"Aloof" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and some of them seriously convulsed. Destructive wars ensued, which have of late only been terminated. In the course of these conflicts the United States received great injury from several of the parties. It was their interest to stand aloof from the contest, to demand justice from the party committing the injury, and to cultivate by a fair and honorable conduct the friendship of all. War became at length inevitable, and the result has shown ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... host Second, and was the uncle of the King; These came and counsel'd, and then Gudurz said:— "Ferood, shame bids us take their challenge up, Yet champion have we none to match this youth. He has the wild stag's foot, the lion's heart. But Rustum came last night; aloof he sits And sullen, and has pitch'd his tents apart. Him will I seek, and carry to his ear The Tartar challenge, and this young man's name. Haply he will forget his wrath, and fight. Stand forth the while, and take their challenge up." So spake he; and Ferood stood forth and cried:— "Old ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... under the influence of recent detestation. Thence my own design of recounting a few incidents respecting Augustus, and those toward the latter part of his life; and, after that, of giving a history of the reign of Tiberius and the rest; uninfluenced by resentment and partiality, as I stand aloof ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... and brushes, grandly overlooked the late irruption of trivialities. He glanced across to Preciosa, and she felt that he was thanking her for having held herself quite aloof from them. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... of the speeches that were made, much regret was expressed at the determination of Mr. Muntz to stand aloof from the party in this election, and it was hinted that if the Conservatives should retain the seat, Mr. Muntz personally would be to blame. Muntz heard it all pretty quietly, and at length, greatly to the astonishment of most who were there, who were not even aware of his being present, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... men of the council are grouped together and sit aloof. They sit like mummies, smoking, and with every appearance of indifference. But their ears are wide open. One alone displays interest, and it is noticeable that he is different from all the rest of the aged group. He is younger. He has blue eyes and fair hair, and his skin is pale. Yet ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... beauty: she Now in air floats high and free. Takes the sun and makes the blue;— Late with stooping pinion flew Raking hedgerow trees, and wet Her wing in silver streams, and set Shining foot on temple roof: Now again she flies aloof, Coasting mountain clouds and kiss't By the evening's amethyst. In wet wood and miry lane, Still we pant and pound in vain; Still with leaden foot we chase Waning pinion, fainting face; Still with grey hair we stumble on, Till, behold, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Smith meant to do on his holiday; most likely he would be reading hard for his "Sam," as Billy called it. It seemed shabby of me to go off on a spree and leave him to drudge; but, as Hawkesbury said when I referred to the matter, it would just show him what he missed by holding aloof, and make him all the more ready to try to get ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... understanding. She drew the breath of pain through the lips: red lips and well cut. Her brown eyes were tearless, not alluring or beseeching or repelling; they did but look, much like the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her reddish hair-chestnut, if you will—let fall a skein over one of the rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness by making it wilder, as if a great bird were winging across a shoulder of the mountain ridges. Conceived of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... full-moon flood, Appear'd itself a wood upon the waters, But when the tide left bare its upright roots, A wood on piles suspended in the air; Such too the Indian fig, that built itself Into a sylvan temple, arch'd aloof With airy aisles and living colonnades, Where nations might have worshipp'd God in peace. From year to year their fruits ungather'd fell; Not lost, but quickening where they lay, they struck Root downward, and brake forth on every hand, Till the strong ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... eloquence in Rome. Great amongst the humanists, in him the very spirit of ancient Hellas seemed revived. What to many was but the fad or fashionable craze of the hour, was to him the all-important and absorbing purpose of living. He dwelt aloof in poverty; shunning the ante-chambers and tables of the great, he and kindred souls communed with their disciples in the shades of his grove of classic laurels. He was indifferent alike to princely and ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... a message was received from Duck Lake from the Willow Indians, the band which had hitherto held aloof, in reply to a message sent to them by the Governor, that they would meet the Governor and Commissioners at the place designated by the Governor, the camp of the Hon. James McKay, about five miles from Carlton House. Accordingly, the next morning ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... laws, customs and privileges of the several provinces of his Netherland dominions as he was with the language of their peoples. He spoke and wrote only Castilian correctly, and during his four years' residence at Brussels he remained coldly and haughtily aloof, a foreigner and alien in a land where he never felt at home. Philip at the beginning of his reign honestly endeavoured to follow in his father's steps and to carry out his policy; but acts, which the great emperor with his ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... occupations; perhaps also by the feeling that the thickets were full of sound pitched just too high or just too low for human ears to hear; but even this relief was absent here. The high peaks stretched before them, one after another, until they faded into the horizon,—majestic, aloof, utterly ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... thousand. From the time he was twelve he has shared with me the financial burden. An artist, Sergeant Graham, must remain aloof from the market-place. Now that I have retired permanently from the stage in order to devote my time exclusively to writing, my only business engagement is a series of lectures at the university, where, as you know, I occupy the chair of ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... 'mid the rocks Uplifts its lowly roof, Scarce seen by the far sun that shines aloof. Of such a rude device Is the whole structure of this edifice, That lying at the feet Of these gigantic crags that rise to greet The sun's first beams of gold, It seems a rock that ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... he showed a contempt which he could not conceal. The Doctor and the Curate were the only people Pen cared for in the place—even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried, forsooth, to keep her head up with the great County families. She, indeed! Mrs. Barker at the Factory has four times the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... surrounding the Convocation House were crowded with sick persons, drawn thither by the rumour of what was going forward; and when the meeting adjourned to the cathedral, these unfortunate beings followed them, and were with some difficulty kept aloof from the uninfected by the attendants. A very earnest and touching address was next pronounced by the archbishop. Calling upon his hearers to look upon themselves as already dead to the world,—to regard ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... give any such counsel, and similarly I will not give to a woman the means of procuring an abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practise my art.... Into whatever houses I enter I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, keeping myself aloof from every voluntary act of injustice and corruption and lust. Whatever in the course of my professional practice, or outside of it, I see or hear which ought not to be spread abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... who had not tangled himself in the use of his forks, who spoke in even, well-modulated tones, and looked like a gentleman. Miss Howland was not snobbish in these thoughts. She had never been a snob; she was simply considering facts. And she did not want him to be aloof. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... follow then that a Christian must stand aloof from all festivities that are not wholly among Christian people? Not quite that. "I am a companion of all them that fear thee," said David,[19] and it certainly looks ill for a man if his habit is the other way. Yet there are exceptions, there must ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... Moreover, he loved the country and the family homestead, and may have perceived, also, that the condition of art in Boston and New York was not such as to encourage an original purpose, and that, if he was ever to gain success, he must develop himself in quiet, and aloof from the distracting influences of other methods and men. It is easy to perceive, with the complete record of his life before us, that this experience of labor and thought upon the Deerfield farm, although at first sight forming ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the hope that my prognostics had deceived me. This hope was strengthened by reflecting that the billet received was written in a different hand from that of my friend. Meanwhile I continued my search. Seated on a bench, silent and aloof from the crowd, his eyes fixed upon the floor, and his face half concealed by his hand, a form was at length discovered which verified all my conjectures and fears. Carlton ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the spectators in a mirthful tone of mind Comedy must hold them as much as possible aloof from all moral appreciation of its personages, and from all deep interest in their fortunes, for in both these cases an entrance will infallibly be given to seriousness. How then does the poet avoid agitating the moral feeling, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... at which she had stayed in Dresden, had been frequented by leisured foreigners: over twenty people, of various nationalities, had sat down daily at the dinner-table. Among so large a number, it would have been easy for Louise to hold herself aloof. But, as far as Maurice could gather, she had felt no inclination to do this. From the first, she seemed to have been the nucleus of an admiring circle, chief among the members of which was a family of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... enemies, led by Epaminondas, penetrated Laconia that same year, and again in 362 when they all but succeeded in seizing the city by a rapid and unexpected march. The battle of Mantinea (362), in which Agesilaus took no part, was followed by a general peace: Sparta, however, stood aloof, hoping even yet to recover her supremacy. In order to gain money for prosecuting the war Agesilaus had supported the revolted satraps, and in 361 he went to Egypt at the head of a mercenary force to aid Tachos against Persia. He soon transferred his services to Tachos's cousin and rival Nectanabis, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were the Man and the Hour—Man who was strong for the shock— Fierce were the lightnings unleashed; in the midst, he stood fast as a rock. Comrade he was and commander, he who was meant for the time, Iron in council and action, simple, aloof, and sublime. ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... China: an extension of the Lodge, you may say, visible among men. Bodhidharma—are you to call him a Messenger at all? He hardly came out into the world. It was known he was there; near by was the northern capital;—he taught disciples, when they had the strength to insist on it. Yet he dwelt aloof too, and wrapped about in the seclusion Masters must have, to carry on their spiritual work. One must suppose that Messengers of the Lodge had been very busy in China between 375 and 400, in the days of Tao Yuang-ming ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Jean and Loll spent many hours ashore exploring the vicinity with Senott or Kayak Bill. Sometimes the visitors caught a glimpse of the tweed-clad young man who seemed so quiet and aloof, and who, even when not drinking, avoided them all. Ellen observed a certain interest in him growing in Jean. A tentative question or two put to Kayak Bill revealed this, though it availed her nothing. The old hootch-maker, muttering something about "everybody to his own ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... stolen glances and secret admiration, you keep aloof. There is no wish to fathom what seems a happy mystery. There lies a content in secret obeisance. Sometimes it shames you, as your mind glows with its fancied dignity; but the heart thrusts in its voice; and, yielding to it, you dream dreams like fond old Boccaccio's upon the olive-shaded ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... whole subsequent course of European history. Alexander the Great had died too soon to permit him to engage in any plan of conquest in the West. In the wars of his successors the Romans had stood aloof. Now they were brought into conflict with a Greek monarch, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who was a relative of Alexander, and had married into the royal family of Egypt. He was a man of fascinating person and address, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... unjustly, to the imputation of seeking to establish the claim of our neighbors to a territory, with a view to its subsequent acquisition by ourselves. Prudence, therefore, seems to dictate that we should still stand aloof, and maintain our present attitude, if not until Mexico itself, or one of the great foreign powers, shall recognize the independence of the new Government, at least until the lapse of time or the course of events shall ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... himself indignantly, what affair was it of hers? She was not his confessor; she was just a convent-bred girl who couldn't understand. He would be aloof and polite. That was the attitude. And he ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Germany, but no one seemed ready to follow his standard. No one asked him to arbitrate. The Spanish faction wheedled and threatened by turns, in order to divert him from his purpose, while the Protestant party held aloof, and babbled of Charlemagne and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... onward until all the city was gone under a white swinging ocean; except the points of the hills disfigured with the excrescences of the rich. Into the canons and rifts of the hills beyond the blue bay the fog crept daintily at first, hanging in festoons so light that the very trades held aloof, then advancing with a rush,—a phantom of the booming ocean ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... few; in fact, she disliked politics and desired to keep aloof from the intrigues of the ministers. She may have been instrumental in the downfall of Necker—at least, she secured the appointment, as minister of finance, of the worthless Calonne, who, it will be remembered, brought about the ruin of France in a short period. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... immediately after this that the "Centenary"—mispronounced in every manner conceivable—began to obsess the town. Superior and aloof persons, like the Orgreaves, had for weeks heard a good deal of vague talk about the Centenary from people whom intellectually they despised, and had condescended to the Centenary as an amiable and excusable affair which lacked interest ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... and as the contributions of the faithful were commonly intrusted to their management, they often diverted to this purpose what was intended to be employed against the infidels [u]. But no one was a more immediate gainer by this epidemic fury than the King of England, who kept aloof from all connexions with those fanatical and romantic warriors. [FN [u] Padre Paolo Hist. delle benef. ecclesiast. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... than a military trick to obtain a command. But I think the government had better keep out of the field its assistant adjutant-generals, and especially those in the Bureau of Conscription, unless they are put in subordinate positions. Some of them have sought their present positions to keep aloof from the fatigues and dangers of the field; and they have contributed no little to the disaffection in North Carolina. Gen. Whiting suggests that one of Gen. Pickett's brigades be sent to Weldon; and then, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the idea of the rule of Spain, and the great Catholic nobles hastened, when the moment of danger arrived, to join in the defence of their country, while Scotland, seeing no advantage to be gained in the struggle, stood sullenly aloof, and France gave no aid to a project which was to result, if successful, in the aggrandizement of her already dangerously ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... proved to be mild and dry. Say recovered slowly. Shotaye kept aloof after the conjuration, for a long time at least. All of a sudden she made her appearance at the home of her convalescent friend. It was in order to remind her that the first step was only a preliminary, and that it could not effect ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... had held aloof from him, refusing all the advances which the general-in-chief and his friends had made him. The fact is, Bernadotte had long since discerned the politician beneath the soldier's greatcoat, the dictator beneath the general, and Bernadotte, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... hushed the stormy main:{12} Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed: Mountains, ye mourn in vain Modred, whose magic song Made huge Plinlimmon{13} bow his cloud-topt head. On dreary Arvon's shore{14} they lie, Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale: Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail; The famished eagle{15} screams, and passes by. Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,{16} Ye died amidst your dying country's cries— ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... mind with them. O mothers, ye do make us what ye please! Your tears and caresses are the rain and the sun that mature the seed which time and the accidents of life sow in our tender minds! She filled him with pride,—which is a cardinal virtue, let theologians say what they will,—and kept him aloof from the little blackguards who toss and tumble over the curb-stones, losing that dignity which is man's chastity, and removing one barrier ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... now noon: the whole Moorish force, quitting the plain, occupied the steep that spread below the tower, in multitudinous array and breathless expectation. The miners stood aloof—the Spaniards lay prostrate and exhausted upon the battlements, like mariners who, after every effort against the storm, await, resigned, and almost indifferent, the sweep of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more than that. He is so emotionless, so remote and aloof from all mundane concerns. He moves among ordinary men and women, but as a mere presence, an unmoved spectator of their ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... all the gods of Samoa except one, and that was himself; and then he added pathetically through the priest to the family where he was supposed to reside, "When the great god comes, do not you all leave me, but let two still keep aloof and stand by me." On the introduction and rapid spread of Christianity many said, "The prediction of Ave i le tala has ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... in Mrs. Odell-Carney's sitting-room. Mr. Odell-Carney was smoking a cigaret on the balcony, just outside the window. Mrs. Rodney did not know that he was there. It is only natural that he held himself inhospitably aloof: Mrs. Rodney bored him to death. He did not hear all that was poured out between them, but he heard quite enough to cause him something of a pang. He distinctly heard his wife say things to Mrs. Rodney ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... growth since his first appearance as a poet. His place is now so well defined that death—which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author makes upon his generation—cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his successes were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... up money on mortgage; and that he hardly knew where to turn for five hundred pounds. The Duke pressed all their hands, passed his arms round all their shoulders, patted all their backs, and sent away some with wages, and some with promises. From this traffic Pitt stood haughtily aloof. Not only was he himself incorruptible, but he shrank from the loathsome drudgery of corrupting others. He had not, however, been twenty years in Parliament, and ten in office, without discovering how the government was carried on. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... resolves, and to wise and manly action; but, like spaniels erect on their hind legs, with fore-paws obsequiously suppliant, fawn, flatter, and actually beg for votes. Rather than descend to this, they stand contemptuously aloof, disdainfully refusing to court the people, and acting on the maxim, that "mankind has no title to demand that we shall serve ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... minded his business for so many years, and kept himself aloof from ladies, spending all his leisure in good literature, at this time of life and in this state of health (for the shock he had received struck inward), fell into an accident tenfold worse—the fatal accident of love. And this malady raged the more powerfully ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... from the moody, stone-faced, and haunted-eyed man who had so worried and distressed her. He had embarrassed her, too, for sometimes, in her home, meeting young men there who had not gone into the service, he had seemed to retreat into himself, singularly aloof, as if his ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Army, for khaki clashed badly with most of Mrs. Gustus's colour theories. But he had never noticed that: his eye and his ear and his mind were all equally slow to appreciate clashings of any kind. He was rather aloof from comparison and criticism, but not on principle. He had no principles—at least no original ones, just the ordinary stuffy old principles of decency and all that. He never turned his eyes inward, as far as the passer-by could see; he lived a breezy life outside ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... copy out the parts, and prompt and make up. And I also had to look after the various effects such as thunder, the singing of a nightingale, and so on. Having no social position, I had no decent clothes, and during rehearsals had to hold aloof from the others in the darkened wings and ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... lowest type, some committed for slight offences, some for heavy crimes. These women were able to recognise in an instant that this prisoner was of a different order from themselves. Those who were not fallen into the depths, treated her with some respect; but the lowest either held aloof from her or jeered at her—mostly the latter. Alice took all meekly; did what she could for the one or two that were ailing, and the three or four who had babies with them; spoke words of Gospel truth and kindly ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the morning. It was only then that the inhabitants, who had hitherto held themselves aloof, watching the movements of the strangers from under the brushwood, began to assemble from all sides. A few words in German spoken from the balloon dissipated their fears, and, recovering from their mistrust, they hastened immediately ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... adj.; void, vacuum; vacuity, vacancy; tabula rasa [Lat.]; exemption; hiatus &c (interval) 198; lipotype^. truant, absentee. nobody; nobody present, nobody on earth; not a soul; ame qui vive [Fr.]. V. be absent &c adj.; keep away, keep out of the way; play truant, absent oneself, stay away; keep aloof, hold aloof. withdraw, make oneself scarce, vacate; go away &c 293. Adj. absent, not present, away, nonresident, gone, from home; missing; lost; wanting; omitted; nowhere to be found; inexistence &c 2 [Obs.]. empty, void; vacant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... grotesque and laughable. The grand old hymn refused its cadences to this instrument of a tune-loving bourgeoise. It seemed to stand aloof and unconquered. This is a hymn for the swelling notes of an organ or for the great harmonies of a choir. It was not made to be debased by association with this caterwauling wood and wire, this sounding board for barbershop chords, this accomplice of ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof From the poor girl by magic of their bright, The while it did unthread the horrid woof Of the late darkened time—the murd'rous spite Of pride and avarice—the dark pine roof In the forest—and the sodden turfed dell, When, without any word, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Prussia in regard to the proposed Prusso-Italian treaty he should be found a supporter, even if an inactive and silent one, of this new arrangement. And it was equally natural that during the short war of 1866 between Austria and Prussia he kept aloof from any actual interference. It might even have been possible that France indirectly would have been found at that time on the side of Prussia, for there can be no doubt that Napoleon III would have liked to assist at that time Italy against Austria. But the Mexican ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... eighteen years without them, Kitty! My poor friends are not happy, and we are. To leave well alone is a golden rule worth all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my dear,—a place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped,—always kept rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who adored the shrew-mice. Cats are domestic animals, your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts: you can't find a better model, any Kitty, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and never full; that insatiable crowd which seems to be born only to seize all and possess nothing, and pitiless as it is shameless."—And when this day arrives the extortioners will find that they stand alone. For the characteristic of an aristocracy which cares only for itself is to live aloof in a closed circle. Having forgotten the public, it also neglects its subordinates; after being separated from the nation it separates itself from its own adherents. Like a group of staff-officers ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... eastern parts of the island, with those of the adjacent smaller islands, were still unsubdued and remained so for years to come. Their caciques were probably as well informed of the character of the newcomers and of their doings in la Espanola as was the first Guaybana's mother, and they wisely kept aloof so long as their ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... rather I did, humbly and at a distance, for Sir Jervas is, and always will be, magnificently aloof from all and sundry—but ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... a chorus of raucous laughter came to his ears. He glared belligerently at a group of newcomers who stood aloof from his own gathering. Seven or eight of them there were, and they wore the gray with obvious discomfort. Slummers! Well, they'd hear something they could carry back with them when they returned ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... and of lands, Far above the convent stands. On its terraced walk aloof Leans a monk with folded hands, Placid, satisfied, serene, Looking down upon the scene Over wall and red-tiled roof; Wondering unto what good end All this toil and traffic tend, And why all men cannot be Free from care and free from pain, And the sordid love of gain, And as indolent ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... grasped his hand, and even nodded, but her eyes were busy elsewhere. She was watching the movements of Lord Henry, who had not yet spoken to her, and who, apparently in animated conversation with Sir Lionel Borridge, had hitherto held himself aloof. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... was pride or shyness which kept the maiden aloof, she conquered it after a while; perhaps through mere woman's curiosity; and perhaps, too, from mere longing for amusement in a place so unspeakably stupid as the forest. She gave the English to understand, however, that though they all might be very important personages, none of them was to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was I who shrugged my shoulders in reply. He sat gripping the arms of his chair, again his gaze reverted stolidly to the fire. The clock ticked on past midnight, peacefully aloof as if content to be well out of ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the President and the Secretary of State as a champion of Mrs. Eaton. As to the views of the Vice-President upon the all-absorbing question, we have no information. Not being one of the official advisers of the President, he probably kept entirely aloof from a controversy no doubt in every way distasteful ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... rerum, though it had hardly nibbled at her heart or wishes, had been feeding on the freshness of her brow and the bloom of her lips. The child with whom she would have loved to play kept aloof from her too, and would not pick up the ball when it rolled to his feet. All this, if one thinks of it, is hard to bear. It is very hard to have had no period for rounders, not to be able even to look ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... almost all asleep, now and then the laugh of some rioters was heard breaking in upon the stillness of night. She had not seen her lover for many days; from the time that her marriage was determined upon, the young warrior had kept aloof from her. She had seized her opportunity to tell him that he must meet her where they had often met, where none should know of their meeting. She told him to come when the moon rose, as her father would be tired, and her mother wished to sleep ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... had passed, and she had not seen him, had heard nothing of him. Oh, he must be sad and very angry with her; he wished never to see her again. And because he was angry, and wished to hold himself aloof from her, he, the loving and attentive son, had even neglected to pay the accustomed morning visit to his royal mother, which he had never ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... matters, was entirely out of my line. In all these, mamma found her element. Ransom was no resource to anybody; and of course not to me, with whom, now as ever, he had little in common. Mamma held me aloof, ever since Mr. De Saussure's departure; and I only knew indirectly, as it were, that she was planning a social campaign for me and meditating over adornments and advantages which should help to make it triumphant. Life in this way was not ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... intimacy, which belongs of all moments perhaps in the progress of a passion to that moment when two standing tiptoe on the brink of golden surrender, sit down to their first ambrosial meal together—delicious adventure!—with all the world to watch them, if it choose, and yet aloof in a magic loneliness, as of youthful divinities wrapped in a roseate cloud! Hours of divine expectancy, at once promise and fulfilment. Happy were it for you, lovers, could you thus sit forever, nor pass beyond this ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... her call; in consequence of that high devotion, he was now in prison, charged with a dreadful crime; but, instead of hastening to him, instead of standing by his side and proclaiming to the whole world her belief in his innocence, she deliberately stood aloof. It was almost as if she herself believed in his guilt! The world, at least, ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... added her congratulations to his. The children gazed at Pollyooly with deep respect. Only the nurses and the mothers held aloof; an earthquake shock would hardly have astonished and confused them more than had this smacking of royalty. Had any one but the little cousin of the Honourable John Ruffin smacked, they would have been unable to refrain from an outburst of ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... wild reply, and the taper fingers easily relaxed—gave way—and got confounded with his own. After the lapse of four-and-twenty hours, reason returned to both; not the cold and calculating capacity that stands aloof from every suggestion of feeling, but that more sensible and temporizing reason, that with the will goes hand-in-hand, and serves the blind one as a careful guide. They met—for they had parted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... there to live with? She felt horribly deserted in life. She had looked at numerous houses and apartments from time to time. Apartments were costlier and fewer than houses. Since she was doomed to live alone, anyway, she might as well have a house. Her neighbors would more easily be kept aloof. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Londonderry openly advertises himself as a coal-merchant, and the brothers-in-law of the Princess Louise are in the wine trade and stock-broking business,—and all the old knightly blood of England is mingling itself by choice with that of the lowest commoners—what's the use of my remaining aloof, and refusing to go with the spirit of the age? Besides, Marcia loves me, and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and every thing else is unsettled, and Mr. Fox is to take nothing till the Inquiries are over. The Duke of Devonshire remains in the treasury, declaring that it is only for a short time, and till they can fix on somebody else. The Duke of Newcastle keeps aloof, professing no connexion with Mr. Pitt; Lord Hardwicke is gone into the country for a fortnight. The stocks fall, the foreign ministers stare; Leicester-house is going to be very angry, and I fear we are going into great confusion. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... character of doctor's assistant, Tom Long did not mix with the officers in command of the little detachment, and was standing aloof leaning over the bulwarks, and gazing at the fire-flies on the shore, when he heard ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... taken precisely the same attitude as the vicar-general himself; they held themselves aloof, and yet were able to direct others. But just at this crisis an event occurred which complicated the plans laid by Monsieur de Bourbonne and the Listomeres to quiet the Gamard and Troubert party, and made them ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... is convey'd, Where gates impregnable, and coercive chains, In durance strict detain him, till, in form Of money, Pallas sets the captive free. Beware, ye debtors! when ye walk, beware, Be circumspect; oft with insidious ken The caitiff eyes your steps aloof, and oft Lies perdu in a nook or gloomy cave, Prompt to enchant some inadvertent wretch With his unhallowed touch. So, (poets sing) Grimalkin, to domestic vermin sworn An everlasting foe, with watchful eye Lies nightly brooding o'er a chinky gap, Portending her ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... notably the "Praise of Folly," the "Colloquia" and "Adagia"; he has been regarded as the precursor of the Reformation; is said to have laid the egg which Luther hatched; aided the Reformation by his scholarship, though he kept aloof as a scholar from the popular ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... I am now his irreconcilable enemy, and I will hang upon his skirts and never quit him, no, not for a moment, till he is turned out of office with disgrace. He ought not to have angered me, for I and my friends kept aloof: he knew I did, and he might—But now I have openly joined the opposition, and nothing less than his ruin shall satisfy me! I am exceedingly happy, Mr. Trevor, to find you reason so justly on these subjects; and to say the truth I shall be very glad ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... end of the year, with the hand of winter again pressed firmly upon the land, it seemed time could do no more; that the adaptation of the exotic to his new surroundings was complete. Already the past life seemed a thing interesting but aloof from reality, like the fantastic exploits of a hero of fiction, and the present, the insistently active, vital present, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... nothing to do with this charter, we might have some sort of Epicurean excuse to stand aloof, indifferent spectators of what passes in the Company's name in India and in London. But if we are the very cause of the evil, we are in a special manner engaged to the redress; and for us passively to bear with oppressions committed under the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... taught in his philosophical doctrines. He brought accusations against tyranny, yet he made himself a teacher of tyrants: he denounced such of his associates as were powerful, yet he did not hold aloof from the palace himself: he had nothing good to say of flatterers, yet he had so fawned upon Messalina and Claudius's freedmen [that he had sent them from the island a book containing eulogies upon them; this latter caused him such mortification that he erased the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... he acted in a most peculiar manner; he put his ear to the partition that separated his room from Narcisse's, and listened intently; then walked over to his bed, sat on the edge of it, took off his boots, held them aloof, and then let them fall on the floor; laid his coat across the foot of the bed, stood still for a few minutes, and then threw himself so heavily across the bed that it groaned loudly enough to be distinctly heard by Narcisse, who nodded his head ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... the glittering air they soar and skim, Whose voices make the emptiness of light A windy palace. Quavering from the brim Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night, They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; Who hears the cry of God in everything, And storms the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... influential men, and after a long and heated canvass adoption occurred in Virginia by a majority of only ten in a vote of 168; in New York by the narrow majority of two. Even now North Carolina and Rhode Island remained aloof. The former, not liking the prospect of isolation, came into the Union November 21, 1789, after the new government had been some time at work. Rhode Island, owing to her peculiar history in the matter of religious ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Persius, which is forever independent and consistent, was in earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration of all. The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most wilfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact. There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor. The buffoon cannot bribe you to laugh always at his grimaces; they shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian granite, to stand heavy as the pyramids ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scriveners pale form appeared ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... now ensued was not general. The Six Nations, as a whole, took no part in it, while Pennsylvania also stood aloof; indeed at one time it was proposed that the Pennsylvanians and Iroquois should jointly endeavor to mediate between the combatants.[6] The struggle was purely between the Virginians and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... for gaming, and little for wine or tobacco, the captain and I were received very heartily into the fraternity. After one afternoon of despondency we both voted it the worst of bad policy to remain aloof and nurse our misfortune, and spent our first evening in making acquaintances over a deal of very thin "debtor's claret." I tossed long that night on the hard cot, listening to the scurrying rats among the roof-timbers. They ran like the thoughts in my brain. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... can see across the roof The sun, the stars and . . . God! For proof — Between the twisting chimney-pots A pointing finger, old, aloof! ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... on the back and said: "Go it, Granville! Steady does it. Here's to you and many more of them." And Booty brought Maudie Hollis, who was not too proud and too beautiful to go down on her knees before the Baby, while young Fred stood aloof in awe, and grew sanguine to the roots of the hair that rose, tipping his ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... wonder at the various incidents which had converted his mansion, first into an hospital for a wounded duellist, and now into the sick chamber of a dying nobleman. "And yet," said he, "I have always kept aloof from the soldiery and the peerage. My coenobitium has only next to be made a lying-in hospital, and then, I trow, the transformation will ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... beside Rhoda, and whispered, and she answered, and they knew not what they said. The joint moans of father and daughter—the unutterable communion of such a meeting—filled their ears. Grief held aloof as much as joy. Neither joy nor grief were in those two hearts of parent and child; but the senseless contentment of hard, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... who held aloof was Cecil, who would not rise to the bait when Raymond tried to exhibit Miss Bowater ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to use the phrase "Over-Soul," which removes the soul even farther aloof than it is in popular conception, or which fosters the belief of an inner and outer, or an inferior and a superior soul; whereas Emerson meant, as the context ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... pitiful sorrow over that loveless mockery of all human pity and love; and for the "Frog-faced" there is no feeling but sympathetic compassion for his apparent loneliness amongst strangers, who all stand aloof and look askance on him. Into all Lydgate's plans, into the whole question of the hospital and all he hopes to achieve through means of it, she throws herself with swift intelligence, with active, eager sympathy, as a probable ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... bear to think of it," cried Amy, who, in the canoe with Will, still silent and aloof, had scarcely spoken a word till now. "It seems as if there ought to be some other way of settling ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... stop that controlled the bells. She would have liked to play those bells and call through them to Mark across the mountains where he might be riding, call to tell him that she was waiting, call to ask him why he was so strangely aloof, so silent, and pale in his dignity; what had come between them, old friends of the years? She felt she could say with the bells what her lips could never speak. But the bells would cry her trouble to the villagers ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... picture silently, for he remembered with disturbing emotion that he had felt what Jake suggested when he first met Clare Kenwardine. She was frank, but somehow remote and aloof; marked by a strange refinement he could find no name for. He was glad that Jake did not seem to expect him to speak, but after a few moments the latter wrapped up the portrait and took it away. When he came back he lighted ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... consideration and politeness, talks with them during the times that they necessarily are thrown together in the most affable and cheerful manner, and never assumes any airs of supremacy with them. Her wanting a room to herself gave them at first an idea that she would hold herself aloof from them, and in fact, for the first few days, there was a subterranean fire in the kitchen ready to burst forth; but now all that is past, and in some way or other, without being in the least like any ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... depths" of time. Those have been greatest in thought who have been best endowed with faith, hope, sympathy, and the spirit of effort. And next to them come the great stern, mournful men, like Tacitus, Dante, Pascal, who, standing as far aloof from the soft poetic dejection of some of the moods of Shelley or Keats as from the savage fury of Swift, watch with a prophet's indignation the heedless waste of faculty and opportunity, the triumph of paltry motive and paltry aim, as if we were the flies ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... path like gorged monsters drowsing voluptuously. The world she was leaving behind her grew alien and repulsive, her heart went out to the patient world of toil. What had she been doing all these years, amid her books and her music and her rose-leaves, aloof ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and more particularly when a section of the Peterborough Hound Show was reserved for them. Then they seemed to spring from every part of the country. In 1896 one became well acquainted with many packs that had apparently held aloof from the dog shows. There was the Cheshire, the Christ Church (Oxford), Mr. T. Johnson's, the Royal Rock, the Thorpe Satchville, the Worcestershire, etc., and of late there have been many more that are as well known as packs ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Aeetes held an assembly of the Colchians far aloof from his palace at a spot where they sat in times before, to devise against the Minyae grim treachery and troubles. And he threatened that when first the oxen should have torn in pieces the man who had taken upon him to perform ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... fast in me, thy hand pressed me sore; there was no soundness in my flesh, neither rest in my bones, because of my sin; mine iniquities went over my head, were a burden too heavy to bear. I was feeble and sore broken, and roared by reason of the disquiet of my heart. My lovers and friends stood aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stood afar off. I was ready to halt, and my sorrow was continually before me; yet even in my darkest, deepest afflictions, when deep called to deep, and thy waves and billows were passing over me; when my soul seemed sinking in the mire where there was no ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... assert that we know nothing absolutely, that is, in and for itself, and without relation to us and our faculties."[300] Now, in the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, "the absolute" is defined as "that which is aloof from relation"—"that which is out of all relation."[301] The absolute can not, therefore, be "the correlative" of the conditioned—can not stand in any relation to the phenomenal. The subject, however, is the necessary correlative of the phenomenal, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... bewildered, for much had happened to me that morning which I found it hard to understand. Why had the Augusta kissed me? I took it that this was some kind of imperial jest. It was known that I kept aloof from women, and she may have desired to see what I should do when an Augusta kissed me, and then to make a mock of me. I had heard that she had done as ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... under their own vine and fig-tree, Alfred returned to the United States, where he became first a clerk, and afterward a prosperous merchant. His natural organization unfitted him for conflict, and though his peculiar experiences had imbued him with a thorough abhorrence of slavery, he stood aloof from the ever-increasing agitation on that subject; but every New Year's day, one of the Vigilance Committees for the relief of fugitive slaves received one hundred dollars "from an unknown friend." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... mighty war for either swamp or emissary. Besides, the plot had failed. Guy Fawkes, true to his oath and his orders, had indeed reached the vault; but the other conspirators were less devoted. The Abyssinians had held aloof. The negro tribes gazed with wonder on the strangers, but had no intention of fighting for them. The pride and barbarism of the Khalifa rejected all overtures and disdained to discriminate between the various breeds of the accursed 'Turks.' Finally, the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of rival powers and of hostile principles and creeds kept the world in agitation and prolonged suspense,—when Romanism and Reform, the Crescent and the Cross, despotic power and constitutional freedom, were contending for mastery, and no government or nation could stand wholly aloof from a contest in which the fate, not of empires alone, but of civilization, was involved. Spain, during that period, was the bulwark of the Church against the attacks of the Reformers, and the bulwark of Christendom against the attacks of the Moslem. The power of Spain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... You have always held yourself aloof from me. All my love has been powerless to gain an entrance into your heart. Now it is too late. I ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... had sat stately and aloof, with an inkling in her brain that all this mirthful tumult was not entirely in the nature of a complimentary tribute ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... besides those contained in the list above, are (or have been) occasionally employed in English as prepositions: as, A, (chiefly used before participles,) abaft, adown, afore, aloft, aloof, alongside, anear, aneath, anent, aslant, aslope, astride, atween, atwixt, besouth, bywest, cross, dehors, despite, inside, left-hand, maugre, minus, onto, opposite, outside, per, plus, sans, spite, thorough, traverse, versus, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that she seemed well enough to go. Throughout the meal Pete, who was wearing an aloof and serious manner, refrained from looking at her, and she strived to keep her own anxious gaze away from him. He wasn't going to the meeting with the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... of this anger, oddly enough, that the memory of the girl came to him. She was like the falling of this starlight, pure, aloof, and strange and gentle. It seemed to Andrew Lanning that the instant of seeing her outweighed the rest of his life, but he would never see her again. How could he see her, and if he saw her, what would he say to her? It would not be necessary to speak. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... were to speak of it unto Vasudeva, he might be irritated with thee. Feed thou by every means in thy power those that are dear and devoted to thy lord and always seek his good. Thou shouldst, however, always keep thyself aloof from those that are hostile to and against thy lord and seek to do him injury, as also from those that are addicted to deceit. Foregoing all excitement and carelessness in the presence of men, conceal thy inclinations ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is obvious that there is a literary aristocracy in America. Born in an intellectual atmosphere, with inherited talent, wrapped in their own dreams, knowing little of the struggle and toil of their less fortunate co-workers, its members stand aloof, saying: Thou shalt not enter therein. The old Italian poet ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... in 1791, of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, every essential objection which he had formerly urged against that instrument was satisfied; and there then remained no good reason why he should any longer hold himself aloof from the cordial support of the new government, especially as directed, first by Washington, and afterward by John Adams,—two men with whom, both personally and politically, he had always been in great harmony, excepting only upon this single matter of the Constitution in its original ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... her alone—bellissima, divine, glorieuse! Ah, how I have watch' her! It is sad to me when I see her surround' by your yo'ng captains, your nobles, your rattles, your beaux—ha, ha!—and I mus' hol' far aloof. It is sad for me—but oh, jus' to watch her and to wonder! Strange it is, but I have almos' cry out with rapture at a look I have see' her give another man, so beautiful it was, so tender, so dazzling of the eyes and ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... finally, they are mixing with the world, they are meeting other men face to face, as equals, they are claiming no merit because of birth, no authority because of rank; they are, perhaps, even working with their hands. Whereas our business is to keep aloof from the world, to maintain a barrier of caste between ourselves and other men, for they must not suspect that we are as imperfect as they—that we have the same appetites and passions, the same defects and meannesses. Our business is to rule over them, to require their obedience because ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... went, and a great restlessness kept her moving. She could not feel at her ease in his vicinity. She wanted very urgently to secure his friendship. She had counted upon that day in his society to do so. But it seemed to be his resolve to hold aloof. He seemed disinclined to commit himself to anything approaching intimacy, and that attitude of his filled her with misgiving. Had he begun to repent of the one-sided bargain, she asked herself? Or could it be that he also was oppressed ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... They are different from us." The son looked at his father, but made no immediate reply. "Our lot has been cast with theirs because of their difficulties," continued the old man, "but the time is coming when we had better stand aloof." ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... very wrong about this," she said to herself. "It does not seem like New York at all, and I do not like the idea of Mrs. Montague keeping herself so aloof from me. Even if she were sick, or angry with me, she might at least have shown some interest in me. I do not like Louis Hamblin's manner—he does not appear natural. I wish—oh, I wish I had gone ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... usual tactfulness. Excusably enough in so young a man, he allowed himself to be swayed by personal feeling, and his feeling was ungenerous. With the exception of a small knot of friends like Dundas, he kept himself aloof from his supporters and was ignorant of the annoyance with which they regarded this attempt to deal harshly with a defeated foe.[190] A bill passed that session ordered that polls were not to last more than fifteen days, and that any scrutiny should be closed six days ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... middle of Dresden: not landing by any means. "No, be assured of it, ye Dresdeners, all flurried, palisaded, barricaded; no hair of you shall be harmed." After a day or two, the flurry of Saxony subsided; Prussians, under strict discipline, molest no private person; pay their way; keep well aloof, to south and to north, of Dresden (all but the necessary ammunition-escorts do);—and require of the Official people nothing but what the Law of the Reich authorizes to "Imperial Auxiliaries" in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in motion, Camille was compelled to keep watch for her safety, fearing the amazing cleverness of the friendly enemy, or, rather, the inimical friend she had allowed within her borders. To guard her own secrets and maintain herself aloof, she had taken of late to contemplations of nature; she cheated the aching of her own heart by seeking a meaning in the world around her, finding God in that desert of heaven and earth. When an unbeliever once perceives the presence of God, he flings himself unreservedly into Catholicism, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... "Jimmy"—was a tall, lanky man, irreclaimably truculent, incapable of recognising the dominance of those who bestowed his Christian name. Long after most of his fellows had submitted in a more or less kindly spirit to the o'ermastering-race, "Jimmy" held aloof, and in his savage, self-reliant way, deemed himself a worthy foe of the best of them. Often he endeavoured to persuade his companions to join him in a policy of active resentment. Once, when remonstrated with on account of some offence against the rights of property, he assumed ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... "Memoires sur les campagnes de 1792 a la paix de Campio-Formio," I., pp.91 to 139.—Ibid., 229. "The effect of this was to lead men who had any means to keep aloof from any sort of promotion."—Cf., ibid., II., 131 (November, 1794,) the same order of things still kept up. By order of the representatives the army encamps during the winter in sheds on the left bank of the Rhine, near Mayence, a useless proceeding and mere literary parade. "They would ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
