"Modicum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... admit that fact until, as a result of their change of policy, disaster stared them in the face. Then they made haste to reverse their action as far as possible and did other works of repentance which enabled them to save a modicum of prestige and some money; but the hands of the clock had been set back, and the goal of a national opera, toward which the German movement was leading, was forgotten. It ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... "A modicum, I grant you; yet it is equally true that those who merely read to be amused will not digest the scientific dishes you set before them. On the contrary, far from appreciating your charitable efforts to elevate and broaden their range of vision, they will either sneer at the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... according to the market for which the wine is destined: thus the high-class English buyer demands a dry champagne, the Russian a wine sweet and strong as "ladies' grog," and the Frenchman and German a sweet light wine. To the extra-dry champagnes a modicum dose is added, while the so-called "brut" wines receive no more than from one to ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... vindicare non potest: populus igitur hoc amplius quam privatus quispiam habet: quod huic, vel ipsis adversariis judicibus, excepto Buchanano, nullum nisi in patientia remedium superest. Cum ille si intolerabilis tyrannus est (modicum enim ferre omnino debet) resistere cum reverentia possit, Barclay contra Monarchom. 1. iii. c. 8. In English thus: Sec. 233. But if any one should ask, Must the people then always lay themselves open to the cruelty ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... known to belong to the straightforward classes are allowed to remain at large, and may be even seen hobnobbing with the guardians of public immorality. Indeed it is not in the public interest that straightforwardness should be extirpated root and branch, for the presence of a small modicum of sincerity acts as a wholesome irritant to the academicism of the greatest number, stimulating it to consciousness of its own happy state, and giving it something to look down upon. Moreover, we hold it useful ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... burdens with the certainty of moderate success. It was not, when one considered it, the life which one would have chosen, but who, since the world began, had ever lived exactly the life of his choice? Many women, she reflected stoically, were far worse off than she, since she started not only with a modicum of business experience (for surely the three months with Brandywine & Plummer might weigh as that) but with a knowledge of the world and a social position which she had found to be fairly marketable. That Madame Dinard would have accepted an unknown and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... as they were—liked the crooked staircase squeezed into a corner of the living room below, the stuffy little dens above, with casement windows which only opened on one side, letting in the smallest modicum of air, and were not often opened at all. Cottages on the Now Arden model meant stone floors below and open rafters above, thorough draughts everywhere, and, worst of all, they meant weekly inspection ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... period was emphatically a serious one. Large sums of money, due at a certain time, were wanted by Percival (I say nothing of the modicum equally necessary to myself), and the one source to look to for supplying them was the fortune of his wife, of which not one farthing was at his disposal until her death. Bad so far, and worse still farther on. My ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... admit Munster, gintlemen—glorious Kerry!—yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it. I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system: like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude" (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—"from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person. Gintlemen, I have the honor of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... dissolvi posset. Haec 75 nequaquam loquor ad gratiam. Amavi vivum nec minus amo mortuum; quod enim in illo amabam non periit. Si supputem quicquid ille dare mihi paratus erat, immensa fuit eius in me liberalitas; si ad calculum vocemus quod accepi, sane modicum est. 80 Unicum modo sacerdotium in me contulit, immo non dedit sed obtrusit constanter recusanti, quod esset eius generis ut grex pastorem requireret, quem ego linguae ignarus praestare non poteram. Id cum vertisset in pensionem, sentiretque me et eam pecuniolam gravatim 85 accipere, quod ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... judgment on your delicately chiseled nose; I take you for a strolling genius." His ambiguous phrases irritated me; I was about to retort sharply. But he gave me no chance to speak. "Observe," he said, "how you are puffed up by a modicum of praise. Retire within yourself and ponder upon your perilous vocation. We geniuses—for I am one too—care as little for the world as it cares for us; without any ado, in the seven-league boots which ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... privilege of the same elementary training, they might have shown an equal facility in the humble task of pasting and labeling and tissuing paper boxes. "Lame Lena" knew how to work; she knew how to husband every modicum of nervous energy in her frail, deformed body; and thus she was able to make up—more than make up—for her physical inferiority. "Lame Lena" brought to her sordid task a certain degree of organizing faculty; she did the various processes rhythmically and systematically, always with the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... know French and German, and a modicum of Greek and Latin. These last I teach them by a free use of translations; rudiments of grammar first, and then we attack the books, and let grammar be incidental. We don't compose in any of these languages; it's a mere ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... encyclopedic mastery of it. It is now so bulky that the impossibility of any one man's coming into possession of it all is obvious. But the educational ideal has not been much affected. Acquisition of a modicum of information in each branch of learning, or at least in a selected group, remains the principle by which the curriculum, from elementary school through college, is formed; the easier portions being assigned to the earlier years, the more difficult ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... march. The old cow was in very good condition, went off her milk in a day or two, and continued on the journey as though nothing had occurred. On the eighth we had cold fowl for breakfast, with a modicum of water. On the ninth and tenth days of our march the plains continued, and I began to think we were more liable to die for want of water on them than in the dense and hideous scrubs we had been so anxious to leave behind. Although the region now ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... mutilated into this birth, which she could not survive. She had not the strength to come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile. She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless flower that the end of the winter puts forth mercilessly. And she wanted to harbour her modicum of twinkling life. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... am not reasoner enough to persuade you that all women have souls. Very likely in Persia and India they have not. I only want you to believe that there may be women so fortunate as to possess a modicum of immortality. Well, pardon my interruption, 'if you looked ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... they met in the ship, had determined the honest magistrates to retire to their proper pursuits on terra firma, at the earliest occasion. In the mean time, to escape persecution, and to obtain a modicum of the glory that was now to be earned, they had hired a boat, and accompanied the expedition, in the character of amateurs. It formed no part of their plan, however, to share in the combat; a view of its ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... down late and panting, in spite of his daily exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken away his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in open hall, and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion of his own study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been bothering him by that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For it was not a very ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... they might possibly have decided to cross the Channel by the night-boat. Then he hastened off to another quarter of the town to pursue his inquiries among hotels of the more old-fashioned and quiet class. His stained and weary appearance obtained for him but a modicum of civility, wherever he went, which made his task yet more difficult. He called at three several houses in this neighbourhood, with the same result as before. He entered the door of the fourth house whilst the clock of the nearest church ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... equal bulk; it is only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal prize-fights or vapid "personals" as by important political information or literary criticism. There is undoubtedly a modicum of truth in Matthew Arnold's sneer that American journals certainly supply news enough—but it is the news of the servants' hall. It is as if the helm were held rather by the active reporter than by the able editor. It is said that while there are eight editors to one reporter in Denmark, the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... foregone definition, which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity of digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time when I too was foolishly intent to divert the leisure hours of posterity. But reflection assured me that posterity had, thus far, done very little to place me under that or any other obligation. Ah, no! Youth, health and—though I say it—a modicum of intelligence are loaned to most of us for a while, and for a terribly brief while. They are but loans, and Time is waiting greedily to snatch them from us. For the perturbed usurer knows that he is lending us, perforce, three priceless possessions, and that till our lease runs out we ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... finished enough snow had been thawed to give the horses half a bucket of water each. In each pail a couple of pounds of flour had been stirred to help out what nourishment could be obtained from the leaves, and from the small modicum of ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... mystery; and although Professors Tom Duncombe, Count D'Orsay, Chesterfield, and several other eminent Italian-operatic natural historians, have spent immense fortunes in an ardent pursuit of knowledge in this branch of science, they have as yet afforded the world but a small modicum of information. Perhaps what they have learned is not of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... more note than Bishop, pronounced him the man of sin, a malignant manifestation of Satan. On one or the other of these two scales he was placed by every man in the United States, according to each citizen's modicum of sense and temper. We say, every man—because in that war of the Democrats against the Federalists, no one sought to escape the service. Every able-tongued man was ready to fight with it, either for Jefferson ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... reached home, and I left the komatik at the hospital door, I made out 'Senath dancing in an agitatedly aimless fashion on our platform. She was also waving her arms about. For a moment it crossed my mind that she had lost her modicum of wits, but as she was immediately joined by Tryphena, I gave up the theory as untenable, and continued to hasten up the hill to the Home. Our boiler had sprung, not one but many leaks, and the precious hot water destined ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... is always so much mischief being done by globe-trotting tourists and ill-informed and irresponsible novelists who scurry through the Southern Seas on a liner, and then publish their hasty impressions. According to them, any one with a modicum of common sense can shake the South Sea Pagoda Tree and become bloatedly wealthy in ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... wordless growl proceeded from his stricken brother-in-law. "Temper your hilarity with a modicum of reserve. This girlish frivolity is unseemly. Well, I'm going to have a chat with this chappie and fix it ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... appropriated it, without much understanding of its primitive spirit, but appreciating it as a setting for the ideal society dreamed of but not realised in his own day. Add to this literary perspicacity, a good foundation in classic fable, a modicum of ecclesiastical doctrine, a remarkable facility in phrase, figure, and rhyme and we have the foundations for Chretien's art as we shall find it upon ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... habits of this animal, we find that he displays all the characteristics of the instinctive principle. If animals are endowed with instincts which apparently act so much like reason in the ordinary course of their operations, we should not at once conclude that there is any need of endowing them with a modicum of reason to account for their deviations from this course, which do not outwardly resemble the acts of reason any more strongly. And besides, it is said, that, if we refer the variations to an intelligent principle, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... learned to make a fire, paddle a canoe, and go through the woods in semi-silence. His scholarly talk had given him large place in Rolf's esteem, and his sweet singing had furnished a tiny little shelf for a modicum of Quonab's respect. But his attempts to get a deer were failures. "You come back next year with proper, farsight glasses and you'll all right," said Rolf; and that seemed the one ray ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... provisions for the trip were cooked: the last of the flour was made into large loaves of bread; a ham and several dozen eggs were boiled; the few chickens that have survived the overflow were fried; the last of the coffee was parched and ground; and the modicum of the tea was well corked up. Our friends across the lake added a jar of butter and two of preserves. H. rode off to X. after dinner to conclude some business there, and I sat down before a table to tie bundles of things to be left. The sunset glowed and faded, and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... slightly projecting border at the sill, which is 10 feet or so above the level of the present pavement. The jambs are quite plain, with heavy impost members, slightly hollowed, and a square label, much damaged and defaced. These two archways were no doubt made to admit a modicum of light to what must always have been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... Wimblehurst were years of pretty active growth. Most of my leisure and much of my time in the shop I spent in study. I speedily mastered the modicum of Latin necessary for my qualifying examinations, and—a little assisted by the Government Science and Art Department classes that were held in the Grammar School—went on with my mathematics. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... peculiar—it was not so much fortune that I sought—in short, I had my reasons—and a large practice would have greatly interfered with my more serious occupation. Still, I do not deny that a slight modicum of professional business, just to fill up the intervening time and save appearances, would not have been amiss, and I had been in fact rather anxiously looking for some symptoms of the sort for a considerable time, without any result at all. The inhabitants ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... poison of fashionable folly runs comparatively innocuous while it circulates in fashionable veins; but when vulgar fellows are innoculated with the virus, it becomes a plague, a moral small-pox, distorting, disfiguring the man's mind, pockpitting his small modicum of brains, and blinding his mind's eye to the supreme contempt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... form the caste system is undoubtedly doomed. It is too purely artificial to endure after the people acquire even a modicum of education. Perhaps it was planned originally as a means of preserving the racial integrity and political superiority of the Aryan invaders, but for unnumbered centuries it has been simply a gigantic engine of oppression and social injustice. At the present time no blood or social difference ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... beat her with three more puppies than two calves. It's sixteen chickens and a passel of turkeys and we waked up Mr. Mark to tell him and he said—" Stonie paused in the rapid fire of his announcement of the morning news and then added in judicial tone of voice, as if giving the aroused sleeper his modicum of fair play: "Well, he didn't quite say it before he swallowed, but he throwed a pillow at Tobe and pulled the sheet over his head and groaned awful. Aunt Viney was saying her prayers when I went to tell her, ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... agreed that a certain modicum of natural gifts is necessary for those who think of entering the ministry. Here is Luther's list of the qualifications of a minister: you will observe that most of them are gifts of nature: 1. He should ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... an author—which he was once heard to thank Heaven he was not—he would probably have been one of those shallow, fashionable sentimentalists who hang like Mahomed's coffin between earth and heaven, an eyesore unto both. As it was, his modicum of talent made him a most pleasant man in his own ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... directions, and as far as the eye could reach could see nothing but the endless monotony of wave after wave of dunes, treeless, and apparently almost devoid of vegetation, for the little there was, was confined to the deep hollows between. A short distance away a fair-sized bush offered a modicum of shade, and here we rested for the day for we had planned to travel only in the cool of the night as long as the moon served. And here Inyati showed me how to make water from the young green t'samma, taking those the size of an orange only, and roasting them in ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... and effectually spoiled the appeal they meant to make, and Clavering's face flushed as he recognized its ludicrous aspect. Still, he could not withdraw then, and he made the best of a difficult position with a certain gracefulness which might, under different circumstances, have secured him a modicum of consideration. As it was, however, Hetty's anger left her almost white, and there was a light he did not care to see in her eyes when she ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... point of departure for his pictures. That he seems almost completely to have lost such power as he ever had of giving to his vision a coherent and self-supporting form is unfortunate; still, he does convey to us some modicum of the thrill provoked in him by his ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... something so much distorted by the compression of his chin, and by his face being out of window, that his sister could not make it out. In answer to her sound of inquiry, he took down one hand, removed the other from his temple, and emitting a modicum more voice from between his teeth, said, 'It ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no priestcraft in the Church of England? There is certainly, or rather there was, a modicum of priestcraft in the Church of England, but I have generally found that those who are most vehement against the Church of England are chiefly dissatisfied with her because there is only a modicum of that article in her—were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... was spotlessly clean; the stove, highly polished, gave forth a pleasing warm glow, even whilst the window, slightly open, allowed a modicum of fresh air to enter the room. In a rough earthenware jug on the table stood a large bunch of Christmas roses, and to the educated nostril the slight scent of perfumes that hovered in the air was doubly pleasing after the fetid ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... sit ye down then, sit you down here: [They sit down.]—and now, sir, you must recall to your thoughts, that your grandfather was a man, whose penurious income of half pay was the sum total of his fortune;—and, sir, aw my provision fra him was a modicum of Latin, an expertness in arithmetic, and a short system of worldly counsel; the principal ingredients of which were, a persevering industry, a rigid economy, a smooth tongue, a pliability of temper, and a constant attention to make every ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... man and another as long, but less bulky, are extended in a couple of long bamboo chairs on Nixey's longish front verandah. The blue, fragrant smoke of two long cigars curls upwards over their supine heads, and two long drinks containing a very meagre modicum of inferior whisky are contained in two long tumblers, resting in the bamboo nests cunningly devised for ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... have done in his family, and the care I have taken in the education of his two boys, are services for which some men might have expected a greater return. I would not have you imagine I am therefore dissatisfied; for St Paul hath taught me to be content with the little I have. Had the modicum been less, I should have known my duty. But though the Scriptures obliges me to remain contented, it doth not enjoin me to shut my eyes to my own merit, nor restrain me from seeing when I am injured by an unjust comparison."—"Since you provoke me," returned Square, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... lost everything in the world save some small modicum of pride, which, being all I have, I do cherish, maybe, unduly. And so, when these unmannerly hinds took me by the throat, calling on me to tell my name and business, this spirit within me flaring up, I could not answer with the humility of a villain seeking ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Here and there a doorway broke into what might have been a solid section; in one or two cases arches crumbled; in many others inside walls or beams or stairways, falling, carried down with them another modicum of the long ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... no purpose; and the day wore on with intense heaviness to her, and the customary modicum of strength gained ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... neglecting the fathers! Nothing in this world could be farther from my thoughts. Not only do I agree with him that "all ordinary children have fathers, and it might be well to put in a paragraph;" but I am cheerfully willing to write a whole book on the subject, provided that a mere modicum of readers can be assured me. I fairly ache to talk to fathers, having a really great ideal of them, and whenever a class of them can be induced to take up a correspondence course I shall be glad ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... comprising the seven in this little collection of Stories of the Old Missions, all but one have, as a basis, some modicum, larger or smaller, of historical fact, the tale of Juana alone being wholly fanciful, although with an historical background. The first story of the series may be considered as introductory to ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... and inclosed him in a chamber as entirely cut off from the external atmosphere as that of a diving bell. He was oppressed in the darkness, every time the waves came rolling in and compressed his modicum of air, by a sensation of extreme heat,—an effect of the condensation; and then, in the interval of recession, and consequent expansion, by a sudden chill. At low ebb he had to work hard in clearing away the accumulations of stone and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... up a deliberate voice (Flora caught her hand away), "as far as I can make head and tail of your business—supposing it to have a modicum of head, which I doubt—it appears to me that I have just done you a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in contact with Roman men of the world, but it also doubtless reflects the tendencies of the Syrian branch of the school from which he sprang; for the Syrian group had had to cast off some of its traditional fanaticism and acquire a few social graces and a modicum of worldly wisdom in its long contact with the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... and she had talked this matter over with that small modicum of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties thus suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare of her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... bit more proud after hearing our determination than he was before. After having taken a very small modicum of the welcome refreshment, he had seated himself in a corner ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... mysterious means by which she accomplished the charming effect that she did in some intuitive way presently accomplish; and at any rate I decline the task of description. I confess, however, that the little packet contained a modest modicum of the necessary materials, whatever they were; and I have no hesitation in praising the generous interest, the discretion and exuberant experience of the gay widow of the late Cap'n Saul Nash o' the Royal Bloodhound, whose letter, dealing with the most satisfactory methods ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... Haquino Dei gratia regi Norwegi illustri amico suo charissimo Edwardus eadem Dei gratia rex Angli, Dom. Hiberni, & dux Aquitani salutem cum dilectione sincera. Miramur non modicum & in intimis conturbamur de grauaminibus & oppressionibus qu subditis nostris infra regnum vestrum causa negociandi venientibus his diebus plus solito absque causa rationabili, sicut ex graui querela didicimus, inferuntur. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... unless her lie has some spice of fact to go on, unless it has vraisemblance, truth-likeness, an appearance of foundation at least. Mean little lies, like those she sets going, do not need much salt of truth to keep them from spoiling; still they require their due modicum, and they usually have it. As for instance, she says, with a long face, to Mrs. Tittle: 'Mrs. Jenkins, the widow Jenkins, you know, it's awful. She went over to Pinkins's last evening; I saw her go, and I do believe she stayed ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... not compulsory by law in Athens, but the father who fails to give his son at least a modicum of education falls under a public contempt, which involves no slight penalty. Practically all Athenians are at least literate. In Aristophanes's famous comedy, "The Knights," a boorish "sausage-seller" is introduced, who, for the purposes of the play, must be one ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... clever mulattoes who have caught the civilisation of the kitchen, are busy from morning till night in their cabins, preparing dishes, issuing orders, regulating courses, starting corks, and answering questions. Apathy is the great requisite for the station; for wo betide the wretch who fancies any modicum of zeal, or good nature, can alone fit him for the occupation. From the moment the ship sails until that in which a range of the cable is overhauled, or the chain is rowsed up in readiness to anchor, no smile illumines his face, no tone ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... his beating, for he was, indeed, a rare sport. However, he would have to retaliate. The feud must go on. Unless he could mix a modicum of fun with his profits, J. Augustus would not have regarded the fight worth while, so accordingly he kept his eyes and his ears open for a handy weapon with which to jab Cappy through that same old rift in his armor—his ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of them were a mixture of sympathetic and average qualities: a modicum of philosophy, moderate desires, fond attachment to the family, the earth, moral custom; discretion, dread of intruding, of being a nuisance to other people: modesty of feeling, unbending reserve. All these amiable ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... maternal side, and it was infinitely impossible for him to trace the "family tree" from the paternal side. The evil effects of this consequent admixture of "similar" blood cannot be denied, and must bear a modicum of responsibility for the excessive mortality ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... be able to complete what I have undertaken and long prosecuted, namely, contribute something to settle many unsettled and disputed facts of American and Canadian history, and to do, at least, a modicum of justice to a Canadian ancestry whose heroic deeds and unswerving Christian patriotism form a patent of nobility more to be valued by their descendants than the coronets ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... raising taxes and soldiers for purposes absolutely remote from the conquered people's interests. Such a government is nothing but a chronic raid, mitigated by the desire to leave the inhabitants prosperous enough to be continually despoiled afresh. Even this modicum of protection, however, can establish a certain moral bond between ruler and subject; an intelligent government and an intelligent ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... this, as if it would be thought mean; but I put on a stern visage, and told them, that if they did more I would rise up, and rebuke and forbid the extravagance. So three services became the uttermost modicum at all burials. This was doing much, but it was not all that I ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... of AEschylus cited with passages of Shakespeare, no more than happy coincidences in the thinking of two kindred original minds. Yet some Greek at least he had. Our witness is Ben Jonson. Rare Ben was himself a monument of learning, and to him the ordinary mortal's modicum was but a trifle. When he observes "and though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek," we should do well to take him as meaning precisely what he says. If he had meant "no Latin and no Greek," he would have written it so; the line would have scanned as easily, and the desired point would have ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... humanity and the affairs of other nations, races, and peoples of this globe, which is round—those responsibilities handed down to us by the father of our country, George Washington—interpret as meaning that we wish freedom of the seas. Not in the abstract, but in the concrete, not in modicum but in unconditional unobstruction and under such international statutes and regulations as shall confine sea spaces to neither the individual, to the group, to those who live within certain prescribed boundaries which constitute government by the people for the people and of the people, nor yet ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... formulation and pursuance of a national policy is, therefore, not an easy task, and the conflict of interests often necessitates compromise, so that a history of legislation over a series of years shows that national progress is generally accomplished by liberalism wresting a modicum of power from conservatism, then giving way for a little to a period of reaction, and then pushing forward a step further as public opinion becomes more intelligent or ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... young men would rather sail together than cruise in different ships, and as I have a modicum of interest in high quarters, though I do not boast of much, if you wish, Captain Headland, to apply for Harry, it is possible that I may induce the Lords Commissioners to grant your request, unless Harry would prefer ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... I submit, to awake to a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power, intelligence and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half consciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so, deliberately ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... knows exactly where it comes from. You don't win it by any definite act of superlative daring—I mean to say, you don't have to creep out under cover of darkness and return in the morning with an enemy battleship in tow to qualify for a modicum of this mysterious treasure. You just proceed serenely on your lawful occasions, confident in the knowledge that incredible sums of prize-money are piling themselves up for your ultimate benefit. I suppose the authorities understand all about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... resistance—made friends of Protestant and Catholic alike; won the warm recognition of the Pope, who averred, "Thorwaldsen is a good Catholic, only he does not know it." He kept clear of all factions, and with a modicum more of will, might have been a very prince of diplomats. But as it was, he evolved into a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... a lamentable wail from low on the floor, rising to the full pitch of Rol's healthy lungs; for his hand was gashed across, and the copious bleeding terrified him. Then was there soothing and comforting, washing and binding, and a modicum of scolding, till the loud outcry sank into occasional sobs, and the child, tear-stained and subdued, was returned to the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the special effects that it brings about. It was said just now that heredity is the stiffening in human nature, a stiffening bound up with a more or less considerable offset of plasticity. Now clearly it is in some sense true that the child's whole nature, its modicum of plasticity included, is handed on from its parents. Our business in this chapter, however, is on the whole to put out of our thoughts this plastic side of the inherited life-force. The more or less rigid, definite, systematized characters—these form the hereditary factor, the race. ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the State schools which will satisfy the demands of the Catholics. The Protestant denominations might without difficulty agree upon a common platform, and it is on the cards that they may, in spite of the Catholic opposition, succeed in introducing a modicum of religious instruction into the State schools. The Catholics maintain that false religious teaching is worse than no religious teaching, and will be satisfied with nothing less than a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Said Kakunai—"Kage, be circumspect and constipated. To-morrow the master offers congratulations at the castle. Kage is stuffed beyond measure to-day, that he be able to fast to-morrow. Show no discontent. For the passage of the sun there is to be no eating, and but a modicum of drinking. Halt not the procession for unseemly purposes." He stroked the horse, and the pleased animal purred and whinnied with the contentment of a cat at being petted. Then harshly said a voice in the ear ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... it were paneled, and in one of them, not readily distinguishable, was another door. It opened into a room lighted only by a little window high up in a wall, through whose dusty, cobwebbed panes, crept a modicum of second-hand light ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... was thinking as he left his door for the car that awaited him. From the start he had never deviated from his well-laid course of determination. Power was his goal and by power he meant no mean modicum, but limitless strength. He had picked finance as his field of endeavor because in this day the scepter that sways affairs must be the scepter of gold. But Hamilton Burton knew that he was only starting and his plans ran to the future. As he looked ahead he never forgot that the fighter must be ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... to rush in and raise the devil where there's no necessity for anything to happen if just a modicum of common sense ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... one buzz of confusion, till I reached General Crude's study, and found him walking up and down the room. He had left his table with his gold snuff-box in one hand, his pinched-together finger and thumb of the other holding a tiny modicum of snuff, which he applied to his nose as I entered, and he ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... to my story: it's a sort of shilling-shock tale, With no end of fire and fury, and a modicum of blood, And a Colonel who mixed metaphors as Yankees mix a cocktail, And a quiverful of arrows, shameful arrows, barbed ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... against the insensate folly which was hurrying me to infallible destruction, without success. For me there was only obedience. With a revolver in either hand I marched towards the bureau as unconcernedly as if I would not have given my life to have escaped the denouement which I needed but a slight modicum of common sense to be aware was close at hand. I placed the muzzle of one of the revolvers against the keyhole of the drawer to which my unseen guide had previously directed me, and pulled the trigger. The lock was shattered, the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... men a modicum of success will give a disproportionate sense of confidence and power. The man to whom success has always come easily is not baffled by problems that would appall those who, in middle life, "lie among the failures at the foot of the hill." As Goethe, who had always been ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the Arctic zone? It is something to stand where the foot of man has never trod. It is something to do that which has defied the energy of the race for the last twenty years. It is something to have the consciousness that you are adding your modicum of knowledge to the world's store. It is worth a year of the life of a man with a soul larger than a turnip, to see a real iceberg in all its majesty and grandeur. It is worth some sacrifice to be alone, just once, amid the awful silence of the Arctic snows, there ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... squirted out a modicum of 'baccy juice, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, "It's my opinion, that the best way of getting one man out of a scrape, is to get all the rest in it. Jemmy, d'ye see, is to be hauled up for singing an old song, in which a wench ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... to make the end. The play, I fear, will have to end darkly, and that spoils the quality as I now see it of a kind of crockery, eighteenth century, high-life-below- stairs life, breaking up like ice in spring before the nature and the certain modicum of manhood of my poor, clever, feather-headed Prince, whom I love already. I see Seraphina too. Gondremarck is not quite so clear. The Countess von Rosen, I have; I'll never tell you who she is; it's a secret; but ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... casks, barrels and hogsheads, contained his groceries, drugs and dye-stuffs. A few remnants of domestic prints and muslins, together with stray fragments of broadcloth, constituted his stock of dry-goods. Then there was a modicum of hardware and cutlery; a few spelling-books and new testaments for a book store; and sundry jars and bottles filled with fancy-colored powders and liquids, for an apothecary shop. His remaining list of commodities ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... reading and sent sternly to bed because he must get up so early. Always work had stolen from him these treasures—dreams, recreation and knowledge. He had been obliged to fight the farm and his father for even a modicum of them—the things that made life worth living. And the irony of it—that eventually it would be this farm and Martin's driving methods which, if he became reconciled to his father, would make it possible for him to drink all the ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... I generally cooked in it was leg of beef, with sliced potato, bits of onion chopped down, and a modicum of white pepper and salt, With just enough of water to cover "the elements." When stewed slowly the meat became very tender; and the whole yielded a capital dish, such as a very Soyer might envy. It was partaken of with a zest that, no doubt, was a very important ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... evil in Canada and in the States is the rage for