"Superfluity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... going, doc?' says the Mayor with a howl. 'You ain't going away and leave me to die with this—superfluity ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... he so vigorously combats—the frivolous ignoramuses who have no soul for anything but debauchery; the sophistical theologian to whom Helicon, the Castalian fountain, and the grove of Apollo were foolishness; the greedy lawyers, to whom poetry was a superfluity, since no money was to be made by it; finally the mendicant friars, described periphrastically, but clearly enough, who made free with their charges of paganism and immorality. Then follow the defence of poetry, the proof that the poetry of the ancients ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... stupidly surprised that the poor deformed creature should have found a mate—as though there were not a superfluity of mates in the world—"I didn't ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... only such powers as are required for self-preservation; man alone has more. Is it not very strange that this superfluity should make him miserable? In every land a man's labour yields more than a bare living. If he were wise enough to disregard this surplus he would always have enough, for he would never have too much. "Great needs," said Favorin, "spring from ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... to me the other day that they considered this story to be of a pestilent example. I am not inclined to imagine we shall ever be put into any practical difficulty from a superfluity of Greenvilles. And besides, I demur to the opinion. The worth of such actions is not a thing to be decided in a quaver of sensibility or a flush of righteous commonsense. The man who wished to make the ballads of his country, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Montmorency did not display any broad perception of the tragedy, although the superfluity of eight inches of Sendlingen's steel in the side of a young man pronounced dead by asphyxia would have struck one of the laity. But the reporters of the Paris press were more perspicacious. They related that an envoy of a foreign union of ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... that does not contain (a) a love interest, (b) a wrongly suspected hero, (c) a baffled inspector, (d) an amateur, but inspired, detective. It would be a grateful task to add that the result proves the superfluity of these time-worn accessories. But the cold fact is that, to me at least, the proof went the other way. From the first I was painfully aware of a lack of snap about the whole business, and I am more than suspicious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... of gift is it that thou desirest?" said Eocho. "Nothing less than a gift of milking-kine," said Ailill. "There is no superfluity of these in my land," said Eocho; "I have forty fosterlings, sons of the kings of Munster, to bring them up (to manhood); they are here in my company, there are forty cows to supply the needs of these, to supply my own needs are seven times twenty milch-cows ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... to pause for religious purposes. The distinguished party attracted the notice of all eyes as it entered the piazza, but the gaze was not entirely cordial and admiring; there were remarks not altogether allusive and mysterious to the Frenchman's hoof-shaped shoes—delicate flattery of royal superfluity in toes; and there was no care that certain snarlings at "Mediceans" should be strictly inaudible. But Lorenzo Tornabuoni possessed that power of dissembling annoyance which is demanded in a man who courts popularity, and Tito, besides his natural disposition to ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... entered. The building had considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining sprung from six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from the centre of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a round end, embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in relief, and pierced by many little windows shaped like stars, trefoils, or wheels. These windows were imperfectly glazed, so that the night air circulated freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which there must have been half a hundred burning on the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... reaches a plantation for the first time, he fancies himself in paradise. He is amazed by the generosity with which he is fed with fruit and fresh provisions. His new clothes, red cap, and roasting blanket (a civilized superfluity he never dreamed of), strike him dumb with delight, and, in his savage joy, he not only forgets country, relations, and friends, but skips about like a monkey, while he dons his garments wrongside out or hind-part before! The arrival of a carriage or cart creates no little ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... those wise old Hebrews said make one feel that one is committing a superfluity when one attempts to say anything along the line of practical advice, since anything that any man can say is nothing more than a very weak dilution of the concentrated thought of the most acute minds of the greatest business people, the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... pipe to dinner was given. The boatswain's call came into requisition, and all hands, except the watch on deck, were soon busily employed in discussing the contents of a cask of beef, boasting of but a small proportion of fat or lean and a considerable superfluity ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... and suggest, where she spoke out broad words, frank and free; the motif is one and the same. If we judge Mrs. Behn's dramatic output in the only fair way by comparing it legitimately with the theatre of her age, we simply shall not find that superfluity of naughtiness the critics lead us to expect and deplore. There are not infrequent scenes of Dryden, of Wycherley, of Vanbrugh, Southerne, Otway, Ravenscroft, Shadwell, D'Urfey, Crowne, full as daring as anything Aphra wrote; indeed, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... infallible in distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and poison all his enjoyments, till he became sensible that he was entirely forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of sensitiveness, Ilbrahim was altogether destitute; when trodden upon, he would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting in the stamina for self-support; it was a plant that would twine beautifully round something stronger than itself, but ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... The two medallion "Madonnas," the "Madonna and Child" in S. Lorenzo, the "Head of Brutus," the "Bound Captives," and the "Pieta" in the Duomo of Florence, are instances of masterpieces in the rough. He loved to fancy that the form dwelt within the stone, and that the chisel disencumbered it of superfluity. Therefore, to his eye, foreseeing what the shape would be when the rude envelope was chipped away, the marble mask may have taken the appearance of a veil or mantle. He may have found some fascination in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of the most consummate Greatness. He wants no Man's Admiration, is in no Need of Pomp. His Cloaths please him if they are fashionable and warm; his Companions are agreeable if they are civil and well-natured. There is with him no Occasion for Superfluity at Meals, for Jollity in Company, in a word, for any thing extraordinary to administer Delight to him. Want of Prejudice and Command of Appetite are the Companions which make his Journey of Life so easy, that he in all Places meets with more Wit, more good Cheer and more good Humour, than is necessary ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... one else on her side, and, as they went to bed, she said to Ethel, "Don't you wish we had some of this superfluity of the Riverses ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... meritorious role of regaling the blackbird, the minstrel of the forest, the Balaninus adds another—that of moderating the superfluity of vegetation. Like all the mighty who are worthy of their strength, the oak is generous; it produces acorns by the bushel. What could the earth do with such prodigality? The forest would stifle itself for want of room; ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of perfect peace and tranquility, which now prevail, are the offspring of the pure, intelligent, divine and subtle spirit which ascends above, to the very Emperor, and below reaches the rustic and uncultured classes. Every one is without exception under its influence. The superfluity of the subtle spirit expands far and wide, and finding nowhere to betake itself to, becomes, in due course, transformed into dew, or gentle breeze; and, by a process of diffusion, it pervades the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... among the things which have to be done, and must be done, therefore, as best one can do them. It is in the nature of a superfluity: the excuse for it is that it is beautiful. It is not worth doing unless it is done well, and in material worth the work done on it. If you are going to spend the time you must spend to do good work, it is worth while using good stuff, foolish to use anything else. The stuff need ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... there was carried, what seemed to most passengers, a superfluity of provision. It was his fixed theory that to feed an Indian was better than to fight one. He showed his passengers the need of surplus foods, if he had an idea he would be visited by his Red Friends, who may have been ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... developing, as the anarchists did before them, a contempt even for democracy. The literature of syndicalism teems with attacks on democracy. "Syndicalism and Democracy," says Emile Pouget, "are the two opposite poles, which exclude and neutralize each other.... Democracy is a social superfluity, a parasitic and external excrescence, while syndicalism is the logical manifestation of a growth of life, it is a rational cohesion of human beings, and that is why, instead of restraining their individuality, it prolongs and develops ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... imperfectly, from the cold; his hands, however, are well defended by a pair of gauntlets that reach his elbows; and on his head he wears a cap richly ornamented with bear's and eagle's claws. His long thick hair, however, renders the head-gear an article of superfluity,—but it is the fashion. The dress of the women consists of a square piece of dressed deer-skin, girt round them by a cloth or worsted belt, and fastened over their shoulders by leather straps; a jacket of leather, and cloth leggings. I have also observed some of them wearing a garment in imitation ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... No one from without can ever know or judge what is the time for hopeful insurrection: it must be done from within, and generally without plan. My sole question is, Is the cause legitimate? I find that it is. I leave Italians to judge of the time. Meanwhile every year I would give of my superfluity to the aid of patriotic effort.... To fail ten times may be necessary for success in the eleventh. If they were losing heart and becoming denationalized, the case would be bad; but it is the contrary. The fusion with Austria is impossible. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... correct. For Maud Lindesay, accustomed all her life to the homage of many men, and having been brought up in a great castle in an age when chivalrous respect to women had not yet given place to the licence of the Revival of Letters, practised irritation like a fine art. She was brimful of the superfluity of naughtiness, yet withal as innocent and ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely destitute of civic rights; and a great number of them, not having even intelligence enough for the purposes ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... Apostles lived, we must perforce consider ourselves rich. After all, possessing honestly all that is necessary for food and clothing, ought we not to be content? Whatever is more than this is only evil, care, superfluity, wanting which we shall have less of an account to render. Happy is poverty, said a stoic, if it is cheerful poverty; and if it is that, it is really not poverty at all, or only poverty of a kind that is far preferable to the riches of the most wealthy, which are amassed with ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... about the absurd action which melted David. He shook the hand and repeated him. Leaning over he whispered some information in Daddy's ear, Daddy beamed. And in the midst of the superfluity of nods and winks that followed David ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yoke is [Greek: zyga]. Cypress and pine are also just as admirable; for although they contain an abundance of moisture mixed with an equivalent composed of all the other elements, and so are apt to warp when used in buildings on account of this superfluity of moisture, yet they can be kept to a great age without rotting, because the liquid contained within their substances has a bitter taste which by its pungency prevents the entrance of decay or of those little creatures which are destructive. Hence, buildings made of these kinds of ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... influence. Either of these men, a few hours since, would have been most happy to have been in this vessel, as a home, or a covering for their heads, and now they quarrel with their good fortune because it is wanting in some accustomed superfluity or pampered indulgence." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... value of the tenacious adhesive provided by the anus to save the tiny creature, at the least sign of danger, from an imminent fall; we realize lastly the useful function that may be fulfilled by the elastic cirri of the flanks and legs, which are an absolute and most embarrassing superfluity when walking upon a smooth surface, but which, in the present case, penetrate like so many probes into the thickness of the Anthophora's down and serve as it were to anchor the Sitaris-larva in position. The more we consider this arrangement, which seems modelled by a blind caprice ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Phil extricated himself from the man's superfluity of negatives and continued on ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... a discovery of a public-house in the neighbourhood, went thither every evening and enjoyed his pipe and can; being very well satisfied with the behaviour of the landlord, whose communicative temper was a great comfort to his own taciturnity; for he shunned all superfluity of speech, as much as he ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... fault if I did. But I like prosperous fellows, comfortable fellows; fellows that talk comfortably and prosperously, like you. Such fellows are generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a superfluity in ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... reticent," are qualities which one of our ablest modern critics emphasises as essential, and the end must always be more impressive than the beginning,—the reader must be carried onwards and upwards, and left with a definite feeling that in what has been said there is neither superfluity nor omission, but rather a completeness which precludes all wish or need for ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... under compulsion, and caused a feeling of dislike to the person honoured, and of absolute hatred against those who enforced them, but showed no gratitude or desire to honour the dead. They were mere displays of barbaric pride and boastful extravagance, which wastes its superfluity on vain and useless objects; whereas, here was a private citizen who died in a foreign land, without his wife, his children or his friends, and, without any one asking for it or compelling them to it, he was escorted ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... me by a small lamp filled with aromatic oil, whose fragrance filled the apartment. The young woman walked quickly forward to a bed, hung with light green silk damask curtains fringed with yellow, and luxuriously ornamented with a superfluity of gilding; and, drawing aside the curtains, she whispered a few words into the ear of some one lying there, apparently in distress; then hurried out of the room, leaving me standing on the floor, without ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... frolic. 'You follow me and do as I tell you, and I don't believe old "Tushy" will follow us far.' By general consent he led them to the dry, sandy shore, and such as had them filled their handkerchiefs, and such as could not boast of that superfluity filled their caps, with sand. 'Now,' says Phil, 'when he comes back, and it won't be long, we'll form a line and wait till he gets his skates on, when he'll put chase for some of us. If he gets near any of us, some one sing out "Bully," and every boy drop his sand, and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... terminated. For our course lay down a very steep street, and across the bridge into the Alt Stadt, where at a hotel, rich in all the essentials of food, and wine, and couches, though somewhat deficient in the superfluity of cleanliness, we established our head-quarters ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... the seines, two oars, and an old cobble upon props. Beneath their heads was a scanty matting, their clothes, their sailors' caps. Here was all their toil, here all their wealth. The threshold had never a door nor a watch-dog. All things, all, to them seemed superfluity, for Poverty was their sentinel; they had no neighbour by them, but ever against their narrow cabin gently floated up ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... for the hands of the guests—an office which suggests an obvious rhyme for poets writing of water-jugs. Another epitaph is a shining example of the proper manner of attributing to the dead an almost crushing superfluity of virtues. Sara Holney, first in Latin, and then in English, thus is lamented ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... of the matter, and disputed energetically with the master. At last he asked him to explain how it was that all this gold and silver was the property of one man and was left to rust, and why the master of the treasure incessantly laboured to increase it when he had already such an amazing superfluity of riches. The master answered, "I am not a man, although I have the form and appearance of one. I belong to a nobler race, which was formed by the decree of the Creator to rule the world.[45] By his decree, I must work constantly with my little ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... then, after the custom of the Trade, primed, emboldened, and made drunk to do it, drunk to a point which had brought him to destruction—yes, he was like that man; his temptations, his perils, his essential superfluity were all the same. As he went up the stair he tried to imagine he was the man himself, going up and up, a solitary and uplifted figure, fixing his thoughts on things above in order that he might forget the gulf which yawned below. He took his ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... choosing the latter course is abundantly obvious.[5] Hamlet the Younger was to be the protagonist: the interest of the play was to centre in his mental processes. To have awakened our interest in Hamlet the Elder would, therefore, have been a superfluity and an irrelevance. Moreover (to say nothing of the fact that the Ghost was doubtless a popular figure in the old play, and demanded by the public) it was highly desirable that Hamlet's knowledge of the usurper's crime should come ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... affords him a cool shelter in summer, in winter he is warmed by the mid-day sun, or a fire of kindled boughs; even the raging attacks of his pain at length exhaust themselves, and leave him in a refreshing sleep. Alas! it is the artificial refinements, the oppressive burden of a relaxing and deadening superfluity which render man indifferent to the value of life: when it is stripped of all foreign appendages, though borne down with sufferings so that the naked existence alone remains, still will its sweetness flow from the heart at every pulse through all the veins. Miserable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... most notorious Christian. Renown, however, with him could never be a superfluity, or even a sufficiency, and he grudged the fame that these strange spiritual utterances were acquiring. He had long enjoyed the distinction of being considered a miraculous convert; his rescue from the ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of this town are kept as clean as a floor, by sweepers watching the streets all day long, collecting and carrying away all the refuse matter. One day, I felt ill at ease about a small piece of paper that had become a superfluity in my pocket, but which I was afraid to throw upon the street, as it would there seem as much out of place as if I should drop it upon the carpet in a parlor. I passed along the pavement with it, until I met a street-sweeper, ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... it seemed an odd, bare place to eyes used to the superfluity of hangings and stuffings that prevailed at Estcourt? These bare boards, these shabby little mats by the side of the beds, the worn foxes' skins before the writing-tables, the cane or wooden chairs, the white calico curtains with meek cotton fringes, the queer little prints on the walls, the painted ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... love's sake than the money's, and enjoyed a popularity which can not be purchased, and which yet is impossible to be won by one who has nothing to give. He had the reputation among these simple folks, who knew how to be frugal themselves, of having a superfluity of wealth; his air and manner showed he had been always used to be lavish (as indeed he had), and nourished this delusion, which extended, though upon other grounds, to the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... class of persons to whom art in general is but a fashionable luxury, and music in particular but an agreeable sound, an elegant superfluity serving to relieve the tedium of conversation at a soiree, and fill up the space between sorbets and supper. To such, any philosophical discussion on the aesthetics of art must seem as puerile ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... as the first fruits of his creatures be. Wherefore, beloved brethren, I entreat You to be swift to hear, and slow to speak, And slow to wrath, for wrath cannot incline The sons of men to righteousness divine. Wherefore avoiding ev'ry filthiness, And superfluity of naughtiness: Receive with meekness the engrafted word, Which can salvation to your souls afford. But be ye doers of the word each one, And not deceive yourselves to hear alone; For he that hears the word and doth it not, Is like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... house built to shelter a family of boys, and steps being a superfluity scorned by their agile legs, there was a sheer drop of three feet to the ground upon that side. Evadna made it in a jump, just as the boys did, and landed lightly upon ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... to the pride of man? Are the decorations of temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces, and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence sports away the burden of its superfluity? ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dared not present myself at a hotel, and many of the humbler hostelries refused me admittance, believing, no doubt, either that the seeds of pestilence were in my rags, or not a copper in my pocket. Indeed, to no brain but that of a very imaginative genius would the possibility of such a superfluity as a pocket suggest itself. All the beds were "full." At last I thought me of an expedient. I called for a glass of ale, for which payment in advance was duly demanded. I handed a sovereign, which at ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... cost of maintaining his establishment, and in the government of the realm. France had had during the last years poor harvests. The people were suffering from a want of the bare necessities of life. The taxes could not be collected. A reform must be introduced, and those who before had rejoiced in a superfluity of royal gifts had to be contented with a ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups, Antonio, Shylock, and Portia are respectively the centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems nevertheless to grow forth as an element of the original germ; a sort of inherent superfluity, and as such essential to the well-being of the piece. But perhaps it may be better described as a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts; itself in perfect harmony with them, and therefore perfecting their harmony with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... And being rich, they divided their substance into three portions, one for the service of the temple, one for the poor and the strangers, and the third for their household. On a certain feast day, Joachim brought double offerings to the Lord according to his custom, for he said, 'Out of my superfluity will I give for the whole people, that I may find favour in the sight of the Lord, and forgiveness for my sins.' And when the children of Israel brought their gifts, Joachim also brought his; but the high priest Issachar stood over against him and opposed him, saying, 'It is not lawful for thee ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... hands and eyes, the transports, the ecstasies, the tears—the actual tears that he saw streaming in despite of rouge. It was real! and it was not real feeling! Of one thing he was clear—that this superfluity of feeling or exaggeration of expression completely silenced him, and made him cold indeed: like one unskilled or dumb ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... which the vessels had been smeared from end to end on the outside was stoned smoothly down until it glistened like varnish. Inside there was not a superfluity to be seen of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... think, unquestionably accurate: first, that for many months of the year the residents need not take into consideration for a moment the possibility of rain; second, that on account of this drought there must inevitably be during that period a superfluity of dust; and, third, that every day there will be felt "a cool refreshing breeze," which frequently increases to a strong wind. My memory of California will always retain a vivid impression of this wind, and the effect of it upon the trees is evident from the fact that it has compelled ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... washstand with its silver spigots, its silver bowl, wherein the scented water gleamed opal-like with its perfumes, the gas illuminating the brushes decorated with monograms, standing out against the white marble, the manicure sets of fine steel, the dark-veined tortoise-shell combs, the coquettish superfluity of scissors and files scattered about amongst knickknacks, inlaid enamels, and Japanese ivory ornaments, and there, stretched out and watching Marianne, who came and went before him with a smile on her face, her hair unfastened, sometimes with bare shoulders, Sulpice saw, through a ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Falesa? If I mistake not, our interest centres neither in Case's dirty trick of the marriage, nor in his more stiff-jointed trick of the devil-contraptions. The first but helps to construct the problem, the second seems a superfluity. The problem is (and the author puts it before us fair and square), How is Wiltshire a fairly loose moralist with some generosity of heart, going to treat the girl he has wronged? And I am bound to say that as soon as ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tax, he explained, meant a further step in the pauperization of the masses. He showed that this new tax was a superfluity, provided the attempt was abandoned by the government to increase still further the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... and childish impatience of his system which would be aroused among his opponents, he was fully aware, and would often anticipate the jests which the rest of the world, 'in the superfluity of their wits,' were likely to make upon him. Men are annoyed at what puzzles them; they think what they cannot easily understand to be full of danger. Many a sceptic has stood, as he supposed, firmly rooted in the categories ...
— Sophist • Plato
... bookselling, one of the more interesting is William Newton, who resided there during the earlier years of the last century. In 1712 he published Quincy's 'Medicina Statica,' at the end of which is this curious 'Advertisement' (minus the superfluity of capitals): 'Those persons who have any Librarys (sic) or small parcels of old books to dispose of, either in town or countrey, may have ready money for them of Will. Newton, Bookseller in Little Britain, London. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... them, from the way the girl moved, from the look in her gray-blue eyes, from the carriage of her head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little prettiness matters, beside the other thing!—the indefinable, irresistible something—which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's occasional ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mean his looks. Good looks in a man are a superfluity. But his manners—I never saw anything so underbred. Those Tempest ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... church; but he allows that modern doctors had involved it in numerous scholastic subtleties, unknown to antiquity. He complains that on one hand the reformers left nothing untouched; that, on the other, the scholastics would retain every abuse, and every superfluity: Wisdom, he thought, lay between them; the reformers should have respected what antiquity consecrated; the Catholics should have abandoned modern doctrines and modern practices ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... close to and looking into the stream of recorded history, within whose banks the littlest things are great, and outside which she and the general bulk of the human race were content to live on as an unreckoned, unheeded superfluity. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... parent needed no such request. He lavished upon me all that superfluity of fondness and food of which those good people who are resolved to spoil their children are so prodigal. He could not bear the idea of sending me to school; accordingly he took a tutor for me,—a simple-hearted, gentle, kind man, who ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... life, whatever exceeds the mean is superfluous and a burden rather than a help. So it is that excessive riches, like steering oars of too great weight and bulk, serve to sink the ship rather than to guide it; for their bulk is unprofitable and their superfluity a curse. I have noticed that of the wealthy themselves those win most praise who live quietly and in moderate comfort, concealing their actual resources, administering their great possessions without ostentation or pride and showing like poor ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... morning, through the Chinese Town, and out by the gate in the old wall, up Myasnitzkaya Street, and round to the right to a building that used to be the Grand Hotel of Siberia, a loathsome place where I once stayed. Here in the old days provincial merchants put up, who did not mind high prices and a superfluity of bugs. It has now been turned into a hive of office work, and is the headquarters of the Supreme Council of Public Economy, which, controlling production and distribution alike, is the centre of the constructive work ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... lady shall so will, you may obtain from her liberality a shirt for this worthless tabernacle, and also a pair of hose; for I am unsavory to myself and to others, and of such luxuries none here has superfluity; for all live in holy poverty, except the fleas, who have that consolation in this world for which this unhappy nation, and those who labor among them, must wait till the world ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... came the Chancellor, for another three hours; and to him I had to explain that the hurt to my finger (we turned that bullet to happy account) prevented me from writing—whence arose great to-do, hunting of precedents and so forth, ending in my "making my mark," and the Chancellor attesting it with a superfluity of solemn oaths. Then the French ambassador was introduced, to present his credentials; here my ignorance was of no importance, as the King would have been equally raw to the business (we worked through the whole corps diplomatique in the next few days, a demise of the Crown necessitating ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Really the young man was now talking decently!—about matters he understood; Burne-Jones, Rossetti—some French pictures in Bond Street—and so forth. The ruffled host was half appeased, half wroth. For if he could make this agreeable impression, why such a superfluity of naughtiness downstairs? And the fellow had really some general cultivation; nothing like Welby, of course—where would you find another Arthur Welby?—but enough to lift him above the mere journeyman. After all, one must be indulgent to these novices—with ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saint, if he have a reasonable sense of his pastoral duty, gets, malgre lui, a very fair share of that open-air medicine which is supposed to be the great lack of his profession. For if he be a clergyman in a rural parish of tolerable extent and with no great superfluity of wealth, he will not want for either air or exercise. The George Herbert so situated finds by no means his whole round of duty in the study. Old Mrs. Smith, sick and bedridden, lives a couple of miles from the parsonage; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... sparingly, and with perfect point. Often the instruments sound singly, or by twos and threes. What had been but half realized in the earlier work is distinct and important in this. It is as if Sibelius had come upon himself, and so been able to rid his work of all superfluity and indecision. And, curiously, through speaking his own language in all its homeliness and peasant flavor, he seems to have moved more closely to his land. The work, his "pastoral" symphony, for all its absolute and formal character, reflects a landscape. It is full of home ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... therefore before stopping or ascending inclined planes, the boiler should be well filled up with water. In descending inclined planes an extra supply of water may be introduced into the boiler, and the fire may be fed, as there, is at such times a superfluity of steam. In descending inclined planes the regulator must be partially closed, and it should be entirely closed if the plane be very steep. The same precaution should be observed in the case of curves, or rough places on the line, and in passing ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... new ghosts, in a sense) to give readers any intelligible notion?—Here, flickering on the edge of conflagration after duty done, is a poor Note which perhaps the reader had better, at the risk of superfluity, still in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... fancy. Often the folds of a piece of drapery so delighted him that they are continued for their own sake and float out where there is no wind to support them, or he would develop their intricacies beyond every possibility of conceivable train or other superfluity of real garments; and it is this necessity to be richer and more magnificent than probability permits which brings us to the creator in Duerer; not only had he a profound realistic perception of what the world was like, but he had an imagination that ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... It would be a work of social regeneration to convince the public of the economy they might effect by such practises, to show them that elegance and propriety in themselves cost nothing—nay, more, that they demand simplicity and moderation, and therefore exclude all that superfluity which is ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... leaders, I prefer that they should be people with brains as well as money. The ambition is quite legitimate. Do your part in civilising the drawing-room, as Arnold conceives he is doing his on a larger scale. A good and intelligent woman is no superfluity in the world ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... and the province of Samara often comes to the attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891, because of scarcity of food, or even famine, which is no novelty in the government. In a district where the average of rain is twenty inches, there is not much margin of superfluity which can be spared without peril. Wheat grows here better than in the government just north of it, and many peasants are attracted from the "black-bread governments" to Samara by the white bread which is there given them as rations when they ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Savarin,—in criticism the French Longinus—in poetry the Parisian Horace—in social life the genius of gaiety in pantaloons,—contemplate his attenuated frame! Shall he perish for want of food while thou hast such superfluity in thy larder? I appeal to thy heart, thy conscience, thy patriotism. What, in the eyes of France, are a thousand Foxes compared to ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that exuberant overplus of vitality of which so much has already been said in this book, and which is always needed for the true appreciation of poetry. Grant Allen has shown that man, when he is conscious of a superfluity of sheer physical strength, gives himself to play; and in like manner, when he is conscious of a superfluity of receptive power, which has a physical basis, he gives himself ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... commoner. There was no printed page to while away the hours of idleness. The library was stored in one's memory. The language of the mele, which now has [Page 29] become antiquated, then was familiar speech. For a kumu-hula to have given instruction in the meaning of a song would have been a superfluity, as if one at the present day were to inform a group of well-educated actors and actresses who was ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... mild Cavanagh! favours us with the following practical account of his system; by which he intends, through the means of enthusiasm, to render breakfasts a superfluity—luncheons, inutilities—dinners, dreadful extravagancies—teas, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... has varied, or that the authour has, in my opinion, pronounced wrong. Short directions are sometimes given where the sound of letters is irregular; and if they are sometimes omitted, defect in such minute observations will be more easily excused, than superfluity. ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... by nature. Show those qualities then which are altogether in thy power, sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities thou art immediately able to exhibit, in which there is no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet thou still remainest voluntarily below the mark? or art thou compelled through being defectively furnished ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centered upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure of difference between ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... ceased; the camels no longer knelt in the Jewish quarter of Smyrna, the Bridge of Caravans ceased to vibrate with their passing, the shops remained open only so long as was necessary to clear off the merchandise at any price; whoso of private persons had any superfluity of household stuff sold it off similarly, but yet not to Jews, for these were interdicted from traffic, business being the mark of the unbeliever, and punishable by excommunication, pecuniary mulcts, or corporeal chastisements. Everybody prepared for the imminent ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that won't answer. You must save the money by depriving yourself of some superfluity, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... true womanly grace. That necklace of pearls, if half hidden among soft laces, would be charming; but banding the uncovered neck and half-exposed chest, it looks bald, inharmonious, and out of place. White, with a superfluity of pink trimming, jewelry and flowers, I call on the outside of good taste; and if you go as you are, you will certainly attract all eyes, but I am sure you will not win admiration for these things from a single heart whose regard is worth having. Don't be hurt with me, Alice. I am speaking ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... of summer, and out of heat back again into the depths of winter. So should we follow God, and take one step after another until we reach our goal. [30] What you might spend on heavy rugs and coverlets spend rather on food: any superfluity there will not be wasted: and you will not sleep less soundly for lack of bedclothes; if you do, I give you leave to blame me. But with clothing the case is different: a man can hardly have too much of that in sickness or in health. [31] And ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... kind of capstan-head court-martials, at which captains will sometimes administer reefers' law, "Woe to the weakest!" A defence was quite a work of superfluity; so, consoling myself with the vast responsibility with which, all at once, I found myself invested, I went and turned in, anathematising every created thing above an inch high and a foot below the same dimensions. However, in a very sound sleep I soon forgot everything—even ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... journals which have the appearance of being free, they make so many phrases in the sense which they are ordered. It must be confessed that our French writers are the only ones who can in this manner every morning embellish the same sophism, and who hug themselves in the very superfluity of servitude. While the instruction of this famous affair was in progress, the journals informed Europe that Pichegru had strangled himself in the Temple; all the gazettes were filled with a surgical report, which appeared very improbable, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... marble, on the left wall of the choir. Standing before this Giorgione, as before the Tintorettos here and over the way, one again wishes, as so often in Venice, that some American millionaire, in love with this lovely city and in doubt as to how to apply his superfluity of cash, would offer to clean the pictures in the churches. What glorious hues would ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... laboured or undertaken; unto which point it is an inducement to enter into a view and examination what parts of learning have been prosecuted, and what omitted. For the opinion of plenty is amongst the causes of want, and the great quantity of books maketh a show rather of superfluity than lack; which surcharge nevertheless is not to be remedied by making no more books, but by making more good books, which, as the serpent of Moses, might devour the serpents ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... decorated neck and chest are undraped, displaying how the latter tapers to the waist, which the young dandies compress within the smallest compass. In addition to the cloth, there is always round the waist a girdle of cords made of tasar-silk or of cane. This is now a superfluity, but it is no doubt the remnant of a more primitive costume, perhaps the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... first I've heard of it!" Connie fluttered up and down the room in her white dressing-gown, occasionally breaking into a dance-step, as though to work off a superfluity of spirits. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... form of speech, and was understood by all. Dr. Whewell [Footnote: Plurality of Worlds, chap. x. Section 5.] has put forward the curious notion that when the creation of the interior planets was completed, there remained a superfluity of water, which was gathered up into the four exterior planets. But the only fact in favour of such an hypothesis is the close correspondence between the apparent density of these planets and that of water. Now, as will be seen immediately, there ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why—why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... windy sunlight, Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but, unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped into the imbroglio—a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... his successors,—an end so seldom achieved by more ambitious efforts. But the old minister, before reaching his patriarchal age of ninety, ate the apples from this orchard during many years, and added silver and gold to his annual stipend by disposing of the superfluity. It is pleasant to think of him walking among the trees in the quiet afternoons of early autumn and picking up here and there a windfall, while he observes how heavily the branches are weighed down, and computes the number of empty flour-barrels ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its occupier is ordinarily judicious, ought to serve as a certificate of sanity. To me all policemen are precisely alike, but I daresay they know them apart in the force, and as all the beats and crossings are presumably taken already, I might excite suspicion by my mere superfluity. Besides, a theatrical costumier's uniform would possibly lack ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... little positive good in this, or perhaps in anything else. It is not only so of the state and statesman, but of all the classes and descriptions of the rich: they are the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by their superfluity. They are under an absolute, hereditary, and indefeasible dependence on those who labor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... theatre I was invaded by a sense of serenity and peace. There was no ornament, no upholstery, no superfluity at all. A square building of unvarnished wood; a floor covered with matting, exquisitely clean, and divided into little boxes, or rather trays (so low were the partitions), in which the audience knelt on their heels, beautiful in loose robes; running out from the back ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Regiments seemed to have lost their colonels, colonels their regiments. Men of all arms and all commands were mixed in the wildest way. A constant fusillade of small arms and singing of bullets were kept up, indicative of a superfluity of disorder, if not of ammunition. One of my men was severely wounded in camp by a "stray," and derived no consolation from my suggestion that it was a delicate attention of our comrades to mitigate the disappointment of missing the battle. The elation of our people at ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Babylonia, but who afterwards fully adopted Babylonian manners and customs. It is at once apparent that Nimmuria and Kadashman-Bel approach each other as equals. The Egyptian, however, was supposed to possess one very precious thing in superfluity, namely, gold; for at that time the gold mines of Nubia were in good working. The Babylonian letters, therefore, seldom failed to contain a hint that the king desired some of the precious metal, sometimes as a return gift for rich presents he ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... and cats,—with a small stock of salt pork, bacon, flour, potatoes, molasses, salt, and coffee. An old cooking-stove is set up in the shanty, and its sheet-iron pipe, projecting through the roof, makes a chimney a superfluity. Rough bunks, or berths, are constructed for sleeping-quarters; but if the family are the happy possessors of any furniture, it is put on board, and adds greatly to their respectability. A number of steel traps, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop |
