"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her head; she said that she had always thought how matters would end; she judged from her brother's letters that he began to find out that he was not the happiest of men. Yet nothing to that effect was ever said by him; one phrase only excepted, in his letter to her on her last birth-day, which began with, "In our ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the external shell of form and ceremony. Forms are thenceforward only retained so far as they are guarantees of authenticity, and securities for caution and deliberation. The idea of a Contract is fully developed, or, to employ the Roman phrase, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... reparation. At one time it seemed almost probable that the English minister would have to employ force to coerce his own client into terms as well as the other party to the suit. But Walpole "put his foot down," as the modern phrase goes, and the danger was averted. Even Cardinal Fleury, who co-operated with Walpole in bringing about the settlement, thought at one time that Walpole was too strenuous and was likely ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... universal law of nations, robbery or forcible depredation upon the "high seas," animo furandi, is piracy. The meaning of the phrase "high seas," embraces not only the waters of the ocean, which are out of sight of land, but the waters on the sea coast below low water mark, whether within the territorial boundaries of a foreign nation, or of a domestic state. Blackstone says that the main sea or high sea begins ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... which we trust these pages will make clear is this: So-called "revelation" is neither a personal "discovery," nor any special act of a divine power. "God spake thus and so to me," is a phrase which the self-conscious initiate employs, because he has lost sight of the cosmic light, or because he finds it expedient to use that phraseology in delivering ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... lay long awake that night, thinking over the words his father had carelessly enough dropped. "Dog in the manger"—what did that mean exactly? He had heard the phrase more than once, but had never stopped to consider it in any way. Yet it was a plain sort of illustration, carrying its own meaning along with it. Harry had once been staying in the country with some ...
— The Good Ship Rover • Robina F. Hardy
... purifies himself as Christ is pure. He cannot love the world, which is a system of selfishness. St. John speaks of the possibility of committing a "sin unto death." This {260} is an old Jewish expression for a sin deserving natural death. But the apostle lifts the phrase to a higher level and slightly alters it. His words literally mean "a sin tending unto death." It is any sin which by its very nature excludes a man from fellowship with Christians. It is a sin which requires chastisement before forgiveness, and ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... sympathetic phrase and extended his search for the lost pin to the side of the pool. Almost under the scaffold he saw the shine of precious stones and called to her as he picked up the pin, a bar pin splendidly set with ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the attempt at burglary so happily defeated, Paul thought he ought to go round to the counting-room of Mr. Preston and acquaint him with the particulars. He accordingly deferred opening his place of business—if I may use so ambitious a phrase of the humble necktie stand over which he presided—and bent his steps toward Mr. Preston's counting-room. The latter ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... him. Her eye had fallen on the round visage of Jacky, and a beaming smile now lighted up and beautified the countenance which had so recently been distorted with passion. Uttering some unintelligible phrase in Gaelic, she held out her skinny arms towards the child, as if entreating him to come to her. Strange to say, Jacky did not run away or scream with fright as she approached him and took him in her arms. Whether it was that he was too much petrified with horror to ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... sin no longer. And, when the prayers rhymed, how exhilarating it was to lay stress on each rhyme and double rhyme, shouting them fervidly. And sometimes, instead of rhyming, they ended with the same phrase, like the refrain of a ballad, or the chorus of a song, and then what a joyful relief, after a long breathless helter-skelter through a strange stanza, to come out on the old familiar ground, and to shout exultantly, "For His mercy endureth for ever," or "The appearance of the priest!" Sometimes ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... phrase constantly ringing in the ears of the Devon Commissioners, and now, after nearly a generation has passed away, it is ringing in the ears of the nation louder than ever—'the want of tenure.' All the evidence went to show that the want of security paralysed ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... (428) This phrase has been also attributed to Mademoiselle de Montmorency, afterwards Princess de Cond'e, in reply to the solicitations of Henry IV.; and is told also of Mademoiselle de Rohan, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and exactitude of impression, for the sake of producing a harmonious phrase or a picturesque suggestion, disgusted Alfred de Vigny. "The worst thing about writers is that they care very little whether what they write is true, so long as they only write," we read on one page of his Journal. He adds, "They should seek words only in their own ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the horrid, hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, Is that portentous phrase, 'I told you so,' Utter'd by friends, those prophets of the past, Who, 'stead of saying what you now should do, Own they foresaw that you would fall at last, And solace your slight lapse 'gainst 'bonos mores,' With a long memorandum of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... months of hard exposure which he had endured in the northland. It had not the edge. If it were not for the wind it was scarcely a threat to life. Moreover, the singing sounded no more. It had been hardly more than a phrase of music, and it must have been a deceptive murmur ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... of some mysterious reference to The Old Gentleman, and connecting in her mystified imagination certain associations of a religious nature with the phrase, was so disturbed, that hastily rising from the low chair by the fire to seek protection near the skirts of her mistress, and coming into contact as she crossed the doorway with an ancient Stranger, she instinctively made a charge or butt at him with ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... of an aphorism is that slight exaggeration which makes it more biting whilst less rigidly accurate. According to Buffon, the style might belong to a man as an acquisition rather than to natural growth. There are parasitical writers who, in the old phrase, have 'formed their style,' by the imitation of accepted models, and who have, therefore, possessed it only by right of appropriation. Boswell has a discussion as to the writers who may have served Johnson in this ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... [Greek: antioosan] "sharing," which still clings to the translations, is exploded by Buttm. Lex. p. 144. Eust. and Heysch. both give [Greek: eutrepizonsan] as one of the interpretations; and that such is the right one is evident from the collateral phrase [Greek: porsynein lechos] in Od. iii. 403. [Greek: Lyphizezkas] is the perfect tense, but with ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... phrase, we must "heave to" in our narrative awhile, as it is necessary that we should enter a little more into the previous history of Edward Forster; which we can now do without interruption, as the parties we have introduced to the reader are ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... she ever permitted me to offer her was a little enameled ring, the plainest and cheapest thing of the kind in the jeweler's shop. In all relations with me she was sincerity itself. On all occasions, and under all circumstances, she spoke her mind (as the phrase is) with the same ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... back her hand). Notwithstanding, so much the more am I determined that that shall never be,—never!—Of what are you thinking, Major?—I thought your own distress was sufficient. You must remain here; you must obtain by obstinacy—no better phrase occurs to me at the moment—the most perfect satisfaction, obtain it by obstinacy.... And that even though the utmost distress should waste you away before the ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... is the reading of all the editions, yet as it is a phrase without either example, elegance, or propriety, it is surely ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... which lust in liberty, together with the present trade of the stage, in all their masculine interludes, what liberal soul doth not abhor? Where nothing but filth of the mire is uttered, and that with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, such racked metaphors, with (indecency) able to violate the ear of a Pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... see her pass. Something new, some sudden revelation must have impelled her to take this attitude of aggressive defiance, this expression of provoking irony,—and Franchita then stopped, she also, while this phrase, almost involuntary, came through her ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... great powers of observation to see that the old man placed great reliance on his new doctor and that the visit partook of a social as well as a professional nature. Although they talked low we could catch now and then a word or phrase. Dr. Scott bent down and examined the eyes of his patient casually. It was difficult to believe that they saw nothing, so bright was the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... required secrecy."[124] That these provisions were of little practical value is evident from the fact that they contain no definite statement as to when and how often the accounts and journals are to be published. The phrase from time to time was susceptible of almost any interpretation that either house of Congress or the President might wish to give it, and could easily have been so construed as to justify a method of publication which gave the people ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... general staff learn to order, not to command. "Sir, I order," a popular phrase, applies ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... she broke in. "That phrase always was your introduction to one of the world's greatest brainstorms. But I know that this is the first time you have had time even to eat like civilized beings, so I'll forgive you this once. Why all the registering of ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... merchant stood the two priests. Of the first of these the brigands asked a question, to which, with some hesitation, the priest—that man who had shown so much terror—replied in the affirmative, whereon his companion looked at him contemptuously and muttered a Spanish phrase which means "Man without shame." Of him also the same question was asked, in answer to which he shook his head, whereon he was conducted, though without violence or being searched, to the coach, and shut into it with the plundered merchant. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... in a sort of tremor. I was too young to be in love in the ordinary sense of the phrase, but I was aghast at the thought of the bloom of her cheeks and lips being plucked like roses in a hedgerow. She was precious to my imagination, yet, for all her every-day reality, scarcely nearer to my aspirations than Lady Edith Plantagenet or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... raked by war, but motionless, with workmen idle, young men gone to the front, and nothing for people to do but exchange rumors and wait for the clash to come. I strolled round the old square and through some of the winding streets. One window was filled with tricolor sashes carrying the phrase: "Long live our dear Belgium! May God ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... independently. It is true that this equilibrium is a rough, imperfect one; and it may happen that what is called a "glut" of wool may co-exist for a short period with what is called a scarcity of mutton. But qualifications of this nature are in the strictest sense of the phrase, the exceptions which prove the rule. For the departures from equilibrium which gluts and scarcities represent are always transient and are usually confined within narrow limits. A strong prevailing trend towards an adjustment of demand and supply is unmistakably manifest amid ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... "I catch on—correct phrase, isn't it?" rejoined the Englishman. "Of course, you're liberal minded and free from effete prejudice, but I hardly fancied the wives of your best citizens would ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... both of our own sinfulness and of the mercy we have experienced from our Saviour. At the close of our conversation we kneeled down and prayed to him in fellowship, that he would deliver us from all power of sin, during which my heart grew so warm that I felt it penetrate to my feet"—a phrase used by the Esquimaux to express great inward joy. "Jesus," continued he, "was very near us. I will give him my whole heart as his property." The schools were diligently attended, both by young and old, whose improvement ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... 20th.—The Lords continued the DYER debate. Lord MILNER confessed that he had approached the subject "with a bias in favour of the soldier," and showed how completely he had overcome it by finally talking about "Prussian methods"—a phrase that Lord SUMNER characterised as "facile but not convincing." Lord CURZON hoped that the Peers would not endorse such methods, but would be guided by the example of "Clemency" CANNING. The Lords however, by 129 to 86, passed Lord FINLAY'S motion, to the effect that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... squabbling politicians in the Chambers—for mincing dandies in the salons—for the sarcasm of Scribe-ish comedies, or the coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces, but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were faiseurs de phrase—thinking about words and not feelings. 'No, no,' my Troubadour continued, 'to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural people—a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains—a language never minced or disfigured by academies and dictionary-makers, and journalists; ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... matter of expediency, it seemed wise to indicate a sympathetic attitude toward the idea. For that reason I expressed myself as favorable to the guaranty and termed it "the heart of the League of Nations," a phrase which the President by his subsequent use of it considered to ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... and King Charles, who had neglected him during life, pronounced his panegyric after death, declaring that 'Mr Cowley had not left behind him a better man in England.' It was in keeping with the character of Charles to make up for his deficiency in action, by his felicity of phrase. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... looked at each other in the whites of their eyes, if we may use a phrase so colloquial. Sitting back in the vehicle was a third traveller who took no part in the discussion, and preserved a deep silence. The driver and the patriot and even Gudin paid no attention to this mute individual; he was, in truth, one of those uncomfortable, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... being so, been the subject of the power of the engine. And thus it is falsely said of great men, that they waste their lofty powers on unworthy objects: the object may be dangerous or useless, but, as far as the phrase has reference to difficulty of performance, it cannot be unworthy of the power which it brings into exertion, because nothing can become a subject of action to a greater power which can be accomplished by a less, any more than bodily strength can ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... century without rest or failure, the stream of conversions has continued to flow, and the spiritual impulse has been maintained, despite many changes in manners and modes of thought. The old tradition of Methodism being an aggressive force, embodied in the apt phrase "Christianity in earnest" is still true, as it emphasizes the great spiritual forces of religion, as distinguished from ceremonial and even church organization, as the essentials of our faith ever abide within. The message of the apostle of Methodism in the ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... that it was felt 1800 years ago, and has been dealt with over and over again. Papias [44] is lionized [45] in order to upset the antiquity of the four Gospels—which upsetting, however, depends on a dogmatic interpretation of an ambiguous phrase, and the absence of positive testimony. Here again there is no evidence that Mr. Laing has read any elementary text-book on the authenticity of the Gospels. He is "perfectly clear" as to the fourth Gospel being a forgery; again for reasons which he alone ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... so much elevation of mind should be compatible with a spirit of detail carried to minuteness. He previously divided the employment of the day by hours, quarters and minutes; and so scrupulously adhered to this distribution, that had the clock struck while he was reading a phrase, he would have shut his book without finishing it. His portions of time thus laid out, were some of them set apart to studies of one kind, and others to those of another: he had some for reflection, conversation, divine service, the reading of Locke, for his rosary, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... common-sense or because of visionary theories. Strict and consistent as a moralist, she was never led into any extravagances or fanaticisms. Stern even as a disciplinarian, she did not proscribe healthy and natural amusements. Strong-minded,—if I may use a modern contemptuous phrase,—she never rebelled against the ordinances of nature or the laws dictated by inspiration. She was a model woman: beautiful, yet not vain; witty, yet never irreverent; independent, yet respectful to authority; exercising ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... could not have been misunderstood. As it was, all kinds of rumors as to proposed disunion movements, and as to the intrigues with Spain, got afloat; and there was no satisfactory contradiction. The stanch Union men, the men who "thought continentally," as the phrase went, took the alarm and organized a counter-movement. One of those who took prominent part in this counter-movement was a man to whom Kentucky and the Union both owe much: Humphrey Marshall, afterwards a Federalist senator from Kentucky, and the author of an interesting ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... be impossible, in the space at our command, to enumerate the various modes adopted in different countries for "making coffee;" that is, the phrase commonly understood to mean the complete preparation of this delicious beverage for drinking. For performing this operation, such recipes or methods as we have found most practical will be inserted in their proper place; but the following facts ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... stood in the hall deeply perplexed, when Tom sauntered from Mr. Dalken's bedroom where he had been smoking a cigarette to steady his nerves. Now he joined Polly and began a conventional phrase, but was ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... peaceful common, through the solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadows of the rod of Moses, to the terminus of their harmless stroll—the 'patulous fage,' in the Professor's classic dialect—the spreading beech, in more familiar phrase—[stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not done yet, and We have another long ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... who (to use a sea phrase) were "all at quarters." The magic pen of Scott might here have been well employed to describe "The Gathering." The chiefs sat apart from their followers in deep consultation: we did not approach near enough to hear ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... This phrase caught the fancy of Roberta Vallis whose fluttering, frivolous soul was appealed to by any line of reasoning that tended to put saints and sinners on the same level. She made Kendall repeat his idea and then and there proposed that they adopt it. A society for the dissemination ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... submitted, provided that the right of citizens of the United States to vote should not be abridged on account of sex. I notice that the amendment which the ladies here now propose has prefixed to it this phrase: "The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based on citizenship." I call attention to this because I would like to have them explain as fully as they may why they incorporate the phrase, "shall be based on citizenship." Is the meaning this, that all citizens shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... poor old soul in a phrase that might have seemed comic if it hadn't been so infinitely profound and touching. "Ah, Madame, even if there isn't anything left, it will be our ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... something stealthy—a smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts—nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just uneasiness—nothing more. You ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... trees, and among the crowd, as if expectant of an arrival and impatient of delay. "Ou sont-ils? Pourquoi ne viennent-ils?" I heard her mutter more than once; and at last, as if determined to have an answer to her question—which hitherto none seemed to mind, she spoke aloud this phrase—a phrase brief enough, simple enough, but it sent a shock through me—"Messieurs et mesdames," said she, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Andrew! Poet of renown! Whether the chairmen of Edina's town You curious draw, and make 'em justly speak, To use a vulgar phrase, as clean's a leek; Or smart Epistles, Fables, Songs you write, All put together handsome trim and tight; Or when your sweetly plaintive muse does sigh, And elegiac strains you happy try; Or when in ode sublime your genius soars, Which guineas ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... the whole letter with one glance of the eye, darting to the culminating point of each phrase as a deer bounds over ledges of rocks; he weighed the plain meaning as well as the innuendoes of the slightest expression, like a rabbi who comments upon the Bible, and deciphered the erasures with the patience ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and she invited me to go to her parlor to have a cup of tea. To see Bettina boil the tea (steep it or draw it, she said was the proper phrase) was as pretty a sight as one could wish to behold, and when she poured it out in thin china cups, handing one to me and taking one herself, her pride in following the fashion of modish ladies was as touching as it was simple ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Aquilina, whose heavy breathing suggests an analogy with the sounds of a storm about to burst," replied Emile, absently engaged in the harmless amusement of winding and unwinding Euphrasia's hair, "you would be ashamed of your inebriated garrulity. Both your systems can be packed in a phrase, and reduced to a single idea. The mere routine of living brings a stupid kind of wisdom with it, by blunting our intelligence with work; and on the other hand, a life passed in the limbo of the abstract or in the abysses of the moral world, produces ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... I hope, sufficiently elucidated what is meant by the common phrase, "the ordinary rate of profit," and the sense in which, and the limitations under which, this ordinary rate has a real existence. It now remains to consider ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the current phrase I heard among the men in these trenches. It shared honours with strafe. You have only one life to live and you may lose that any second—what hopes! Dig, dig, dig, and set off a mine that sends Germans skyward in a cloud of dust— what hopes! ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the new President is beyond reproach, he is a gentleman of unwavering integrity, and possesses the confidence of his fellow-citizens in an eminent degree. To use the western phrase, he is 'very popular,' but we don't esteem this of much account. It is an idle wind, and may blow south or north ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... far off, Dr. McAlister was contentedly ruffling up his hair, while he monopolized the attention of a prominent professor, who appeared altogether unconscious of the passing moments and of the crowd of alumnae waiting for a word. Theodora smiled to herself, as she caught an occasional phrase,— ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... cemeteries to celebrate the memory of the dead, the priest countenanced these masks as religious rites and taught the superstitious people that their gifts would ease the souls of those sent suddenly unshrived to hell. With solemn phrase and syncopated notes, the danse macabre wound through the darkened street around the shadowed crucifix up to the chapel door, where in hideous masks, and dancing still, the hallucinated people, cast their gold before the altar. "And as the coins, tin, ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... is the phrase used by the Commons in their first article) words made choice of by them with the greatest caution. Those means are described (in the preamble to their charge) to be, that glorious enterprise which his late Majesty undertook, with an armed force, to deliver this kingdom from Popery and arbitrary ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the origin of the phrase "To kick the bucket," the tradition among the slang fraternity is, that "One Bolsover having hung himself to a beam while standing on the bottom of a pail, or bucket, kicked the vessel away in order to pry into futurity, and it was all UP with him from that moment—Finis!" Our Querist will find ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... words "sea power," or their translation, is a recognized phrase the world over, and since the power of sea power is greater than ever before, and is still increasing, it may be profitable to consider sea power as an entity, and to inquire what are its leading characteristics, and in what ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... precious portion of his time which could be reserved for higher objects. An interesting passage in a letter of his to Mr. Gladstone (dated from Lincoln's Inn, June 25, 1841) will illustrate this feeling by a phrase which I italicise, as I believe he was fond of using it: 'My reason for staying in town is to read ecclesiastical law, and to prepare (if so be) for election committees. The former branch I reckon my flower-garden, the latter my cabbage- field.' [Footnote: ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... about his brother, Frederick essayed the song, he noted suppressed glee on the part of his listeners, which increased, through giggles and snickers, to a great outburst of laughter. To his disgust and dismay, he learned that the simple phrase he had repeated and repeated was nothing else than "I am so drunk." He had been made a fool of. Over and over, solemnly and gloriously, he, Frederick Travers, had announced how drunk he was. After that, he slipped quietly out of the room whenever it was sung. Nor ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... the senate, and is called president of the senate. In the absence of the presiding officer, a temporary speaker or president is chosen, who is called speaker or president pro tempore, commonly abbreviated, pro tem., which is a Latin phrase, meaning for the time. ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... remark this phrase. Tertullian quotes the last clauses differently from the reading in our present copies, "The Holy One of God." If such a quotation had occurred in Justin, the author of "Supernatural Religion" would ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... must not be spoken. It is thus often very difficult to find out the names of particular natives, and strangers would make many mistakes, imagining that they were putting down the name, when in reality they were marking some phrase, signifying that his name could not be mentioned by the one applied to. They have no objection to meet each other after the ceremony, nor do they decline speaking, but there is this peculiarity in their conduct that ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... experience in isolation. I have said that any translation of emotion into poetry—it might be said, into any intelligible expression—necessarily implies a certain co-operation of intellectual control. If we take even a detached phrase so directly and obviously ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... and as he looked down upon her he saw that the cheap brooch was again on her breast. It would have been pretty, could an observer have been there, to see the skill with which they both steered clear of any word or phrase which could be disagreeable to him. One might have thought that it would have been impossible to avoid all touch of a rebuke. The very fact that he was forgiven would seem to imply some fault that required pardon. But there was no hint at any fault. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of outward circumstances are termed reverses of fortune, and the phrase is fitting, for by them life gains a new form. Yet real happiness is more frequently increased than lessened, if only they do not entail anxiety concerning daily bread. My mother's position was far removed from this point; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... words, two nights before, had been: "In the present 'situation,' as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am CONSIDERING, and shall not fail to act when satisfied ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... my dear father have done if I had? but simply to show you how the very people we think the least of frequently become our best friends; the "weak things of the earth confounding those that are mighty," in scripture phrase.' ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... when the satirist enters into detail, when he enumerates circumstances, when local manners, national habits, and individual peculiarities fall under his notice; when he describes the specific disease engendered in the atmosphere by which his characters are surrounded; when, to borrow a lawyer's phrase, he condescends to particulars, then it is that close and intimate acquaintance with the scenes and persons he describes is requisite; and that a superficial critic falls, at every step into errors the most glaring and ridiculous. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... which a ship's crew hold the knowledge of such accomplishments as these, is expressed in the phrase they apply to one who is a clever practitioner. To distinguish such a mariner from those who merely "hand, reef, and steer," that is, run aloft, furl sails, haul ropes, and stand at the wheel, they say he is "a sailor-man" which means that he not only knows ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... that phrase "packing the Court" it is charged that I wish to place on the bench spineless puppets who would disregard the law and would decide specific cases as I wished them to be decided, I make this answer: that no President fit for his office would appoint, and no Senate of honorable men fit for their ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... Dolman said, putting the points of his fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment, and Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were rapiers, stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting phrase, proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps John Porter would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the Reverend Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... again." "Farewell, farewell, my lord," said the Bishop of Beauvais to the Earl of Warwick, whom he met shortly after Joan's retractation; and in his words there was plainly an expression of satisfaction, and not a mere phrase of politeness. On the 29th of May the tribunal met again. Forty judges took part in the deliberation; Joan was unanimously declared a case of relapse, was found guilty, and cited to appear next day, the 30th, on the Vieux-Marche ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... even at the last, when I am playing at my ease, we cannot say that consciousness is altogether absent. I am conscious of the harmony, and if I do not direct, I still verify results. As an entire phrase of music rolls off my rapid fingers, I judge it to be good. But if one of the notes sticks, or I perceive that the phrase might be improved by a slightly changed stress, I can check my spontaneous movements and correct the ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... into a brisk gallop, and I followed suit, and caught up with her. And I was a little moved and troubled by what she had said. For it seemed to me as if she had said it of me alone, and that the inclusion of Evelyn in that delayed and hanging fire "both" of her phrase had ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... the sad chronicles of the Jackson family. She was moved to tears. She remembered the doctor's hesitancy, and her own idle phrase—"a huge coffin." ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... feeling of astonishment at the fact that they were still alive. The summary execution of some thieves, who were shot without a trial, was regarded as an act of signal justice. For a month Lamartine's phrase was repeated with reference to the red flag, "which had only gone the round of the Champ de Mars, while the tricoloured flag," etc.; and all ranged themselves under its shade, each party seeing amongst the three colours only its own, and firmly determined, as soon as it would be the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... only with the play as Da Ponte and Mozart gave it to us. In the dramatic terminology of the eighteenth century "Don Giovanni" was a dramma giocoso; in the better sense of the phrase, a playful drama—a lyric comedy. Da Ponte conceived it as such, but Mozart gave it so tragical a turn by the awful solemnity with which he infused the scene of the libertine's punishment that already in his day it was felt that the last scene as written and composed to ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... would pass synonymous with it, "internal polity." Whenever we find that in one of his speeches, the substitute is used in this manner; and I can tell you the reason. It would be too bald a contradiction to say slavery; but "internal polity" is a general phrase, which would pass in some quarters, and which he hopes will pass with the reading ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to vain conjectures, however, as to Roderick's actual moods and occupations. He knew he was no letter-writer, and that, in the young sculptor's own phrase, he had at any time rather build a monument than write a note. But when a month had passed without news of him, he began to be half anxious and half angry, and wrote him three lines, in the care of a Continental banker, begging him at least to give some sign of whether ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in the first, I have given Lady Charlotte Guest's translation exactly as she wrote it. It would have been easy to make it a more faithful reproduction of the Welsh by occasionally changing a word, or by making a phrase more simple in diction. But the reader would not have forgiven me for placing before him a translation that was not Lady Charlotte Guest's. I have again ventured, however, after a careful comparison of ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... smoking and looking at the boy in silence. He felt he knew what the old Bible phrase meant when it spoke of yearning over a child. He felt the helpless desire to protect, to stand between this golden boy and all that must come to him, and he knew that not only can no one live for anyone else, but that youth would refuse the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... peaceable and friendly reputation, which was widespread, would protect them; so he parted from his wife and children with little apprehension as to their safety. In reply to Meek's question, I stated that I had not seen Spencer's family, when he remarked, "Well, I fear that they are gone up," a phrase used in that country in early days to mean that they had been killed. I questioned him closely, to elicit further information, but no more could be obtained; for Meek, either through ignorance or the usual taciturnity of his class, did not explain more ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... been called by his admirers the most Homeric of English poets. The phrase was probably applied to him because of his Sigurd the Volsung, in which he uses the material of an old Icelandic saga. There is a captivating vigor and swing in this poem, but it lacks the poetic imagination of an earlier work, The Defence of Guenevere, in which ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... phrase "man's complex vision" I am trying to indicate the elaborate and intricate character of the organ of research which we have to use. All subsequent discoveries are rendered misleading if the total activity, at least in its general movement, of our instrument ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... related to domestic life, was never excelled, used to say that two movings were equal to one fire. And gentlemen, as if they were afraid that this besetting sin of republican governments, this rerum novarum lubido (to use a very homely phrase, but that comes pat to the purpose), this maggot of innovation, would cease to bite, are here gravely making provision that this Constitution, which we should consider as a remedy for all the ills of the body ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... various venders, our two observers passed on, unmolestedly, excepting the annoyance and importunity of "What d'ye buy? what d'ye buy, buy, buy?" from" barking butchers, who instinctively reiterated the phrase as the casual passenger approached, like so many parrots, unconscious of its import being unproductive in effect; for who would be induced to purchase by the clamorous invitation universally in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... some few days later, on his return to Whitney, Ludovic indited a voluminous letter to his sister, in his very best style. "It is rather a waste," he reflected regretfully. "She will miss the neatest points. The happiest turns of phrase will be lost upon Louisa!" To recoup himself for which subjective loss the young man amused himself by giving a very alarmist account of certain matters, though he was constrained to admit the pleasing fact that Sir Richard and Lady Calmady really had it in contemplation to go up ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... missals of hushed memories would I bend, And thrilling scripts of bosom-scented phrase, Telling of love that never hath an end, And sacred relics of wonder-working grace, Strands of bright hair, and tender webs of lace, Press to my lips—until the Present seems The Past again to my ensorcelled gaze,— Kneeling within that cloister of ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... his heart, whispering softly, "They know not what they do." And this old and ready phrase gave him the strength to ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... politeness in French, our conversation was carried on in Italian, and I had a better opportunity of studying my host's air and manner. His hands he held clasped before him, but frequently released them, to make those vivid gestures with which Neapolitans frequently clinch their phrase. His most remarkable feature was his eyes, of a greenish grey: extraordinary eyes, not for beauty, but for their fathomless depth, and for the sympathy which one felt welling up in them from the soul beneath. This was especially noticeable as our conversation fell upon the question of Art and ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... to use a hackneyed but convenient phrase, can better be imagined than described. Instead of the sigh of relieved tension that should have swept over the audience at the conclusion of the line, a burst of laughter greeted it. The Story Girl's performance was completely ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... jest in me by the time he finished. My own thought had just called him a swaggerer, and now he clapped the same phrase back ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... a bower of green branches, and as we ate our supper round our modest fire she sat like a queen among us. It was odd to see the way in which her presence affected each of us. With her Grey was the courtly cavalier, ready with a neat phrase and a line from the poets. Donaldson and Shalah were unmoved; no woman could make any difference to their wilderness silence. The Frenchman Bertrand grew almost gay. She spoke to him in his own tongue, and he told her ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... very curious passage—"a trout, Hamlet, with four legs"—which is given as a proverbial line in Clarke's Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina (or Proverbs English and Latin), 1639. It is unnecessary to be too curious in searching for the exact meaning of the phrase, but, as Dr. Ingleby suggested to me, it is in all probability taken from the older play of Hamlet, which does not appear to have been entirely superseded at once by the new, or at least was long ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... but it satisfied Martha. She considered that Katharine Maitland had the "perfectly sweetest manner of any girl in the world," and was daily trying to improve her own by the pattern set. "Make my regards." She had never heard that phrase before, but it impressed her as very stately and "Miss Eunicey," so put it away in her memory for future use. She was further delighted by Katharine's begging her and Mary to walk home with her, as far as they went her way, for she had something ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... your Zahid-phrase, is but the gift of latest years; Conscience was born when man had shed his fur, his tail, his ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... our conduct. The account of the creation in the book of Genesis is one of the compositions from which no sensitive imagination would subtract an iota, to which it could not bear to add a word. Milton's paraphrase is alike copious and ineffective. The universe is, in railway phrase, "opened," but not created; no green earth springs in a moment from the indefinite void. Instead, too, of the simple loneliness of the Old Testament, several angelic officials are in attendance, who help in nothing, but indicate ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... would need to consider the effects of a great number of more or less philosophical ideas which throw their weight on the side of war. So far as these ideas are simple and clear, and especially if they can be conveyed in the form of the phrase, their influence cannot wholly be ignored. Some we have already referred to. The doctrine that might makes right, the conception of state as supreme, the belief in the divine right of kings, the belief in the ordained rights of aristocracy, belief in militarism as a social institution, the doctrine ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... How quickly does this bourgeois phrase call up before us a hodgepodge room, an atmosphere of stale tobacco smoke, a table covered with pipes, books and magazines, littered with tobacco, walls burdened with hideous prints, a mantel adorned with objects dear to their owner from their associations, to the visitor hideous. The ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... such a delightful prospect expand the breast of a benevolent and philanthropic European? Would he cavil at an expression? catch at a phrase? No, sir, that is only reserved for the gentleman on the other side ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... you refer to ours in that ambiguous And filmy phrase, why then you lie; And if to yours—we hope to be contiguous To our objective by-and-by, But for the present, though the end is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... village, either a little child with the measles, or a wounded soldier from the wars, Isabeau's modest child—no doubt the mother too—was always ready to help. It must have been a family de bien, in the simple phrase of the country, helpful, serviceable, with charity and aid for all. An honest labourer, who came to speak for Jeanne at the second trial, held long after her death, gave his incontestable evidence to this. "I was then a child," he said, "and it was she who nursed me in my illness." They were ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... The writer shows a talent for invective, but there is a good deal of evidence that he was well-read in other Pope attacks. The phrase, Pope's "Mountain Shoulders," (p. 5) recalls Pope's "Mountain Back" in The Difference Between Verbal and Practical Virtue, p. 5, published in August 1742. The image of the wasp (pp. 6, 10) had appeared in Hervey's and Lady Mary's ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... position in which he now stood, his desires took a loftier and more unbounded range. Yet, if he harboured a criminal ambition in his breast, he skilfully veiled it from others, - perhaps from himself. The only object he professed to have in view was the good of the people; *21 a suspicious phrase, usually meaning the good of the individual. He now demanded permission to raise and organize an armed force, with the further title of Captain-General. His views were entirely pacific; but it was not safe, unless strongly protected, to urge them on a person of the viceroy's ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... think he had said too much. His practical nature rebuked the poetic sentiment and phrase. He re-collected himself, and added, more coldly, "You would ask my opinion? What on? Some public matter—some parliamentary bill that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... twelve years, dressed in a boy's jacket with a ruffled shirt, collar coming down over his shoulders, such as boys wore in those days—playful as a kitten, and as innocent as the purest-minded girl. He was probably the best fitted (as the phrase is) for college, of any member of the class. He had, I believe, gone over all the studies of the Sophomore year. Without any apparent effort he maintained his pre-eminence through his entire college course, not only in the Languages, but also in Mathematics and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... day." It was a Prussian phrase. The revolution was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered loot as a reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... nine o'clock in the evening, our party assembled for what, in foreign phrase, is called 'une seance magnetique.' Anna M——, our mesmerisee, was already with us. Mr K—— arrived soon after, and was introduced to his young patient, whose name we had purposely avoided mentioning to him in the morning; not that we feared imposition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... upon the nail."—The origin of this phrase is thus stated in the Recollections of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... to strike a blow at some liberty—I don't know what—which he had formerly demanded with virulence and force. And, more than that, the man in power was going to forfeit his word to the tribune. In good French that is called "to betray," but in parliamentary language they employ the phrase, "accomplish a change of base." Opinion was divided, the majority uncertain; and upon his speech would depend the political future of the speaker. Therefore, on that day, the legislators were in their places, and the Chamber did not resemble, as usual, a class of noisy boys presided ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... years ago; so they imagine as his hair was gray then, he must have been a very old man at that time back, and so to them he appears to live forever, and they consider him as charmed, and to use their phrase, 'great medicine.' I've heard some Indians declare that Malachi had seen one hundred and fifty winters, and they really believe it. I never contradicted ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... sitting-room, when in the hedge on the other side of the lane, just opposite my window, a small brown bird warbled a few rich notes, the prelude to his song. I went and stood by the open window, intently listening, when it sang again, but only a phrase or two. But I listened still, confidently expecting more; for although it was now long past its singing season, that splendid sunshine would compel it to express its gladness. Then, just when a fresh burst of music came, it was disturbed by another sound close by—a human voice, also ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Without finishing his phrase, he went to the table, drew forth Caesar's "Gallic Wars," and a copy of "Lorna Doone" and immediately began to concentrate. A moment later Snorky Green arrived chuckling from a foray down the hall where he had just deposited a moth ball in the lamp chimney of Beckstein, the Midnight Poler. He ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... leaving Tim, the saloonkeeper, "that shook up," to use his own phrase, that it is doubtful whether he ever entirely regained his former ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... have had to work all our lives as dressmakers, Nan and I would have done it, and never given in. We were making quite a fine business of it. We had more orders then we could execute; and you call that play? Confess, now, that you repent of that phrase!" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... thus by a series of divisions, each being successively cleft into two, he reaches a division which only comprises the first chapter. He applies to each part of the work the same process as to its whole. He continues these divisions until he comes to having before him only one phrase ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... and three of the most active of their number ran to the trap and entered the canoe. It required some little delay, however, to embark with their weapons, to find the paddles and, if we may use a phrase so purely technical, "to get out of dock." By this time Hurry was in the scow, and the Delaware had his rifles again in readiness. As the Ark necessarily sailed before the wind, it had got by this time quite two hundred yards from the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... based on gold mines, shares at a fabulous premium. Now no gold mine can be worked to a profit by a company. Primo: Gold is not found in veins like other metals. It is an abundant metal made scarce to man by distribution over a wide surface. The very phrase gold mine is delusive. Secundo: Gold is a metal that cannot be worked to a profit by a company for this reason: workmen will hunt it for others so long as the daily wages average higher than the amount of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and tables, much pleased. Then her conscience smote her. "He is really very good," she said to herself—"far too good for me. I don't think I ever could have married anybody else." But there was something dubious, that resembled a question, in this last phrase. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... use would not be restricted to attacks on enemy aircraft. Bombing raids on enemy positions became a regular duty of the Flying Corps. A machine built to take a heavy load of bombs is clumsy and slow in manoeuvre, not well able to repel the attack of light fighting scouts. To borrow a phrase from the pilots, it is cold meat in the air. Hence bombing raids were carried out chiefly at night, and night flying, on machines designed for the purpose, became another special duty of the Flying Corps. These raids were what may be called short-distance raids, aimed at the aerodromes, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... her a shake. However, be only grumbled out, "Qu'est-ce que c'est, donc?"(187) A little at a loss what to say, she gently stammered, "M'ami,—le—le premier Consul, ne vient-il pas?"(188) "Oui! oui!" was blustered in reply, with a look that completed the phrase by "you fool you!" though the voice left ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the request. Her husband uttered some soothing phrase of compliance. We all looked on while the flame caught and began to creep up among the apple-logs. Bagheera rose and changed his position to one before the hearth. When Vere stood erect, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... had to come out," was the graphic phrase of one of the captors, "and they looked fed up, too. They had even run out ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... central or national government; and this was of great moral weight with mediaevals, who always conceived of freedom as a positive status, not as a negative escape: they had none of the modern romanticism which makes liberty akin to loneliness. Their view remains in the phrase about giving a man the freedom of a city: they had no desire to give him the freedom of a wilderness. To say that they had also the authority of the Church is something of an understatement; for religion ran like ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... observers most competent to pass practical judgment on the problems of our country life. All students now realize that education must seek to train the executive powers of young people and to confer more real significance upon the phrase "dignity of labor," and to prepare the pupils so that, in addition to each developing in the highest degree his individual capacity for work, they may together help create a right public opinion, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... The last phrase was uttered with such grim determination that the exclamation which had risen to Mr. Ransom's lips died in a conflict of feeling which forbade any rejoinder that savored of sarcasm. Hazen, ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... two letters from Ulster," he said, "in which the phrase occurs, 'Rather the Kaiser than the Pope.' These letters were written before the war. Ulster, no doubt, has now changed her tune. But it was that spirit, surely, and the reports sent to Berlin by German officers who visited Ulster ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... her promise and aroused hopes that would only have meant further disappointment, in view of developments. She knew, of course, the current gossip to the effect that the Security State Bank was about to foreclose and "set Kate afoot," as the phrase was. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... by their surroundings, and is so exactly suited to their patient, phlegmatic temperament that it comes to them as naturally as the air they breathe, and even if unable to read but a few characters in a phrase, they will arrive at the meaning as surely as a well-bred hound will ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had—to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase—a "passionate prodigality" of statement both to himself and others. The simple truth was that nothing then invited him so strongly as the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to matins and to prime, To pious works and secular submission, To prove to them that liberty was crime,— This was, in fact, the Padre's present mission; To get new souls perchance at the same time, And bring them to a "sense of their condition,"— That easy phrase, which, in the past and present, Means making that condition ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... there can be for prolonging the existence of these trifles, my answer is that there is no excuse. But a copy on the bedside shelf may possibly pave the way to easy slumber. Only a mind "debauched by learning" (in Doctor Johnson's phrase) will scrutinize ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... sort of young lion. The several trips he had made across the continent, and the several able and interesting reports he had published over his name attracted great public attention. He was hardly ever mentioned except in a high-flown hyperbolical phrase. Benton was one of the most influential men of his day, and it soon became well understood that the surest way of reaching the father-in-law's favor was by furthering the son-in-law's prospects; everybody that wished to court Benton praised Fremont. Besides this political influence Benton ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... George Bingham, for assault, during the tithe agitation. The General's Aide-de-Camp, Captain Berners, of the Royal Artillery, was under examination. A junior counsel asked the witness, "What is the meaning of the military phrase, 'ride him down?'" ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... so do I: would you desire better simpathie? Let it suffice thee (Mistris Page) at the least if the Loue of Souldier can suffice, that I loue thee: I will not say pitty mee, 'tis not a Souldier-like phrase; but I say, loue me: By me, thine owne true Knight, by day or night: Or any kinde of light, with all his might, For thee to fight. Iohn Falstaffe. What a Herod of Iurie is this? O wicked, wicked world: One that is well-nye worne to peeces with age To show himselfe a yong Gallant? What an vnwaied ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... yet the actual presence of women at political meetings has not debased them but has raised the other sex. Coarseness has not become diffused through both sexes but has fled from both. To put the whole matter in a short phrase: The association of the sexes in the family circle, in society, and in business, having improved both, there is neither history, reason nor sense to justify the assertion that association in politics will lower the one ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various |