dress. An Irish girl no sooner gets a modicum of wages than all her thoughts are to go to chapel or church as fine or finer than her mistress. Nearly every servant-girl in the large towns has a ridicule (that must be the proper way of spelling ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the girl, whom he saw for the first time. She, who neither meant nor suspected any ill, was quite at her ease, and we should have enjoyed the joke, and everything would have gone on pleasantly, if her husband had possessed some modicum of manners and common sense, but he began to get into a perfect fury of jealousy. He ate nothing, changed colour ten times in a minute, and looked daggers at his wife, as much as to say he did not see the joke. To crown all, Tiretta began to crack jests at the poor wretch's expense, and I, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "Putabant isti officiarii per hoc non modicum damnificare civitatem Lundoniae, sed potius hoc multo majora damna intulerunt regi et hominibus regni quam jam dictae ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... opportunity of so doing occurred. Now, learning on credible authority that Sir Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever modicum of advantage—in the matter of advice and introductions—might be derivable from so irritating ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... said than done! I escorted Bridget to a restaurant, and fed her and myself with lots of good hot food, and then straightway hired a taxi, and drove back to the agents to demand addresses of flats a little further afield, which should have at least a modicum ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the breaker, to shield it from the sun. At last, Jarl enlarged the vent, carefully keeping it exposed. To this precaution, doubtless, we owed more than we then thought. It was now deemed wise to reduce our allowance of water to the smallest modicum consistent with the present preservation of life; strangling all ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the half of my soul. I go out into the world with a secret horror. When I withdraw, I gather together and lock up my scattered treasure, but I put away my ideas sorely handled, like fruits fallen from the tree upon stones.' No, no; in seclusion I find the only modicum of peace that earth can ever yield me, and can readily understand why Chateaubriand avoided those crowds which he denominated, 'The vast ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... saw no profit in wasting that modicum of spleen, when I might double it by deliberately reading her effusion and knowingly casting it into the dust. One always can make excuses to oneself, for curiosity. Consequently I halted, around a corner in this exhausted Benton; tore the envelope open with gingerly touch. The folded paper within ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... education; and this College must steadily set before itself the ambition to be able to give that education sooner or later. At present we are but beginning, sharpening our educational tools, as it were, and, except a modicum of physical science, we are not able to offer much more than is to be found ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... me, however, the late "Fellow of University College," Oxford, declares he had to look the word out in a Lexicon. I commend the fact to the notice of the combatants over the desirability of retaining the present compulsory modicum of Greek in ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... in his arm-chair, thinking of all this, with that small untasted modicum of brandy and water beside him, when he heard some distant Lambeth clock strike three from over the river. Then he rose from his seat, and taking the candles in his hand, sat himself down at a writing-desk on the other side of the room. "I needn't send it when it's ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the harvests which she does without a labour to which new settlers would be unaccustomed. By means of the hydro-electric commission homes are warmed in winter, lighted all the year round, as indeed are the cities, towns and villages, and cooking for the family accomplished with a modicum of trouble. Electric railways connect communities and settlements. The telephone is in almost everyone's home. So that with the pianola, the gramophone, and other means of diversion, the winter nights are not what they ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... all questioning. He seized the small modicum of wine on the table, and drained it at a draught. "Poole," said he, "have you nothing that warms a man better than this?" Oliver, who felt as if under the influence of a frightful dream, went to a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... expectant family. But thanks to Her Majesty's well-meaning Secretaries of State for the Colonies, who have all successively judged alike on this point, it is declared most unadvisable to allow a local magistrate the smallest modicum of discretion. He has only one course to pursue, and that is, to commit the offender for trial at the next Quarter Sessions, to be held in the capital of the colony. Accordingly the poor native, who would ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... the almost perished man had regained consciousness and a modicum of strength, the girls were told the rest of his story, which ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... which Joyce had built for herself and the Bonnivels. Both of them, though fitted with many conveniences and finished with taste, were of moderate cost, there being not one extravagance, and only the modicum of room actually needed for refined living, in either. Many a rich woman has thought nothing of putting more expense into the fitting of one room, even, than Joyce had laid out on her whole house. Indeed that reserved ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... mutton is devoured, or in a lukewarm state past our power of managing; and Ganymede, the greengrocer, though we admire the skill of his necktie and the whiteness of his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us going in sherry. Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without a small modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good digestion, I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I bowed my head at her, she looked at me with all her eyes, struck with amazement. Had I suggested that she should join me in a wild Indian war-dance, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... will suffice. They evidence the general statement, i. e. that the American mind has refused to foster and to cultivate the Negro intellect. Join to this a kindred fact, of which there is the fullest evidence. Impelled, at times, by pity, a modicum of schooling and training has been given the Negro; but even this, almost universally, with reluctance, with cold criticism, with microscopic scrutiny, with icy reservation, and at times, with ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... had greatly declined with both husband and wife since the earlier days in Italy. Yet when they returned to Casa Guidi it was only for six weeks. Even at the close of the visit to Siena Mrs Browning had recovered but a slender modicum of strength; she did not dare to enter the cathedral, for there were steps to climb. At Florence she felt her old vitality return and her spirits rose. But the climate of Rome was considered by Dr Gresonowsky more suitable for winter, and towards the close of November ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... dispensation, distribution; division, deal; repartition, partition; administration. dividend, portion, contingent, share, allotment, fair share, allocation, lot, measure, dose; dole, meed, pittance; quantum, ration; ratio, proportion, quota, modicum, mess, allowance; suerte^. V. apportion, divide; distribute, administer, dispense; billet, allot, detail, cast, share, mete; portion out, parcel out, dole out; deal, carve. allocate, ration, ration out; assign; separate &c 44. partition, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sanitation of this plague and fever infected region of that Republic, which has for so long constituted a menace to health conditions on the Canal Zone. It is hoped that the report which this mission will furnish will point out a way whereby the modicum of assistance which the United States may properly lend the Ecuadorian Government may be made effective in ridding the west coast of South America of a focus of contagion to the future commercial current passing through ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... quam nauigio intrauimus in octo vel circa diaetis per aquam satis tenuem, haud profundam. Ibi, sicut et in alijs multis Insulis, rex non nascitur sed eligitur per partes terrae: et est haec vna de quindecim nominatis Regionibus conquisitionis Ogeri. Ista, cum modicum declinet a circulo terrae sub AEquatore, patitur in anno duas aestates, et duas hyemes, si tamen hyems aliqua dici debeat, et non magis aestas, quia nullus hic dies anni caret fructu, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... indifferent minds may be discipline; it certainly is not teaching. I think that success will come only to the teacher who is a middleman between thought and expression, valuing both. When we succeed in making the bulk of the undergraduates really think; when we can inspire them with a modicum of that passion for truth in words which is the moving force of the good writer; when the schools help us and the outside world demands and supports efficiency in diction; then we shall carry through the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Masters, it can not as much as purge its own channels. For what is the ballot box, I ask again, but a modern vehicle of corruption and debasement? The ballot box, believe me, can not add a cubit to your frame, nor can it shed a modicum of light on the deeper problems of life. Of course, it is the exponent of the will of the majority, that is to say, the will of the Party that has more money at its disposal. The majority, and Iblis, and Juhannam—ah, come out with me to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... deadly as the deep sea—" and Mr. Carlyon's voice was tense. "When they have only bodies they are dangerous enough, but when—as many of the modern ones have—they combine a modicum of mind as well, with all the cunning Satan originally endowed them with—then happy is the man who escapes, even partially ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... so when in the plenitude of his wisdom he conceives that he can enlighten the house with a modicum of information. The last time I heard him hold forth was as an apologist for the tumultuary loyalists at the Mansion House Meeting, when he delivered himself in a manner so heterogeneal of commonsense, and so completely in a style of egotism, as to excite the ridicule and risibility ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... experience the lady was a reader of character—of hobo character at least—and she saw nothing in the appearance of either of these two that inspired even a modicum of confidence. Now the young fellow who had been there earlier in the day and who, wonder of wonders, had actually paid for the food she gave him, had been of a different stamp. His clothing had proclaimed him a tramp, but, thanks ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... known it anywhere, from its extreme peculiarity. It never either rose or fell much from a certain pitch; and at that level the words gurgled forth, seemingly from an everbrimming fountain; he never wanted one; and the stream had neither let nor stay till his modicum of sense had fairly run out. People thought he had not a greater stock of that than some of his neighbours; but he issued an amount of word-currency sufficient for the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of a woman to recognize a lover's hostile feeling beneath the spoken words, was acutely conscious of the annoyance; she ignored the modicum of sympathy. To conceal her hurt, she had resort to a fictitious gaiety that was ill calculated, however, to deceive, for the stress of her disappointment was ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... extraction and identity, intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... be well if that gomerl, Renny Potter, 'ud do his'n. See here, now, Mester Adrian, nowt but a pint of wine left; and it the last," pointing her withered finger, erratically as the palsy shook it, at a cut-glass decanter where a modicum of port wine sparkled richly under the facets. "And he not back yet, whatever mischief's agate wi' him, though he kens yo like your meat at one." And then circumstances obliged her to add: "He is landing now, but it's ower ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... words in Truc. 858 ff. is egregiously tiresome in the reading, but in action could have been made to produce a modicum of amusement if presented in the broad burlesque spirit that we believe was almost invariably employed. This gives us a clue to the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... changed economic conditions which now prevail, it can no longer be asserted that the imparting of the mere elements of knowledge is adequate either to secure the future social efficiency of the children of the lower classes of society or that such a modicum of instruction as is provided by our Elementary Schools is sufficient to protect the community from the ignorance of its ill educated and badly trained members. The "hooliganism" of many of our large cities is due to our system of half educating, half training ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch |
