poetry betrays here and there the Latin culture and the Christian sentiment; and yet if ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... government's ability to restrict the content of speech in a designated public forum by restricting the purpose of the designated public forum that it creates is not unlimited. Cf. Legal Servs. Corp. v. Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533, 547 (2001) ("Congress cannot recast a condition on funding as a mere definition of its program in every case, lest the First Amendment be reduced to a simple semantic exercise."). As Justice Kennedy has explained: If Government has a freer hand to draw content-based distinctions in limiting a forum than in excluding ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... which it had so long waited, strong and thorough in proportion to her nature, not rapid in receiving impressions, but steadfast and uncompromising in retaining and working on them when once accepted, a nature that Alick Keith had discerned and valued amid its worst errors far more than mere attractiveness, of which his sister had perhaps made him weary and distrustful. Nor, indeed, under the force of the present influences, was attractiveness wanting, and she suited Alick's peculiarities far better than many a more charming person would have done, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the previous one on Sabbath days. Nor does it even matter whether Atticus meant Addison, or Sappho Lady Mary. The satire is equally good, whether its objects are mere names or realities. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... as these to be brought before the infant mind: let the feelings of the heart, as well as the powers of the understanding, be called into exercise; let babes have "the pure milk of the Word" before "the strong meat;" let as little stress as possible be laid on "the mere letter," and as much as possible on "the spirit" of "the truth;" let it be shewn that piety is not merely rational, but in the highest degree practicable; let this be done with diligence, faith, and prayer, and I hesitate ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... will find I have borrowed several incidents as well as names from Ashmole, and the more early authorities; but my first acquaintance with the history was through the more pleasing medium of verse. There is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers has a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in more advanced life. At this season of immature taste, the author was greatly delighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... fainting fit, in sleep, or in death, the perfect instrument of the physical body becomes useless when the hand of the master workman drops it. The body is only his tool, whereby he contacts the things in a universe which is not himself; and the moment he leaves it, it is a mere heap of matter, doomed to decay, to destruction. But just as he has that body for knowledge here, so he has other bodies for knowledge otherwhere, and in every world he can know, he who is the Knower, and every world is made up of objects of knowledge, which ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... the distant headland was cut off from view, Sarah Libbie would go through the little ceremony and after it was over return to her knitting with a quiet gladness, although the presence of the other factor in the drama was a mere matter of conjecture. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... views of Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-in-law in the ward, whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous romance, had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host; but he looked upon Helen as a mere child, and naturally left her to the countess. The dim sense of her equivocal position, of her comparative humbleness of birth and fortunes, oppressed and pained her; and even her gratitude to Harley was made burdensome by a sentiment of helplessness. The grateful ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distinguishable. This voice outlives the rest at every strophe, and contrives to add a supplemental antiphonic phrase that recalls in turn the favourite melodies of the opera. Camillo hears it, but takes it as a delusion of impassioned memory and a mere theme for the recurring melodious utterance of his regrets. Michiella hears it. She chimes with the third notes of Camillo's solo to inform us of her suspicions that they have a serpent among them. Leonardo hears it. The trio is formed. Count Orso, without ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... In the mere sensuous arts of painting and sculpture the Germans are poor, in the ennobling arts of literature and music they are great; and this fact provides a key to ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... layman—a citizen who has not experienced the test of action and danger in battle—to understand or appreciate our feelings that night. It is hard to describe them, to paint with mere words the intense seriousness and gravity of the situation. You can imagine a dark night at sea—a night so black that the senses feel oppressed. You can add to these a thrill of impending danger and a vision of capture by a cruel enemy and the thought that the very next second will sound the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... too, better than she'd ever liked any man, perhaps, except her first love—the handsomest Irish boy you ever saw, whom she couldn't think of marrying because he'd no family and no money. But she was only seventeen then and Jerry Taylor was a mere subaltern. He died in India of enteric when Di was eighteen; and before Captain March came on the scene she had liked and flirted with at ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... but that could not be called a beneficial incident; that seemed to Sigismund and the council a most small and insignificant one. And it kindled Bohemia, and kindled Rhinoceros Ziska, into never-imagined flame of vengeance; brought mere disaster, disgrace, and defeat on defeat to Sigismund, and kept his hands full for the rest of his life, however small he had thought it. As for the sublime four years' deliberations and debates of this Sanhedrim of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... administrative work. The real measure of his energy can only be found when all these are considered together. Without this there can be no conception of the limitations imposed upon him in his chosen life's work. The mere amount of his research is greatly magnified by the smallness of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... statements. In Bridger's case, however, there was ground for doubt, inasmuch as he had a reputation for exaggeration, and the facts that he related about the wonders of the Yellowstone were considered mere fabrications. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... poured out for himself a glass of water with a trembling hand; then hastily swallowing it, went to sit down at the first vacant place, and this was, by mere chance, placed next to the seat on which poor Mercedes had fallen half fainting, when released from the warm and affectionate embrace of old Dantes. Instinctively Fernand drew ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... them. And so, if I always imagined the woman I loved as in a setting of whatever places I most longed, at the time, to visit; if in my secret longings it was she who attracted me to them, who opened to me the gate of an unknown world, that was not by the mere hazard of a simple association of thoughts; no, it was because my dreams of travel and of love were only moments—which I isolate artificially to-day as though I were cutting sections, at different ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... equally right in principle, it is mere matter of opinion which we prefer. If the one be demonstratively better than the other, that difference directs our choice; but if one of them should be so absolutely false as not to have a right to existence, the matter settles itself at once; because a negative proved ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... naturally looked at the commercial end of Wonota's improvement. Nor did Ruth overlook the chance the Osage maid had of becoming a money-earning star in the moving picture firmament. But she desired to help the girl to something better than mere money. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... important circumstance, that all the sections of the Act, except four, belong to the latter division; that is, they refer to mere matters of administration. The four sections in question are the seventh, the fourteenth, the sixteenth, and the ninety-seventh. Of these, the seventh, the fourteenth, and the ninety-seventh deal ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... led you, field, or line, or staff, Showed they were fit for more than mere parade; Their motto: "Victory or an epitaph," And well they ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... consisting merely of faint dots. Modern poetry, especially lyric, with its wealth and interplay of rhyme, affords a fine opportunity for the printer to mediate between the poet and his public, and this he has been able to do by mere indention and leading, without resorting to distinction of type. The reader of a sonnet or ballad printed without these two aids to the eye is robbed of his rightful clues to the construction of the verse. It seems hardly possible that a poem could have been ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman |
