"Unimportant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before, he said, and found him a rather muddle-headed Scotchman as to his powers of conveying his ideas. He (Higgins) had gone over his documents judicially, and with the greatest attention; and not only was —— wrong in every particular (except one very unimportant circumstance), but, in reading documents to the House, had stopped short in sentences where no stop was, and by so doing had utterly ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances were perceived, and even returned. Now and then she had seen them talking together; it was but for a moment or two, but much can be said in a brief space; it may have been on most unimportant topics, but how could she know that? The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to the loved one of the princess; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, she hated the woman who ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... Gloria flushed with pleasure at his generous praise and replied: "It is good of you, Philip, to give me so large a credit, and I will not deny that I am very happy over the outcome of my endeavors, unimportant though they be. I am so glad, Philip, that you have been given the leadership of our side in the coming struggle, for I shall now feel confident ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... the humours of English character in the person of the wounded man she nursed on little Croridge, imagining it the most unobserved of English homes, and herself as unimportant an object. Daniel Charner took his wound, as he took his medicine and his posset from her hand, kindly, and seemed to have a charitable understanding of Lord Levellier now that the old nobleman had driven a pellet of lead into him and laid him flat. It pleased him to assure her that his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enunciation has come with him to his present vicarage from his scholastic days, an elaborate clearness of enunciation and a certain nervous determination to be firm and correct upon all issues, important and unimportant alike. He is a sacerdotalist and a chess player, and suspected by many of the secret practice of the higher mathematics—creditable rather than interesting things. His conversation is copious and given much to needless ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... however, had continued to support the Republican party to the full extent of their strength. But it soon became clear that the support of Negro leaders was little more than an effort directed toward obtaining a few unimportant offices. The Republicans, having long since discovered that the Negro vote of most communities can be changed neither to harm nor to help them, have consequently ceased to consider the danger of losing their support of great import. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... years the strangeness of his situation had ceased to be strange. Always he meant some time to go back to Norada, and there to clear up certain things, but it was a long journey, and he had very little time. And, as the years went on, the past seemed unimportant compared with the present. He gave little thought ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have incurred the heavy expenses of preparation for a teaching career, were dissatisfied with the very small return they may expect by way of salary. Certainly if we judged by the standard of payment, the profession might well appear unimportant. Men and women alike receive inadequate remuneration in all its branches, but, as in other callings, women are worse paid than men. One might imagine that the training of girls was less arduous or less important than that ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... had proof within the last few hours," I said, "that I am under a certain amount of suspicion, and it is very possible that I am watched. Yet, after all, that is comparatively unimportant. Do you think that Polloch ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... becomes more intricate and difficult, owing to rocks and reefs, rips and rapids. A large stony holm about mid-stream is called Eduasim, meaning 'thief in river.' I need not repeat from my map the names of the unimportant settlements. At the mouth of the Abonsa the bed widens to nearly double, and the north-easterly direction shifts to due north. This great drain, falling into the left bank, lies between five and six miles above the Fura Creek. I shall have more to say ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... calculated seriously to embarrass the mother-country. Then the close union that was brought about between France and Spain, in the early days of Charles III. and the last days of Louis XV., had no unimportant effect on the fortunes of Spain. The Pacte de Famille was one of the greatest political transactions of those days. It was effected just a hundred years ago, and but for the occurrence of the French Revolution ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Caswall family which I think will interest you. There is, or used to be, a belief in this part of the world that the Caswall family had some strange power of making the wills of other persons subservient to their own. There are many allusions to the subject in memoirs and other unimportant works, but I only know of one where the subject is spoken of definitely. It is Mercia and its Worthies, written by Ezra Toms more than a hundred years ago. The author goes into the question of the close association of the then ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... there are a great many purposes for which money is required. Suppose a parent wished to pay his child's school fees, or anything of that sort, of course cotton goods would not pay for that; only the money would do. But the hosiery is a very unimportant branch of ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... The question of money was to me perfectly unimportant. I did not see a glimpse of danger in his perusing the list ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... difficult to understand the tardy arrival of the prospectuses you had promised me in your letter of the fourth of this month. I must explain to you that the porter here had confounded that packet with the files of unimportant printed papers addressed to a Prefecture, and if the want of a book had not induced me to visit the private study of the Prefect, I should perhaps have not yet discovered the mistake. I thank you for the confidence with ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... campaign, had not an English bullet temporarily put an end to my military activity—all too soon for my ambition, as you can imagine. Uninjured in two great battles and a number of trifling skirmishes, I was unhappily destined to be incapacitated in quite an unimportant and inglorious encounter. Had I not been saved by an heroic woman, you would have heard no more of your old friend Tchajawadse, except that he was one of those who had remained on the ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... improvement, became from this time what, for want of a better name, may be called sentimental; but sentimental in a way of its own, very curious to contemplate. In considering the system of religion, politics, and morals, which in his later writings M. Comte constructed, it is not unimportant to bear in mind the nature of the personal experience and inspiration to which he himself constantly attributed this phasis of his philosophy. But as we shall have much more to say against, than in favour of, the conclusions to ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... "You heard all about that!" He had no time for his own adventures, already receding into a past which made them both dim and unimportant. "What happened to ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... Providence, because we are in a state of probation; we are so constituted, with a body, and with fleshly appetites, that we must be in the world; but we must be separate from it and its controversies, which are so unimportant ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... us with all the force of truth. It is difficult to estimate the "immense value" of our glorious Union of confederated States, to which we are so much indebted for our growth in population and wealth and for all that constitutes us a great and a happy nation. How unimportant are all our differences of opinion upon minor questions of public policy compared with its preservation, and how scrupulously should we avoid all agitating topics which may tend to distract and divide us into contending parties, separated by geographical lines, whereby it ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... garrisons in each, continued his march. The opening of a road for the passage of the troops and artillery, necessarily consumed much time; and while it was in progress, small parties of the enemy were often seen hovering near, and some unimportant skirmishes took place; and as the army approached the Indian villages, sixty of the militia deserted in a body. To prevent the evil influence of this example, General St. Clair despatched Major Hamtrack at the head of a regiment, to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... significance of this much debated but otherwise unimportant episode is that it seems to have thrown Mrs. Eddy upon her own resources, for now that Quimby was dead she begins to develop what she had received from him through both experience and teaching along lines of her own. She had found a formula for the resolution of problems, ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... beautiful, with a willowy, wild grace which could not but arrest attention, and all the other girls immediately owned to a sense of inferiority in her presence. But Irene was so endowed with nature's grace that she could not do an awkward thing; and then the child who accompanied her, the small unimportant child, was as beautiful in her way as Irene was in hers. So charming a pair did they make, those two, each of them dressed in the purest white, that Rosamund, who was considered quite the handsomest girl in the school, seemed to sink into commonplace in comparison. But no one had time ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... be. His contemporaries took him for a great Englishman, a man who did much for his country, and whose character was a mirror of all the national and patriotic ideals. His public work was by no means unimportant, even in a time so full of dangers and so critical for the destinies of England. Little did the people who loved and hated him in his day and afterwards dream of the contents of that small volume, so ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... a typical product of Victoria's reign, a beautiful creature whose faith was pinned to the most unimportant things—class, position, a snobbish religion, a traditional morality and her own place in an intricate little world of ladies and gentlemen. God save us! What was Cecil Grimshaw going to do in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... requisite. He accordingly advanced rapidly against the Romans, and first engaged them in a cavalry action at the Ticinus. Victory declared for the Carthaginians. The horse of Numidia routed the cavalry of Rome. This success, unimportant as it was, revealed Hannibal to the eyes of the Gauls; influenced by it, the Insubrian chiefs hastened to supply him with provisions and troops. Hardly had the Carthaginians arrived in sight of the Roman camp at Placentia, when a large body of the Gaulish contingent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... had occupied but two or three minutes, and had attracted no attention, whatever. The soldiers' shout might have been heard; but there was no clashing of weapons, and a shout was too unimportant a matter for anyone within hearing to take any ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... side of their natures,—had made with him a tolerably equitable exchange of ideas and of favors; and after his disappearance from their midst, they had duly mourned for his loss—to themselves! They had played out the final act in the unimportant drama of his life: it was really asking too much to demand a repetition ... Impossible to deceive himself as to the feeling his unanticipated return had aroused:—feigned pity where he had looked for sympathetic welcome; ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... Seymour's designs, which appear in "Figaro in London," are too small and unimportant to justify the title which the editor gives them of "caricatures;" and relating to political matters which at that time were far more efficiently chronicled by the pencil of H. B., they have lost any interest which they once might have commanded. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... my child, it is by no means an unimportant matter for a big business house like ours, with such a wide-spread connection, that people coming here from all quarters should find themselves hospitably received. You might ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Did that seem unimportant? The Minstrel was not fond of the mountains, for climbing made him cough. He always traveled through the valleys, sitting under the almond and fig trees to compose his verses. If he had gone up to the blacksmith shop it was undoubtedly because the Ironworker had sent for him. The two ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Paris, frightened to death at having been sent by the votes of their fellow-citizens into an assembly which was not at all, it appears, their ideal of a municipal council. And upon this subject Monsieur Desmarest, Monsieur Tirard, and their adjoints will perhaps permit me an unimportant question. What right had they to persuade their electors and the Friends of Order, to vote for the Commune of Paris if they were resolved to decline all responsibility when the votes had been given them? Their presence at the Hotel de Ville, would it not ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... to himself, "I ought to go back. I ought not to take for granted the fact that this old letter is unimportant. However, Irene has read it, and if it happened to be of value I'm sure the girl would ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... would be unimportant if our poor nobility were still triumphantly occupying their rightful position; but while they are struggling to recover their prestige what can be done with such representatives? Oh, I hated those little fools who by their culpable folly compromised so noble a cause! Can they not see that ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... everyone were as sensitive as you are!" said Varenka. "There isn't a girl who hasn't been through the same. And it's all so unimportant." ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Purgatory of Saint Patrick" is, with the exception of a few unimportant lines, an entirely new translation. It is made with the utmost care, imitating all the measures and contained, like the two preceding dramas, in the exact number of lines of the original. One passage of the translation which I published ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... girls in the class who've never had anything to do here but study, and who would be perfectly delighted to be on some little unimportant commencement committee." ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... might be to acknowledge it, he was as a humourist keenly alive to certain glaring defects of the great German writers; to their frequent tendency to lose themselves among the mere minutiae of erudition, and thus to confuse the unimportant and the important; to their habit of rising at times into the clouds rather than above the clouds, and of there disporting themselves in regions "close-bordering on the impalpable inane;" to their too conspicuous want of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... could argue lightly. That morning, when he gave his word to Mitri, he had felt alone and helpless. Now, in repossession of his Emir, with boundless wealth in prospect, the question of his change of faith seemed unimportant. That the Orthodox creed was the way of salvation, he had no doubt; his mother had always said so; but there seemed plenty of time in which to save his soul. He added: "How can their faith be false, seeing it is founded on the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... occupied, at least, one-third of the whole of one side of the gallery. Two hundred and fifty boys and young men, with their attending masters and ushers, could not but fill a large space, and, of course, would form no unimportant feature in the audience. Mr Root and the little boys were always placed in the lower and front seats. There we sat, poor dear little puppets, with our eyes strained on the prayerbooks, always in the wrong place, during the offertory, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... discomfort—when Eleanor called him "darling" at the dinner table, or exhibited her jealousy before people! "They're sorry for me—confound 'em!" he thought.... Yet how trivial the cuff was, or even—yes, even the impertinence which was "sorry" for him!—how unimportant, when compared to a ring of braided grass, and the smell of locust blossoms, and a lovely voice, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... suspected a little at times, but I was so astounded that a man like you—in the full flush of success, so well known, so sought after—should concern himself with such a little, unimportant girl as I, that, really, I could place no faith in the ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... out what was written, and to use the same roll over again—as a "palimpsest"—for some work more desired. It is perhaps needless to say that the writing was regularly to be found upon one side only. If the back was used, it was for economy, for unimportant notes, or as an exercise book for schoolboys. We may imagine a fine library copy, or edition de luxe, of Virgil as consisting of a number of rolls, each a long strip of the best parchment rolled round a staff of ivory with gilded ends. Its "cover" is a wrapper of parchment ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... many of us on both sides theories of evolution in one form or other seem to mark the greatest advance of modern thought, or its most lamentable divergence from the true line. To Fitzjames such theories seemed to be simply unimportant or irrelevant to the great questions. Darwin was to his mind an ingenious person spending immense labour upon the habits of worms, or in speculating upon what may have happened millions of years ago. What does it matter? ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... been exercised to gain accuracy—a quality not found in other versions now extant. In one or two instances, errors have been discovered in the original French, notably in dates—probably typographical errors—which have been corrected by means of foot-notes. A few unimportant elisions have been made for the sake of brevity and coherence. Many difficulties confront the translator in the preparation of material of this nature, involving names, dates and titles. Opportunities are constantly afforded for error, and the work must necessarily ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... 'We mention these otherwise unimportant incidents, in order to show that our exploration of the palace was not impeded by any attempt at concealment. We were even admitted to her ladyship's own room—on a subsequent occasion, when she went out to take the air. Our instructions recommended us to examine his ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... a great many pages of Mr. Ruskin without getting a hint of this delightful truth; a hint of the not unimportant fact that art after all is made for us and not we for art. This idea that the value of a work is in the amount of illusion it yields is conspicuous by its absence. And as for Mr. Ruskin's world's being a place—his ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... immeasurable comradeship. He no longer feared him or had a suspicion of him. And Carvel, on his part, was observing things. The vast emptiness of the world about them, and their aloneness, gave him the opportunity of pondering over unimportant details, and he found himself each day watching Baree a little more closely. He made at last a discovery which interested him deeply. Always, when they halted on the trail, Baree would turn his face to the south. When they were in camp it was ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... bright and early Saturday morning. After feeding and brushing Peaches, he dressed himself in his best clothes. Landy, too, sensing the importance of coming events, improved his appearance by buttoning up his shirt-front. The ride to the B-line was unimportant. Adine Lough was ready with the roadster. By ten or eleven o'clock the party was ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... now remained only a few unimportant tribes on the coast between Calais and the Scheldt which had not formally submitted. The summer being nearly over, Caesar contented himself with a hasty survey of their frontier. The weather broke up earlier than usual, and the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... not unimportant to say here that the Sauviats were eminently religious. At the very height of the Revolution they observed both Sunday and fete-days. Twice Sauviat came near having his head cut off for hearing mass from an unsworn priest. He was put in prison, being ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... things, which seemed in themselves unimportant, bore directly on immediate events; for when Connie and Harris arrived at St. Thomas's Hospital and made inquiries with regard to a little, freckled girl, with an honest face and sturdy figure, the hall porter went to communicate ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... seemed a small and unimportant thing to them that as they clattered the governments of half the world and more were drifting into war. About midday they became aware of the first of the evening-paper placards shouting to ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... observant eye, with its portentous movement, the foundations of tyranny, the fact, too, that these men were understood to have made use of the stage unsuccessfully as a means of immediate political effect, are facts which lie on the surface of the history of these works, and unimportant as it may seem to the superficial enquirer, it will be found to be anything but irrelevant as this inquiry proceeds. The man who is said to have contributed a thousand pounds towards the purchase of the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... much time is consumed by the little things of life,—unimportant in themselves, yet absolutely necessary to a satisfactory accomplishment of the big things. Luck, looking ahead into the next day, confidently expected to be making scenes by the time the light was right,—say nine ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... "It's an unimportant detail, and I'm ashamed to mention it," said Vernon, "but I've got a picture on hand—I'm painting a ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... words, that repression will play but an unimportant role in the future. We believe that every branch of legislation will come to prefer the remedies of social hygiene to those symptomatic remedies and apply them from day to day. And thus we come to the theory of the prevention of crime. Some say: "it is better to repress than ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... and Russia regarded the Peninsula as to be shortly theirs, and were working hard to extend their spheres of influence. Each, under the so-called reform schemes, had put their gendarmerie in the districts they could work from best. They had put England in an unimportant place. England ought to have insisted on being on the frontiers, then the importation of arms could have been prevented. As it was, Austria and Russia were both smuggling arms in by means of their gendarmerie. Russia wanted to provoke a rising of Christians ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... single occasion has there been the slightest hitch or the least cause for alarm. The trains have been absolutely up to time, and very good time. They could not have been more regular in the most peaceful country. This personal experience, in itself unimportant, is typical of a general improvement. I may add, in confirmation of it, that during the last two months the mail train from Capetown to the north has only been late on one or two occasions, and then it was ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... collegiate year, though now Professor Macon was away a large part of the time; yet, as he was constantly sending home cases of specimens, she was usually kept nearly as busy as before. But one day, sitting at her desk with only a few unimportant odds and ends of work before her, her thoughts drifted away, and soon formed themselves into words and sentences which seemed clamoring for definite expression. She seized her pen and some blank paper, setting them down as rapidly as possible, and before she quite realized ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... By no means unimportant is the influence that wide diffusion of the knowledge of how to prevent conception would have in causing more irregular unions and greater promiscuity in sex relations. The effect of this would not only loosen, rather than strengthen, the marriage tie, but would inevitably lead to an extension ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... the presence of the monsters was enough. What had preceded their presence was unimportant, save that their presence, and their near approach to the shore undetected, further proved the executive and planning ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... said Samuel, as if vaguely recalling an unimportant fact. "It's to-day you begin to go to school, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... if not novel, at any rate excited little comment in the descriptions of the older forms of injury, although this may have depended on the more serious nature of the primary local lesions accompanying wounds from the larger bullets, among which it formed a comparatively unimportant element. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... choice in the four positions of this phrase? After having been told that your answers were correct, would it be a disappointment to be told that they were not all correct? Is the interest in a story best kept up by first telling the important points and then the unimportant particulars? What then do you think of placing ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... coals are, with some unimportant exceptions, confined to five small fields in Eastern Pennsylvania, as shown in the following list. These fields are given in ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... friend of mine on the day before an examination. "What would you advise me to read to-night?" asked my friend, anxious to make the most of the few remaining hours. "If I were you," said the don, "I shouldn't read anything. I should get drunk." He did not mean that the business was so unimportant that it did not matter what he did. He meant that it was so important that he must forget all about it, and come to it afresh from the outside. And he used the most violent illustration he could find to ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... as far as I can discover. My papers in the shop were not disturbed, but it looked as if the turbine model had been moved. The only thing missing seems to be a sheet of unimportant calculations. Luckily I had my most valuable drawings in the safe in ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... and doubtless of any of the others, would set alarm bells ringing. This was not an unimportant discovery, but it brought him very little nearer to a solution of the chief problem which engaged his mind. Assuming that Cohen had opened one of the cases and had alarmed old Huang Chow, what steps had the latter ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... leading divisions of the two battalions of the wings upon the same line with the central deployed battalion. There would thus be a half-battalion more to each regiment in the first line,—a by no means unimportant thing for the delivery of fire. There may be reason to fear that, these divisions becoming actively engaged in firing, their battalions which are formed in column to be readily launched against the enemy may not be easily disengaged for that purpose. ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... primitive man in the New World also associated these physical phenomena as products of an invisible power, conceived under human form, called by name, worshipped as one, and of whom all related the same myth differing but in unimportant passages. This was the primeval religion. It was not monotheism, for there were many other gods; it was not pantheism, for there was no blending of the cause with the effects; still less was it fetichism, an adoration of sensuous objects, for these were recognized ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of the bewildered and the disappointed. It was in the lofty waiting-room of the Washington station where Alwyn had come to meet a friend. Mrs. Cresswell turned and recognized him with genuine pleasure. He seemed somehow a part of the few things in the world—little and unimportant perhaps—that counted and stood firm, and she shook his hand cordially, not minding the staring of the people about. He took her bag and carried it towards the gate, which made the observers breathe easier, seeing him in servile duty. Someway, she knew ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... history at least. And he will visit out-of-the-way spots unnoticed by these authorities, but dear to him by reason of their mention in the pages of his fireside Mentors, their association with some thrilling though unimportant event of which he has read. Harbours, villages, buildings, will be familiar to him through some old print or coloured engraving; and he will eagerly compare the actual appearance with the mental picture he ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... happened, something unimportant apparently, as the way is when the nerves are in a very great state of tension, and this small thing for a brief space gave me an entirely different point of view. I chanced to look down at my sand-shoe—the sort we used for the canoe—and ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... eating, and thoroughly masticate your food. Irregularity in the intervals between eating, disturbs the functions of the intestine. The use of ripe fruits, such as apples, pears, grapes, figs, and prunes, in proper quantities, is sometimes very beneficial. Trivial or unimportant as these hygienic suggestions may appear, yet were they observed, constipation, as well as most of the diseases incident to it, would be obviated. A large proportion of the cases will yield to the foregoing hygienic ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... words from their lips, and, like Asmodeus, has unroofed their houses. To say that some slight errors have crept into Daniel Deronda is to say that no human work is perfect; and these inaccuracies are singularly few and unimportant." [Footnote: James Picciotto, author of "sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1876.] Still another Jewish critic says that in her gallery of portraits she "gives in a marvellously full and accurate way all the many sides of the Jewish complex ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... because it represents the sword? But, pray, forgive this digression. Ten to one, in your case, reader, it is unnecessary, because sensible people are more numerous than foolish! Howbeit, whether right or wrong, Will Osten had, as we have said, acquired the by no means unimportant knowledge of where to hit and how to hit. He had also the good sense to discern when to hit, and he invariably acted on the principal that—"whatever is worth doing, is ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... could observe, thought proper to grapple with him, to point out anything unfounded in his premises, or illogical in the conclusions which he drew from them; they generally confined themselves to mere assertions, or to minute and unimportant observations by which the real question ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... victim was now past all suffering, being no more a motive for heroism than so much mutton, the girl's blood was too hot with triumphant indignation to let her think of such an unimportant point as that. She was victor. She had outfaced and routed the foe. She had saved one victim. She ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... goes the same way. But a good deal of very bad prose in the nonfiction field has some value. In an otherwise dull book there may be a solitary anecdote, an isolated observation on a skunk, a single gesture of some human being otherwise highly unimportant, one salty phrase, a side glimpse into the human comedy. If poetry is not ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... I could decide that intellectual honesty demanded that the question of the Deity of Christ should be analysed as strictly as all else, and that the conclusions come to from an impartial study of facts should be faced as steadily as though they dealt with some unimportant question. I was bound to recognise, however, that more than intellectual honesty would be here required, for if the result of the study were—as I dimly felt it would be—to establish disbelief in the supernatural claims of Christ, I could not but feel that such disbelief would necessarily entail ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... in South Tredegar was unimportant. There was a word or two to be said personally in the ear of Hanchett, the senior member of the firm of attorneys intrusted with the legal concernments of Gordon and Gordon, and afterward a solitary dinner at the Marlboro. But the real object of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... sure, it's out of order, slightly out of order!" As he spoke he took his list out of his pocket and ran his eye over it once more. "Hullo," said he in a surprised tone, "there's one more item on Miss Jane Mackenzie's and it seems to be missing! Comparatively unimportant, but I like to have my things complete. 'One lost Kitten!' Now what can have ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... that Skeeter horse, he boasted, and Jeff's manner of riding was absolutely unimportant, non-essential and immaterial. He was mighty glad that holdup man had fallen down, last Sunday, before he got his hands on any money, because that money was going to talk long and loud to Jeff Hall next Sunday. Now that Bud had started running his horse for money, working ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... The dull debate, The dreary unimportant question, The pressure of affairs of State, A muddled brain, a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... at the same recital. What a variety, what a wealth of contrasting artistic enjoyment such a concert would afford. There is nothing that is so enjoyable for the true artist as ensemble playing with his peers. Solo playing seems quite unimportant ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... two ways: they may be either kept in separate hanks, which is the method mostly in vogue in modern bleach-houses, or they may be linked together in the form of a chain. In the latter case the operations and the machinery may be the same as used in the madder bleach, with a few unimportant minor differences. In the final washing the dumping machine is used, which consists of two wooden bowls set over a wooden trough containing the wash waters. The top bowl is covered with a thick layer of rope and merely rests on the bottom bowl by its own weight, and is driven by friction ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... was of all persons the best qualified to undertake such a task, not only from his access to the various sources of information, and his singular power and skill in narrating events and delineating characters, but also from the circumstance that he himself had a personal and no unimportant share in most of the transactions of those times, which have left the character of his own mind so indelibly impressed on his country and its institutions. It is scarcely necessary to subjoin the ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... already out of date. Since his discovery was announced, the most learned Assyriologists have made a study of the document, and now even those among them who most seldom think alike, are in agreement as to its meaning except in a few unimportant particulars.[438] No doubt remains as to the general significance of the piece; we may even compare it with other documents from the same library in which there is much to confirm and complete ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... by no means unimportant that intending readers should know the sort of interest that they are to expect from this novel; and for that purpose it is almost imperative that they should know what kind of person was this novelist. A good deal of biographical pains has been spent, as has been ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... gone I was to drive to Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little station of Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken fragments, for the most part of unimportant things. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... on the farm, Maurice the hard-working farmer and old Timothy the father. But the father, too, is far from what he should be, as one must suspect, not believing that education alone can account for so many gone wrong. Timothy burns down some unimportant farm buildings for the insurance upon them. This practice is so common in all parts of the world civilized sufficiently to have insurance that I wonder insurance companies take risks on backwoods farms ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... these anecdotes here, because I can vouch for their authenticity, and though individually unimportant, they may serve to throw additional light upon the manners, customs, and traditions of the Aborigines of Australia; but to all really interested in the subject, I would recommend a perusal of Captain Grey's second volume. I have as yet neither space nor materials ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... allow him to escort her, which was obviously the proper thing. When she refused again, and went off, like any nobody, alone, he returned to his chambers, leaving Rosalie to the unimportant persons whose business it was to look ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the relatives and the latter by the minister. In the second place, there wouldn't be any use of wasting a lot of space on a big item because by the time the Democrat comes out, everybody knows all about it, and the mere facts would be stale and unimportant beside the superstructure of soaring fancy which has been built up by the easy-running imaginations of our chief news dispensers on the street corners. And so, when the creamery burns down or the evening fast freight runs through an ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... view of Lohengrin in the Berlin National-Zeitung, in which he claimed a high importance for my opera, did not remain without permanent influence upon the German public. Even in the narrow circle of professional musicians its effects seem not to have been unimportant; for Robert Franz, whom Liszt dragged almost by force to a performance of Lohengrin, spoke of it with unmistakable enthusiasm. This example gave the lead to many other journals, and for some time it ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... again, it was getting hot. It was past eight, the mist had long ago receded, and I feared delay. So I mused on the white road under the tall towers and dead walls of Viterbo, and ruminated on an unimportant thing. Then curiosity did what reason could not do, and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... to the north, fronted south by a large square-headed block of land, whose point is called Cabo das Esteiras—of matting (Barbot's Estyras), an article of trade in the olden time. The southern part receives the Munda (Moondah) river, a foul and unimportant stream, which has been occupied by ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... from public haunt and those swift currents that carry the city-dweller resistlessly into the movie show, leaves us caught in the quiet eddy of little unimportant things,—digging among the rutabagas, playing the hose at night, casting the broody hens into the "dungeon," ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... color very good; voice a trifle weak and suggesting timidity and feeble initiative. Introspective; a little self-conscious, and unimportant nervous symptoms indicated by the rolling of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... did violence to Anne's nature; besides, Auntie Adeline behaved as if you were uninteresting and unimportant, not attending to a word you said. Yet her strength lay in her inconsistency. One minute her arrogance ignored you and the next she came humbly and begged for your caresses; she was dependent, like a child, on your affection. Anne thought that pathetic. ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... The French seized Formosa; and both parties were preparing for a trial of strength, when a seemingly unimportant occurrence led them to come to an understanding. A small steamer belonging to the customs service, employed in supplying the wants of lighthouses, having been taken by the French, Sir Robert Hart applied to the French premier, ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... of the lard which we produce, and large quantities of oleo oil for oleomargarine. Although the exports of butter in 1917 have almost been doubled since the preceding fiscal year, it is relatively unimportant, representing only about 1 per cent of the production. We are shipping cottonseed oil also, but this requires tank-steamers, which are scarce. In general, as the oils are much more difficult to handle and impossible for the armies to use, ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... descended from Indian elephants. There is no evidence that we have anything in particular more than the remotest fiftieth cousinship with our poor relation the West African gorilla. Science is not in search of a 'missing link'; few links are anywhere missing, and those are for the most part wholly unimportant ones. If we found the imaginary link in question, he would not be a monkey, nor yet in any way a tailed man. And so forth generally through the whole list of popular beliefs and current fallacies as to the real meaning of evolutionary teaching. Whatever most people think ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... interposition of fossils found in B (Y) does furnish the fossil ancestry of what would otherwise have been an abrupt appearance of whole groups of new species in A (X). Now such cases are neither few nor unimportant, and therefore they deprive the objection of the force it would have had if the selected cases to the contrary ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... goes off to you this day; through Kennet, to C.C. Little and J. Brown of Boston; the likeliest conveyance. It is correctly printed, and that is all. Its fate here (the fate of the publication, I mean) remains unknown; "unknown and unimportant." ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with the ardour of a young soldier, whose courage seems to have partaken largely of that romantic spirit which youth and enthusiasm produce in a fearless mind. No small addition to the regrets occasioned by his loss was derived from the reflection that he fell unnecessarily, in an unimportant skirmish, in the last moments of the war, when his rash exposure to the danger which proved fatal to him could no longer be useful ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... designs are most generally found on canvas-bound books; the Symbolical figures, and Portraits, on satin, rarely on velvet. The Floral and Arabesque designs are most common on small and unimportant works bound in satin, but they occur now and then on both canvas and velvet books. The true arabesques have no animal or insect forms among them, the prophet Mohammed having forbidden his followers to imitate ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... her meager and unimportant mail, wrote a few replies, and then turned to the pile of volunteer manuscripts which it was her duty to read and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... beasts, to be sure, but Earth alone has an intelligent, thinking, reasoning population, and your scientists and novelists would do better trying to comprehend their own planet than in groping through space to unravel the mysteries of barren and unimportant worlds." ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... particular mode of signifying may be unimportant but it is always important that it is a possible mode of signifying. And that is generally so in philosophy: again and again the individual case turns out to be unimportant, but the possibility of each individual case discloses something about the ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... tenderness as Gloria approached him and threw her arms around his neck, and to her he related the incident of the King and Queen's unexpected visit, as a sort of accidental, uninteresting, and wholly unimportant occurrence. The Queen, he said, was very beautiful; but too cold in her manner, though she had certainly taken much interest in ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... those who went straight home, without internal scission or external trouble; unimportant they are in this peaceful aspect though they were formerly heroes in the war. Four such are passingly mentioned by Nestor in his talk: Diomed, Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, Philoctetes, and Idomeneus. Nestor himself ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... of their own, are denied any of the other great blessings of life. But the man or woman who deliberately foregoes these blessings, whether from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant,—why, such a creature merits contempt as hearty as any visited upon the soldier who runs away in battle, or upon the man who refuses to work for the support of those dependent upon him, and who tho able-bodied ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... copy are written the words, "Extracts from this conversation, made by me, from the original." I omitted what I thought unimportant, and transcribed only the most interesting passages. Montgaillard spoke of his escape, of his flight to England, of his return to France, of his second departure, and finally of his arrival at ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... marching toward the enemy the rear guard is very small and its duties relatively unimportant. It is principally occupied in gathering ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... trust, excuse me for going into such minute processes of investigation and reasoning, in such comparatively unimportant points. But, as the long-received opinions, in reference to this chapter of our history, have been brought into question in the columns of a journal, justly commanding the public confidence, it is necessary to re-examine ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham |
