"Best" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because we cannot have everything we want, is to take the sure road to the defeat of our most cherished objects." These are timely words, and they reveal a state of feeling among colored people which finds all too fertile a soil in the tendency to ignore, or discriminate, or, at best, grant but a supercilious recognition, which still in great measure controls Southern sentiment. The colored people are naturally loyal and conservative. It is possible, now, so to develop these qualities, that they shall be ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... tower upon a headland rock, Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone, Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock; But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne, THEIR admiration thy best weapon shone; The part of Philip's son was thine, not then (Unless aside thy purple had been thrown) Like stern Diogenes to mock at men; For sceptred cynics earth were far ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... coherence; if he was vain at all, it was neither of his intellectual nor personal endowments, but of the few tunes he could play on his grandfather's pipes. He could run and swim, rare accomplishments amongst the fishermen, and was said to be the best dancer of them all; but he never thought of such comparison himself. The rescue of Lady Florimel made him very happy: he had been of service to her; but so far was he from cherishing a shadow of presumption, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... &c, by which petitioner is much decayed in his fortune. Beseeches his Majesty to grant him (he not being of the Company of Vintners in London, but authorised merely by his Majesty) leave to victual and retail meat, it being a thing much desired by noblemen and gentlemen of the best rank and others (for the which, if they please, they may also contract beforehand, as the custom is in other countries), there being no other place fit for them to eat in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... this modest confidence in himself, Mr Toots appeared to be involved in a good deal of uncertainty whether, on the whole, it was judicious to button the bottom button of his waistcoat, and whether, on a calm revision of all the circumstances, it was best to wear his waistbands turned up or turned down. Observing that Mr Feeder's were turned up, Mr Toots turned his up; but the waistbands of the next arrival being turned down, Mr Toots turned his down. The differences in point of waistcoat-buttoning, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... is a collection of nine stories, some short, and some not so short. They are all very good reading, and Kingston seems to be at his best in the short story mode. You will probably enjoy the two episodes from the life of "Uncle Boz", that form the second story, especially the first, when he organises the rescue of the crew and passengers of a vessel that is wrecked near his house ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... have been the more curious to express and report, not to upbraid any miserable man, or by way of derision (I rather pity them), but the better to discern, to apply remedies unto them; and to shew that the best and soundest of us all is in great danger; how much we ought to fear our own fickle estates, remember our miseries and vanities, examine and humiliate ourselves, seek to God, and call to him for mercy, that needs not look for any rods to scourge ourselves, since we carry them in our ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... agreement with the President, insisted that if no State could lawfully secede, it followed that no State could lawfully be deprived of statehood. These persons reinforced their legal argument with the sentimental one that lenity was the best policy. As General Grant afterward put it: "The people who had been in rebellion must necessarily come back into the Union, and be incorporated as an integral part of the nation. Naturally the nearer they were placed to an equality with the people who had not rebelled, the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... not far from his end, and Nestie was nursing him as best he could. He sponged his father's face—threatening to let the soap get into his eyes if he were not obedient—and dried it with a soft towel; then he brushed the soft, thin brown hair slowly and caressingly, as he ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... affairs than by simply being himself. The impression made upon his contemporaries by a man of strong and noble character is something which cannot be precisely estimated, but which we often feel to be invaluable. The best justification of biography in general is that it may strengthen and diffuse that impression. That, at any rate, is the spirit in which I have written this book. I have sought to show my brother as he was. Little as he cared for popularity (and, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... so, and proved to be young and handsome. Shefford had a thrill as he recognized her. She was Ruth, who had been one of his best-known acquaintances in the hidden village. She was pale, angry, almost sullen, and her breast heaved. She had no shame, but she seemed to be outraged. Her dark eyes, scornful and blazing, passed over the judge and his assistants, and on to the crowd ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... you carried the Clergy Reserves Bill through the House of Lords. I am assured that this result was mainly due to your own personal exertions. I am quite confident that both in what you have done, and in the way you have done it, you have best consulted the interests of the Province, the Church, and the Empire. I trust that what has happened will have here the favourable moral effect which you anticipate. It cannot fail ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... ourselves," he said. "Here is a pistol we took from you, and a sword. You must do the best you can with them. It is probable that, before the fight goes on long, there will be rifles without masters, and you will be able to find one. Are you ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... most frightful sight it was. Everyone young and old was running about crying, wailing, with faces painted black and white. They did not seem even to see the big steamer. It was such an appalling spectacle that the captain deemed it best not to land, but there were two men on board, residents of St. Paul returning from St. Louis who got into a boat and ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... is right. 'When the wind's in the west, the fish bite best,' is an old saying. Sandy reminded me of it ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... appears in its best form, the skill with which opportunities for collision or friction have been minimised is almost above praise. The Federal or Central power is so constructed as to represent the whole nation; its authority cannot by any misrepresentation be identified with the power of one State more than ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... these productions have frequently won the recognition and affection of their contemporaries by means of prose and verse quite unsuited to sustain the test of severe critical standards. Neither Longfellow's "Excelsior" nor Poe's "Bells" nor Whittier's "Maud Muller" is among the best poems of the three writers in question, yet there was something in each of these productions which caught the fancy of a whole American generation. It expressed one phase of the national mind in ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... calm as ever. "That's just as you will. I only meant to suggest it to you. My one wish is to do the best I can for you. Perhaps"—and he hesitated—"perhaps I'd better let it go on for an hour or two more, and then, whenever the air begins to get very oppressive—I mean when one begins to feel it's really failing us—one ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... and misfortune, loyalty and devotion to the British Empire, have brought into the Dominion of Canada the people who, within a comparatively short period of time, have won from the wilderness a country whose present condition is the best evidence of their industrial activity. Religion was a very potent influence in the settlement of New France. It gave to the country—to the Indian as well as to the Frenchman—the services of a zealous, devoted band of missionaries ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... upon the town of Gorey, lying seven miles to the northward. On the 1st of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken place between a mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of Gorey and a strong detachment from the rebel camp. Many persons at the time regarded this as the best fought action in the whole war. The two parties had met about two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certain that, if the yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge at the critical moment, the defeat would have been a most murderous one to the rebels. As it was, they escaped, though ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Elmer. "I wish it had been George Robbins, now, because that would have saved time. No such luck, it seems, so we'll just have to make the best ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... quickly. "I couldn't get my own consent to cheat a woman like Polly Everton. She has a right to demand the best that a man can give, and all of it. Besides, it doesn't lie altogether with me or my possible leanings, in Polly's case—as no man ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... ever talking of their Tom Jones's, "for so they call their favourites," and that the gentlemen, on their side, had their Sophias, one having gone so far as to give that all-popular name to his "Dutch mastiff puppy." But perhaps the best and freshest exhibition (for, as far as can be ascertained, it has never hitherto been made public) of Richardson's attitude to his rival is to be found in a little group of letters in the Forster collection at South Kensington. The writers are Aaron Hill and his daughters; but the letters ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... this—that the San Tome Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last revolution, which had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don Vincente Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character, invested with a mandate of reform by the best elements of the State. Serious, well-informed men seemed to believe the fact, to hope for better things, for the establishment of legality, of good faith and order in public life. So much the better, then, thought Sir ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... month or so later, in one of the mining towns down in the zinc belt of southwestern Missouri, I was to speak to a meeting of men. There were probably five or six hundred gathered in a Methodist Church. They were strangers to me. I was in doubt what best to say to them. One dislikes to fire ammunition at people that are absent. So stepping down to a front pew where several ministers were seated, I asked one of them to run his eye over the house and tell me what sort ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... weedy growth, not playing, but moving listlessly to and fro, fantastic in the wild inaptness of their costumes. One of these little creatures wore, with an odd, involuntary jauntiness, the cast-off best dress of some happier child, a gay little garment cut low in the neck and short in the sleeves, which gave her the grotesque effect of having been at a party the night before. Presently came two jaded women, a mother and a grandmother, that appeared, when they crawled out of their ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... we to apprehend that this secret article will prove in the hands of Britain a most dangerous engine. They may reveal to the Court of France the jealousies our Ministers entertain, the confidence they repose in them, with such falsehoods and additions as will best serve their purposes, and, by producing this secret article, gain credit for all they advance. This line they certainly pursued with respect to France, revealing all that they learnt from the Count de Vergennes, relative to his opinion of the first commission; nor is there room to doubt, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... journey to Greece, and showed off at Olympus and the Isthmus, at the same time robbing the Greek cities of numbers of their best statues and reliefs to adorn his Golden House; for the Romans had no original art—they could only imitate the Greeks and employ Greek artists. But danger was closing in on Nero. Such an Emperor could be endured no longer, and the generals of the armies in the provinces ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... when I'm lonely, he's taught me to sit down and make myself think of things I like—pictures, books, monuments, splendid places. It pushes the other things out and sets your mind going properly. He doesn't know I nearly always think of him. He's the best thought himself. You try it. You're not really jealous. You only THINK you are. You'll find that out if you always stop yourself in time. Any one can be such a fool if he lets himself. And he can always stop it if he makes ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... expected that I was to begin the proceedings. This expectation was quite natural and justifiable, for I had inadvertently invited them to meet me, but I could not make a speech to them, for the best of all reasons—that I did not know what to say. If I told them my real aims, their suspicions would probably be aroused. My usual stratagem of the weather and the crops was wholly inapplicable. For a moment I thought of proposing that a psalm should be sung as a means of breaking the ice, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of the arrest of Sauverand, the flight of his accomplice, Florence Levasseur, Don Luis Perenna's secretary, and the inexplicable disappearance of Perenna himself, whom they insisted, for the best of reasons, on identifying with ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... One of the best of November's surprises may come when all hope of late migrants has been given up. Walking near the river, our glance falls on what might be a painter's palate with blended colours of all shades resting on the smooth surface of the water. We look again and again, hardly believing our eyes, until ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Salesian colony of St. Jose or Sangrador, near which was a small settlement of Brazilians—a bad lot indeed. One of my best horses was stolen here, and I was never able to recover it. I remained in that unpleasant place for three days, endeavouring to recover the animal, but it ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... are no free schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best governments. God ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... blessed be the lips which uttered them! And we are beginning to fulfil the inspired ideal. Alas! we have suffered too much from permitting an evil germ to grow up side by side with this great annunciation, to fall speedily again into a like error. It has taken down into the dust our best and dearest, saddened almost every hearthstone in the land, and, saddest of all, wrought ruin on the Southern soul, maddening our brethren there into modern Cains, armed against the sacred life of their and our nationality. For what cause did Cain kill his brother? 'Because,' says St. John, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hesitated for a moment and then burst out, rather plaintively: "She's an awfully good sort, demme, she is. And so are you, Brock,—it's mighty decent of you. You're the only man in all the world that I could or would have asked to do this for me. You are my best friend, Brock,—you always have been." He seized the American's hand and wrung it fervently. Their eyes met in a long look of understanding ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... to have the best of the argument, and if Gallia had become a satellite of the moon, it would not have taken three months to catch sight of her. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... an exception, could have been possible in England within the last twenty years, what a discouragement it would have been for all the Royal Academicians, who would thereby have lost Hart! Dear good old SOLOMON! He was a poor HART that often rejoiced, and if he was not the best painter in the world, he was just about the worst punster. We hope to hear that our Royal Academicians, with their large-hearted and golden-tongued President at their head, will send a friendly expostulation to their Russian Brothers in oil, and obtain the abrogation of this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... and hungry mastiffs once espied A dead ass floating on a water wide. The distance growing more and more, Because the wind the carcass bore,— "My friend," said one, "your eyes are best; Pray let them on the water rest: What thing is that I seem to see? An ox, or horse? what can it be?" "Hey!" cried his mate; "what matter which, Provided we could get a flitch? It doubtless is our lawful prey: The puzzle is to find some way To get the prize; ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... thirty years of age. But however and whensoever he did escape, what hatred he must cherish against him to whom he owed his long imprisonment; who had taken him, rich, brave, glorious, beloved by women, feared by men, to cut off his life's best, happiest years; for it is not life, it is merely existence, in prison! Meantime, Mazarin redoubled his surveillance over the duke. But like the miser in the fable, he could not sleep for thinking ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have been the last words spoken by King David. Joab was his best general, and had ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... meet'st the storm; Though hosts assail thee, thou thyself a host, Prepar'st to meet the invader on the coast: Thy generous sons contending which shall be First in the phalanx, gathering by the sea; No dastard fear appals them, as they teach How best to hurl the bolt, or ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... "Bed's the best place, sir, for you," she said. "So just you lie quiet 'ere, sir, and Rose'll look after you. And if there's anything you fancy, sir, you tell Rose, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... parties nor for imposing upon them arbitrators whom they might wish to reject, nor, finally, for failing to take into account any other suggestion which the parties might wish to make. It is indeed evident that the Council will always be desirous of acting {178} in the manner best calculated to increase to the utmost degree the confidence which the Committee of Arbitrators should inspire in ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... available to members of the London Library. In most cases a few words of description are added, and the whole list has been so classified that the reader—it is hoped—will be able without much difficulty to pick out those volumes which will best help him whether to a general view or in gathering detailed information ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... in the presence of three other persons, also, as appeared, interested inquirers. Kate Croy was one of these; Lord Mark had just become aware of her, and she, all arrested, had immediately seen, and made the best of it, that she was far from being first in the field. She had brought a lady and a gentleman to whom she wished to show what Lord Mark was showing Milly, and he took her straightway as a reinforcement. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... benefices, when they become vacant, must be given away; and the friends of power may, if there be no inherent disqualification, easonably expect them. Swift accepted, 1713, the deanery of St. Patrick, the best preferment that his friends could venture[101] to give him. That ministry was, in a great degree, supported by the clergy, who were not yet reconciled to the author of the Tale of a Tub, and would not, without much discontent and indignation, have borne to see him installed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Kalergy, on perceiving the careless arrangements of his enemy, soon induced his troops to creep up pretty close to the Moreotes, when he suddenly jumped up, and shouted to his followers, "The shortest way is the best. Follow me!" and rushed forward. His whole band was within the hostile lines in an instant. The manoeuvre was so unexpected, that few of the rebels fired; many were loading their muskets, and none had time to draw ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... figure, playing no politics, interested not at all in war and diplomacy, in a way to the sea or to a place in the sun—one of the millions who must adapt themselves to new and fearsome situations and do their best. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the king repeated to his vizier what his wife had told him, and bade him investigate the matter, and be ready with a satisfactory answer within six mouths, on pain of death. The vizier promised to do his best, though he felt almost certain of failure. For live months he labored indefatigably to find a reason for the laughter of the fish. He sought everywhere and from everyone. The wise and learned, and they who were skilled in magic and in all manner of trickery, were consulted. Nobody, however, ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... independent thing. Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind, If each most obvious and particular thought, Not in a mystical and idle sense, 230 But in the words of Reason deeply weighed, Hath no beginning. Blest the infant Babe, (For with my best conjecture I would trace Our Being's earthly progress,) blest the Babe, Nursed in his Mother's arms, who sinks to sleep 235 Rocked on his Mother's breast; who with his soul Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye! For him, in one dear Presence, there exists ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... and dry cheese is necessary for this somewhat peculiar soup, but the best cheese of all is, undoubtedly, Gruyere. Grate half a pound of cheese and spread a layer of this at the bottom of the soup-tureen. Cover this layer of cheese with some very thin slices of stale crumb of bread. Then put ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... and that he must be a magician; and they thought that their daughter must also be a magician, as she had recognised the prince when he was a caterpillar, and she could not even see his long hair; so they were afraid and thought it best to make over the kingdom to their son-in-law, and they abdicated in his favour, and ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... the happiness of such an achievement, while he could only imagine how that spirit must shrink from reflection which animates the self-condemned slave to fight, not merely to fasten chains on others, but to rivet his own the closer. The best affections of man having put the sword into the hand of Thaddeus, his principle as a Christian did not remonstrate against his ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... mere suggestions of the farewell gifts which Jesus left to his friends when he went away,—his peace, his joy, the key to all the treasures of his kingdom. He had blessed them in wonderful ways during his life; but the best and richest things of his love were kept to the last, and given only after he was gone. Indeed, the best things were given through his death, and could be given in no other way. Other men live to do good; they hasten to finish their ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... their bed in the borrowed dress which I had so lately exchanged for the rags of an hospital. Their couches breathed the richest perfumes, while I was reeking from a pest-house; and I—I repeat it—the heir, the produce of their earliest and best love, was thus treated. No wonder that my look was that ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... of State, he was now all in all in the council. The other great lords, highborn and highly titled as they were and served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees—Nottinghams, Northamptons, Suffolks—were, after all, ciphers or at best, mere pensioners of Spain. For all the venality of Europe was not confined to the Continent. Spain spent at least one hundred and fifty thousand crowns annually among the leading courtiers of James while his wife, Anne of Denmark, a Papist ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to yield!" And he went from the House of Debate, but Maev with Ailill bent low in plot: All around us our foes," said the king, "shall close, if Finnabar stays here not; Many kings of Erin, who seek that maid, shall hear of her borne away, And in wrath they will rush on our land; 'twere best that Fraech we devise to slay; Ere that ruin he bring, let us make our spring, and the ill yet unwrought arrest." "It were pity such deed should be done," said Maev, "and to slay in our house our guest! 'Twill bring shame on us ever." "No shame to our house," said King Ailill, "that death ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... Bathilde in the best room; he kept the other for himself, and put Nanette in the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... and felt it strongly, too; but now that he was embarked in the business, he must put the best face he could upon it. Still it was a moment or two before he could ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the beard, whereby a small part of it was lost. When the dwarf saw that he screamed out, "Is that civil, you toad-stool, to disfigure one's face? Was it not enough to clip off the end of my beard? Now you have cut off the best part of it. I cannot let myself be seen by my people. I wish you had been made to run the soles off your shoes!" Then he took out a sack of pearls which lay in the rushes, and without saying a word more he dragged it away and disappeared ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... our heart may be set upon undying good, and that our aspiration may never fold its wings and rest on anything lower than the highest. This shall not make dreamers of us. It shall stand us in good stead in the thick of the world. The man who gets 'the best of the bargain' is always the man who is most honest; for the most precious thing that a man stands to win or lose in any deal is the cleanness of his soul. The man who gets the best of the argument is always the ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... as hard, as lofty as the Matterhorn itself. And while it stands, it wants not only aspiration, it wants tenderness; it wants humility; it wants the unrest which tenderness and humility must breed, and which Mr. Ruskin so clearly recognises in the best Gothic art. And, meanwhile, it wants naturalness. The mere smooth spire or broach—I had almost said, even the spire of Salisbury—is like no tall or commanding object in Nature. It is merely the caricature of one; it may be of the mountain-peak. The outline must be ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... investment. Exports feature textiles and footwear, fishery products, rice, rubber, jewelry, automobiles, computers and electrical appliances. Thailand has recovered from the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis and was one of East Asia's best performers in 2002. Increased consumption and investment spending and strong export growth pushed GDP growth up to 6.3% in 2003 despite a sluggish global economy. The highly popular government ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... "I have. I did not intend to tell you, but you have forced me to do it. You see, she is a young woman of extraordinary good sense. She believes she ought to marry, and she is going to try to make the very best marriage that she possibly can. She has suitors who have very strong claims upon her consideration—I am not going to tell you those claims, but I know them. Now, you have no claim—special claim, I mean—but for all this, I believe, as I have ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... happened, the seat would be yours. This case only gives us the right to go to the poll. We are keen upon Annys because she's our best ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... suspect that fellow,' said Ralph, when he returned to his own office. 'Therefore, until I have thought of the shortest and least troublesome way of ruining him, I hold it best to keep ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... back the tears at this causeless injury. "Mr. Leverich said it was best not to. Nobody knows about your being away at all. You're not going now, Justin—without even ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... safety lies in the course of their innocent activities. Not a child in the slums is born to be lost. They are all born to be saved, and the raft that carries them unharmed through the perilous torrent of tenement life is the child's unconscious aspiration for the best. But there must be lighthouses to guide ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... in this connection that the discussion turned on the wide-spread use, or rather abuse of gold and velvet. It tended to depreciate the Order and the state of chivalry. But the sovereign thought it best to defer this point until his return from his proposed journey to Guelders. Lengthy, too, were the discussions upon the exact usage in respect to wearing the collar and insignia of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... slyness with the whole truth at stake. The detective's manner increased the hatred which had blazed in Bobby's mind when he had stood in the bedroom over his grandfather's body. For a moment he wished with all his heart that he might accept the challenge. He did the best he could. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... home blissfully unconscious that half the class was talking itself hoarse over Jean Eastman's bad taste in appointing a notorious "cutter" and "flunker" to represent them on so important an occasion, just because she happened to be the best dressed and prettiest girl in ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... as to your reasons. Your letter and your petition were instrumental in persuading the Committee to a complete change of policy. This should not be without the very best of reasons." ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... Jordan, whose waters had been sanctified by the Saviour's baptism, and no doubt also a fear that he might by relapse forfeit the sacramental remission of sins. He wished to secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past sins, with as little risk as possible, and thus to make the best of both worlds. Deathbed baptisms then were to half Christians of that age what deathbed conversions and deathbed communions are now. But he presumed to preach the gospel, he called himself the bishop of bishops, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... accent denoted that. His manner was rough but open. He made a good impression upon the Englishman, who was wont to accept strangers in this wild and savage country at their own valuation, asking no questions and assuming the best of them until they proved themselves undeserving ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... one-tenth of those engaged was placed hors de combat, was considered a very sanguinary affair. During the war there were many engagements where the defeated party suffered a loss of less than one-twentieth. Wilson Creek can take rank as one of the best-fought battles, when the number engaged is brought ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... In the best examples, where the wool is not bought from traders, but carded, spun and dyed by the weaver, the Navajo blanket is a perfect production of its kind, and I cannot help wondering that the manufacture of these rug-like ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... mine not obtain his approval. Unless an author proceeds in this way, the reader never knows how far he may trust him, how far the evidence justifies his judgment. For—not to speak of cheats and fools—the best informed are apt to make assertions unsupported or insufficiently supported by facts, and the wisest cannot help seeing things through the coloured spectacles of their individuality. The foregoing remarks are intended to explain ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... ill matters were going for him, stole away with the best face he could; but before he left the room, he stooped down, and collecting as many of the hairs of his beard, which I had plucked from him, as he could find, to which he cunningly added some of my own hair, he brandished them ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... been high-priests in Solomon's temple, and the people having treated them as noblemen even at that time. We will remind the Christian ladies of this whenever they talk to us about their own ancestors, who, at best, only date back to the middle ages or to Charlemagne." "That is right. I like to hear you talk in this strain," exclaimed Marianne, joyfully. "I see you will represent us in Vienna in a noble and proud manner, and be an honor to the Jews of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Quinn, Wind-River Smith, and me were putting up hay at the lake beds. It was a God-forsaken, lonesome job, to say the best of it, and we took to collecting pets, to make it seem a little more ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... train. There were men of millions and persons of modest means who had slept side by side on the journey over; voyagers with balances of tens of thousands of dollars in banks and not a cent in their pocketbooks; men able and eager to pay any price for the best accommodations to be had, yet satisfied and happy sharing ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... by other companies for loftier positions. In this way the affairs of the company were constantly in the hands of men who had gone through it all, who could weed out the worthless among the new men, and select the best of those who had left the road at the beginning of the strike. The result is that there is scarcely an official of importance in the employ of the company to-day who has not been with it for a quarter of a century. The man who took the first engine out at the beginning of the ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... spirit of Jean Paul. He then wrote three sympathetic depictions of Parisian Bohemia: 'Frederic et Bernadette, Mimi Pinson, and Le Secret de Javotte', all in 1838. 'Le Fils de Titien (1838) and Croiselles' (1839) are carefully elaborated historical novelettes; the latter is considered one of his best works, overflowing with romantic spirit, and contrasting in this respect strangely with 'La Mouche' (1853), one of the last flickerings of his imagination. 'Maggot' (1838) bears marks of the influence of George Sand; 'Le Merle Blanc' (1842) is a sort of allegory dealing with ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... that mankind began with the Homo Alalus, speechless, dumb man, an hypothesis now looked npon by the best authorities as untenable; and the folk have imagined that, were not certain procedures gone through with upon the new-born child, it would remain dumb through life, and, if it were allowed to do ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... in the same room six pictures by Correggio which are said to be among his best works—one of them, his celebrated Magdalen. There is also Correggio's "Holy Night," or the Virgin with the shepherds in the manger, in which all the light comes from the body of the Child. The surprise of the shepherds is most beautifully exprest. In one ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... an' as aw'd a turn that way mysel I thought aw'd just walk up as far as his haase, and buy a twothree, and try and hev a word wi' Betty i' th' bargain. So aw weshed mysel, and donned mi Sunday best, and went up. ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... him to go to Hollywell,—adhered to his second resolution, and wrote to his uncle a calm and lofty letter, free from all token of offence, expressing every wish for the happiness of Guy and Amabel, and thanking his uncle for the invitation, which, however, he thought it best to decline, much as he regretted losing the opportunity of seeing Hollywell and its inhabitants again. His regiment would sail for Corfu either in May or June; but he intended, himself, to travel on foot through Germany and Italy, and would ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... frightfully tabooed or unclean as to be quite useless. Food would be set for him on the ground, and he would then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands carefully held behind his back, would gnaw at it as best he could. In some cases he would be fed by another person, who with outstretched arm contrived to do it without touching the tabooed man; but the feeder was himself subjected to many severe restrictions, little less onerous than those which were imposed upon ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... too, even though it is the best which can be made. Every window has to be bricked in partially; every entrance where bullets might flick in must be closed; and in the heat and dust of a Peking summer the stench is terrible. Worse still are the flies, which, attracted by the newly spilt blood of strong men, swarm so thickly that ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... in gesture has two advantages: it presents all the interest of the most fascinating drama, and is the best means of gaining suppleness by accustoming ourselves ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... I thought the log was sound. But what says the unequalled chief—is the old woman, my wife, indeed dead? Ah, if she is dead all may yet prove to have been for the very best;' and he clasped his hands and looked up piously to heaven, in which the moon was once ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... roulette tables and sedan-chairs of the very best make. There were elegant stalls at which trinkets were distributed to the guests,—note-books, pocket-mirrors, gloves, knives, scissors, purses, fans, sweetmeats, scents, pastilles, and perfumes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that I was in my best clothes, and I certainly didn't look like a penniless clerk. If the fellow had struck a blow at me, I couldn't have been more astonished than I was by that answer. Astonishment was the first feeling, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... "art," but in the other house no such restrictions existed. It was to the latter that Conward led. Dave had been there before, in the cheap upper gallery, but Conward's tickets admitted to the best seats in the house. Dave had adopted town ways to the point where he changed his clothes and put on a white collar Saturday evenings, and he found himself amid the gay rustle and perfumes of the orchestra floor with a very pleasant sense of being somebody ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... bold and vehement. If argument were necessary to enforce the importance of cultivation in gesticulation, one sufficiently cogent might be drawn from the graceful skill and power displayed in this art by the best actors on the stage. No truth is clearer than that their excellence in this is ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... for which the present articles must be regarded as furnishing only a few introductory hints. This work has been for several years on my mind, but as it may still be long before I can find the leisure needful for writing it out, it seemed best to republish these preliminary sketches which have been some time out of print. The projected work, however, while covering all the points here treated, will have a much wider scope, dealing on the one hand with the natural genesis of the complex aggregate of beliefs and aspirations ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Nature's last, best gift: Creature in whom excell'd, whatever could To sight or thought be nam'd! Holy, divine! good, amiable, and sweet! ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... the gold-fish, with fan-like tails as long as their bodies, has also turtles. These boys at last settle that of all the pretty things they have seen they would best like to spend their money on a young turtle. For their pet rabbits and mice died, but turtles, they say, are painted on fans and screens and boxes because turtles live for ten thousand years. Even the noble white crane is said to live no more than a thousand years. In this picture they have carried ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... Whether this arose from the preponderance of the intellectual over the animal in his nature, or the subjection of his passions by discipline, was never determined by those who knew the gifted South Carolinian best; but such was the fact. His enemies could find no opprobrious appellation for him but "Catiline," instead of "Caldwell," which was his middle name—no crime but ambition. He disregarded the unwritten laws of the Senate, which required Senators to appear in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... do, it is with anger. What availeth that solemn music, that noble chanting, that incense of sweet savour? What availeth kneeling before that grand altar of silver, surmounted by that figure with its silver hat and breast-plate, the emblem of one who, though an apostle and confessor, was at best an unprofitable servant? What availeth hoping for remission of sin by trusting in the merits of one who possessed none, or by paying homage to others who were born and nurtured in sin, and who alone, by the exercise of a lively faith granted from above, could hope to preserve ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 196) were the textbooks read, with perhaps a little more practical work in discussion than in Arts or Medicine. The Oxford course of study in both Civil and Canon Law (R. 116 b-c) gives a good idea as to what was required for degrees in one of the best of the early ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... eleven P.M., when Sedgwick received the order, he had immediately marched, regardless of what was in his front, straight through the town, and up the heights beyond, paying no heed whatever to the darkness of the night, but pushing on his men as best he might, it is not improbable that he could have gained the farther side of this obstacle by daylight. But is it not also probable that his corps would have been in questionable condition for either a march or a fight? It would be extravagant to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... cheap after his failure. The Caribbee, close-hauled, was standing off to the south-east, while The Starry Flag was a quarter of a mile astern of her. Neither had the advantage, and it was still an open question which could make the best time. Levi soon found that the Caribbee was running away from him; but she carried a main gaff-topsail and a staysail. Fortunately he had similar sails on board, though he seldom used them. They were set when the two vessels were about a ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... passers-by come and go. The merchants converse and call to each other from the thresholds of their shops. The festival, the ambassadors, Coppenole, the Pope of the Fools, are in all mouths; they vie with each other, each trying to criticise it best and laugh the most. And, meanwhile, four mounted sergeants, who have just posted themselves at the four sides of the pillory, have already concentrated around themselves a goodly proportion of the populace scattered on the Place, who condemn themselves to immobility and fatigue ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... could write such pure and idiomatic Portuguese, often used peculiar Spanish, not perhaps so much from ignorance as from a wish to make the best of both languages. Thus he uses the personal infinitive and makes words rhyme which he must have known could not possibly rhyme in Spanish, e.g. parezca with cabeza (Portug. pare[c,]a—cabe[c,]a). So mucho rhymes with fruto, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... successors free access, through the gate-house, of walking in the garden, and leave to gather twenty bushels of roses yearly therein! During the life of Dr. Cox an attempt was made by Elizabeth on some of the best manors belonging to the See of Ely; but it was not till that of his successor, Dr. Martin Heton, that Dereham Grange, with other manors, were alienated to the Crown. See Dugdale's Monasticon, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... grave, when public opinion could be of no service to him, many who had hunted him down began to view less harshly the crime which had led to his death; and this man was one of the number. He said that, although he deserved punishment for his previous evil deeds, yet the best and purest act of his life had been that by which he had struck down the destroyer ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... where he had been confined by the manager under the guard of four scene-shifters, who threw the text out of the window to copyists bit by bit as it was composed. Tartini is said to have composed "Il trillo del Diavolo," considered to be his best work, in a dream. Rossini, speaking of the chorus in G minor in his "Dal tuo stellato soglio," tells us: "While I was writing the chorus in G minor I suddenly dipped my pen into a medicine bottle instead of the ink. I made a blot, and when I dried this with the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... we placed several small pieces of gunny sack, and on top of this we put several pieces of trench candles. When the candle melted and ran down over the sacking it produced a good steady blaze and it gave out considerable heat—best of all, it didn't make any smoke, for of course smoke in the front line would be apt to draw shell fire. Over our fire we could boil the full of our mess tin of water and make our tea—also, we could warm up our rations in this way, and meat and vegetables tasted a lot better when they were hot. ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... were despondent; but Girard, looking far beyond the present, saw a prosperous future. He was satisfied that it would require but a short time to restore to Philadelphia its old commercial importance, and he was satisfied that his leases would be the best investment he had ever made. The result proved the correctness of his views. His profits on these ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr. |
