"At best" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not easy to carry on a spirited conversation with Mr. Britt. At best, his range of topics was limited, and in his present frame of mind he was about as vivacious as a deaf mute. He was quite content to sit with the high heels of his cowboy boots—from which a faint odor of the stable emanated—hung over ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... country ruined, in consequence of the union with England, and indeed their opinion was supported by very plausible arguments. The majority of both nations believed that the treaty would produce violent convulsions, or at best prove ineffectual. But we now see it has been attended with none of the calamities that were prognosticated; that it quietly took effect, and fully answered all the purposes for which it was intended. Hence we may learn that many great difficulties are ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... knowledge of faults; as if there could be a human production without them! Nevertheless, there is little to be apprehended from any conventional theory, by one who is forewarned of its mere negative power,—that it can, at best, only suppress feeling; for no one ever was, or ever can be, argued into a real liking for what he has once felt to be false. But, where the feeling is genuine, and not the mere reflex of a popular notion, so far as it goes it must be true. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... there is a convention by which the matter of a first edition—whether a single story or a collection of stories—which has been reproduced from a magazine or magazines, is treated as if it were a novelty. It is a sound and benevolent convention, because the stuff of magazines only receives at best a very sketchy notice. Miss May Sinclair, however, is apparently prepared; to risk the loss of any advantage to be derived from it, for her collection of short and middle-sized stones republished under the title of the first of them, The Judgment of Eve (Hutchinson), is prefaced by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... manifestations it presumes to a certain academic remoteness from the concerns and carnalities of everyday. In every aspect it shows the defects of its practitioners. The American critic of beautiful letters, in his common incarnation, is no more than a talented sophomore, or, at best, a somewhat absurd professor. He suffers from a palpable lack of solid preparation; he has no background of moving and illuminating experience behind him; his soul has not sufficiently adventured among masterpieces, nor among men. Imagine a Taine or a Sainte-Beuve or a Macaulay—man of ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... people used the ways and manners of narrower days; one paralysed the other. It might be gathered from the slight tone of patronage in the address of youth to age that the advantage lay with the former; but polite conversation, at best, was sustained with discomfort. Such considerations, however, were far from operating with the Milburns. Mrs Milburn would have said that they were characteristic of quite a different class of people; and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... any of the crew approached Caliente, that noble animal became transformed into a tiger and as he came for them with bared teeth or whirled and kicked out with his heels, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor and they left him alone. Sailors at best ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... however, and he continued to talk of how words like "Nature," and "God," and "Liberty" are on every lip, yet none is able to define their meaning. Liberty he instanced as a word around which poems have been written, "yet no poet could tell what he was writing about; at best we can only say of liberty that we must surrender something to gain something; in other words, liberty is a compromise, for no one can be free to obey every impulse the moment one ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... worthy your trust, Madame," I said somewhat stiffly, for it hurt to realize that this emotion arose from her husband's peril. "At best I am only an adventurer, and rely upon those means with which life upon the border renders me familiar. Such may prove useless where I have soldiers of skill to deal with. However, we have need of these minutes flying past so rapidly; they might be put to better use than ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... America that precisely such a success as Garfield's is possible for people who spring, as he did, from the midst of the people. In old-settled and wealthy countries we must be content, at best, with slower and less lofty promotion. But the lesson of Garfield's life is not for America only, but for the whole world of workers everywhere. The same qualities which procured his success there will produce a different, but ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... our poor lot is cast, Or this the last, Which on the crumbling rocks has dashed Etruscan seas; Strain clear the wine—this life is short, at best; Take hope with zest, And, trusting not To-Morrow, snatch ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... or, at best, an absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of His universe, and seeing it go?' Know that for man's well-being, whatever else be needed, 'Faith is one thing needful.' Mark, 'how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... returned the boy, calmly. "There was a little twig that righted itself even as I looked at it. His foot had bent it down. Now, I shouldn't think it could have stayed that way more'n half an hour at best." ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... years this constitution—so skilfully drawn—remained unimpaired. At best, however, it was only a compromise; and in 1879 an alteration was made {1879.}. As Mission work was the only work in which the whole Church took part as such, it was decided that only the Mission Department of the U.E.C. should be elected by the General Synod; the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... through to the southward, and that the land from King William's Cape to this place is an island, separated from New Guinea by some strait, as Nova Britannia is by that which we came through. But this being at best but a probable conjecture, I shall insist no ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... elsewhere, I was selected as captain and manager, a position that I have always had reason to believe came to me through the influence of Mr. Hulbert, and that I retained for many a year, through both good and evil report, finding it but a thankless job at best. The make-up of the team in full was as follows: Larkin, pitcher; Flint, catcher; Anson, first base; Quest, second base; Hankinson, pitcher and third base; Peters, stortstop; Dalrymple, Gore, Remsen and George Schaffer ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... be astonished at the warped, cold, unhappy, suspicious natures we see about us, when we reflect upon the number of unwished-for, unwelcomed children in the world;—children who at best were never loved until they were seen and known, and were often grudged their being from the moment they began to be. I wonder if sometimes a starved, crippled, agonized human body and soul does not cry out, "Why, O man, O woman—why, being ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... history of its settlement, and in its economic and social life, a unity and interdependence which warrant a study of the area as an entity. Within the limits of this article, treatment of so vast a region, however, can at best afford no more than an outline sketch, in which old and well-known facts must, if possible, be so grouped as to explain the position of the section in ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... now returned to a deficit. Following the closing of the Black Angel lead and zinc mine in 1989, Greenland today is fully dependent on fishing and fish processing, this sector accounting for 95% of exports. Prospects for fisheries are not bright, as the important shrimp catches will at best stabilize and cod catches have dropped. Resumption of mining and hydrocarbon activities is not around the corner, thus leaving only tourism with some potential for the near future. The public sector in Greenland, i.e. the HRG and its commercial entities and the municipalities, ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... bad, for then the hooting of a vagrant owl, or it may be the distant howl of a prowling timber wolf, that gray skulker of the pine lands, is apt to break the monotony; but even in the midst of summer there is lacking the hum of insects and the bustle of woods life—at best one hears the weird call of the whip-poor-will, called by the Indians, the "wish-a-wish," or if near a marsh the croaking ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... me ef we don't save 'em. I've done held on ter thet timber fer a long spell of years an' I sorrers ter part with hit now. But thar's a right weighty mortgage on my land an' hit's held by a man thet don't squander no love on me at best." ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... not covering his tracks better. This exposure doesn't help us any at best. If we still tried to carry Pelton, we should last about as long as ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... in an afternoon is enough," retorted Paul. "I will not do it again. You know the worst of me: that I have an uncertain temper, which betrays me occasionally into blurting out unpleasant truths: that I have absolutely no small talk. I shall be at best but a rough-and-ready friend; but if in your kindness you still care to cultivate Sally and me, we will gratefully accept the cultivation, and be the better for it. There's my hand on it," and Paul stretched ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... rocks, with so much violence as to threaten our immediate destruction. The idea of never more seeing my family upon earth, rushed upon my mind; but the pang of thought was alleviated by the recollection that life at best was short, and that they would soon meet me in 'brighter worlds,' whither I expected to be hurried, through the supposed hasty death of drowning. Providentially however we escaped being wrecked; and I could not but bless the God of my salvation, for the anchor ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... sacrifice her own pleasure for the good of others. Her temper being naturally good, she was never violent or morose, but from constant indulgence, and habitual scorn of reason, she was often testy and capricious; her mind had never been cultivated: her intellect, at best, was somewhat shallow; she possessed considerable vivacity, some quickness of perception, and some talent for music and the acquisition of languages, but till fifteen she had troubled herself to acquire nothing;—then the love of display ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... running, there was a sensation, an uncertain quivering motion, not at first noticed and not at all definable, about our craft, that constantly, suggested the idea that we were standing on nothing, or, at best, nothing better than dissolving quicksands, which were liable at any moment wholly to slide away and leave us; and it required some strength of mind to resist the vagary, and prevent it from effecting a troublesome ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... between merely sufficient and efficacious grace in the Augustinian system, therefore, may be described as follows: Merely sufficient grace imparts to the will the posse but not the velle, or at best only such a weak velle that it requires the delectatio victrix (gratia efficax) to become effective. Efficacious grace (delectatio coelestis victrix), on the other hand, impels the will actually to perform the good deed. Hence there is between ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... they were said to be particularly inapplicable to the present moment. If, as was believed, the United States were about to be forced into a war, the public counsels ought to be directed to measures of defence. In that event, the resolutions would, at best, be useless. But the greater the danger of war, the more incumbent was it on the government to unite public opinion in support of it; and this would best be effected by observing a line of conduct which would ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... with the present, always hoping that the future would bring me the satisfaction I seemed to miss. I did not always know it at the time, for I was often happy when I was writing a book—but it was, at best, a rushing, tortured sort of happiness. My great sorrow—what has that become to me? A beautiful thing, full of patience and hope. What but that has taught me to learn to live for the moment, to take the bitter experiences of life as they come, not crushing out ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... date of his birth or of the number of years to which he attained, and, indeed, promises no more information than it gives. That Chaucer's contemporary, the poet Gower, should have referred to him in the year 1392 as "now in his days old," is at best a very vague sort of testimony, more especially as it is by mere conjecture that the year of Gower's own birth is placed as far back as 1320. Still less weight can be attached to the circumstance that ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... undertaking. This detachment, amounting, all told, to sixty men, made a night march across the mountains, while the main command camped at the foot of the divide on the night of the 7th, and at 5 o'clock the next morning, resumed the march. The road up the mountain, a steep and difficult one at best, was seriously obstructed at this time by large quantities of down timber that had to be cut out or passed around, so that the ascent was very slow and trying to men and beasts. The wagons were but lightly loaded, and by doubling teams and using all the men at drag ropes, the command ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... man to take thought for the future, or he would not have come there at all. He might have stuck to his fishery, and like enough been lucky at that and made good money, but 'twas not like going into business; nothing so fine, a thing for common folk at best. People didn't take off their hats to a fisherman. Aronsen had rowed his boat before, pulling at the oars; now he was going to sail instead. There was a word he was always using: "Cash down." He used it all sorts of ways. When things went well, they were going "cash down." His children ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... their advantages. The specters in classic and medieval literature were malarial, vaporous beings without energy to do anything but threaten, and mortals never would have trembled with fear at their frown if they had known how feeble they were. At best a revenant could only rattle a rusty skeleton, or shake a moldy shroud, or clank a chain—but as mortals cowered before his demonstrations, he didn't worry. If he wished to evoke the extreme of anguish from his host, he ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... thirteenth century. There are some curious brasses which would be very interesting to persons capable of decyphering them, one in particular to the left on entering, but so much in the dark that it is difficult to make it out, especially as the characters at best are not easy to understand, but I recommend them to the inspection of those persons who have time and inclination to study such subjects. The view of the city from the towers affords an ample panorama, and displays the positions of the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... said George, impatiently. "But how can I stop it? I am at best but one man, and a prisoner, and," ruefully glancing at his nurse, "by the present signs, not likely to be able to ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Jack, "it would be a very dangerous undertaking for two strangers to go through that part of the mine without a guide at any time, especially at night, and it will be at best, a hazardous piece ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... summer air were hard to bear even for those who were well. Poor little Dick, lying day after day on his hard bed, with no care except what the kind-hearted washerwoman could give him, felt that life was an ill thing at best, and he was fast hastening out of it, with the assistance of ill nutrition and bad ventilation. Dick's own mother and father were dead, and his stepmother, a rough-looking creature, when she remembered him at all, looked upon him as a useless ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... retorts. The gas makes a handy fuel. The tar washed from the gas contains a lot of valuable products. And potash can be leached out of the charcoal or from its ashes whenever it is burned. But this at best would not go far toward solving the problem ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... protection, LAFOND got the better of every difficulty. This actor made his first appearance in the character of Achille in the tragedy of Iphigenie en Aulide by RACINE. He was not the Achilles of Homer, nor even that of the piece, or at best he represented him in miniature. However, his diction generally just, his acting, some grace, and, above all, the fatigue and ennui which TALMA impressed on many of the spectators, procured this rival a decisive success. As is customary in such ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... credit to yourself for insight and for a lofty morality. It becomes a kind of blasphemy to suggest that your great man, who thus stands for an inspired leader dropped straight out of heaven, was probably at best very imperfect, one-sided, and at least as much of a product as a producer. The crudity of the method is even regarded as a proof of its morality. Your common-place moralist likes to call everything black or white; he despises all qualifications ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to take your own time to change from the canter to the trot, rather than to wait for him to say, "Now," you may do so. And the canter begins again, and, after a round or two, you try the mouth-sawing process, doing it very well, for it is an ugly little trick at best, rarely found necessary by an accomplished rider, and beginners seldom fail to succeed in it at the very first attempt. If it were pretty and graceful, it would be more difficult. Down to the trot comes ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... a glimpse so hasty as mine had been. And yet, while I reasoned in this way, I foresaw plainly enough that, as time passed, doubt would get the better of assurance, as it always does, and I should never be certain that I had not been the victim of some illusion. At best, the evidence was worth nothing for others. If only that excellent Mr. ——, for whose kindness I was unfeignedly thankful (and whose pardon I most sincerely beg if I seem to have been a bit too free in this rehearsal ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... poetic thought of all ages, and the author will therefore hardly hope to offer much that is new in the following verses. His only excuse for so worn a theme is, that the world still loves the picture, and that each generation can, at best, but reset the old jewels of ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... At best, Theodora was hot-tempered. To-night, excited by her attempt at writing and tired with the unwonted effort, she flashed like a train of powder. She realized, even in the midst of it, that her annoyance was ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... absolutely improper. It is certainly to be wished that decency should be observed on all public occasions, and consequently also on the stage. But even in this it is possible to go too far. That carping censoriousness which scents out impurity in every bold sally, is, at best, but an ambiguous criterion of purity of morals; and beneath this hypocritical guise there often lurks the consciousness of an impure imagination. The determination to tolerate nothing which has the least reference to the sensual relation between the sexes, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... or probability; and if he enter upon the discussion with his mind free from prejudice, will he not experience that an outrage has been committed upon his reason, in calling upon him to give assent to positions and principles which at best are merely assumed, but to which he is called upon dogmatically to subscribe his acquiescence as the indubitable results of experience, skill and ability? The editors of the works above alluded to, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... would notice, is the completeness or pleromatic fulness of the moral and religious character of Christ. While all other men represent at best but broken fragments of the idea of goodness and holiness, he exhausts the list of virtues and graces which may be named. His soul is a moral paradise full of charming flowers, shining in every variety of color, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... foremost is the uncertainty of the war itself. All prophecy—at best a dangerous thing—is purest speculation. No one can tell how long the duel will last; how badly the loser will be beaten; what the terms of peace will be. Yet out of these contingencies will emerge the strong hands ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... that to the highest consummation of taste, as well as of every other excellence, nature must lend much assistance, yet great is the power of art, almost of itself, or at best with only slender aids from nature; and, to say the truth, there are very few who have not in their minds some small seeds of taste. "All men," says Cicero, "have a sort of tacit sense of what is right or wrong in ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... employed in reading and taking notes from the volumes borrowed by him every morning at a reading-room on the Rue Rorer-Collard; for he had already learned that one leaves college almost ignorant, having, at best, only learned how to study. He left the office at nightfall and reached his room through the Boulevard des Invalides, and Montparnasse, which at this time was still planted with venerable elms; sometimes the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... free-and-easy fellow, with many generous qualities, which made him popular with most who knew him. He did not hesitate to declare that his views on religious subjects were liberal—a bold announcement for a man to make in Hampton. Indeed, his enemies put him down for a Universalist, or at best a Unitarian, for which they claimed to have some reason, since he seldom went to church, although his wife was a communicant, and very regular in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... for the purpose of instructing him. He is free to hear with a clear conscience, and let his children hear, Catholic teaching, for the Church claiming infallibility is at its worst as good as his private judgment is at best, namely, fallible. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Wood," and some of the Robin Hood ones had long been widely, nay almost universally familiar, they had hardly been regarded as literature worthy of serious attention. They were looked upon as nursery tales, or at best as the amusement of peasants and unlettered folk, who used to paste them up on the walls of inns, cottages, and ale-houses. Here and there an educated man had had a sneaking fondness for collecting old ballads—much ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... his face. It looked sad and worried, and the thought suddenly struck me that his extravagant spirits of the night before, and even his quieter, careful cheerfulness of to-night, had been but artificial moods at best. He turned, and finding my eyes fixed on him, at once plunged into conversation, discussed the peculiarities of one of the guests, good-humoredly enough, but with so much fun as to make me laugh in spite of myself. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... whose presence had surprised and somewhat startled Alice Lee, was a person of the lower rank, whose red cloak, russet kirtle, handkerchief trimmed with Coventry blue, and a coarse steeple hat, could not indicate at best any thing higher than the wife of a small farmer, or, perhaps, the helpmate of a bailiff or hind. It was well if she proved nothing worse. Her clothes, indeed, were of good materials; but, what the female eye discerns with half a glance, they were indifferently adjusted ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... About noontide it was ordinarily 120 degrees Fahr. in my tent. Still, I am sure it was by no means so oppressive as at Korti in March 1885. The Atbara and the Nile helped to temper the fiery glow that radiated from the desert rocks and sands. At best, the heat is a sore trial, but to be borne with more patience than the "devils" and sand storms that bother by night as well as by day. Snow-drifts are mild visitations of Providence compared with a dust storm or whirlwind. These ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... "I believe that for a very long time a very strong prejudice existed against it; and even physicians opposed its use, considering it at best a dangerous medicine. It is now, however, acknowledged to be a sovereign remedy for ague of all descriptions. I believe the French astronomer De la Condamine, who went to Quito in the year 1735 to measure an arc of a degree, and thus to determine ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... intelligence from parochial ministers, and others not the best qualified or most impartial narrators, whose ungenerous prejudice against the house of Stuart glares in misrepresentation; a writer, who at best treats merely of superficial objects, and shews no philosophical investigation of character and manners, such as Johnson has exhibited in his masterly Journey, over part of the same ground; and who it should ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... upon knowledge! Oh, Squills, Squills, Squills! Knowledge perverted is knowledge no longer. Vinegar, which, exposed to the sun, breeds small serpents, or at best slimy eels, not comestible, once was wine. If I say to my grandchildren, 'Don't drink that sour stuff, which the sun itself fills with reptiles,' does that prove me a foe to sound sherry? Squills, if you had but received ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Virgil, life remains pastoral still. The field labourer of northern countries may be but a hapless hind, hedging and ditching dolefully, or at best serving a steam-beast with oil and fire; but in the land of the Georgics there is the poetry ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... remarked the young lady. "It has been the abode of the Monk family from generation to generation. For my part, I sometimes half wish it would fall down that we might get away to a more lively locality. Church Leet is a dead-alive place at best." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... parliamentary system is in vogue, but at best it operates only indifferently. Supposedly responsible, collectively and individually, to the Reichsrath, the ministers are in practice far more dependent upon the Emperor than upon the chambers. In France the inability of political parties to coalesce into two great opposing ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... penalty, but this may be no moral benefit to the criminal; and at best, it only saves him from one form of punishment. The moral law, which has the right to acquit or condemn, always demands restitution, before mortals can "go up higher." Broken law brings penalty, in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shook. "I'm far from sure. It's a wild gamble at best, but we can't be any worse off than we are now. If the priests win out, we're sunk and no mistake about it; but there's a fighting chance my idea could ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... per cent tax on the property was levied on those immigrants compelled to stay through the winter; that justice was impossible to obtain in the Mormon courts; that immigrants' mail was opened and destroyed; and that all Mormons were at best treasonable in sentiment. Later the breach between the Mormons and the Americans became more marked, until it culminated in the atrocious Mountain Meadows massacre, which was probably only one of several similar but lesser occurrences. These things, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... block." That is, he gets geometrical enveloping lines for his design. And, in fact, there is no sculpture which is more wonderful in design than Rodin's. I quote Mr. MacColl again. "It has been said that the 'Bourgeois de Calais' is a group of single figures, possessing no unity of design, or at best affording only a single point of view. Those who say so have never examined it with attention. The way in which these figures move among themselves, as the spectator walks round, so as to produce from every fresh angle ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... and rebelled. Their own government sent soldiers after them, resulting in about eight hundred soldiers being killed, when they dispersed into small bands, one of which was paying Las Palomas a social call that morning. Along the Rio Grande it is only a short step at best from revolution to robbery, and either ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... At best I'm but the missing link Upon his Berlin-Baghdad line; This is the senior partner's show, not mine; Will he consult ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... the most part with the tomb, to rob death itself of a sort of immortality, to suggest in some faint and subtle way that death itself will pass away and be lost, as the sun is lost at evening in the strength of the sea. The sentiment that his work conveys to us of a beauty fragile at best, and rather exquisite than splendid, lacks, perhaps, a certain originality and even freshness; yet it preserves very happily just the beauty of flowers, of the flowers that grow everywhere about his home in the slowly closing valleys, the tender hills that lead to Castelnuovo of the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... are just what they were when Cromwell suppressed them and Dickens derided them. The democratic politician remains exactly as Plato described him; the physician is still the credulous impostor and petulant scientific coxcomb whom Moliere ridiculed; the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child farmer and at worst a flagellomaniac; arbitrations are more dreaded by honest men than lawsuits; the philanthropist is still a parasite on misery as the doctor is on disease; the miracles of priestcraft are none the less fraudulent and mischievous ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... is uninspired work at best," he said once to me, when I had been his confidential assistant for some years. "It leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead nowhere. It is playing with the wrong end of a rather dangerous toy. Far better, it would be, to examine the causes, and then the results would so easily slip ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... that these spirits have also forcibly to diffuse themselves into the human race to find an outlet, so that they may then completely disperse, with the result that men and women are suddenly imbued with these spirits and spring into existence. At best, (these human beings) cannot be generated into philanthropists or perfect men; at worst, they cannot also embody extreme perversity or extreme wickedness. Yet placed among one million beings, the spirit of intelligence, refinement, perception and subtlety will be above these one million ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that we ought to do all we can to limit, to restrain, to fetter the abuse of military power. Bayonets are at best illogical arguments. I am not willing, except as a case of sheerest necessity, ever to permit a military commander to exercise authority over life, liberty, and property. But, sir, it is part of the law of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... and difficult business and with so much at stake on behalf of the whole farming population of Western Canada it was necessary to place the helm in the hands of somebody who could pilot them through the shoals. At best it promised to be a ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... shot!—What! because I indulge thee with my confidence, and let thee, in reward, poll my lieges a little now and then, dost thou think it makes thee fit to be the husband of that beautiful vision, and a Count of the highest class to boot?—thee—thee, I say, low born, and lower bred, whose wisdom is at best a sort of dinning, and whose ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... microbiology may show that manganese and other essential nutrients are perhaps most important in their functions for the preservation and balancing of microbial life and actions in soils. There is where tree nutrition must begin; whatever is neglected in soils can at best only temporarily be adjusted afterwards. After all, deficiency symptoms on foliage show lack of soil fertility, and while we should welcome them for their diagnostic value, our corrective measures to be most economical ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... n't trouble to define his position. At best it was at that instant an anomalous one; so far as I knew there were no grounds upon which to hold him at all; and while I would have hesitated to say that he was actually in custody, at the same time it is also true that I would not have permitted ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Delacour had read it, her countenance suddenly changed—"Worth a hundred of your aunt's, I declare," said she, patting Belinda's cheek. "What a treasure to meet with any thing like a new heart!—all hearts, now-a-days, are second-hand, at best." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... himself, so far as conceivable and representable by human powers. It requires light from heaven to make them visible. If the church were merely illuminated from the inside,—that is, by what light a man can get from his own understanding,—the pictures would be invisible, or wear at best but a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Harman, for married couples? Why not try that experiment so many people have talked about of the conjoint kitchen and refectory, the conjoint nursery, the collective social life, so that the children who are single children or at best children in small families of two or three, may have the advantages of playfellows, and the young mothers still, if they choose, continue to have a social existence and go on with their professional or business, work? That's ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to withdraw Union forces from the heart of the war, send them off at a wasteful tangent, misuse them in eccentric operations just where they would give most offense to the French, and then expose them to what, at best, could only be a detrimental victory, and to what would much more likely be ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... enemy, to the serious detriment of a fine dress coat, but he himself marvellously escaping untouched. Two field pieces were at work close upon our left, firing directly over the heads of our men in front; only a random firing at best, and I was glad when an aide-de-camp galloped down and put a stop to the infernal din. Amid this scene of indescribable excitement and confusion, the regiment rapidly formed. Our knapsacks—were we going into action with their encumbrance? The order was shouted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is a sorry makeshift at best. Far better let nature have her way. There is but one hair-dye that is not positively harmful, this is henna, and its use entails no end of trouble because it must be frequently renewed,—some use it ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... character, in that which is the health of the mind. Those who formerly aimed at this upon the foot of philosophy appear to have had better success in eradicating the affections of tenderness and compassion than they had with the passions of envy, pride, and resentment: these latter, at best, were but concealed, and that imperfectly too. How far this observation may be extended to such as endeavour to suppress the natural impulses of their affections, in order to form themselves for business and the world, I shall not determine. But there does not appear any capacity ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... the wheel-house to call down an indignant enquiry of the Ancient Mariner as to the cause of the delay. Much sailing in all weathers in the keen air of the northern lakes had ruined Captain McTavish's voice, which, at best, had never been intended for any part but a high soprano. And now it was almost inaudible with anger. It ill became the dignity of a sea captain to be thus publicly berated in the presence of ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... acquiescence of the National Executive in any reasonable temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must at best attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout whole States. It is hoped that the already deeply afflicted people in those States may be somewhat more ready to give up the cause of their affliction if to this extent this vital matter be left to themselves, while no power ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... this war, and while our troops and even more our money and material resources may have decisive weight toward victory, yet it is France, England, Italy, Russia against whom the enemy has spent his strength. Our Allies have brought the war already to its turning point, and we can at best only add completeness to their achievement. Furthermore, while we aid France and her Allies, we are defending ourselves also. We went to war because Germany was killing our citizens, was plotting against ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... intact on the soil of other countries, and was a consolidated force, tired though not beaten. But the fat and filthy "Czar" Ferdinand of Bulgaria sat in voluntary exile, eating like bread the ashes of repentance, and mingling his drink with weeping; so that his country, yellow at best, and frightened by the fear of being done to as it had done by Serbia, quit abruptly, without shame, almost without firing a shot. With that defection the last wisp of Germany's long cherished dream of a boche Middle-Europe and a boche empire ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he expected to lead a quiet domestic life after ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is that too many goods are produced, the other that too few are consumed. The over-production theorist seeing that in a crisis warehouses are filled with goods that cannot be disposed of for what they cost (or at best, not so as to give a profit), and that factories are shut down and men are out of employment for lack of demand, declares that productive power has grown too great. The under-consumption theorist, seeing the same facts, says that the trouble is lack of purchasing power. He observes ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... peacemaker in this matter? And had I not then a right to feel blessed?—But the understanding was brought about simply by making the people meet—compelling them, as it were, to know something of each other really. Hitherto this girl had been a mere name, or phantom at best, to her lover's father; and it was easy for him to treat her as such, that is, as a mere fancy of his son's. The idea of her had passed through his mind; but with what vividness any idea, notion, or conception could be present ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... and sacrifice are acts of joy when it is a case of love's surrender. The blessedness of service is great when love is the inspiration of that service, and great is the enduring power of true God-given love. The human will at best is weak; human supports are like reeds which bend or break when most needed; intellectual capacity or natural talents are valuable; but, after all, they only stand for so much in one's life; but 'love never faileth'. I cannot sufficiently commend to you this law of love in the heart; ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... subject to disease, and, unless hygienic conditions be observed, will soon be stricken low by its presence. She must be relieved occasionally and get rest, or she cannot long withstand the combined influence of fatigue and disease. Her office is an arduous one at best, and the long, weary hours of night-watching should be compensated by exercise in the open air, as well as by sleep during the day. Unless this be done, the system will become exhausted, and sleep will intrude itself upon her at the time when the greatest diligence is required ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... greater number must be called monstrosities, such as six-fingered men, porcupine men, Ancon sheep, Niata cattle, etc.; and as they are widely different in character from natural species, they throw very little light on our subject. Excluding such cases of abrupt variations, the few which remain would at best constitute, if found in a state of nature, doubtful species, closely related to their ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... nothing to do with it, they cannot be active, their perfection is found in repose; they are an adjunct, an after-thought in the system. Thus all attempts to reconcile the Power with the popular religion must inevitably be failures, and more especially so in the Roman world. At best the Epicurean gods could but set an example of quietism which could not possibly be a force for good in that active world of business and government.[765] The real force of Epicurism, for the Roman at least, if I am not mistaken, was analogous to a religious force, though far indeed from ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... lived near the school, ran in their yards as soon as the classes were dismissed, and brought out their sleds. But the snow was too thin to pack well and at best the coasting was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed after months and months of sleeping out at night, between watches, on the hard ground or the sand, or at best on a few boughs when I wasn't too tired to pull them down, and my saddle for ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... hastened. If we are camped on the river bank sometimes a steel-pointed rifle-bullet fired straight down into the ice will penetrate to the water below and allow a little jet to bubble up. Melting snow is a tedious business at best; but, since three times out of four when camping it must be done, the aluminum pots are a treasure. There is still work for every one as well as the cook. Snow must be banked all round the tent to keep out the wind. Little heaps of spruce boughs ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... class? The "masses" is at best an unsatisfactory and indefinite term. It is very far from embracing even the southern Negro, and we need not forget that seven years ago there were 900,000 members of the race living outside of the South. What of the class, mainly ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... our noblest and best powers of mind, heart and hand. The constant probability that our term of service would at best be brief, and the desire to accomplish the greatest possible results, have proved an incentive to incessant industry. When difficulties increased, they served as a signal ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger |
