"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the city whom she greatly esteemed and valued, and whom Zamano suspected. But their endeavors were met wholly with scorn. When they entreated her, among other things, "to give peace to our country," the phrase seemed to awaken ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... characteristic Rendell fashion, all speaking together, and continuing to speak, without being in the least disconcerted by the babble evoked. Elsie whined, Agatha gurgled, and Chrissie drawled, while the listener rolled her eyes from one to another, catching a phrase here, a phrase there, until at length some dawning of the situation began to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... relic of North Anglian heathendom seems to be preserved in a phrase which forms the local slogan of the town of Hawick, and which, as the name of a peculiar local air, and the refrain, or 'owerword' of associated ballads, has been connected with the history of the town back to 'fable-shaded ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... 'digging up the hatchet,' as they termed it in their euphonious language, as soon as the spring came round! However, I wouldn't place much credence in their statement, I assure you. Those Crows are such curs that they would say anything rather than venture 'within measurable distance,' as the phrase goes, of a possible enemy." And Ernest ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... sporting among the clouds and, in the poet's phrase, "waiting to see some wonder ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... invention of Walpole's, and that resistance to such a measure would not be unwelcome to the Sovereign, and would lead to the dismissal of the minister. Walpole was not long in finding out the treachery of the Duke of Roxburgh. To adopt a homely phrase, he "took the bull by the horns" at once. Lord Townshend was in Hanover with the King, and Walpole wrote to Lord Townshend, giving him a full account of all that was going on in Scotland, and laying the chief blame for the continuance of the disturbance on the Duke of Roxburgh. "I beg ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... a line upon a card, as he might sign a beggar's petition—with a supercilious parade of benevolence—and passed it to the other, who accepted it with a phrase of acknowledgment neither hearty nor grateful. Then the master of the house paced the floor with a slow, regular step, his hands behind him; his countenance placidly ruminative, his thoughts apparently engaged with ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... his fame; But, in his heart, his thoughts were rife How for her sake to earn a name. With bays poetic three times crown'd, And other college honours won, He, if he chose, might be renown'd, He had but little doubt, she none; And in a loftier phrase he talk'd With her, upon their Wedding-Day, (The eighth), while through the fields they walk'd, Their children shouting by the way. 'Not careless of the gift of song, Nor out of love with noble fame, I, meditating much ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... these years we have detailed accounts from an eye-witness a writer competent, above all other men of his time, to set down in courtly and happy phrase the wonders that delighted his eyes. In 1361, John Froissart, an adventurous young clerk from Valenciennes, sought out a career for himself in the household of his countrywoman, Queen Philippa, bearing with him as his credentials a draft of a verse chronicle ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... life, Wayland! Men laugh at that phrase to-day! Oh, A know vera well, we've no time for an old or a new dispensation nowdays. We're too busy wi' the golden calf, an' the painted woman, an' th' market place, an' th' den o' thieves; an' when th' vision faileth, the people perish! 'Ye shall have ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... afternoon, the secretary came to deliver in behalf of the royal court a verbal message to the father procurator [sic] Antonio Jaramillo, advising him of the oversight of the preacher, who that morning in the sermon—at which the governor and the king's fiscal were present—had omitted to use the phrase, "very potent sir." The same message was sent to the superiors of the other religious orders, because, several days before, the prior of St. Augustine and another religious, a Dominican, had fallen into the same offense, when preaching in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... waiting at a railway junction" ... Here, with his instinct for the perfect phrase, Stevenson has pointed a finger at the one experience which is commonly accepted as the acme of imaginable dulness. This man, who could be happy at a railway junction, could not have found a prouder way of boasting to posterity that he had never "faltered more ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Algonquin magi, May have reclined "sub tegmine fagi;" For when across the Sapper's Bridge, The prospect was a fine beech ridge, And "Gibson's corner," in old time, For squirrel hunting was most prime, "Prime" is a somewhat slangy phrase For these high philologic days, And in connexion, be it stated, With a spot to science dedicated. J.H.P. Gibson's astral lecture Will place this fact beyond conjecture. Bound that old spot now thronged by all, ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... Wehle had nothing left to do. The river was falling fast, the large boats above the Falls were, in steamboat-man's phrase, "laying up" in the mouths of the tributaries and other convenient harbors, there were plenty of engineers unemployed, and there ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... may formerly have refined. The Ghatole are those who dwelt above the ghats or passes of the Saihadri range to the south of the Berar plain. The Baone are an important subcaste both in Berar and the Central Provinces, and take their name from the phrase Bawan Berar, [22] a term applied to the province by the Mughals because it paid fifty-two lakhs of revenue, as against only eight lakhs realised from the adjoining Jhadi or hill country in the Central ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Israelites de Roumanie, dont la situation est indeterminee au point de vue de la nationalite. Le Comte de Launay, dans le but de prevenir tout malentendu, a propose, au cours de la discussion, l'insertion de la phrase suivante: "Les Israelites de Roumanie, pour autant qu'ils n'appartiennent pas a une nationalite etrangere, acquierent, de plein droit, ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... paltry vexations; and he seemed to think that everybody ought to be as much hardened to those vexations as himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a head-ache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were, in his phrase, "foppish lamentations," which people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because the Good-natured Man had failed, inspired him with no pity. Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... once," said Fanny. "There need not be any consideration. I really have never thought—" Fanny, who knew her own mind on the matter thoroughly, was hardly able to express herself plainly and without incivility. As soon as that phrase "of course" had passed her lips, she felt that it should not have been spoken. There was no need that she should insult him by telling him that such a proposition from him could have ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... incidents, peeping out from time to time, show what is called the true blood, and are extremely valuable, proving how essential it is that an officer in command should "Never say die while there is a shot in the locker!" a pithy old phrase, which will apply to many situations in life, civil as well as military. Had the gallant commander alluded to, Sir Nathaniel Dance, yielded when the French Admiral Linois, and his squadron, consisting of the Marengo, a ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... belong as little to the Pessimist as to the Bombastic school—to borrow Mr. Seeley's phrase—unless it is to be a Pessimist to seek a foothold in positive conditions and to insist on facing hard facts. The sense of English kinship is as lively in us as in other people, and we have the same pride in English energy, resolution, and stoutness ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... shall grow up and flourish, or whether it shall die and perish. This is what Mr. Darwin has drawn attention to, and called the "STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE"; and I have taken this simple case of a plant because some people imagine that the phrase seems to imply ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... knew already, that Cicely had walked to the station and had taken no luggage with her, and having opened up the necessary channels of information, so that outdoor and indoor servants alike now knew that Cicely had run away and that her father was prepared, as the phrase went, to raise Cain about it, the Squire went up to bed, and breaking his usual healthy custom of going to sleep immediately he laid his head on his pillow, rated Mrs. Clinton soundly for not noticing what was going on under ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... less inglorious obscurity, leavens the entire lump of humanity. Mr. Mullen, who regarded him with the active suspicion with which he viewed all living examples of Christian charity, spoke of him condescendingly as a "man of impracticable ideas"—a phrase which introduced his index prohibitory of opinions. But the old clergyman, having attained a serviceable sense of humour, as well as a heavenly fortitude, went on quietly doing good after the fashion in which he was made. In his impracticable way he had solved the problem of life by an indiscriminate ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... steam-engine, but it has not, in 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 ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... him Hawkeye," Uncas replied, using the Delaware phrase; "for his sight never fails. The Mingoes know him better by the death he gives their warriors; with them he is 'The ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... second chapter we find the phrase "taking stock" of ourselves. Done rightly that alone will inspire success. Now if we are a little farther along on the way towards sane living and the ability to laugh and we know that after this struggle is over the battle is won ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... sojourn in the deep recesses of the cavern. "Man," say they, "should avoid places which are enlightened neither by the sun (zis), nor by the moon (nuna)." 'To go and join the guacharos,' is with them a phrase signifying to rejoin their fathers, to die. The magicians (piaches) and the poisoners (imorons) perform their nocturnal tricks at the entrance of the cavern, to conjure the chief of the evil spirits (ivorokiamo). Thus in every region of the earth a resemblance may be traced ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... that this comment, which was widely repeated and traveled far, was the origin of the term "Going up Salt River," as applied to defeated political candidates.—[The dictionaries give this phrase as probably traceable to a small, difficult stream in Kentucky; but it seems more reasonable to believe that it originated in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... but no one did the whole or anything like the whole, and yet it is all one thing. Who carved the wood in St. Bertrand de Coraminges? We know who paid for it, and that is all we know. And as for the wood of Rouen, we must content ourselves with the vague phrase, "Probably ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... kingdom of Italy, which no more corresponded to its name than did the Gothic kingdom of which he arrogated to himself the heirship, when, placing the Iron Crown of Theodolinda upon his brow, he uttered the celebrated phrase: 'Dieu me l'a donnee, gare a ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of sterilization, and the difficulties in securing it, as well as the extreme delicacy of the manipulations necessary, made it possible for a very long time to be doubtful as to the application of the phrase omne vivum e vivo to the microscopic world, and there still remain a few belated supporters of abiogenesis. Subjection to the temperature of boiling water for, say, half an hour seemed an efficient mode of sterilization, until ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... difference between the terms in which the universality of the deluge is spoken of, and the terms employed in those admittedly metonymic passages in which the whole is substituted for a part. "What limitation," he asks, "can we assign to such a phrase as this:—'all the high hills that were UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVENS were covered?' If here the phrase had been, 'upon the face of the whole earth,' we should have been told that 'the whole earth' had sometimes the meaning of 'the whole land;' ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... say of the other that he had "the interminable limbs" of an aristocrat. To the end of the book indeed I was uncertain whether such occasional lapses were meant to illumine the character of the supposed speaker or were unintentional. But again to quote, this time a phrase in which Mr. TURNER clearly shares my own delight, "before we were through with the affair" such details had ceased to be of moment. The plain fact is that The Woman of the Picture is the most breathless, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... uttered, but to her hurt pride and sore, shamed woman-instinct, they were a promise, simply because there was a choking sound in Justin's voice and tears in Justin's eyes. "You 'll see me back when my luck turns, Nancy"; this was the phrase upon which she had lived for more than ten years. Nancy had once heard the old parson say, ages ago, that the whole purpose of life was the growth of the soul; that we eat, sleep, clothe ourselves, work, love, all to give the soul another day, month, year, in which to develop. She used to wonder ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... iceberg to enjoy tropical sunshine. Our dislike to leave the old lady alone, although she insisted that she didn't mind it at all, led us to pass a large portion of each day, sometimes all day, about the house. It was "deuced stupid," to use Marston's elegant phrase, but there was little to do for it. To be sure, there was Desmond, "old Dives," Fred called him. He seldom went out of sight of the house, but he had a perfect mail-bag of newspapers and letters ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... Brisket!" said Robinson. Perhaps, he was wrong in using such a phrase, but it must be confessed that he was sorely tried. Who but a harpy would have alluded to the comforts of a rival's domestic establishment at such a moment as that? Maryanne Brown was a harpy, and is a harpy ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... who profited by them we may form our own opinion. It was by such means that Nelson fostered a spirit of full cooperation and mutual confidence between himself and his subordinates which justified his affectionate phrase, "a band of brothers." ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... to their courses, and thus formed the side walls of the transepts.... The entire interior of the eastern transept has been most skilfully converted from Ernulfian architecture to Willelmian (if I may be allowed the phrase for the nonce). It was necessary that the triforium and clerestory of the new design should be carried along the walls of these transepts, which were before the fire probably ornamented by a continuation of those of Ernulf. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... at her speech; asked himself suddenly and wildly what was wrong with him. A better opening for his crushing announcement could not have been desired. Yet he stood dumb as a man of stone. One blurted phrase would commit him irrevocably, but his lips would not say it. And ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... speaking-trumpet to the first lieutenant; and if, as sometimes happened, the latter (either from accident, or perhaps from a pardonable pique at having the duty taken out of his hands), was not at his elbow to prompt him when at fault—at these times the cant phrase of the officers, taken from some farce, used to be, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... chief representative and supporter in the Church, to abandon his charge in Alexandria, and retire to Caesarea. In vain through many subsequent centuries did her leading men spend themselves in—as the phrase then went—"drawing forth the internal juice and marrow of the Scriptures for the explaining of things." Universal history from the third to the sixteenth century shows with what result. The dark ages owe their ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Zhid-phrase, is but the gift of latest years; Conscience was born when man had shed his fur, his ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... have changed!" Mrs. Salisbury said to herself involuntarily. She mused over the well-worn phrase; she had never used it herself before; its truth struck her forcibly for the ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... five years less a term since, feeling (as they say of other offenders) my position acutely, I had the honour of reading an Inaugural before this University and the impudence to loose, in the course of it, a light shaft against a phrase in the very Ordinance defining ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... The phrase implied a breach which she felt to be irreparable. She did not attempt to protest. It was finished. And she knew this so thoroughly that, a moment later, when Philippe opened the door and prepared to go away, she did not even ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... ebb till near the close of his first semester. He lived in a new world, one removed a million miles from the sordid one through which he had fought his way so many years. All the idealism of his nature went out in awe and veneration for his college. It stood for something he could not phrase, something spiritually fine and intellectually strong. When he thought of the noble motto of the university, "To Serve," it was always with a lifted emotion that was half a prayer. His professors went clothed in majesty. The chancellor ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... implied in the Ten Commandments and to consent for all necessary purposes to remove trade restrictions across the border. That was after the United States had declared war. The high priest of protection himself invented a phrase "economic unit" to express North America. He wanted markets to find their own levels by their own routes. He no longer had any fear of Canada being Americanized. Canada's nationhood was already defined in ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... between France and England owes its greatest force to the recollection of Cressy and Waterloo, Navarino and Trafalgar. We have hated each other and licked each other and had it out, as the common phrase goes; and we can afford now to fall into each others' arms and vow eternal friendship and everlasting brotherhood. Let us hope that when Northern Yankeedom has decimated and been decimated, blustering Jonathan ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... no right to expect that attentive perusal, without which, confined, as I have been, to the narrow limits of a Preface, my meaning cannot be thoroughly understood, I am anxious to give an exact notion of the sense in which the phrase poetic diction has been used; and for this purpose, a few words shall here be added, concerning the origin and characteristics of the phraseology, which I have condemned under ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... this theatre (for as to Reason, the patentee, he is known to be a very idle fellow and seldom to exert himself), may most probably have learned to understand the famous nil admirari of Horace, or in the English phrase, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the succession of ideas in our mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute, by the clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of these spaces would actually ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... but natural and all to our delight that he should see chiefly their humours, so largely the result of misadventure. But as he has long since ceased to jibe at the lady who cycles or to regard male cyclists as "cads on castors,"—in the phrase of Edmund Yates,—and ceased also to view the motor car as an ingenious device for public slaughter, his adverse views have not in the present ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... to! He thought over the phrase not with any desire to put Helen in the pillory, but merely to uncover, if possible, the source ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Seven Shares and a Half."—Can any reader of "N. & Q.," conversant with the literature of the seventeenth century, furnish an explanation of this phrase? It occurs in the preface to Steps to the Temple, &c., of Richard Crashaw (the 2nd edit., in the Savoy, 1670), addressed by "the author's friend" to "the learned reader," and is used in disparagement of pretenders to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... Gohier had come to breakfast on the morning of the 18th Brumaire, according to Madame Bonaparte's invitation, he would have been one of the members of the Government. But Gohier acted the part of the stern republican. He placed himself, according to the common phrase of the time, astride of the Constitution of the year III.; and as his steed made a sad stumble, he fell ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... good stead before, and I applied to it now. Walking slowly up to the largest, and one of the oldest men in the group, I drew out my pipe and a bag of old Virginia tobacco, free from any flavor than its own, and filling the pipe, I asked him for a light in the best phrase-book Norsk I could command. He gave it, and I placed the bag in his hand and motioned him to fill his pipe. When that was done I handed the pouch to another, and motioned him to fill and pass the tobacco around. One by one they took it, and I saw that I had friends. No man can fill his pipe ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Home-Ruler long before the majority found salvation. Remember across the years how he put whole case in crisp sentence when he adjured the deaf Government of the day "not to attempt to enforce Greenwich-time at Dublin." If BRIGHT had said that, or DIZZY, or Mr. G., the happy phrase would have echoed down the corridors of time. But it was only an Irish Member; MACFARLANE, then Member for Carlow. So it passed unnoticed—unremembered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... to Lola. The astonishing woman burst into tears and kissed my hands and said something about my being the arbiter of her destiny—a Gallic phrase which she must have picked up from Captain Vauvenarde. Then she buried her face in the bristling neck of Adolphus, the Chow dog, and declared him to be her last remaining consolation. Even Anastasius Papadopoulos had ceased to visit her. I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... was a witness of the crowning struggle, that nothing can even paint its gigantic character more aptly than the concluding phrase of the now famous ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... 1815, with all the alterations afterwards made in the pieces copied in by the poet from the edition published in 1827. Some of the changes are marked improvements, and nearly all make the meaning clearer. Now and then a prosaic phrase gives place to a more poetical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... and in a suitable manner, their daughter should present herself to her feudal superiors, to whom she was assuredly indebted, though indirectly, for 'the blessings she enjoyed.' This was Mrs. Rockett's phrase, and the rheumatic, wheezy old gardener uttered the same opinion in less conventional language. They had no affection for Sir Edwin or his lady, and Miss Hilda they decidedly disliked; their treatment at the hands of these new people contrasted ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... meet a man the other day, Whose store of legal knowledge was amazing, He stormed at me in quite the stormiest way, With, fiery indignation simply blazing. I wondered if he'd lost his (legal) hair (Forgive the phrase) against a demi-rep? Nay! They'd really ventured to presume to dare To ask a Judge or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... basically important role in our social and economic development played by "The Forgotten Man." The misappropriation of this title and its application to a character the exact opposite of the one for whom Sumner invented the phrase is, unfortunately, but typical of the perversion of words and phrases indulged in by our present-day "liberals" in their attempt to further their revolution by diverting the loyalties of individualists to ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... thousand a-year. This gentleman is a declared opponent of the ministry in parliament; and having an opulent fortune, piques himself upon living in the country, and maintaining old English hospitality — By the bye, this is a phrase very much used by the English themselves both in words and writing; but I never heard of it out of the island, except by way of irony and sarcasm. What the hospitality of our forefathers has been I should be glad to see recorded, rather in the memoirs of strangers who have visited our country, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... little speech, His Majesty the German Emperor had made a big one, from which we learned yet once again that William I had been entrusted with a mission, and had handed it down to William II; and then we heard once more the phrase with which Bismarck had deafened our ears, on one of his blustering days, and which the King of Prussia has re-issued in a new form and on his own account: "We Germans fear God and nothing else ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... at Avignon and Nismes, so also at Arles, one of the chief attractions of the place lies at a distance, and requires a special expedition. The road to Les Baux crosses a true Provencal desert where one realises the phrase, 'Vieux comme les rochers de Provence,'—a wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into cart-tracks, and tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and leaves no wildernesses Where rugged voices cry; It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses The souls of men who die, And step by even step its rank progresses, An army ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... this is in his later manner. A little further on is Helen's speech to the detestable Parolles, beginning with the mutilated line, "Not my virginity yet," which is followed by some ten, in which she pours out in Euphuistic phrase her love for Bertram, saying that he has in her "a mother, and a mistress, and a friend, a counsellor, a traitress, and a dear"; ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... "then of course—" She stopped abruptly. It may have been imagination, but he seemed to start when she spoke the phrase by which outlaws were known to each other. He was forcing ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... reason," because that verb, in the sense of "to have a right, to be right," seems to have been a courtly expression in Dryden's time. Old Moody answers to Sir Martin Marall (Act iii., Scene 3), "You have reason, sir. There he is again, too; the town phrase; a great compliment I wise! you have reason, sir; that is, you are no beast, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... being too sleepy to speak, and Miss Miggs having, as the phrase is, said her say, the locksmith had nothing for it but to sigh and be as quiet ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... (Belgian Driver utters a string of English imprecations with the utmost fluency and good-nature.) 'Ark at 'im now! Bust my frogs! (Admiringly, and not without a sense of the appropriateness of the phrase.) But he's a caution, Sir, ain't he? I taught him ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... time this happened I did not quite understand what was going on. He repeated the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the pain in my knee!" And gradually I became aware that this lament was becoming a real melody, and for five long minutes Carre improvised a terrible, wonderful, heart-rending song on "the pain in his ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... have already said, was Lamb's executor, with Talfourd. Hence the phrase to Talfourd, "you ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... homely phrase, he was so prostrated by the thought that, in spite of his care and the stern duties of the task that he had been set to do, he had passed some side opening by which the Indians might come down and attack the unarmed camp, that he wanted "shaking ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the glass now, new life seemed to burgeon within me. I remember Jeeves, who, however much he may go off the rails at times in the matter of dress clothes and in his advice to those in love, has always had a neat turn of phrase, once speaking of someone rising on stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things. It was that way with me now. I felt that the Bertram Wooster who lay propped up against the pillows had become ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... still enough to evince acquaintance with "Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer, Fairfax, and Buchanan." The literary merit of these versions seems to us to have been underrated. There may be no individual phrase beyond the compass of an apt and sensitive boy with a turn for verse-making; but the general tone is masculine and emphatic. There is not much to say, but what is said is delivered with a "large utterance," prophetic of the "os magna soniturum," and justifying his own report of his ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... John was slightly shocked at the irreverence of alluding to so perfect and pure a woman as his adored Vera by so familiar a phrase as "a good sort," he was, at all events, too pleased by Maurice's genuine approval of her to find any fault with his ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... Mexico" by the fact that the historian had never visited that country. Napoleon gave a key to the misfortunes of Italy, when he said, "It is a peninsula too long for its breadth." And the significance of the Seven Years' War is expressed in a single phrase by Milton's last biographer, when he defines it as the "consummation politically and the attenuation spiritually of the movement begun in Europe by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... wrong way for it—Brice could hear faintly the strains of a violin. played ever so softly and with a golden wealth of sweetness. Even at that distance, by listening closely, he could make out a phrase or so of Dvorak's "Hiawatha" music from the "New World Symphony." Milo's loud laugh broke in on his audition and on the suddenly rapt look upon ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... (which is the next room) there are decanters of wine, and all that sort of thing, set out as grand as if Kit and his friends were first-rate company; and there is little Jacob, walking, as the popular phrase is, into a home-made plum-cake, at a most surprising pace, and keeping his eye on the figs and oranges which are to follow, and making the best use of his time, you may believe. Kit no sooner comes in, than that single gentleman (never was such a busy gentleman) charges all the glasses—bumpers—and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of his profession, replied that he was a philosopher, that is to say a student or a lover of wisdom, because it seemed to him unduly boastful to call himself a wise man." In this passage, therefore, when the phrase "conspicuous for the praiseworthiness of their lives" is used, it is evident that the wise, in other words the philosophers, were so called less because of their erudition than by reason of their ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... what course to pursue in some great case, they invariably said: "Let us go and consult Tirauclair." For this was the name by which he was most generally known: a sobriquet derived from a phrase which was always on his lips. He was constantly saying: "Il faut que cela se tire au clair: That must be brought to light." Hence, the not altogether inappropriate appellation of "Pere ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... the first edition the 'ignorant preacher' was a 'wretched little curate.' A rougher but more graphic phrase.] ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... woful condition. Not only is every alleviation of their sufferings removed, but actual infliction of punishment is added, to extort money to buy "burnt-offerings" (of paper) to the god of the jail, as the phrase is. For this purpose the prisoners are tied up, or rather hung up, and flogged. At night, they are fettered down to a board, neck, wrists, and ancles, amidst ordure and filth, whilst the rats, unmolested, are permitted to gnaw their limbs! This place of torment is proverbially ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... wholly unmixed with amusement, Odger junior regarded me majestically for a moment, and then, ejaculating the oracular phrase, "Oh, ah!" walked off, his four-foot-one drawn to its full height, his hands behind his back, and his mouth still drawn up for whistling, but apparently too overcome with dignity to emit the music which an observer would naturally ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... its food by the lack of invisible posterity, fall back on affection for visible progeny?[5103] In a country where there are few openings, where careers are overcrowded, what are the effects of this paid idolatry[5104], and, to sum up in one phrase, in what way does the French system of to-day tend to develop the most fatal of results, the decline in the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... far from his country, could still point directly to it, but he had grown so homesick that he begged Burnett not to mention Bathurst. To return except with us was quite out of the question, and as we still receded he dragged, as the phrase is, a lengthening chain. He studied my visage however and could read my thoughts too well to doubt that I too hoped to return. The whole management of the chase now devolved on him and the two boys, his humble servants; ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... upon the smooth floor, like peas tumbled out upon the threshing-floor. The old Count, who slept in the high canopy bed in the Hall, awoke, and marvelled at the number of tiny companions; one of whom, in the garb of a herald, now approached him, and in well-set phrase, courteously prayed him to bear part in their festivity. 'Yet one thing,' he added, 'we beg of you. Ye shall alone be present; none of your court shall be bold to gaze upon our mirth—yea, not so much as with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... after all, Laurie reflected, there seemed to be justice in their claim. He would be seated in that room, he repeated to himself, and it might be that before he left it he would have seen with his own eyes, and possibly handled, living persons who had, in the common phrase, "died" and been buried. Almost certainly, at the very least, he would have received from such ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... all, walk where we will, we cannot help hearing from every side a phrase repeated with delight, and received with laughter, by men with hard hands and dirty faces — by saucy butcher lads and errand-boys — by loose women — by hackney coachmen, cabriolet drivers, and idle fellows who loiter at the corners of streets. Not one utters this phrase ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... immoral, parasitic in more or less irregular ways upon the more successful classes, or labouring, at something less than a regular bare subsistence wage, in a finally hopeless competition against machinery that is as yet not so cheap as their toil. It is, to borrow a popular phrase, the "submerged" portion of the social body, a leaderless, aimless multitude, a multitude of people drifting down towards the abyss. Essentially it consists of people who have failed to "catch on" to the altered necessities the development of mechanism has brought about, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... or wife felt much for me. They recommended me, at parting, to apply to my father's other relatives, living in England. I may be doing them an injustice, but I fancy they were eager to get me (as the common phrase is) off ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Where was I? O, "fair defects." This gave occasion to a critic in company, to deliver his opinion on the phrase—that led to an enumeration of all the various words which might have been used instead of "defect," as want, absence, poverty, deficiency, lack. This moment I, who had not been attending to the progress of the argument (as the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... when the children were in bed, and she was sewing—she did all her sewing by hand, made all shirts and children's clothing—he would read to her from the newspaper, slowly pronouncing and delivering the words like a man pitching quoits. Often she hurried him on, giving him a phrase in anticipation. And then ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... later ages. They carry with them the faded recollection of their own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passage gives a complexion to its use everywhere else, and the new use of an old and familiar phrase has also a peculiar power over us. But these and other subtleties of language escaped the observation of Plato. He is not aware that the languages of the world are organic structures, and that every word ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... this time, received an important letter from Benjamin Hardy. It came by way of Boston, Louisbourg and the St. Lawrence. It told him in the polite phrase of the day how glad he had been to hear from Master Jacobus Huysman that he was not dead, although Robert read easily between the lines and saw how genuine and deep was his joy. Mr. Hardy saw in his escape from so many dangers the hand of providence, a direct interposition in his behalf. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of a piece of soft iron submitted to its influence, draws the said fluid towards it, and with it the material particles with which the fluid is associated. To account for diamagnetic phenomena this theory seems to fail altogether; according to it, indeed, the oft-used phrase, "a north pole exciting a north pole, and a south pole a south pole," involves a contradiction. For if the north fluid be supposed to be attracted towards the influencing north pole, it is absurd to suppose that its presence there could produce repulsion. The theory of Ampere ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... generally gave his signature to a writing was by covering the palm of his hand with ink, and then laying it on the paper. Balbi, who states this, adds that the Russian language still retains an evidence of the practice in its phrase for signing a document, which is roukou prilojite, signifying, literally, to put the hand to it. It may be remarked, however, that this is a form of expression even in our own country; although ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... grass, like a spark fallen from the moon at its full? The Greeks of old called it lampouris, meaning, the bright-tailed. Science employs the same term: it calls it the lantern-bearer, Lampyris noctiluca, Lin. In this case the common name is inferior to the scientific phrase, which, when translated, becomes both ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the effect of such a phrase out of such a man's mouth upon a person like myself, whose whole scheme of life had been based upon a suave and delicate discrimination of social and artistic values. Just imagine! Upon me, to whom all ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... 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, Desire ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... truth most quaintly expressed, with a homeliness of phrase quite delicious. It is one of the Songs of Innocence, published, as we learn from Gilchrist's Life of Blake, in the year 1789. They were engraved on copper with illustrations by Blake, and printed and bound by his wife. When we consider them in respect of the time when they were produced, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... instructive. Unfortunately, the crucifixion was a complete political success. I remember that when I described it in these terms once before, I greatly shocked a most respectable newspaper in my native town, the Dublin Daily Express, because my journalistic phrase showed that I was treating it as an ordinary event like Home Rule or the Insurance Act: that is (though this did not occur to the editor), as a real event which had really happened, instead of a portion of the Church service. I can only ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... their genuineness, but says the bearer was Monsieur Crock; and he inserts (Hist. p. 130,) a different version of that of Francis the Second, from the one which Knox has given, and also the following letter, of which Knox, at page 386, only makes mention to quote the concluding phrase. "The letter (says Spottiswood) sent by the Queen, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Governor, "is from the Marquise de Pompadour, affirming the same thing, and commanding the most rigorous search to be made for Mademoiselle de St. Castin. In language hardly official, the Marquise threatens to make stockfish, that is her phrase, of whosoever has had a hand in either the abduction or the concealment of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... so conveniently situated, or its studio-laboratory so well designed. "Air-raids? Pooh! Just about one chance in a million we should be struck. Besides: can't think of that, when so much is at stake. That's a fine phrase, 'Menders of the Maimed.' Just what we want to be! No more artificial limbs if we can help you to grow your own new legs and arms—perhaps. At any rate, mend up those that are a hopeless mash. Grand work! Only bright thing ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... habit of phrase making and became more jerky and real. "I respected you, Alice," he went on. "I didn't love you but I hoped I might, and I played the game. I liked to see you in my house. You fitted in and made it more of a home than that barrack had ever been. I began to collect ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... word. He had been in terror lest by some inadvertent phrase he might betray himself, and let those fierce men know that he was not the prince; in which case not only might his own life be forfeit, but the real prince might fall into their hands. But now as the dusk overtook them, and still they were ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... amiss this brutal allusion to the personal deformity of the Princess Joan. On the contrary, he was rather pleased to find that the Duke was content to be amused with broad jests, in which he was himself a proficient, and which (according to the modern phrase) spared much sentimental hypocrisy. Accordingly, he speedily placed their intercourse on such a footing that Charles, though he felt it impossible to play the part of an affectionate and reconciled friend to a monarch whose ill ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... is the reason why parasites, internal and external, are so commonly degraded forms of higher types. Survival of the "better" does not cover these cases, though survival of the "fittest" does; and as I am responsible for the phrase, I suppose I am competent to say that the word "fittest" was chosen for this reason. When it is remembered that these cases outnumber all others—that there are more species of parasites than there are species of all other animals put together—it will be ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... advantage. Happening in the course of conversation to express my surprise at seeing him in the character of an opponent, he told me that nothing could be farther from his intention than to oppose the Company. He came to this quarter for the purpose of preparing timber for the Quebec market; in provincial phrase, "to make a shanty." But I knew ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... mouth, and had thrilled briefly at the wordless beauty of the green spread of the plain and the hazy blue sweep of the mountains, and had come suddenly into the poetic mood. She had even caught a phrase,—"The lazy line of the watchful hills," it was,—and she was trying to fit it into a verse, and to find something beside "rills" that ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... took the polite phrase literally. "More like you'll want to knock his head off. Old Timer," he leaned over the saddle horn, "seein' as you're from Missoury, I'll tell you private that you'd better keep on travelin'. Company ain't wanted at the Scissor Outfit, and they'd high-tone ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... it is said, in the whole kingdom. Over the long pointer were written, in large letters of gold, the Latin words, referring to the hours, "Pereunt et imputantur." Literally, the meaning is, "They perish, and are set down to our account"; or, as they have been rendered in terser phrase, "They are wasted, and are added to ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... upon a modern interior, in which a fashionably attired young lady kissed a frock-coated old gentleman. It was a dire disappointment to me and my comrade, who had come thirsting for gore. But how completely the poet conquered us! Each phrase seemed to woo our reluctant ears, and the pulse of life that beat in the characters and carried along the action awakened in us a delighted recognition. Truth to tell, we had but the very vaguest idea of what was the prima causa malorum; but for all that, with the rest of the audience, we were ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a lovely morning, and, as I bicycled along, keeping a fatherly eye on Arthur's activities, I realized for the first time in my life the full meaning of that exquisite phrase of Coleridge: ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... judge discreetly, Miss Delavie. In fact you are too transcendent a paragon to be retained here." Then, biting her lip, as if the bitter phrase had escaped unawares, she smiled blandly and said, "My good girl, you have merited to be returned to your friends. You may pack your mails and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... iambic measures having been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter, and poetical compositions having been transferred from the epical past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a change was important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at the old epical treasures of the people as well as a thirst for new poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it, may well be considered ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... by and the ice moved out. This is the phrase that is always used along the lakes. The ice 'moves out' of every harbor from Ogdensburg to Duluth. You can see the great white floes drift away into the horizon, and the question comes, Where do they go? Do they meet out there the counter ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... here as his housekeeper:—I mean,' she added with a blush, thinking of Harry's warning look just before, 'as soon as they can spare me from home.' She purposely avoided saying 'when they retire from business,' the first phrase that sprang naturally to her simple little lips. 'Let me see, Mr. Le Breton; you haven't got any permanent ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... he remained simple Sir Thomas Muggins, representing Pontydwdlm in Parliament for many years after the war. The old banker died in course of time, and to use the affectionate phrase common on such occasions, 'cut up' prodigiously well. His son, Alfred Smith Mogyns, succeeded to the main portion of his wealth, and to his titles and the bloody hand of his scutcheon. It was not for many years after that he appeared as Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth de Mogyns, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... word for the fitness of things, and that little phrase, "the fitness of things," is what Alice in Wonderland calls a "portmanteau" phrase, for it holds so much, and one must feel it strongly to escape the pitfalls of period furnishing. Most amazing things are done with perfect complacency, but although the French and English kings who ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... phrase cannot be found in Holy Scripture. The terms are misleading—their conjunction is false. Applied to the soul, the word "immortal" is a misnomer. Throughout Scripture the original word and idea relate to the body—never otherwise. The word ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... possible that the insignificant deviations which we know as "individual variations" can form the beginning of a process of selection? Can they decide which is to perish and which to survive? To use a phrase of Romanes, can ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... at the delimiting phrase, "nice girls," and glanced up again. By this time, they had passed through the living room; and he had awkwardly opened the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... us that such and such a person 'has met with a disappointment,' we all understand what is meant. The phrase, though it is conventionally intelligible enough, involves a fallacy: it seems to teach that the disappointment of the youthful heart in the matter of that which in its day is no doubt the most powerful of all the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Under-crag, aged ninety-four, being twenty-four years older than the subject of this Memoir, who was born of the same mother. Robert was a sickly infant; and, through his boyhood and youth, continuing to be of delicate frame and tender health, it was deemed best, according to the country phrase, to breed him a scholar; for it was not likely that he would be able to earn a livelihood by bodily labour. At that period few of these dales were furnished with schoolhouses; the children being ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of Petrarch, metaphysical love has become stereotyped. Adoration has become a phrase (as Cupid has become a phrase with the earlier poets). It is obvious that he loves Laura because the play on the word Laura and lauro (laurel) caught his fancy. I can find no spontaneous feeling in ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... have, independently of their merits, an interest of association. They both love to write in simple expressive Saxon; both love to touch their imagery in epithets rather than in formal similes; both have a delicate perception of rythmical movement, and thus Mr. Turner has occasional lines which, for phrase and music, might be ascribed to his brother.... He knows the haunts of the wild rose, the shady nooks where light quivers through the leaves, the ruralities, in short, ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... On such days he carried about with him an unceasing gnawing torment in his breast; the anguish of the empty page awaiting him in his bureau, and the knowledge that it was worse than useless to attempt the work. He had fallen into the habit of always using this phrase "the work" to denote the adventure of literature; it had grown in his mind to all the austere and grave significance of "the great work" on the lips of the alchemists; it included every trifling and laborious page and the vague magnificent ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... answer this question, we decided to reply to it by using one of several personal references in our possession. The next puzzle was: "Which one?" We carefully examined each, but could not strike a happy decision until some one who entered the room happened to make use of the familiar phrase: "The long and the short of it". That phrase solved the difficulty for us, and we at once made up our mind to use two of these references, namely, the shortest and the longest. The first one is from His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... said, severely; and passed on to my own house, having no desire to encourage discussions at the street corner. A man in my position is obliged to be always mindful of the example he ought to set. But I had not yet done with this phrase, which had, as I have said, caught my ear and my imagination. My mother was in the great salle of the rez-de-chausee, as I passed, in altercation with a peasant who had just brought us in some loads of wood. There is often, it seems to me, a sort of refrain in conversation, which one catches ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... most perfect expression of thought and feeling through the medium of oral language must be traced to the mastery of words. Nothing is better suited to lead speakers and readers of English into an easy control of this language than the command of the phrase that perfectly expresses the thought. Every speaker's aim is to be heard and understood. A clear, crisp articulation holds an audience as by the spell of some irresistible power. The choice word, the correct ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... before us is very well edited in every respect, and makes its appearance in very beautiful 'externals.' The paper, binding, and typography are, in French phrase, as applied to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... of the Hive was an inspiration, and furnishes us with the key to all that happens in the hive. The secret of all its economies are in the phrase. Having hit upon this solution, he should have had the courage to stand by it. But he did not. He is continually forgetting it and applying to his problem the explanations we apply in our dealings with one another. He talks of the power ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... horses; I was stopping to gossip at house-doors; I was happy, only ashamed of myself that I was here for no good. One woman was pretty, and spoke good English, and was infinitely engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly; she thought I was the new white patient; and when she found I was only a visitor, a curious change came in her face and voice - the only sad thing, morally sad, I mean - that I met that morning. But for all that, they tell me none want to leave. Beyond Kalaupapa the houses became ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was 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 ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... one long noiseless cataract over a lesser range—all silent, all motionless, like a great white sea stilled in the fury of a storm. Morning after morning, the boy had looked upon just such glory, calmly watching the mist part, like the waters, for the land, and the day break, with one phrase, "Let there be light," ever in his mind—for Chad knew his Bible. And, most often, in soft splendor, trailing cloud-mist, and yellow light leaping from crest to crest, and in the singing of birds and the shining of ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... remark on the order of "Good God, what a colour!" His personal taste finds its supreme enjoyment in the Circassian walnut panelling, desk, and tables of the directors' room in the Millionaire's Trust and Savings Bank. "Rich and tasteful": how many times he has used this phrase to express his approval! In the mid-Victorian red plush of his club, too, he is comfortable. "Waiter, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... opening street door. Lord Feltre stood in the framing of it—a welcome sight. The 'monastic man of fashion,' of Gower's phrase for him, entered, crooning condolences, with a stretched waxen hand for his friend, a partial nod for Nature's worshipper—inefficient at any serious issue of our human affairs, as the earl ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... compass; melody followed melody—"The Harp that Once through Tara's Hall," "She is Far from the Land," "In Death I shall Calm Recline," and other popular pieces. When Straws missed a note he went back to find it; when he erred in a phrase, he patiently repeated it. The cadence in the last mournful selection, "Bid her not shed a tear of sorrow," was, on his first attempt, fraught with exceeding discord, and he was preparing once more to assault the citadel of grief, entrenched with ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of science were to be considered equal to one statesman. The result justified the selections of the committee, and although the Senator was not present, the seven Commoners of Science made the occasion a most notable one by the flow of wit, elegance of phrase, solidity and cogency of argument, and rare discernment of natural truths, with which their discourse ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... are you," Julia retorted swiftly. "What was it you said in Chicago about the phrase-makers?—the Socialism that flourished in the study while women and children starved in the streets? Those are the sort of things that we remember, Aaron ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
