"Supererogation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distinctly a work of supererogation for me to attempt to tell the story of the Anglo-German war—of all modern wars the most remarkable in some ways, and certainly the war which has been most exhaustively treated by modern historians. A. Low says in the concluding ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... uninstructed brethren in danger accordingly, how can any thing that can be said, written, or done, to alleviate their condition, or to remove prejudice from the public mind, be counted a work of supererogation? ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... difficult vocation of setting the world to rights. But on the other hand, it must be remembered that her standard of exactingness was 'high, and some of the things that in her eyes it was merely culpable to leave undone might be counted by others among virtues of supererogation. Indeed, it is within the limits of possibility that a philanthropist wrapped in over-much conscious virtue might imagine her cold to the objects proposed, when she only failed to see uncommon merit in their pursuit. No one, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... visit that the familiar thou prevails over the colder you; and the letters, both in number and length, very largely exceed those he had written up to the end of 1842. Funnily, he expresses admiration of himself for this work of supererogation, informing Eve, on one occasion, that the sixteen leaves he had recently sent her were worth sixteen hundred francs, even two thousand, counting extra leaves enclosed to Mademoiselle Henriette Borel, the governess, for whom ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... were some hundreds of miles off the nearest coast, our task of looking out for land was entirely a work of supererogation; still, we did not realise this, and strained our eyes vainly until we were called down from aloft at "two bells," after the hands had all had their breakfast and there was nothing left for us. This was "Jock's" ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... extended its jointed arm above an ash dressing-table with a blurred mirror fixed between two standards. Having performed this office with an air of detachment designed to make Woburn recognize it as an act of supererogation, he turned without a word and ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Letters were the beginning of a quarrel. Nash replied in Strange Newes of the intercepting certaine Letters, and a Convoy of Verses, as they were going privilie to victual the Low Countries, 1593. Harvey rejoined the same year in Pierce's Supererogation, or a new Praise of the old Asse; and Nash again, in Have with you to Saffron Walden, or Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up; containing a full Answer to the eldest Sonne of the Halter-maker, 1596.—Dr. Lodge calls Nash our true English Aretine: and John ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... are, it would be a work of supererogation to digest all these patents in the present pages, as they represent not only the inception but also the gradual development and growth of the wax-record type of phonograph from its infancy to the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... than he was when he first set up for himself? Nay, doth not the blot of his ill living betwixt his first and his last, lie as a blemish upon him, unless he should redeem himself also, by works of supererogation, from the scandal that justice may lay ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... Miss Sanford tete-a-tete in the parlor despite Mrs. Stannard's efforts. Mrs. Turner was promptly on hand, so were other ladies, and that they made certain inferences at the time, and compared notes later in the day, is, perhaps, supererogation to state. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... intelligence. I have only to cite the Tierra del Fuegians, the Bushmen, the Australians, and the Akka or Ticki-Ticki, the Pygmies of Central Africa, to prove the truthfulness of this assertion. There are other peoples who would serve as examples, but it would be a work of supererogation to enumerate them to ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... box for me came at the same time as the large one for Papa. When you first told me that you had had the Duke's picture framed, and had given it to me, I felt half provoked with you for performing such a work of supererogation, but now, when I see it again, I cannot but acknowledge that, in so doing, you were felicitously inspired. It is his very image, and, as Papa said when he saw it, scarcely in the least like the ordinary portraits; not only ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... has to say about salads, especially note his remarks on the salad of "cold boiled table vegetables." His arrangement of the menu, to the Baron's simple taste, humble mode of life, and not inconsiderable experience, is perfect. Hors d'oeuvres are works of supererogation, and have never been, so to speak, acclimatised in our English table-land. The Baron may have overlooked any directions about ecrivisses, not as bisque, but pure and simple as cray-fish, which, fresh from the river ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... gentleman Brandeis has no appointment in a military character, but resides peaceably assisting the government of Leulumoenga in their work, for Brandeis is a quiet, sensible gentleman." And then he promised to send the vice-consul to "get information of the captain's doings": surely supererogation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Reform, by whomsoever produced, whensoever, and wheresoever. I daresay I should have no difficulty in adding two or three cases to the list, which I know to be true, and which I have no doubt would be contradicted, but I consider it a work of supererogation; for, if the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be. There is, however, an old indisputable, very well ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... place in every heart. Se-li-nah, though, makes it impossible for us to pose as brave endurers of hardships. Each night and morning she carries her little pack on and off shore, takes her share of pot-luck at meat-su, and is never cross. Bless the kiddie! If ablutions seem to her a work of supererogation and our daily play of toothbrush furnishes all the fascination of the unknown, still hers is the right stuff for pioneer lands and she has lessons to teach us ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... that they must have been mistaken; and some who recollected high winds were considered romancers. We looked at the strong contre-vents placed outside the windows of our dwelling, and wondered why such a work of supererogation should have taken place as to put them there, if the hurricanes we had witnessed were unusual, when I one day, during a high wind, as I sat at home, happened to take up Palassou's Memorial des Pyrenees, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... public and private baths, it may seem a work of supererogation to insist upon cleanliness as the first requisite in a lady's toilet. Yet it may be as well to remind our fair readers that fastidiousness on this head cannot be carried too far. Cleanliness is the outward sign of inward ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... in the knight-errantry of undertaking for other people's. Wretched bankrupt that I am, with an absolute refusal on the part of the Commissioner to grant me a certificate of the lowest class, suddenly, and by a necessity not to be evaded, I am affecting the large bounties of supererogation. I appear to be vaporing in a spirit of vainglory; and yet it is under the mere coercion of 'salva necessitas' that I am surprised into this unparalleled instance of activity. Do you walk? That is, do you like walking for four hours 'on end'—(which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of safeguarding the virtue of the unmarried—that is, of the still passionate. The present plan in dealing, say, with a young man of twenty, is to surround him with scare-crows and prohibitions—to try to convince him logically that passion is dangerous. This is both supererogation and imbecility—supererogation because he already knows that it is dangerous, and imbecility because it is quite impossible to kill a passion by arguing against it. The way to kill it is to give it rein under unfavourable and dispiriting conditions—to bring it down, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... more easily collected in the larval or caterpillar stage than in the perfect one. Every tree, bush, or plant, the grass, and even the lichens growing on trees or walls, produce some larvae feeding on it. It would, I feel, be a work of supererogation to attempt to give detailed descriptions of food-plants and the insects feeding on them, when we have a book so good and cheap to fall back on as "Merrin's Lepidopterist's Calendar," which gives the times ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... need hardly mention the obligation that weighs upon you, to open wide our ports to commerce. Without commerce our agricultural produce might moulder in our warehouses; roads, and interisland communication almost cease to exist; the making of wharves become a work of supererogation, and the opening and closing of stores an idle ceremony. As the legislators of a young commercial nation, we should be liberal in our measures, and far-sighted ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... of distinction and confidence. But there were other interests to be consulted;—and the undisguised earnestness with which Sheridan had opposed the union of his party with the Grenvilles, left him but little supererogation of services to expect in that quarter. Some of his nearest friends, and particularly Mrs. Sheridan, entreated, as I understand, in the most anxious manner, that he would not accept any such office as that of Treasurer of the Navy, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... gave himself to all the delightful bye-tasks: the works of supererogation, the excursions into side paths, the niggling with proofs, the toying with style, the potterings and polishings, the ruminations, and rewritings and refinements which make the joy of the man of letters. For ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... earthquake, nor yet even the collapse of an archway. Nothing at all, in fact, except that I had been smitten over the head with an iron bar. There had been two blows, I believe; and, if so, the second must really have been a work of supererogation, for I was conscious only ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... cash in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment —but only just a moment—then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in unison and their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... It were supererogation to point out to a body of this kind the value of the most careful and thorough work in connection with life histories and habits, often involving as it does much microscopic study of structure. The officers of our institutions who control the funds, and more or less fully ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... containing fifty thousand pieces of eight. Gold has at all times been considered the best of testimonies of good faith, and Blood was determined that in all respects appearances should be entirely on his side. His followers had accounted this a supererogation of pretence. But Blood's will in the matter had prevailed. He carried further a bulky package addressed to a grande of Spain, heavily sealed with the arms of Espinosa—another piece of evidence hastily manufactured in ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... apologists and advocates? Let them stand forth and show the right of barbarism! Let us have a homily on its beauties! let them picture to us the meliorations of cannibalism! Will any one do it? No; it is a self-evident wrong. To attempt, even, to prove it wrong, would seem to be a work of supererogation. Barbarism it repugnant to the common sense of the Anglo-Saxon race; a violation of the conscience of civilization. Cannibalism is an almost inconceivable outrage against all right, in moral, social, or even superior animal existence. Few animals or even reptiles devour ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... the clock struck, Loo turned to him with a laugh and a shake of the head as if the refusal were so self-evident that to put it into words were a work of supererogation. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the most singular heresy in its modern history-the heresy of what is called, very foolishly, the Lake School. Some years ago I might have been induced, by an occasion like the present, to attempt a formal refutation of their doctrine; at present it would be a work of supererogation. The wise must bow to the wisdom of such men as Coleridge and Southey, but, being wise, have laughed at poetical ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not done their work, for they had whitewashed the school with a thoroughness even Store Thompson's wife would never have attempted. The only fault was the lack of discrimination shown by the decorators. Some critics might have considered the coating of the floor and the desks a work of supererogation. But the boys were not stingy; they whitewashed everything with an impartial and lavish generosity; the walls, the ceiling, the blackboard, the furniture. Yes, even the stove and stovepipes were rubbed until they fairly radiated whiteness, and stood out spectrally ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... lost their ears, they enjoyed the satisfaction of making those of their oppressors tingle. Knowing their persecutors to be in the wrong, they did not always inquire whether they themselves had been entirely right, and had done no unrequired works of supererogation by the way of "testimony" against their neighbors' mode cf worship. And so from pillory and whipping-post, from prison and scaffold, they sent forth their wail and execration, their miserere and anathema, and the sound thereof has reached down to our day. May it never wholly die away until, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... might make good confessions and communions, practice all the self-denials required of one in your vocation, and the only thing that the church could give you, the only gleam of hope she could offer, was that, through your works of supererogation, your purgatory would be lessened; and now, wasted through suffering and consumption, dreading the punishment of purgatory, endeavoring in your dying state to do something to lessen its pangs, you have walked with glass ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... dutiful child, prayed as she was told for her father's success and happiness, and then added a petition of her own, shorter, perhaps, but quite as sincere, for her cousin Adolphus. If she added one for herself, it was a work of supererogation, for she felt that in praying for the happiness of her lover, she was not unmindful of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... called it milk? Has he lost the remembrance of the Yorkshire pudding, vulgarly called choke-dog, of which you were obliged to eat a pound before you were allowed a slice of beef, and of which, if you swallowed half that quantity, you thought cooks and oxen mere works of supererogation, and totally useless on the face of the earth? Has the fool lost all recollection of the prayers in yon cold, wet, clay-floored cellar, proudly denominated the chapel? has he forgot the cuffs from the senior boys, the pinches from the second master? and, in fine, has he forgot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... the Republican Fork of the Kaw this is especially true. The climate is so mild and uniform that cattle may be kept at pasture the whole year round. Haymaking and the building of barns are works of supererogation. The wild grass cures spontaneously on the ground. To provide shelter against exceptional cases of climatic rigor,—an unusual "cold snap," or a fall of snow which lies more than a day or two,—the ranchero constructs for his cattle a simple corral, or, at most, a rude shed. The utmost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... many who shall win their way thus far into this book, a work of impertinent supererogation to describe at large an American packet-ship, together with the mode of living on board a regular Liner, considering that there are some three or four of these departing every week from Liverpool, London, and Havre, and at this same point I can fancy ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... between man and God. For, in the first place, man is united to God by faith; secondly, by having his will duly submissive in obeying His commandments; thirdly, by certain special things pertaining to supererogation such as the religious life, the clerical state, or Holy Orders. Now if that which follows be removed, that which precedes, remains, but the converse does not hold. Accordingly a man may apostatize from God, by withdrawing from the religious life to which he was bound by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the causes which help to create this class of street Arabs, whom it is almost a labor of supererogation to describe, especially to those who daily hear the familiar cries, "Telegram!" "News!" "Telegram!" "New-es!" "Mail 'n' Express!" uttered chiefly by young girls, all over the town. Pretty girls they are, too, many of them, with large, lustrous eyes, long, well-oiled hair, nice shoes ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... reprint of the translation of the Arabian Nights, by Jonathan Scott, LL.D., which was first published in 1811. A reviewer having the book before him overlooked this important fact, and straightway proceeded to "slate'' Dr. Scott for his supposed work of supererogation in making a new translation when Lane's held the field, the fact really being that Scott's translation preceded Lane's by ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... are inherent in the vows, namely, that they justify, that they constitute Christian perfection, that they keep the counsels and commandments, that they have works of supererogation. All these things, since they are false and empty, ...
— The Confession of Faith • Various
... of these arduous duties, for in looking so handsome and so jolly from Monday morning until Saturday night he contributed his quota toward the carrying on of society, and all beside were works of supererogation. When these palled upon him a little, as was shown by his picking up a book, he looked very unhappy for ten minutes, and then, making a pass at his face with one of has beautiful hands, he cried out, "No fellow can read badgered like this. There's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... some pretence on the part of one of my young hosts of going into his uncle's office and drawing a lease, until he is reminded that he will probably be performing a work of supererogation, that leases and feudalism and property are going out of date, and that the land agents of the future, if suffered to cumber the earth at all, will be elected by the tenants, as the New York magistrates are elected by the persons whom they will be called upon to judge. And the clock ticks ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... comes in the glory of supererogation is non-existent; but the merit of the virtue is not thereby excluded, provided the will be present. Consequently the ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... were a legacy more stimulating, solacing, and enduring, than his philosophy could have been, even if he had perfected that attempt of his to reconcile all learning and revelation, and if, when perfected, the whole effort had not proved to be a work of supererogation. I doubt if Rossetti quite knew what was meant by Coleridge's "system," as it was so frequently called, and I know that he could not be induced by any eulogiums to do so much as look at the Biographia ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... case a semblance of substance and strength—whose consummate and watchful adroitness placed weak places quite out of the sight and reach of the shrewdest opponent, and never perilled a good case by a single act of incaution, negligence, rashness, or supererogation. When necessary, he would prove a case barely up to the point which would suffice to secure a decision in his favour, and then leave it—equally before the court, and a jury—the result afterwards showing with what consummate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... sense. What should I have been, had I neglected such an opportunity? I have really no patience to think that a thing, which it would have been a crime to have left undone, should possibly be supposed a work of supererogation! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... "Now what supererogation in wit this is to think skill so mightily pierced with their loves that she should prostitutely shew them her secrets when she will scarcely be looked upon by others but with invocation, fasting, watching; yea not without having drops of their souls ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... It would be "supererogation" to go into our early legislation, which is familiar to the colony in a hundred publications, besides the fact that I have touched already on some of the prominent subjects or questions in which I myself took a part, such as the movement against ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... even flattered. Such a person once said to us: "I cannot live without flattery. I want people to say nice things about me. I do not care whether they mean them or not, if only they will say them to my face." To interest such a person in himself is really a work of supererogation—because he thinks of nothing else, and usually can talk of nothing else. All you have to do to arouse his interest is to show him the connection between his vanity and the proposition you have to offer, and then ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the general context of his book required less emphasis upon the virtues of state-interference than upon its defects. His cue was to show that all the benefits of regulation had been achieved despite its interference; from which, of course, it followed that restraint was a matter of supererogation. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... it with its votes, but it can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however, the man who can ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... State to the management of the rulers they, themselves, have chosen." And many of our "old Abolitionists," believing their work done, that the war had killed slavery, knocked the bottom out of the tub, not only declared our work one of supererogation, but told us that petitioning, as a means of educating the people or ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the crumbs from her lap, and was turning into the house, when he witholds her a minute in a perfectly altered fashion, saying, "There be some works, mistress, our confessors tell us be works of supererogation ... is not that y^e word? I learn a long one now and then ... such as be setting food before a full man, or singing to a deaf one, or buying for one's pigs a silver trough, or, for the matter of that, casting pearls before a dunghill cock, or fishing for a heron, which is well able to fish ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... that permission and operation refer to present time, permission being with respect to evil, operation with regard to good. Whilst as to future time, prohibition is in respect to evil, precept to good that is necessary and counsel to good that is of supererogation. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... faith, showing both what faith is and what faith does, and have also published my Confession [1528], setting forth both what I believe and what position I intend to maintain; and whereas the devil continues to seek new intrigues against me, I have decided, by way of supererogation, to publish conjointly, in the German tongue, the three so-called Symbols, or Confessions, which have hitherto been received, read, and chanted throughout the Church. I would thereby reaffirm the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... thy face, Lent. A Catholic priest They even try to cast that thou appear not to is always fasting when ridicule on fasting as men to fast ... and thy he officiates at the a work of Father, who seeth in altar. He breaks his supererogation, secret, will repay fast only after he says detracting from the thee."(84) The Apostles Mass. When Bishops merits of Christ. fasted before engaging ordain Priests they are Neither candidates for in sacred functions: always ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... SUPEREROGATION. The 14th Article gives the teaching of the Church of England. Romanists teach that there are certain good deeds which have been performed by saints over and above those necessary for their own salvation. From this fund of good works, technically ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... into the error of yielding to that rather stupid kind of pride which makes a man presume upon his natural gifts. For a long time it induced me to neglect their real improvement, as if this were a work of supererogation. The idea that gradually grew up in me of the worthlessness of my fellows prevented me from rising above those whom I henceforth looked upon as my inferiors. I did not realize that society is made up of so many elements ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... not be thought ridiculous, or as one who aims at works of supererogation, for what I think is very short of my duty. Some order, surely, becomes the heads of families; and besides, it would be discrediting one's own practice, if one did not appear at one time what one does at another. For that which is a reason for discontinuing a practice ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of recommendation reminds us of an act, on the part of a modern Rabbi, of supererogation in the path of honesty. The post is in the hands of the Government, and, accordingly, the late Rabbi Bamberger of Wurzburg, whenever he gave a Haskamah, or recommendation, which would be delivered by hand, was wont to destroy a postage stamp, so as not to defraud the Government, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... more afraid of, and incomparably more influenced in their conduct by, the doctrine of purgatory, than Protestants by that of hell! That the Catholics practise more superstitions than morals, is the effect of other doctrines. Supererogation; invocation of saints; power of relics, &c. &c. and not of Purgatory, which can only act as a general motive, to what must depend on ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... part of all works relating to the different peoples of our globe; in fact, no particular portion of ethnologic research has claimed more attention. In view of these facts, it might seem almost a work of supererogation to continue a further examination of the subject, for nearly every author in writing of our Indian tribes makes some mention of burial observances; but these notices are scattered far and wide on the sea of this special literature, and many of the ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... "are not allowed to bite people they dislike." All the same there have been times when we have felt that it would have been an act of supererogation to explain to the postman that our dog ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... despise me!" she cried. "But let me assure you that in any case this assumption of virtue becomes you singularly ill. It really is a little bit too cheap, a work of supererogation in the matter of hypocrisy. Have the courage of your vices. Be honest. You can be so to the point of insult when it serves your purpose. Own that you are capricious, own that you have lighted upon some woman who provokes your appetite more ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to be an act of supererogation to compile further evidence of the infamy of this entire business: what additional ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... he got thereby, or how much richer is he at last, than he was, when he first set up for himself. Nay, doth not the blot of his ill living betwixt his first and his last, lie as a blemish upon him, unless he should redeem himself also by works of supererogation, from the scandal that justice may lay at his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Talleyrand Club that the only qualifications required for admittance to its membership are a frock-coat and a glib tongue. To explain the whereabouts of the Talleyrand Club were only a work of supererogation. Many hansom cabmen know it. Hansom cabmen know more than they ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... one thing against which I do solemnly protest and uplift my voice, as a piece of ridiculous injustice and supererogation,—and that is, that every new poem or fresh story I write and print should be supposed and declared to be part and parcel of my autobiography. Good gracious! Goethe himself, "many-sided" as the old stone Colossus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... no, that had been supererogation; you shall never hear your courtier call but by ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson |
