"Speciality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peculiar white markings; and they are besides characterised by horns so remarkably different in each species and so conspicuous, that it seems probable that the peculiarities in length, twist, and curvature have been differentiated for the purpose of recognition, rather than for any speciality of defence in species whose general habits are ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... spirit of the American ambulance, the man whose speciality it was to have drawn more royal teeth, and to have received more royal decorations than any other human being, has left Paris. Mr. Washburne informs me that there are still about 250 Americans here, of whom about forty are women. Some of them remain to look after their homes, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... a regular beauty, or that she goes in for any speciality by way of features or eyelashes, or hair, or a figure, or anything really sensational of that sort, as I do in one or two directions. But there's a rose and pearl and gold-brown adorableness about her; you ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... silver cord, and when it is bound with leather just where otherwise it would suffer from the pressure and friction of the thumb nail it is really very durable. Messrs. W. E. Hill and Sons have an extremely handsome speciality in the way of lapping. This consists of whalebone, sometimes bleached or dyed, and is practically indestructible. Bound on in alternate strands of different colours it has a very ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... the subtle influences of the more delicate sentiments, will probably sympathize with me when I admit that Mr. Plum's sign did not inspire me with that enthusiasm which is at least comforting to the possessor. The reference to Mr. Plum's "speciality" was what cast a temporary gloom over me, but Mrs. Denslow was not one of those who suffer a detail so insignificant as this to stand in her way; so I was bounced into Uncle Si's shop and presented to Uncle Si ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... Italy. Consequently there are no tropical forests, and the mountain-sides are covered with trees of the temperate zone—the stately deodar cedars, spruce fir, maples, walnut, sycamore, and birch; while in the valley itself grow poplars, willows, mulberries, and most beautiful of all, and a speciality of Kashmir, the magnificent chenar tree—akin to the plane tree of Europe, but larger, fuller, and richer ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... expert pessimist. Vice, accidents, and terrible ends are his speciality. All virtue is to him an exception, and by him is immediately forgotten. In sudden deaths you cannot catch him out. If you were tossed from the horns of a bull into the jaws of a crocodile, and died of pneumonia contracted during the flight, you would not surprise Cousin ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... in the old family carriage, which the baron had given up to him, until the arms of the De Lamares had been quartered on it with those of the Leperthius des Vauds. Now there was only one man in the whole province who made a speciality of coats-of-arms, a painter from Bolbec, named Bataille, who was naturally in great request among all the Normandy aristocracy; so Julien had to wait for some time before he could secure ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... which was in a corner of the room, his eyes following me as I moved. It was full of clothing,—garments which might have formed the stock-in-trade of a costumier whose speciality was providing costumes for masquerades. A long dark cloak hung on a peg. My hand moved towards it, apparently of its own volition. I put it on, its ample folds falling to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... in my mind with that night of moonlight in the New Forest when I first knew I cared. But I'm sorely afraid it must be the thing to go. There are several important-looking antique shops here, and I noticed, when casting my eye about, one where they make a speciality of curious and rare jewellery. I shall look at it again more carefully when I run out to the post-office, in a few minutes, and perhaps I may have courage to try and strike a bargain, so as to send the money off in the morning before ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... "She is the daughter of the drunken organist who desecrated my father's tomb, though that concerns you not:—her own speciality, as you see, is that she is the flower ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the dog's speciality as a subtle sense of smell. That is certainly what I mean, if you will understand by that that the nasal passages of the animal are the seat of the perceptive organ; but is the thing perceived always a simple smell in the vulgar acceptation of the term—an effluvium ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... intermediate links have not been lost, criticism succeeds in disentangling the relationships by persistent and ingenious applications of the method of repeated comparisons. Modern scholars (Krusch, for example, who has made a speciality of Merovingian hagiography) have recently constructed, by the use of this method, precise genealogies of the utmost solidity.[87] The results of the critical investigation of authorship, as applied to the filiation ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... who was now eminent in his speciality, occupied the chair of natural history in the faculty of medicine in Paris. What better occasion could he wish of introducing himself to a highly placed official? Fabre had formerly been his host; he could recall the happy hours they had spent together; he could explain his plans, and ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... pained at the mistake, for I knew how keenly Holmes would feel any slip of the kind. It was his speciality to be accurate as to fact, but his recent illness had shaken him, and this one little incident was enough to show me that he was still far from being himself. He was obviously embarrassed for an instant, while ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... circle to which he belonged; but, beyond such slight beguilements of "life's dull weary round," his existence was uneventful. His character altogether might be said to have been a negative one, as the only speciality for which he was particularly distinguished was for the variety of intonation and meaning which he could give to his two favourite exclamations, "Yaas," and "Bai-ey Je-ove!"—thus economising his conversational powers to a considerable extent, which was a great advantage ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... didn't know. I should be happy to speak to Herbert, but, as I said, his time will be very full. But I know he has friends who make a speciality of ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... to explain the title of this opera, which signifies a man who goes about reciting biblical verse after the fashion of street singers. This means of earning a livelihood is unknown in Germany, but forms a speciality in Austria. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... the inconvenience of long hair when our own regimental tonsorial artist is waiting to bob it for you free of charge? Luxurious saloon; deft workmanship; no tips. His speciality—memento locks. Twelve such souvenirs guaranteed from one crop. Bald soldiers supplied to taste from surplus clippings. A delicate, lasting and inexpensive compliment to lady friends on leaving a station. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,—so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice versa. The more particular speciality of one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,—that of the other to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counter-full of books with taking titles. I wonder if the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... diseases, &c., &c. The trade in coffin "furniture" seems to have originated about 1760, when one ingenious "Mole" pushed it forward; and among the list of patents taken out in 1796 by a local worthy there is one for "a patent coffin," though its particular speciality could not have met with much approval, as although some thousands of bodies have been removed from our various sepultures nothing curious or rarer than rotten boards and old lead has been brought ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... he wrote. "There are too many men out here now. I want somebody who will give home comforts which I want to make a speciality of, in place of ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... was certainly a chic and engaging little person, apparently well educated and refined, but she was as sly as her notorious employer, whom she served so faithfully. She was, she had already told Hugh, the daughter of a man who had made jewel thefts his speciality and after many convictions was now serving ten years at the convict prison at Toulon. She had been bred in the Montmartre, and trained and educated to a criminal life. Il Passero had found her, and, after several times successfully "indicating" ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... German Highland and the German Netherland Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism Maritime heretics Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft Worn nor caused to be worn ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... into a harmonious murmur when compared to the one great speciality of the village,—stone-cutting in the open streets. Whenever one of the picturesque old houses is crumbling into utter decay, a pile of stone is dumped before it, and the easy-going masons of Amboise prepare to patch up its walls. No particular method is observed, the work progresses ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the development of the 'middles,' which he considered to be the speciality of himself and his friend Sandars. The middle, originally an article upon some not strictly political topic, had grown in their hands into a kind of lay sermon. For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... incorrigible because I abhorred waste motion. The prison, like all prisons, was a scandal and an affront of waste motion. They put me in the jute-mill. The criminality of wastefulness irritated me. Why should it not? Elimination of waste motion was my speciality. Before the invention of steam or steam-driven looms three thousand years before, I had rotted in prison in old Babylon; and, trust me, I speak the truth when I say that in that ancient day we prisoners wove more efficiently on hand-looms ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... First, under Christianity slavery is impossible; for man as man—in the abstract essence of his nature—is contemplated in God; each unit of mankind is an object of the grace of God and of the divine purpose. Utterly excluding all speciality, therefore, man, in and for himself—in his simple quality of man—has infinite value; and this infinite value abolishes, ipso facto, all particularity attaching to ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... cordial in return. Mind, if your head or your stomach aches or you are worried and can't sleep, take a glassful of this: all your worries will at once disappear. Take good care of it and don't on any account give a drop away, it's a speciality; my grandfather got it from the monks at Radecznica, it's as good ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... usually found among the classes which lack leisure; she is an exasperating and most entirely selfish woman, and she cannot very well invent her refinements of whining cruelty unless she has a little time on hand; her speciality is to moan incessantly over the ingratitude of people for whom she has done some trivial service; and, as she always moans by choice in presence of the person whom she has afflicted by her generosity, the result is merely distracting. If the victim says, "I allow ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... snakes. His remark on the compression of the tail shows that his informants were aware of this speciality in those that inhabit ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... was what God intended him for, for he could track a tsessebe in thick bush, and was far the finest shot I have seen in my life. He took parties to the Pungwe flats, and Barotseland, and up to Tanganyika. Then he made a speciality of the Ngami region, where I once hunted with him, and he was with me when I went prospecting ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... organized labour properly; the ploughman and the fisherman are as necessary to society as the scientist or the artist, I will not say more necessary: neither is the difficulty of producing the more special and excellent work at all proportionate to its speciality or excellence: the higher workman produces his work as easily perhaps as the lower does his work; if he does not do so, you must give him extra leisure, extra means for supplying the waste of power in him, but you can give ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... of debate are gradually furnishing the House with an almost complete autobiography. To-day it learned that while, unlike Mr. BALFOUR, he reads a great many newspapers he does not include among them a certain financial organ which makes a speciality of spy-hunting in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... in a series, of which each term represents an advance in speciality beyond the term preceding it, and (what necessarily accompanies increased speciality) an increase of complexity—a set of phaenomena determined by a more numerous combination of laws; the sciences stand in the following order: 1st, Mathematics; its three branches following one another ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... cattle, and deer). But there is not much to say in defence of such an association. The elephants have, as a matter of fact, not got hoofs, and they have five toes on each foot. The five toes of the front foot have each a nail, whilst usually only four toes of the hind foot have nails. A speciality of the elephant is the great circular pad of thick skin overlying fat and fibrous tissue, which forms the sole of the foot and bears the animal's enormous weight. This buffer-like development of the foot existed in some great extinct mammals ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... guests, they all split into fragments which went whirling, dancing in divisions, subdivisions, re-subdivisions of scientific nonsense! History split into philology, ethnology, anthropology, and mythology, and these again split finer than the splitting of hairs. Each speciality hugged its bit of knowledge and waltzed it round and round. The rest of the company began to nod, and I felt drowsy myself. To put an end to the solemn gyrations, a troop of fairies mercifully waved poppies ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... and eccentricities of phrase. Some other poet—though I know of none such—may have accepted and adopted his theory that "vengeance" must count in verse as a word of three syllables: I can hardly believe that the fancy would sound sweet in any second man's ear: but this speciality is not more characteristic than other and more important qualities of style—the peculiar abruptness, the peculiar inflation, the peculiar crudity—which denote this comedy as apparently if not evidently Marstonian. On the other hand, if it were indeed his, it is impossible ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... similar. There were "four Charming Lyric Sisters," who performed a dance in long expansive skirts, and in conclusion did all turn heels-over-head in simultaneity; but this, it seems, was—contrary to my own expectancy—not to dance a speciality. Speaking for my humble part, I am respectfully of opinion that lovely woman loses in queenly dignity by the abrupt execution of a somersault; however, the feat did indubitably excite vociferous ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... that for yourself? Or have you been stone deaf in this office for two years? It stands to reason that a man who's responsible for all the largest new eyesores in London would impress any corporation. Clever chap, Corver! Instead of wasting his time in travel and study, he made a speciality of learning how to talk to committees. And he was always full of ideas like the piebald pony, ever ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... who says improper things. Once she used to shock me. But I know her now. She is really a nice woman; she doesn't mean them. And when the heroine is in trouble, towards the middle of the book, she is just as amusing on the side of virtue. Then there is a younger lady whose speciality is proverbs. Apparently whenever she hears a proverb she writes it down and studies it with the idea of seeing into how many different forms it can be twisted. It looks clever; as a matter of fact, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... directly in front of the chateau. The prince knew well how to soothe the self-love of his old huntsmen by giving them the most arduous part of the work, and also that of the Englishman, whom he employed at his own speciality, affording him a chance to show the fleetness of his horses and dogs in the open. The two national systems were thus face to face and allowed to do their best ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... suppose that yours were of no use to me! I would throw up the whole thing were it not for correspondence with you, which is the only bit of silver in the affair. I do feel it disgusting to have to make a point of a speciality in which I cannot see my way a bit further than I could before I began. To be sure, I have a very much clearer notion of the pros and cons on both sides (though these were rather forgotten facts than rediscoveries). I see the sides of the well further down more distinctly, but ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... called in Finnish Wiipurin rinkeli, is a great speciality, its real home and origin being Wiborg itself. It is a sort of cake, but its peculiarity is that it is baked on straw, some of the straw always adhering to the bottom. It is made in the form of a true lover's knot, of the less fantastic ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... and outflowing from that one "single moment" or moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of the subjective existence.... The reward provided by Nature for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who have not focussed their affections on an individual or speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the quicker for that through the Kama and Rupa Lokas into the higher sphere of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... Dwight Herbert Deacon, Dentist, Gold Work a Speciality (sic) in black lettering, and Justice of the Peace in gold, was above a store which had been occupied by one unlucky tenant after another, and had suffered long periods of vacancy when ladies' aid societies served lunches there, under great white signs, badly ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... temper in which the same things are regarded by Shakspere. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while in art, every attempt in this style ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... de Fer du Midi. Subsequently he was entrusted with various missions abroad, and in 1869 the Institute of France crowned a little work of his on the employment of women and children in English factories. Mining engineering was his speciality, but he was extremely versatile and resourceful, and immediately attracted the notice of Gambetta. Let it be said to the latter's credit that in that hour of crisis he cast all prejudices aside. He cared nothing for the antecedents of any man who ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... further down the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the 'Rake's Progress,' where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... conscious of the great honor thus to be conferred upon her, she at once set to work in the culinary department with a dexterity and skill of art which is incredible to those who are ignorant of the great speciality of negresses. There was sudden havoc among the poultry, and fruit and vegetables found their way from the corn field in abundant variety to the large chimney place. Meanwhile the captain shouldered his piece and brought, from an adjacent thicket, two large fox squirrels to add to the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... done for individuals, they also wanted to do for nations. Humanity was to be divided into national workshops, having each its speciality. Russia, we were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn; England to spin cotton; Belgium to weave cloth; while Switzerland was to train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate city was to establish a specialty. Lyons was to weave silk, Auvergne to make lace, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... than to get me to marry her. But she was also driven to think of herself, and that promptly, for trouble arose with regard to her own position in the Magdeburg theatre. There she had met with a rival in her own speciality, and as this woman's husband became chief stage manager, and consequently had supreme power, she grew to be a source of great danger. Seeing, therefore, that at this very moment Minna received advantageous offers from the managers of the Konigstadt theatre ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... people; but the old stagers can still find some of their number who are as richly comical as Mr. Vincent Crummies himself. They are like the dyer's hand, subdued to what they work in. I was thrown a great deal into the society of one elderly young gentleman whose speciality had for years been that sort of high-flying rattling comedy of which Charles Mathews was the chief exponent in my youth. He had the most suasive, genial, and gentlemanly comedy manner conceivable, and was never for a minute away from the footlights. At breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... which, after so many generations, can still fill that little body with so strong a soul, and make him sing as Milton's new-created birds sang to Milton's Eve in Milton's Paradise. Sweet he is, and various, rich, and strong, beyond all English warblers, save the nightingale: but his speciality is his force, his rush, his overflow, not so much of love as of happiness. The spirit carries him away. He riots up and down the gamut till he cannot stop himself; his notes tumble over each other; he chuckles, laughs, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... was Aglae. Mademoiselle Aglae took charge - I may say, possession - of me. She was tall, gaunt, and bony, with a sharp aquiline nose, pomegranate cheek- bones, and large saffron teeth ever much in evidence. Her speciality, as I soon discovered, was sentiment. Like her sisters, she had had her 'affaires' in the plural. A Greek prince, so far as I could make out, was the last of her adorers. But I sometimes got into scrapes by mixing up the Greek prince with a Polish count, and then confounding ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... my sole companion at the breakfast table, and she eyed me with a peculiar look as I hungrily put away a lot of devilled kidneys, as well as two raw eggs beat up and mixed in my coffee, to which she slyly added a little fine old Cognac, a speciality of my father as a pick-me-up after too ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... does not do away with the consideration of the best modes of studying whatever books are suitable for the end. One man has to read in Chemistry, another in Law, another in Divinity, and so on. For each and all of these, there is a profitable and an unprofitable mode of working, and the speciality ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... brave colleagues," continued Barbicane, "I asked myself if, whilst still remaining in our speciality, we could not undertake some grand experiment worthy of the nineteenth century, and if the progress of ballistics would not allow us to execute it with success. I have therefore sought, worked, calculated, and the conviction has resulted ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... meaning physically, we should be understood as alluding to those general, uniform, absolute, consistent, and beautiful laws, which control and render harmonious, as a great whole, the entire action, affinities, and destinies of the universe; and when we say nature in the speciality, we would be understood to speak of the nature of a rock, of a tree, of air, fire, water, and land. Again, in alluding to a moral nature in the abstract, we mean sin, and its weaknesses, its attractions, its deformities-in a word, its totality; while, on the other ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... whole man— not always willingly—with marvelous truth and completeness. It is no small matter that Benvenuto, whose most important works have perished half finished, and who, as an artist, is perfect only in his little decorative speciality, but in other respects, if judged by the works of him which remain, is surpassed by so many of his greater contemporaries—that Benvenuto as a man will interest mankind to the end of time. It does not spoil the impression when the reader often detects him bragging ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... fitting it with a silken leash to hang about his shoulder. The hounds have been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Mesmer, or Saint Hubert in the Ardennes, or some other holy intercessor who has made a speciality of the health of hunting-dogs. In the grey dawn the game was turned and the branch broken by our best piqueur. A rare day's hunting lies before us. Wind a jolly flourish, sound the bien-aller with all your lungs. Jacques must stand by, hat in hand, while the quarry and hound ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Japanese dwarf-tree—the merest boy. At eighty or ninety, according to the photographs, he would be a stalwart fellow with thick bark on his trunk, and fir-cones or acorns (or whatever was his speciality) hanging all over him. Just at present he was barely ten. I had only eighty years to wait before he ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... German than to the English schools; only that, instead of a philosophical system, carried through with a rigorous and unsparing logic, he indulges in philosophical reveries. As a statesman Lamartine lacks speciality, and for this reason we think that his administration will be a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... at your service, now you're here. The cigars are nearest you, Mr. Nevis, and I can recommend the contents of the smaller bottle. It's a Southern speciality and rather difficult to get ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... said Uncle Solomon, rather as if he was treating a schoolboy. 'What's their speciality 'ere, now? Well, you can give me,' he added to the waiter, with the manner of a man conferring a particular favour, 'you can give me a chump chop, underdone, and a sausage. And bring this young gentleman the same. I don't care about anything 'eavier at this ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... would be obliged if his mother would refrain from sending him back, as he did not consider him a suitable member of a public school. He suggested, in the lad's own interest, that it might be wise to place him in some establishment where a speciality was made of the training of unruly youths. He added that he wrote this with the more regret since Anthony's father and grandfather had been scholars at —— in their day, and her son possessed no mean intellectual abilities. This would be shown by the fact that he was at ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... want him to know about that night in the Magic Cave. Everyone who heard of it was shocked, everyone except Max, and he made a speciality of never being shocked at anything. Why, it was even possible—here a new thought leaped up and struck her an unexpected blow—was it not more than possible that it was this self-same event that had given ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... when they are not markedly disagreeable). He could not, they observed, want all his various knowledge and Laputan ideas for his periodical writing which brought him most of his bread, and he would do well to use his talents in getting a speciality that would fit him for a post. Perhaps these well-disposed persons were a little rash in presuming that fitness for a post would be the surest ground for getting it; and on the whole, in now looking back on their wishes for ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... irregular intervals to claim whatever might be available of the l2 10s. per quarter bequeathed to him by his father. His strong point was finding his way into outlandish places, and getting insulted and sat on by the public, and run in by the police. Apart from this speciality, he was one of the most useless beings I ever knew (which is saying a lot). Some men, by their very aspect, seem to invite confidence; others, insult; others, imposition; but Dick seemed only to invite arrest. When well-groomed, he used to be arrested in mistake for some bank defaulter; when ragged, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its speciality—or, if you like, its oddity—was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks to save ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... No. 12 is Villon, and Nos. 45 to 49 consist of the plays of Ford, Dekker, Tourneur, Marston, and Middleton; names very dear to the lover of our old Drama, but I venture to think names somewhat inappropriate in a list of books for a reader who does not make the drama a speciality. Lamb's Selections would be sufficient for ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... every drop of blood of a certain species of animal, and we may as well say, in each of its blood corpuscles, and in the last instance, in each of its molecules, the respective animal species is fully represented, as to its odorant speciality, under both aspects ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... man was a comparative newcomer in the underworld. He had bought out a small ship-chandler's business, a rickety, out-at-the-heels place on an equally rickety old wharf on the East River; and it was generally understood that he was a "fence" of a sort, making a speciality of, and catering to, a certain extensive and vicious class of thieves, the wharf rats, who infested the city's shipping—his ostensible business of a ship-chandler enabling him to handle and dispose of that class of stolen ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... saw an angry man in my life it was Leland Stanford. He fairly raved. He jumped at his old speciality, Gov. Low's head; he tore it loose from his body and knocked him down with it. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... the shape of the loaves has in most cases continued unchanged to the present day. And one curious coincidence is certainly worth mentioning, in that a peculiar method of preparing figs with caraway seeds, which was long supposed to be a local speciality of a remote town in Central Italy, has now been recognized as a common method of dressing this fruit for the table at Pompeii, for large quantities of figs so treated have been unearthed in shops and kitchens. Such grains of information as the wearing of hoods and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... character, type, quality, crasis^, diathesis^. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. endowment, capacity; capability &c (power) 157. moods, declensions, features, aspects; peculiarities &c (speciality) 79; idiosyncrasy, oddity; idiocrasy &c (tendency) 176; diagnostics. V. be in the blood, run in the blood; be born so; be intrinsic &c adj.. Adj. derived from within, subjective; intrinsic, intrinsical^; fundamental, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ready his blow-gun and poisoned arrows; Captain Redwood looked to his rifle; while the ship-carpenter, whose speciality was fishing, and who for this purpose had brought his hooks and lines along with him, determined on trying what species of the finny tribe frequented the inland lake, in hopes they might prove less shy at biting than their brethren of the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... apples from Kent. Exeter was famous for metal and corn; Worcester and London for wheat; Winchester for wine—there were vineyards in England then; Hertford for cattle, and Salisbury for game; York for wood; while the speciality ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... it is pretty certain that you won't be long in this trade until you find out I have not exaggerated one single incident, and that there are gentlemen cruising in these waters who claim a law unto themselves, and who make a speciality of brigandage and murder. I understand from Curly that many of them are educated and well-bred, and that it is the love of adventure that causes that section of them to take to the life. They are adepts at playing the double role of society person and ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... it must be looked on as a transition from the last-mentioned method to the next of colour laid by colour. Thus used there is something incomplete about it. One finds oneself longing for more colours than one's shuttles or blocks allow one. There is a need felt for the speciality of the next method, where the dividing line is used, and it gradually gets drawn into that method. Which, indeed, is the last I have to speak to you of, and in which colour is ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... fine, the weather lovely, the feeding unexceptionable, and the only drawback consists in the "javelins," as old Francis Head used to call them—stinks of such wonderful crusted flavour that they must have been many years in bottle. But this is a speciality of all furrin parts that I have ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... had snatched a few hours in the West, and was just returning home. It being then well past twelve, we sauntered a little way with him, and called at a coffee-stall for a cup of the leathery tea which is the speciality of the London coffee-stall. Most stalls have their "regulars," especially those that are so fortunate as to pitch near a Works of any kind. The stall we visited was on the outskirts of Soho, and near a large ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... we hear of early in the centuries and often among the tribes. Let me suppose that you see a knife on the table, a stick in the corner, or a fire on the hearth. About each of these you will notice one speciality; that not one of them is special. Each of these ancestral things is a universal thing; made to supply many different needs; and while tottering pedants nose about to find the cause and origin of some old custom, the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... and the Lady Barnard." The last named, as well as "Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament" and "Fair Margaret and Sweet William,"[34] was quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," (1611). Scraps of them are sung by one of the dramatis personae, old Merrythought, whose speciality is a damnable iteration of ballad fragments. References to old ballads are numerous in the Elizabethan plays. Percy devoted the second book of his first series to "Ballads that Illustrate Shakspere." In the seventeenth century a few ballads were printed entire in poetic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... evangelical aspirations, and has been distributed gratis for the enlightenment of the people. The case of Richard is interesting because it's national. Though to us it's absurd to cut off a man's head, because he has become our brother and has found grace, yet we have our own speciality, which is all but worse. Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,' every one must have seen it. It's peculiarly Russian. He describes how a feeble ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that a man is a hero because he is a man, because he overleaps the level of his life, and is greater than his race, being one of them? If he were of the heroic race, what virtue in being heroic? it is the assertion of his trivial life that makes his speciality evident,—the shadow that throws out the bas-relief. We chatter endlessly about the immense good of Washington's example: I believe its good would be more than doubled, could we be made, nationally, to see him as a human being, living on 'human nature's daily food,' having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a pity the ordinary schools are taking it up. I know of at least one so-called secondary school which makes a speciality of 'Commercial Training.' The girls who take up the subject are quite the wrong kind, with absolutely no real education,... and are ready to accept anything in the way of salary. The really good schools where the girls remain till they ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... external world of sound, or to the imagined discourse of thought. A close criticism might have detected signs proving that she was intent on the latter alternative. Moreover, as was shown by what followed, she was oddly exercising the faculty of invention upon the speciality of the clever Jacquet Droz, the designer of automatic substitutes ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... extensive, for Dr. Rylance was a specialist. He had won his reputation as an adviser in cases of mental disease; and as, happily, mental diseases are less common than bodily ailments, Dr. Rylance had not the continuous work of a Gull or a Jenner. His speciality paid him remarkably well. His cases hung long on hand, and when he had a patient of wealth and standing Dr. Rylance knew how to keep him. His treatment was soothing and palliative, as befitted an enlightened age. In an age of scepticism no one could expect Dr. Rylance to work miraculous ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... reform for which he ought to contend,—that he lived to some extent like a child blowing soap-bubbles, the brightest and most gorgeous of which—the Abbotsford bubble—vanished before his eyes, is not a take-off from the charm of his career, but adds to it the very speciality of its fascination. For it was his entire unconsciousness of moral or spiritual efforts, the simple straightforward way in which he laboured for ends of the most ordinary kind, which made it clear how much greater ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... properly in the first scrum of a big match—and rushed the ball down the field. Norris fell on it. Another hastily-formed scrum, and the Nomads' front rank was off again. Ten yards nearer the School line there was another halt. Grainger, the Beckford full-back, whose speciality was the stopping of rushes, had curled himself neatly round the ball. Then the School forwards awoke to a sense of their responsibilities. It was time they did, for Beckford was now penned up well within its own twenty-five line, and the Nomad halves were appealing ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... the task to a cousin of his mother who, delighted to be doing a commission for him, had written to him, laying stress on the fact that she had not chosen all the fruit at the same place, but the grapes from Crapote, whose speciality they were, the straw berries from Jauret, the pears from Chevet, who always had the best, am soon, "every fruit visited and examined, one by one, by myself." And ii the sequel, by the cordiality with which the Princess thanked him, hi had been able to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... surreptitiously to pick up the dates and leading facts of his father's campaigns (making a speciality of the Battle of Wagram), but the vague ambitions which they inspired only helped his little mind to prey upon itself. It was not "the times" (as with Hamlet) but his own nose that he found to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... Dailies were thought grey; not wicked—only general and vague. The Free Press in its beginnings did not attack as an enemy. It only timidly claimed to be heard. It regarded itself as a "speciality." It was humble. And there went with it a ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... up in a trot, moved a lock of his hair and replaced it, and said, 'Yes, Maister Derriman.' He was old Mr. Derriman's odd hand in the yard and garden, and like his employer had no great pretensions to manly beauty, owing to a limpness of backbone and speciality of mouth, which opened on one side only, giving ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... speciality in his labour which distinguishes the handicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the ruts; what other end? And, by the way, the 'Athenaeum,' since Mr. Dilke left it, has grown duller and duller, colder and colder, flatter and flatter. Mr. Dilke was not brilliant, but he was a Brutus in criticism; and though it was his speciality to condemn his most particular friends to the hangman, the survivors thought there was something grand about it on the whole, and nobody could hold him in contempt. Now it is all different. We have not even 'public virtue' to fasten our admiration to. You will be sure to think I am vexed at the article ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... inclined to rear, the cuts should be given well behind the girth, and he should be kept on the turn to the right, in order that he may not fix his hind legs, which he would have to do in order to get up. If kicking be his speciality, they should be applied on the shoulder, while his head is held up as high as possible. If punishment proves ineffectual, it should be discontinued at once, as no woman cares to be the centre of an admiring crowd while she is engaged in a fight which, in nine cases out of ten, does ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... using pitch, some with spoons, others with rakes, others again with pincers? Therefore, with such equipment as it possesses, the insect would be capable of abandoning cotton for leaves, leaves for resin, resin for mortar, if some predisposition of talent did not make it keep to its speciality. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Greek history, we find illustrious personages known by one name only, as Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Solon. The same feature marks early Jewish history. Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Job were not known by any other names than these. Sometimes names were changed or modified in order to express some speciality of character or achievement—Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Hoshea to Joshua. In later times appellations descriptive of the work or office of individuals were attached to their original names, as in the cases of ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... rich in books of romance, and what was then termed 'the black art'; but Webster was the author of a rare volume on witchcraft, so that his books were his literary tools—just as, a century later, John Rennie, the distinguished civil engineer, made a speciality of mathematical books, of which he had a collection nearly complete in all languages. Dr. Benjamin Moseley's library, which was sold by Stewart in March, 1814, was composed for the most part of books on astrology, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... remain so up to the year 1200. Then an influence appears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (our first MASTER, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each, and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, this conscientious and didactic power which is the speciality of its progressive existence. And just as the new-born and natural art of Athens collects and reanimates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition, purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living heathen faith of the world, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... me to say so, I really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... Wonderful in the boot, stocking, and gaiter department. Very tasteful, too, in the matter of caps and ties. May be flattered by an inquiry as to where he got his gaiters, and if they are an idea of his own. Sometimes bursts out into a belt covered with silver clasps. Fancy waistcoats a speciality. His smoking-suit, in the evening, is a dream of gorgeous rainbows. Is sometimes a very fair shot. Generally wears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... in the peculiar, watery brightness of her eyes,—in the corners of which it would always seem that a diamond of a tear was lurking whenever any matter of excitement was afoot. Her light-brown hair was soft and smooth and pretty. As hair it was very well, but it had no speciality. Her mouth was somewhat large, but full of ever-varying expression. Her forehead was low and broad, with prominent temples, on which it was her habit to clasp tightly her little outstretched fingers as she sat listening to you. Of listeners she was ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... dinner, talking upon all sorts of subjects, and never letting drop a single word to remind Adela that she was in the presence of a medical man. Nor did he seem to take any notice of her more than was required by ordinary politeness; but behavior without speciality of any sort, he drew his judgments from her general manner, and such glances as fell naturally to his share, of those that must pass between all the persons making up a small dinner-company. This enabled him to see her as she really was, for she remained quite at such ease as her indisposition ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... a speciality of St. Ursula's. The gymnasium instructor believed in teaching girls to run. Eleven times around the oval constituted a mile, and a mile of hoop-rolling freed one for the day from dumb-bells and Indian clubs. The three dived into the cellar, and returned ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... account which she had received, it was twelve months at least since he had died in one of the Grecian islands. The full weeds of a mourning widow would ill have befitted her condition of mind, or her immediate purpose. But yet there was a speciality of blackness in her garments which told him that she had dressed herself with a purpose as of mourning. "Mother," he said to her in the train, "you are in mourning,—as for a friend?" Then when she paused he asked again, "May I not be told for whom it is done? Am I not right in ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... akcipitro. Sparse maldensa. Spasm spasmo. Spatter sxprucigi (sur). Spawn fisxsemo. Speak paroli. Speak through the nose nazparoli. Speaker parolanto. Spear lanco. Special speciala. Specialise specialigi. Specialist specialisto. Speciality specialo—eco. Specie monero. Species speco. Specimen modelo. Specious versxajna. Speck makuleto. Spectacle (a sight) vidajxo. Spectacles okulvitroj. Spectator rigardanto. Spectre fantomo. Spectrum spektro. Speculate spekulacii. Speculation spekulacio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... up the card and went on, innocent as a judge,' We used to have a code in those days. For instance, you crooked one finger over your nose and that meant 'sea-urchins.'' 'Why?' I asked. 'That was the code,' Farrell explained. 'They used to have a speciality in sea-urchins, straight from the Mediterranean. You rubbed a soupsong of garlic into them with three drops of paprika. . . . Now what do you say ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... so nicely from her pretty little mouth, and she shapes them with such care, that they seem to issue forth one by one like neatly formed birds being let out of a cage. She is making a speciality of pronunciation, and what she sometimes speaks of as "refined wording." She was ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... works on taxidermy profess to give descriptions of the attitudes of animals, I cannot do so for the simple reason that I consider the acquirement a speciality and purely a matter of experience. Nature must be closely studied; failing this, reference must be made to illustrated works on natural history. All of Gould's works are grand guides to attitudes of specimens and accessories, as also that beautiful work of my friend H. E. Dresser, F.L.S, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... less verbally, so as to run the risk of being unintelligible to a reader unacquainted with the original, to generalize what is special, and to borrow something of the imitator's licence, introducing a modern speciality in place of an ancient. Here, as I have found on other occasions of the kind, to be allowed a choice of evils is itself a matter for self- congratulation. To be shut up entirely to one or other of these resources ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... island—with which it would seem that the city of Troezen, though close at hand, had no connection—meeting there at stated periods, to offer formal sacrifices. These seven cities indeed were not immediate neighbors, but the speciality and exclusiveness of their interest in the temple is seen from the fact that when the Argians took Nauplia, they adopted and fulfilled these religious obligations on behalf of the prior inhabitants: so also did the Lacedaemonians when they had captured Prasiae. Again, in Triphylia, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... of business. Mr MacGinnis and I have been rivals in the past, but we both saw that the moment had come for the genial smile, the hearty handshake, in fact, for an alliance. We form a strong team, sonny. My partner's speciality is action. I supply the strategy. Say, can't you see you're up against it? ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... well as I can remember, since the year 1847, from the peculiar catarrh called by the English "hay fever," the speciality of which consists in its attacking its victims regularly in the hay season (myself-between May 20 and the end of June), that it ceases in the cooler weather, but on the other hand quickly reaches a great intensity if the patients expose themselves to heat and sunshine. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... modern invention, nor can it be claimed as the speciality of any set of religionists. Even heathen people in past ages have provided similar opportunities for those who felt a special need either to thank their God for blessings received, or to seek His help in any specific case, to come forward in an open way, and confess their wants, their ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... think not," answered Kennedy. "It seems that this Hungarian's speciality is playing the waltzes and folk-songs of his own country, which is certainly not anything great; but his successes are not obtained with the violin, but among the women. The ladies in London fight for him. His game is to pass himself off as a fallen man, depraved, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... title for a business, was a little misleading because of the plural ending of the last word. There was only one consultant, and that was Samson Francis Bending. His speciality was the engineering design of atomic power plants—both the old fashioned heavy-metal kind and the newer, more elegant, stellarators, which ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of these artists myself with any speciality of care, and cannot tell you positively, anything about them or their works. But I know good work from bad, as a cobbler knows leather, and I can tell you positively the quality of these frescos, and their relation to contemporary panel pictures; ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... laying claim to the same food, could more easily coexist. Here lay the explanation of the fact that upon the same oak hundreds of different insects might be found. Other things being equal, the same applies to society. He who finds some unadopted speciality possesses a means of his own for getting a living. It is by this division of their manifold tasks that men contrive not to crush each other. Here we obviously have a Darwinian law serving as intermediary in the explanation of that progress of division of labour which itself explains so much ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... becoming very necessary; for Mrs. Cosway's receptions were now the town rage—were crowded to inconvenience. They were marked by what was then a speciality; though it has since become a common enough characteristic of such assemblies. 'Lions' were to be met with there—literary, artistic, and otherwise. The last new poets, painters, players, were to be seen with their honours in their newest gloss; the latest discoverers, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... (greater ablution), and "Zakat" (legal alms which constitute a poor-rate), proving that the writer never read vol. iii. He confidently suggests replacing "Cafilah," "by the better known word Caravan," as if it were my speciality (as it is his) to hunt-out commonplaces: he grumbles about "interrogation-points a l'Espagnole upside down"(?) which still satisfies me as an excellent substitute to distinguish the common Q(uestion) from A(nswer) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... ascetic, with the azure blue eyes so common in Connaught, never seen in England, although frequently met with in Norway and North Germany. The waiting-women were barefoot, but all the men were shod. The Araners have a speciality in shoes—pampooties, to wit. These are made of raw hide, hair outwards, the toe-piece drawn in, and the whole tied on with string or sinew. The cottages are better built than many on the mainland. Otherwise the winter gales would blow them into the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Jonathan's speciality,—science. But I never give my word half heartedly, my boy, and I'll back you to my last dollar. Be prepared for disappointments,—but if you accomplish something, I'll be glad. And if you fail, George,—any failure for a man's convictions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... University which is now extending its care to Art as well as Science, it would seem that the finer industries, such as design applied to furniture, decoration of all kinds, carving, painted glass, bookbinding, ought in time to do particularly well. If you wish to prosper, cultivate your speciality; the rule holds good for cities as well ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... by someone who understands how to cure stammering. The correspondent would do well to consult Miss Behncke of 18 Earl's Court Square, S.W., who makes a speciality of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... day than others, there being a general scrub-up of the premises. The work, my informant thought, could be condensed by judicious co-operation, and the "four to four" rule might be adopted in some establishments, but by no means in all—as, for instance, where there was a speciality for rolls and fancy bread. It seems, as usual, that the difficulties thicken, not about the necessaries, but about the luxuries and kickshaws of life. The master relieved my immediate fears by saying that he scarcely imagined matters would come to a crisis. There was this difference ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... my position had not been perilous enough in reality, my overwrought imagination must needs add to it a thousand extravagant fantasies. Patience had the reputation of being a wolf-rearer. This, as you know, is a cabalistic speciality accredited in all countries. I kept on fancying, therefore, that I saw this devilish little gray-beard, escorted by his ravening pack, and himself in the form of a demi-wolf, pursing me through the woods. Several times when ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... good picture or the fine poem makes its way into the minds of a slowly discerning public. Punch, no doubt, became very popular, owing, perhaps, more to Leech, its artist, than to any other single person. Gradually the world of readers began to know that there was a speciality of humour to be found in its pages,—fun and sense, satire and good humour, compressed together in small literary morsels as the nature of its columns required. Gradually the name of Thackeray as one of the band of brethren was buzzed about, and gradually became known ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... best feel the difference between rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the branches of an oak and a willow than anyone else would; and, therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent—the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is graceful, and vastness of what is vast; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the mind of the painter ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... I'm a plain man from Sun'land that has a speciality, an' that's transshipping cargo at sea, but me ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... of inconsistency!—when you were saying only to-day that you saw no just cause or impediment why women should not do anything for which they have a special fitness. Now I feel politics will be my speciality, and I would not canvass for any one unless I quite ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... editor. The interview appeared—two long columns on prize fighting! I was the innocent "peg" upon which the sporting writer hung his own ideas. He discussed "a rendezvous in the Rockies," remote from the centre of civilisation, as surely an appropriate locale for a train-scuttling speciality or a fight to a death finish between Roaring Gore and Wild Whiskers. A pair of athletes, scienced to the tips of their vibrating digits, compelled to appeal to the courtesy of a wild and well-whiskered Legislature, would doubtless appear inconsistent to gentlemen of the National Sporting Club ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... and Lamartine. Images, we know, are not convictions; aspirations will not do the work; grand speeches will not solve the problems. The poet is a "phrasemaker"; true; but show us the man in these days who is more than a phrasemaker! Where is he who has positive ideas beyond the small circle of his speciality? In rejecting the guidance of the Poet to whom shall we apply? To the Priest? He mumbles the litany of an ancient time which falls on unbelieving ears. To the Lawyer? He is a metaphysician with precedents for data. To the Litterateur? He is a phrasemaker ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... three[145] Vedas were accepted. But the Epics and the Puranas know of the fourfold Veda and place the Atharva Veda on a level with the other three. It was the manual of two ancient priestly families, the Atharvans and Angirasas, whose speciality was charms and prophylactics rather than the performance of the regular sacrifices. The hymns and magic songs which it contains were probably collected subsequently to the composition of the Brahmanas, but the separate poems are older and, so far as can be judged from their language, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness and the dulness of his light. Glorious or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... lively definition of an animal as "a stomach provided with organs." It lives to feed. It does not know much, but in its speciality it is unrivalled. The way in which it helps itself from the sources of life is a masterpiece of hydraulic skill. Once let it lose the Heaven-imparted art of haustion, and all the arts and academies of the world can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is caution;—advise velocity, when the first condition of success is deliberation;—and plead for generalization, when all the foundations of power must be laid in knowledge of speciality. ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Great Rarities are our Speciality. We have a large number of Stamps on hand from L100 to L750 each, and shall be pleased to give prices and particulars to ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell |
