"Casual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Jefferson at Monticello' is too ambitious a title for a little work of 138 pages, octavo though they be. It is, however, an extremely valuable and interesting collection of anecdotes, fac-simile documents, and casual reminiscences of Thomas Jefferson, as preserved by Captain Edmund Bacon, now a wealthy and aged citizen of Kentucky, and who was for twenty years the chief overseer and business-manager of Jefferson's estate at Monticello. In it we see the author of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... people, until he espies, lingering outside the door, another gentleman, whom he at once knows, by his air and manner (for there is a kind of free-masonry in the craft), to be a brother out-and-outer, and towards whom he accordingly makes his way. Conversation being soon opened by some casual remark, the second out-and-outer confidentially informs the first, that he is one of the rough sort and hates that kind of thing, only he couldn't very well be off coming; to which the other replies, that that's ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... mighty elements, Which Heaven from the stormy north unlocks; Nor whatso'er the gruesome winter sends, Can tear thee from the spot where thou art chained. Thou art the veritable portrait of my faith, Which, fixed, remains 'gainst every casual chance. Ever the self-same ground dost thou Grasp, cultivate and comprehend; and stretch Thy grateful roots unto the generous breast. Upon one only object I Have fixed my spirit, sense, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... is approached by the passage giving entrance to the hall. The eastern half was built when Nevile was master between 1593 and 1615, and the library designed by Sir Christopher Wren occupies the river frontage. To the casual observer this building is a comparatively commonplace one, built in two stories, but although it allows space for the arcaded cloister to go beneath it, the library above consists of one floor and the interior ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... are Kitty's sisters. They are twins, and there present age is, I think, nineteen. Though I say it who should not, they are both astonishingly attractive young persons, and the more I see of them the more the fact is borne in upon me. Indeed, a casual remark of mine to that effect, uttered to my wife, by an unfortunate coincidence, on the very morning upon which one of the numerous Deceased Wife's Sister's Bills passed its Second Reading in the House, gave rise to a coldness of demeanour on her part ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... believe in presentiments. They attribute that curious feeling that something unpleasant is going to happen to such mundane causes as liver or a chill or the weather. For my own part, I think there is more in the matter than the casual observer might imagine. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... to look as though Bud had deliberately resolved upon carrying a guilty conscience all the rest of his life. He had made absolutely no effort to trace the parents of Lovin Child when he was in town. On the contrary he had avoided all casual conversation, for fear some one might mention the fact that a child had been lost. He had been careful not to buy anything in the town that would lead one to suspect that he had a child concealed upon his premises, ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... Not content with a casual inspection, he particularly examined those papers which, in his dream adventure, he had believed to have been submitted to mysterious inspection. They showed no signs of having been touched. The casement curtains were drawn across the recess formed by the French windows, and sunlight streamed in ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... factories, brick-yards, foundries, timber-yards, docks, and railway works. On this occasion Yule, contrary to his custom, kept a journal, and a few excerpts may be given here, as affording some notion of his casual talk to those ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending by casual extrinsic splendour the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. A man is in all cases simply the man, of the same intrinsic worth and weakness, whether his worth and weakness lie hidden in the depths of his own consciousness, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... name but "Bunker Bean!" Often he wrote good ones on casual slips of paper and fancied them his; names like Trevellyan or Montressor or Delancey, with musical prefixes; or a good, short, beautiful, but dignified name like "Gordon Dane." He liked that one. It suggested something. But Bean! ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... as though summoned by some purely casual flicker of the Superintendent's thin fingers another ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... mastered his weakness and boldly thrust his hand into his breast, withdrew it, and burst out into a wild hysterical laugh as he gave a casual glance at his hand before passing it cautiously into his left breast-pocket and bringing out, bit by bit, the fragments of the bottle of preparation which the doctor had dispensed, and that it had been his mission to deliver that afternoon. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... had foreseen, tongues did wag—those tongues of the countryside, avid of anything that might spice the tedium of dull lives and brains. And, though no breath of gossip came to Winton's ears, no women visited at Mildenham. Save for the friendly casual acquaintanceships of churchyard, hunting-field, and local race-meetings, Gyp grew up knowing hardly any of her own sex. This dearth developed her reserve, kept her backward in sex-perception, gave her a faint, unconscious contempt for men—creatures always at the beck and call ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not likely, he thought, that any of the neighbors could tell him where she had gone when she had not felt like giving him that much of her confidence. But he went down to Smith's, making casual inquiry, saying nothing about the note which she had left, not taking that to be ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... baulks of timber forming the staith was being hauled at by five women and two men! Two others were in a listless fashion leaning their shoulders against the boat itself. With the last 'Heave-ho!' at the shortened tackle the women laid hold of the nets, and with casual male assistance laid them out on the shingle, removed any fragments of fish, and generally prepared them for ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... of a reflective turn, on the—er— far-reaching consequences of events which, to the casual eye, might appear insignificant. An infant is born in the remote island of Corsica. Years roll on, and we find our gardens denuded of a bulb, the favourite habitat of which must lie at least eight hundred miles from Corsica as the crow flies. How unlikely was it, sir, that you or I, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sergeant," the New-UN orderly said. She was ushered into a small, comfortably appointed chamber adjoining the main conference hall, and the perfectly controlled coolness of her bearing was at its peak. To the casual glance of the orderly, perhaps, it flawlessly masked the vital convictions which had long seethed within her and made her the little known woman she was. The studied mask itself had made her the efficient Space officer she was. And at the moment she was glad for it, ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... anything so absurd! You must certainly go to the dinner. How like you! How casual of you! For a mere trifle to offend the man who might be of the greatest use ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... receiving accidental information that a party was out in quest of him, he returned home, and escaped the fate designed for him, which befell his patron the Archbishop.] In their excited imagination the casual rencounter had the appearance of a providential interference, and they put to death the archbishop, with circumstances of great and cold-blooded cruelty, under the belief, that the Lord, as they expressed it, had ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the extraordinary depth of his sentiments, and the fervor of his feelings. It may be added that these mental traits were not generally ascribed to him by casual or ordinary associates. He was, in manners and bearing, evidently not one who sought friendships or displayed to the general gaze the current of his thoughts. Consequently, of intimates he had but few, and was considered by those ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... fate reserved for me? Perhaps Welbeck would adopt me for his own son. Wealth has ever been capriciously distributed. The mere physical relation of birth is all that entitles us to manors and thrones. Identity itself frequently depends upon a casual likeness or an old nurse's imposture. Nations have risen in arms, as in the case of the Stuarts, in the cause of one the genuineness of whose birth has been denied and can never be proved. But if ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... I remember falling asleep myself whilst a poet was reading to me an ode on the beauties of Sherwood Park. These beauties too soon became familiar to my eye; and even the idea of being the proprietor of this enchanting place soon palled upon my vanity. Every casual visitor, all the strangers, even the common people, who were allowed once a week to walk in my pleasure-grounds, enjoyed them a thousand times more than I could. I remember, that, about six weeks after I came to Sherwood Park, I one evening escaped from the crowds of friends who filled ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... saves a reminiscence that means a good deal by means of a casual question. I asked the first of those two old New-Yorkers the following question: "Who, on the whole, seemed to you the most considerable ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Now the casual observer would say of the great orator: he has money; his family is not in want. But the statement would ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... boldly and there was a purpose in its course. Often it seemed to be on the point of recklessly running against the rocky shore, but always it sheered off in time, and though its advance was apparently casual it was moving down the ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... And they went to the opera. On Thursdays he drove to town, and, putting that fat chap and his horses up, met her in Kensington Gardens, picking up the carriage after he had left her, and driving home again in time for dinner. He threw out the casual formula that he had business in London on those two days. On Wednesdays and Saturdays she came down to give Holly music lessons. The greater the pleasure he took in her society, the more scrupulously fastidious he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... painfully. "But these long-horns that's raised on salt-horse an' rawhide, maintains a jaw on 'em that makes iron an' granite seem right mushy. I didn't figure I'd recount the disturbance, aimin' to pass it off casual regardin' the disfigurin' of my profile. But if you-all witnessed the debate, I might as well go ahead an' oncork the details. In the first place, this warrior is a deputy that's out ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... the shore for the spot at which the bush road debouched, and this we eventually found with some difficulty, for, like everything else connected with the factory, it had been very carefully arranged with the object of screening it from casual observation. But once discovered, our difficulties in that respect were at an end, for we found that it ran down into a tiny indentation in the shore, just sufficiently spacious to accommodate two of ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... disappointment. But the longer she watched the grave, quiet face the more attractive it became. Certainly he was a handsome man, and, judging from the contour of head and features, an intellectual one. There was an absolute repose in the countenance which might have passed with casual observers for inertia, indifference; but to the practiced physiognomist it expressed the perfect peace of a mind and heart completely harmonious. The voice was remarkably clear and well modulated. His text was selected from the first and last chapters of Ecclesiastes, and consisted ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of villages are not those distressing dump-heaps which they too often are in America. Yet there is no excessive air of trimness. The order and grooming seem a part of nature's processes. There is, too, a casual charm about the villages themselves, the graceful, accidental grouping of houses and gardens, which suggests growth rather than premeditation. The general harmony does not preclude, but rather comes of, the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... And besides these casual visitors there are numberless creatures which have lived and multiplied there, ever since I first visited the pool. Tender red, olive-colored, and green seaweeds, stony corallines, and acorn-barnacles lining the floor, sea-anemones clinging to the sides, sponges tiny and many-colored hiding ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... jewelled hand, and with the other twirling a long and silken moustache. Handsome, graceful, and thoroughly inured to the public gaze, he fronted a small circle of gapers like an actor adroit to make the best of himself, and his tongue wagged fast enough to wag a man's leg off. At a casual glance he might have been taken for thirty, but his age was fifty and more—if you could catch him in the morning before he had ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... thus condensed into a small volume, like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its fur. Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity? I am not certain. But it is always the case that these exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless and the feathered game featherless, except for the tail-feathers and the pinion-feathers ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... naturally brought their faces and lips together. They did this with the utmost gravity three times, and then embraced again, rocking on pivoted feet like a metronome. Alas! it was no momentary inspiration. The most casual and indifferent observer could see that it was the result of long previous practice and shameless experience. And as such—it was a revelation ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... CYNTHIA. Casual actions of this class That are done without intention Of a second end, to mention Here were out of place: I pass To another point: There 's no one Who with genius, or denied it,— Dowered with mind, but has applied it Some especial track to ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... things, as well as, in a few instances, some reading. Hall, however, actually surprised me. He spoke with a precision and knowledge of mechanics that would have done credit to a scholar, and with a simplicity that added to the influence of what he said. Some casual remark induced me to put in—"Vell, I might s'pose an Injin voult cut so das column, but I might not s'pose a vhite man could." This opinion gave the discourse a direction towards anti-rentism, and in a few minutes it caught all the attention of ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... atmosphere, till it acquires almost the black of ink; the unsunned portion of the paper remaining unaffected, or so slightly as to render it almost certain that what little action of the kind exists is due to the effect of casual dispersed light incident in the preparation of the paper. I have before me a specimen of paper so treated in which the effect of thirty seconds' exposure to sunshine was quite invisible at first, and which is now of so intense ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... enough to the former Helen to leave no doubt it was herself. But a casual acquaintance ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and he did not wish to read it, but he had to pretend to be interested in it, for the girl showed no desire to offer any more than the casual civilities of one stranger to another. He hoped that he might suddenly look up and find that she was regarding him intently ... she would hurriedly glance away from him with an air of pretty confusion ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... stream and disappears in its black shadows. The wind blows gently from the west: it is just strong enough to show the silver sides of the willow leaves. The sound of the weir, although so soft, is able to exclude the clacking of the mill and all intermittent, casual noises. For two hours it has filled my ears and brought a deeper repose than that of mere silence. It is not uniform, for the voices of innumerable descending threads of water with varying impulses can be ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... and anxiety of the passage, forgot all about the casual traveller from whom he had just parted. Little did he dream that that man carried in his breast the document upon which his fortune depended, and the obtaining of which would establish his mother and sister ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... during the days that immediately followed Teeny-bits' first appearance on the football field, more than one candidate for the team made it a point to be present in the shower-bath room in order that he might cast seemingly casual glances at the unusual mark. Some of the Ridgleyites were more open in their curiosity and did not hesitate to question Teeny-bits, but they all received answers similar to the one that Neil Durant had received. To Teeny-bits there was nothing strange ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... along the lane which later debouched upon the main thoroughfare of Poketown, it was evident to the most casual glance that the old Day house was not the only dwelling far along in a state of decay. Poketown was ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus it was that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man's references, he invited Travail ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... Peter, I had come a little nearer to being actively aware that I was good-looking, only to anathematize the fact. Now, catching sight of my reflection in the mirror, I wondered eagerly whether I really were fair, and wished I had some higher authority to think so than the casual jokes of my sisters. It did not add to my presence of mind to find that my involuntary glance to the mirror had been intercepted—perhaps even my motive guessed at—he appeared to have a frightfully ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... shook hands, and exchanged casual remarks as if nothing were amiss, nor was the subject mentioned, except that Mrs. Arthuret contrived to get a ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... being hardly the word to apply to his few casual acquaintances,—were greatly surprised at this. Such an establishment seemed to them the last sort of thing a man of this type would have gone in for. He had seemed such a decent sort, too. Really, a few professed to be quite shocked—they said you never knew how the ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... to be on the "acting staff." Each new worker was pledged to secrecy, as surprise was to be the order of the day, and a certain portion of the grounds was marked off by placards bearing the announcement that "Trespassers would be persecuted!" A casual observer might have imagined a slip of the pen in this last word, but the girls knew better. It would be persecution, indeed, and of no light nature, which would be visited upon a willing violator of ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... missing man was obliged to confess that their most protracted and confidential conversation had been on the comparative efficiency of ship biscuits and soda crackers. Mr. Banks, who was known to have spoken to him, could only remember that one warm evening, in reply to a casual remark about the weather, the missing man, burying his ears further in the turned-up collar of his pea-jacket, had stated, "'It was cold enough to freeze the ears off a brass monkey,'—a remark, no doubt, sir, intended ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... dear?" His mother was speaking. "The one who shot so well?" Her voice was casual; her acting superb. And God! how they can ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... influence a life: a man whose opinion I esteemed, made of me the casual and trite remark, that 'my nature was one of which it was impossible to augur evil or good: it might be extreme in either.' This observation roused me into thought: could I indeed be all that was good or evil? had I the choice, and could I hesitate which to choose? But what was good and what was ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... its fellows and melts all humanity into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life, if it may still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet unambitious Jest; the life-like, practical discussion of real matters in a casual way; the soul of truth which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word,—will disappear from earth. Conversation will contract the air of debate, and all mortal intercourse be chilled ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... two countries. He showed himself as clever in diplomacy as he was in finance, and important results followed in an incredibly short space of time. An understanding was reached, which on the surface expressed itself in a seemingly casual letter from Sir Edward Thornton to Secretary Fish of the 26th of January, 1871, communicating certain instructions from Lord Granville in regard to a better adjustment of the fishery question and all other matters affecting the relations of the United States to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Lady Jane, Dorothy passed into the courtyard and into the open air for the first time in nearly a week. She felt like a bird with clipped wings. The most casual inspection convinced her that there was no possible chance of escape from the walled quadrangle, in the center of which loomed the immense, weather-painted castle. The wall was high and its strength was as unbroken as in ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... visit. It was some minutes before he finally veered to the subject of women in athletics and from that to women in newspaper work and from that again to the women members of the Recorder's staff. In response to his somewhat too casual enquiry concerning Miss Lawson, Chic sat back ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... universally prone to the belief in omens, and the casual occurrence of certain contingent circumstances soon creates the easiest of theories. Should a bird of good omen, in ancient times, perch on the standard, or hover about an army, the omen was of good import, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... enough. This, says Capt. Sueter, was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... birthplace were correct in their rating of his character and his qualities, again crossed Lorraine and entered Luxemburg, where he celebrated Easter. It was shortly after that festival, on April 17th, that a letter from Sigismund was delivered to him announcing in rather casual and off-hand terms that he was now in a position to repay the loan of 1469, made on the security of those Rhinelands. Therefore the Austrian would hand over at Basel 80,000 florins, 40,000 the sum received by him, 10,000 paid in his behalf to the Swiss, and 30,000 which ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... appearance of what they desired to be thought. In the courtyard a knot of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... takes place, the distress arising from a scarcity of provisions must fall hardest upon the least fortunate members of the society. This distress also must frequently have been felt by the women, exposed to casual plunder in the absence of their husbands, and subject to continual disappointments in their ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Of those, where the departed roam, she falls, Here learns her destin'd path. Soon as the place Receives her, round the plastic virtue beams, Distinct as in the living limbs before: And as the air, when saturate with showers, The casual beam refracting, decks itself With many a hue; so here the ambient air Weareth that form, which influence of the soul Imprints on it; and like the flame, that where The fire moves, thither follows, so henceforth The new form on the spirit follows still: Hence hath it semblance, and is ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... "Billy Johnson" was not only a consummate scholar and a most stimulating teacher, but the sympathetic and discerning friend of the boys who were fortunate enough to be his private pupils. In his book of verses—Ionica—he made graceful play with a casual word which Charles Wood had let fall in the ecstasy of swimming—"Oh, how I wish I ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... having set a watch on your sister at the suggestion, and with the help of a casual Major of Foot, you might in decency reserve the word 'compromise' for home consumption; and further, that against adversaries so poorly sensitive to her feelings, your sister may be pardoned for putting her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in this "happy land" earnestly invite the ladies to "pull away" at the mountains of cabbages which their sheds display, while little boys on the pavement offer what they playfully designate "a plummy ha'p'orth," of onions to the casual passenger. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... vaguely impressed upon Helen that a significance less casual than the light words themselves lay in Carr's remark. She, too, looked at Howard. There was a frown in his eyes. Slowly, as his look met hers, a flush spread in his cheeks. Carr saw ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... monotonous tick, tock, tick, tock, like a metronome. Calhoun got up and made a casual examination of the ship's instruments. He turned on the vision screens. They were useless in overdrive, of course, Now they were ready to inform him about the normal cosmos as soon as the ship returned to it. He put away the coffee things. Murgatroyd ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... daughter; my heart misgives me that there is something very much amiss with you. Not sickness, for your mamma, Max, and Gracie all make casual mention of you, and say directly that you are well; yet I have not seen a stroke of your pen ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... knowledge of how much of a given class of work can be done in a day from either their own experience, which has frequently grown hazy with age, from casual and unsystematic observation of their men, or at best from records which are kept, showing, the quickest time in which each job has been done. In many cases the employer will feel almost certain that a given job can be done faster than it has been, but he rarely ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... only, during those three years had he shown a disposition to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But the backsliding was repented of almost as soon as committed, and, to Charlie's anxious eyes, appeared ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... floor with a splintering crash, the incident attracted little more than casual glances from those ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... a woman, she lost her haunted look and gained some colour in her cheeks. She lost her mortal chill. Her clothing, the putting up of her hair made some difference, but loving entreaty all the difference in the world. To a casual glance there was nothing but refinement to distinguish her from her neighbours, to a closer one there was more than that. Her eyes, they said, had the far, intent, rapt gaze of a wild animal. They seemed to search minutely, reaching beyond our power of vision, to ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... richer to my boyish thought. There was no didacticism on his part; there was, on the contrary, a simplicity so great that I felt entirely at home with him; but he was so thoroughly a citizen of the world that I caught a glimpse of the world in his most casual talk. I got a sense of the largeness and richness of life from him. I did not know what it was which laid such hold on my mind, but I saw later that it was the remarkable culture of the man,—a culture made possible by many fortunate conditions of wealth, station, travel, and ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... where he got his exquisite elocution. He went abroad in his youth, and there were good trainers abroad, then. He must have studied thoroughly the speeches of Cicero and the Greek orators. Many casual phrases in his works, besides many quotations, show his familiarity ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... vanished from the loftier and more exposed sides of the hills. The farm-house or mansion-house, (for, from its size and appearance, it might have been the one or the other,) was a large but low building, and the walls of the out-houses were sufficiently strong to resist any band of casual depredators. There was nothing, however, which could withstand a more powerful force; for, in a country laid waste by war, the farmer was then, as now, obliged to take his chance of the great evils attendant upon that state ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... relapsed into silence, restrained from smoking for fear of a telltale spark or casual fragrance carried by the wind. It was a dark night, the hillsides stood blurry against a blue-black sky in which the stars glittered like metal points but failed to shed much light. Later, much later, toward morning, a moon ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... raising her buff calico a little on the congregation side, just enough to show an inch or two of petticoat. The petticoat was as modestly long as the frock itself, and disclosing a bit of it was nothing more heinous than a casual exhibition of good needlework. Deacon Baxter furnished only the unbleached muslin for his daughters' undergarments; but twelve little tucks laboriously done by hand, elaborate inch-wide edging, crocheted ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was very busy arranging his affairs, and a casual looker-on would have seen nothing unusual in the face always so grave and cold. But to Tom Tubbs, casting furtive glances over his book and wondering at his employer's sudden activity, it was terrible in its dark, hard, unrelenting expression, while even his mother, upon ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... varieties of character impress my mind with a feeling, that they are due to a direct relation of the electric powers to the particles of the dielectric through which the discharge occurs, and are not the mere results of a casual ignition or a secondary kind of action of the electricity, upon the particles which it finds in its course and thrusts ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... somehow left me with an instinctive dislike for asking casual acquaintances the way to any place that I am seeking. The aversion is more or less justified by the fact that outside the police force very exceptional persons can direct you, especially if they know the way themselves. On my first visit ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... commented, and the boy blinked indifferently. He was used to stronger. "The casual Rex all over! Yes, boy, there's an answer." He scribbled rapidly, and the two lines ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... his hour before all men's gaze, and the obscurer duty may be the more substantial honor. So when I lift my eyes to look on yonder level ocean-floor, the fitful sunshine now glimmers white on one far-off sail, now on another; and yet I know that all canvas looks snowy while those casual rays are on it, and that the best vessel is that which, sunlit or shaded, best accomplishes its destined course. The officer is almost as powerless as the soldier to choose his opportunity or his place. Military glory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... realise—the scene at Franick Castle, when Lady Dunstable, unsuspecting, should open the letter which announced to her the advent of her daughter-in-law, Elena, nee Flink—or should gather the same unlovely fact from a casual newspaper paragraph. As for interfering between her and her rich deserts, Doris vowed to herself she would not lift a finger. That incredibly forgiving young woman, Miss Wigram, might do as she pleased. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... pleasures or small and occasional annoyances. A supreme pleasure or a supreme pain forces us to gather our complex vision together, forces us to make use of its apex-thought, so that we can embrace the ecstasy or fling ourselves upon the misery with a co-ordinated power. It is the little casual annoyances and reliefs of our normal days which are so hard to deal with in the spirit of philosophic art, because these little pleasures and pains while making a superficial appeal to the reason or the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... never been beautiful she had always been interesting, and indeed she was (even when in the company of women far more beautiful than herself) always one of the first to whom men looked. This may have been partly accounted for by her very obvious pride, the quality that struck the most casual observer at once, but there was also an air of indifference, a look in the eyes that seemed to pique men's curiosity and stir their interest. It was not for lack of opportunity that she was still unmarried, but she had never discovered the man who had virtue and merit ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... nature to listen hour after hour to such platitudes. I believe they fall into a habit of half-wakeful sleeping, which carries them through the hours; but even that can't be pleasant. I look upon the Treasury Bench in July as a sort of casual-ward which we know to be necessary, but is almost too horrid to ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... has been changed to "from" (partially sheltered from the Southern sun). Chapter XVII: The spelling of Sommbernont has been changed to Sombernon. Chapter XX: The word casual has been changed to casualty (sent him home as a casualty). Chapter XXV: It is not clear if the printed word is trained or ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... was happily concealed by the darkness; his wife and her sister had both grown stout steadily as they grew older, but each insisted upon the other's greater magnitude and consequent incapacity for quick movement. A casual observer would not have been persuaded that there was a pound's weight ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... I heard some of our boarders talking on the floor below. Opening my door and listening eagerly I heard one of them say, in such a casual tone: ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... portion indicated by his honoured association with a distinguished society. He was proud in his modest way, if the paradox be permitted, when he produced his card, on which was engraved "Josiah Smith, F.R.S.A." Also it was known amongst his friends that casual references to his great work on "Underground England" were not displeasing to him. But, as he was wont to say, "The surest way of finding either mental or bodily recreation is to seek it in ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... now, was red lipped, his teeth a glistening white. Eyes very big, very black, very soft, very tender, smiling too. From the crown of his wide black hat to the tall heels of his dainty boots he was such a dandy as demanded more than a casual glance. ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... These casual comments did not seem to arouse any burning curiosity among the young men, and up to the day of Kalora's nineteenth anniversary they had not had the effect of bringing to the father any of those guarded inquiries which, under the oriental custom, are ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... brought low" and the feeble, bent, stricken man piped and wheezed and stammered his confused answers to the young man's questions, and stood paralyzed with unspeakable horror while the inspector glanced at the Carnine note and asked some casual question about it. When the bank closed that night, General Hendricks tried to write to his son and tell him the truth, but he sat weeping before his desk and could not put down the words he longed to write. Bob Hendricks found that tear-stained ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... spent by Thaddeus in the "noble pastime of snooping," as he called it. The house was searched by him in a casual sort of way from top to bottom for a clew to the mystery, but without avail. Several times he went below to the cellar, ostensibly to inspect his coal supply, really to observe the demeanor of Margaret, the cook. Barring an unusual pallor upon her cheek, she appeared ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... speak, I should assuredly want time for the maturest reflection. In the first place, I know almost nothing about you. One would not engage a—a coachman—without more inquiry. How can a girl promise to trust her entire future to a man with whom she has but a casual acquaintance? Such things need consideration. I know my father would say so. And if he heard only the nicest things about you, I doubt if he would like to have you take me from him—especially now, when his ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... oftentimes the white-armed child Of thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comes And droops above him with her short sweet sighs For Love distraught—for dear Love's faded sake That weeps and sings and weeps itself to death Because of casual eyes, and lips of frost, And careless mutterings, and ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... accomplished in my present condition, under any ordinary views of ambition. Indeed, labouring as I have been for many months past, under an almost total deprivation of sight, (the effect of exposure and anxiety of mind in the prosecution of geographical researches,) I owe it to the casual assistance of some of my friends, that I am at length enabled to lay these results before your Lordship and ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... he had a closer knowledge of prisons, Nekhludoff found out that all those vices which developed among the prisoners—drunkenness, gambling, cruelty, and all these terrible crimes, even cannibalism—were not casual, or due to degeneration or to the existence of monstrosities of the criminal type, as science, going hand in hand with the government, explained it, but an unavoidable consequence of the incomprehensible delusion that men may ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... party-day arrived; and Doctor Blimber said at breakfast, 'Gentlemen, we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month.' Mr Toots immediately threw off his allegiance, and put on his ring: and mentioning the Doctor in casual conversation shortly afterwards, spoke of him as 'Blimber'! This act of freedom inspired the older pupils with admiration and envy; but the younger spirits were appalled, and seemed to marvel that no beam ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... made casual reference to the "weak-kneed compromise," he simply voiced a personal opinion on a theme which was in the mind of every American, and one regarded with as many minds as there were men. That political measure of ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... hardly needs discussion here. Its importance is too obvious. It needs, however, more public discussion in England than it has hitherto received. The second method—operating at present only in a very casual and unsystematic way—ought, one would say, to be very systematically considered and dealt with by the modern States. For a nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... fast traveling pony sleighs with frequent exchange of horses. Officers and civil officials found this travel not unpleasant. The following story, taken from the Red Cross Magazine and adapted to this volume, will give the doughboy a pleasing recollection and the casual reader a vivid picture of ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... grief! There were many deeds of my life to which I had given but casual regret. When the minister would counsel us to confess our sins to God, I had knelt in the church and gone through the form; but here, where the height and depth and breadth of God's perfection dawned upon me, and grew hourly clearer, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... country into areas of equal deficiency. The area most affected, as you can see, is longer east and west, than it is north and south. It is worst in the east, in fact in this very neighborhood. Even a casual glance at the map will show you that the center of the drought area, from an intensity standpoint, lies in Maryland, a ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... If the casual gods send inquiring strangers into my camp, let them (the intruders) be civil, please, or at least be male. Citizens I can at once wave away with a regretful nescio vos; foot-officers are decently reserved in their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... Callaway sat in a chair opposite the writer and told her freely of the incidents of slavery as she remembered them. To a casual observer it will come as a surprise to know the woman was blind. She is quite old, but her thoughts were clearly and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... his own. There was in his manner and address something of what the French call liant. When the chances of residence made me his neighbour, an evening in his drawing-room, or half an hour's talk in casual meetings in afternoon walks on Wimbledon Common, was always a particularly agreeable incident. Some men and women have the quality of atmosphere. The egotism of the natural man is surrounded by an elastic medium. Mr. Greg was one of these ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... intelligible Why, And both, from severance, winning equal smart. So, with resigned and acquiescent heart, Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie, I seem to see an alien shade pass by, A spirit wherein I have no lot or part. Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim, From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn That June on her triumphant progress goes Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him She is a legend emptied of concern, And idle is the ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... sunset, and moonlight idealize the sacred hill, rising amid the palm-groves and rice-fields of a matchless valley, sweeping away in green undulations which break like emerald waves against the deepening azure and amethyst of the mountain heights. The solemn grandeur of Boro-Boedoer blinds the casual observer to many details which manifest the ravages of time, the ruthlessness of war, and the decay of a discarded creed. Headless and overthrown figures, broken tees, mutilated carvings, and shattered chapels abound, but the vast display of architectural features ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... repeatedly. It is of special significance on "total days." Those are the days when the Government, in the absence of fresh victories, adds the totals of prisoners taken for a given period, and as only the totals appear in the headlines the casual reader feels nearer a victorious peace. On the morning of March 13, 1916, most of the papers had "total" ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... of the results at which they have arrived, I may be pardoned for expressing my belief that this kind of investigation is often pursued with an exaggerated confidence. Plausible conjecture is too frequently mistaken for positive proof. Undue significance is attached to what may be mere casual coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy is professed in discriminating between the different elements in a narrative which cannot be attained by mere internal evidence. In all writings, but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was unknown, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... hundred yards, and, directed in some degree by a strong smell of sulphur, they applied their match to several places, with similar effect. These fires continue burning unceasingly, unless they are extinguished by accident. The phaenomenon was originally discovered by the casual rolling of lighted embers, from the top of the bank, whilst some persons were clearing it for cultivation; and, in the intensity and duration of the flame, it probably exceeds any thing of the kind that ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... that her spirit might follow him unhampered to the world of ghosts whither he was bound. Thus the twin barrows on Ogbury hillside bridge over for us two vast epochs of human culture, both now so remote as to merge together mentally to the casual eyes of modern observers, but yet in reality marking in their very shape and disposition an immense, long, and slow advance of human reason. For just as the long barrow answers in form to the buried human corpse and the chambered hut that surrounds and encloses it, so does the round barrow ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... officer only by consent of the men, stood apart by the bridge-head, gravely. They were all serious and self-contented, very unglamorous. It was like a business excursion on horseback, harmless and uninspiring. The uniforms were almost ludicrous, so ill-fitting and casual. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... interest. His quiet air of authority among his fellows was like a birthright; it seemed assumed and accepted unconsciously. His face was smooth, and he was fuller in figure than the rest, but still sinewy and lank, though not awkward; his movements were too quick and decisive for that. With a casual glance Clayton had wondered what secret influence could have turned to spiritual things a man so merely animal-like in face and physique; but when the mountaineer thrust back his hat, elemental strength and seriousness were ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... accordingly came forth from the shop of Roberts, between whom and Johnson I have not traced any connection, except the casual one of this publication[478]. In Johnson's Life of Savage, although it must be allowed that its moral is the reverse of—'Respicere exemplar vita morumque jubebo[479],' a very useful lesson is inculcated, to guard men ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... that she was his—his very own! And only four nights ago he had been a rude stranger, too, criticising her every movement, and drinking too much port with annoyance over it all. And now his whole life was changed. He saw with new eyes, and heard with new ears, even his casual observation was altered and sharpened, so that he noticed the texture of the cloth and the quality of the glass, and the shape of the room and ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... McMaster, "History of the People of the United States", 7 vols. (1883-1912). McMaster has the more "modern" point of view and is excellent but dry, without any sense of narrative. Rhodes has a somewhat older point of view. For example, he makes only a casual reference, in a quotation, to the munitions problem of 1861, though analyzing with great force and candor such constitutional issues as the arrests under the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The other strong points in his work are its sense of narrative, its freedom from hero-worship, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... him, as he stood in the bar, swallowing some fiery liquid of dubious origin which the landlord had sold to him as brandy, to make a casual ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... know no details save that he had been "in business." But had he ever an affair of the heart? Just as in real life, when a stray allusion will occasionally escape from a person betraying something of his past history, so once or twice a casual remark of Mr. Pickwick's furnishes a hint. Thus Mr. Magnus, pressing him for his advice in this delicate matter of proposing, asked him had he ever done this sort of thing in his time. "You mean proposing?" said the great man. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... meanness. This so eclipsed every other passion in the man, and loomed so bulkily and insistently in the foreground, that had he cherished a second vice no one would have observed it, and if he really did possess a casual virtue, it could scarcely have reared its head in ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... open questions urgently in need of answers. But I do not hope much from the answers of adults,—from the deaf and blind writers to the hearing and seeing children. The answers must come from the children themselves. We must listen to children's speech, to their casual everyday expressions. We must gather children's stories. Mothers and teachers everywhere should be making these precious records. We must study them not merely as showing what a child is thinking, but the way he is thinking and the way he ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... it is just heaven," observed Marcus, when he came downstairs to his wife; "the night before last, poor beggar, he was in the casual ward, and last night he had a few hours in some refuge. 'Fancy the casual ward for a gentleman's son,' he said to me so bitterly, 'and there was actually a barrister there too, and we fraternised.' It is just as I thought, ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... herself the further indiscretion of swallowing it grew to such proportions that at the age of fifteen she almost succumbed to its allurement. Even at this late date she could recall every detail of a seemingly casual conversation which she had held with the stalwart butcher boy who came daily to the kitchen door to deliver meat. The first day she merely had broached the subject of Sunday picnics; the second she had intrigued him into giving ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... doubt as to which of the two sorts of people—the easy and graceful, or the stiff and awkward—it is most agreeable to meet, either in business, in society, or in the casual intercourse of life. Which make the fastest friends, the truest men of their word, the most conscientious performers of their duty, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of the third asking, however, one in the congregation, a casual visitor and in no way personally concerned in the matter, found it of sufficient interest to make mention of it in a letter home, and so unwittingly played his little part in ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... also as the God of all men. At one time Judaism was certainly a missionary religion. But after the loss of nationality this quality was practically dormant. Belief was not necessary to salvation. 'The pious of all nations have a part in the world to come' may have been but a casual utterance of an ancient Rabbi, but it rose into a settled conviction of later Judaism. Moreover, it was dangerous for Jews to attempt any religious propaganda in the Middle Ages, and thus the pressure of fact came to the support of theory. Mendelssohn ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... is not a mere casual visitor at the palace-gate of the world, but the invited guest whose presence is needed to give the royal banquet its sole meaning, is not confined to any particular sect in India. Let me quote here some poems from a mediaeval poet of Western India—Jnandas—whose works are nearly forgotten, and ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... capricious, would have to be disgustingly full. Far be it at any rate from the present editor to bury these delightful creations under an ugly crust of parallel passages and miscellaneous erudition. The sheets, however, have been carefully read in order to prevent the casual errors which are wont to creep into frequently reprinted texts; and the editor hopes that if any such have escaped him, the escape will not be attributed to wilful negligence. A few obvious errors, in spelling of proper names, &c., which ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... former with easy hand collected, as it passed by him, whatever could add to his own stores, appropriated what he could assimilate, and levied subsidies of knowledge from all the accidents of social life and familiar intercourse. Even at the jovial board, and in the height of unrestrained merriment, a casual suggestion, that flashed a new light on his mind, changed the boon companion into the hero and the man of genius; and with the most graceful transition he would make his company as serious as himself. When the taper of his genius ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are inseparably conjoined. When we reflect upon what human nature is, in the class from which so many of the members of The Army have been drawn, when we think how difficult it is to reconcile the hand-to-mouth existence of the casual labourer with any high standard of conduct, let alone of religion, General Booth's success, partial though it has been, is an astonishing fact. It implies a prodigious strength of character, and a genius for seeing what would appeal to large numbers ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... greatest obscurity, both in the present savage religions and in the scanty vestiges of pre-historic religion. But one point is clear. All savage religions are full of superstitions founded on luck. Savages believe that casual omens are a sign of coming events; that some trees are lucky, that some animals are lucky, that some places are lucky, that some indifferent actions—indifferent apparently and indifferent really—are ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... black billies and cloudy nose-bags are placed on the table. The men eat in a casual kind of way, as though it were only a custom of theirs, a matter of form—a habit which could be left off if ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... readers. In fact, this clever and talented assistant in some respects never had his match. He did not, as other reporters do, take down in short-hand what the speaker or reader said, but sat and heard the passing discourse like any other casual spectator: when over he would go home to his room, write out in full all that had been said on the occasion, and that entirely from memory. On a certain occasion I hinted to him my incredulity about his ability to report ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... fresh light had been thrown on the subject. Everything went on as usual within the school, and a casual observer would never have noticed the cloud which rested over that usually happy dwelling. A casual observer would have noticed little or no change in Annie Forest; her merry laugh was still heard, her light step still ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... calling almost all the frog's actions reflex or instinctive. During months of study of the reaction-time of the frog I was constantly impressed with the uniformity of action and surprised at the absence of evidences of profiting by experience. In order to supplement the casual observations on the associations of the green frog made in the course of reaction-time experiments, the tests described in this paper were made. They do not give a complete view of the associative ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Louis XVI. that if he saw any alarming movement among the disaffected he would give him notice of it by the discharge of a cannon from Henri IV.'s battery on the Pont Neuf. On the same night a few casual discharges of musketry were heard from the terrace of the Tuileries. The King, deceived by the noise, flew to the Queen's apartments; he did not find her; he ran to the Dauphin's room, where he found the Queen holding her son in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sky. She looked as if she might be dreaming a maiden's dream of love. He hazarded a tentative remark. Her eyes moved, touched him indifferently, and passed back to the sky, and an unformed murmur, interrogation, acquiescence, casual response, anything he pleased to think it, escaped her lips. He watched her as he could when she was not looking at him. A loosened strand of her hair lay among the lupine roots, one of her hands rested, brown and upcurled, on a tiny weed ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible. The two ladies were squeezed into this, and they crouched together, Sadie's arms thrown round her aunt. When they had walled them up, the men turned with lighter hearts to see what was going on. As they ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... shoemakers and Jingars [450] or saddlemakers and bookbinders have obtained a better position than the ordinary Chamars, and have now practically become separate castes; while, on the other hand, the Dohar subcaste of Narsinghpur have sunk to the very lowest stage of casual labour, grass-cutting and the like, and are looked down on by the rest of the caste. [451] The Korchamars are said to be the descendants of alliances between Chamars and Koris or weavers, and the Turkanyas probably have Turk ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... to be conducted on a very irregular plan, for it appeared that the casual afternoon caller always meant tea and sometimes dinner. This is all very well if the people happen to be agreeable and the food holds out, but even I, the least conservative of the three women, am conservative about invitations to ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... spend their money to see it a second or a third time, perhaps many times, and bring their friends to enjoy it with them. There are many more "repeaters" on occasions when attractions have real merit of one kind or another than the casual public dreams of. The show manager watches for them and spots them, and rejoices greatly when he finds them abundantly in evidence, night after night, for he knows then that he has displayed real showmanship in his selection of a cast, a ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... casual to be classified; rejoicings over the vanishing of winter and the return of spring (I, iv); praises of the Tibur streams, of Tarentum (II, vi) which he loved only less than Tibur, of the Lucretilis Groves (I, xvii) which overhung his Sabine valley, of the ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded. Her feelings, concealed under an exterior of self-possession, deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes became molten, and she was frightened by a passion that made her tremble—a passion by no means always consciously identified with men, embodying all the fierce unexpressed and unsatisfied ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... close of the Middle Ages that lycanthropy was recognized as a disease; but it is one which has so much that is ghastly and revolting in its form, and it is so remote from all our ordinary experience, that it is not surprising that the casual observer should leave the consideration of it, as a subject isolated and perplexing, and be disposed to regard as a myth that which the feared investigation might prove ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... that a considerable increase of income (which he put down at L82,000) was required to cover the regular expenditure, but that a still greater sum was needed for casual expenses, for which in the state, as in every household, certainly a quarter of the sum reached by the regular expenditure was required. He therefore proposed that L600,000 should be at once granted him for paying off the debt, and that in future ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... day after day in his office in the Raleigh Block, trying to discover where his money had gone and how he could get some of it back. He was a widower, and found very little congenial companionship in this casual Western city. Lena's good looks and gentle manners appealed to him. He said her voice reminded him of Southern voices, and he found as many opportunities of hearing it as possible. He painted and papered her rooms for her that spring, and put ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... trenches are accurately marked, with their changes made from day to day. On the wall next to this map and at right angles to it, is a large-scale map of the entire region over which the squadron operates. On this map are numerous conventional markings which would have no meaning to the casual observer. ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... to you that I owe my most amiable reception at Coppet. It is no doubt to the favorable expectations aroused by your friendship that I owe my intimate acquaintance with this remarkable woman. I might have met her without your assistance—some casual acquaintance would no doubt have introduced me—but I should never have penetrated to the intimacy of this sublime and beautiful soul, and should never have known how much better she is than her reputation. She is an angel sent from heaven to reveal the divine goodness upon earth. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... adequate, even though its contents should be thoroughly mastered, to make every woman her own lawyer, in matters where she would otherwise require legal advice, but it is hoped that its statements are sufficiently plain and free from technical phraseology and legal terms, that even the casual reader may readily comprehend them, and be able to gain a general understanding of the law of ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... Dagaeoga, here is where the deer fell! Look at the little bushes broken and at the dark stain on the ground where its life flowed out. They dragged the body to the other side of the thicket, and cut it up there. Nothing could be plainer, the traces are so numerous. They were casual hunters, and it is not worth our while ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... above her trucks, on the wearer's treelike neck; weird serpents and smoke-breathing dragons writhed about his arms from wrist to shoulder, and a red star on the back of one gnarled hand kept watch and watch with a blue star on its opposite member. Barry chuckled audibly as, in a casual flourish, one great arm was half turned, showing the comparative white of the underarm upon which was blazoned a pair of gory hearts in collision, impaled on a harpoon apparently. Around this work of art a flamboyant motto announced to the world: "I ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... about the devices Tom had built in the forward end of the locomotive cab to understand, by any casual examination, if they were at all injured. But when he climbed down beside the track he saw at once that the forward end of the locomotive had received more than ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... walked slowly up to Piccadilly, and climbed on top of a Chelsea omnibus, a dejected figure even to the casual eye. He was more than disappointed at the upshot of his wild speculations, and in himself for the false start that he had made. His feeling was one of positive shame. It was so easy now to see the glaring improbability of the conclusion to which ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... a grave, steady, reserved man, in an advanced period of life. To those with whom he had occasion to speak upon business, he appeared uncommonly well versed in all its forms. With others he held little communication; but in any casual intercourse, or conversation, displayed the powers of an active and well-informed mind. For some time before taking up his final residence at the castle, he had been an occasional visitor there, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... glowed, pink-cheeked, star-eyed, in a frock of dull blue linen made with wide white pique collar and cuffs. Her hair waved and rippled and curled, despite its loose braiding, almost to her waist. Rosemary was simply going to the station to meet the 4:10 train, but nothing was ever casual to her; she met each hour expectantly on tip-toe and, as her mother had once observed, laughed and wept her way around the clock. Sarah smiled broadly—going to the station to meet Aunt Trudy had, for some inexplicable ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... condolence. Such particularly was the case when he met the funeral procession at Nain: it was that of a young man, represented in the simple and affecting language of the evangelist, as "the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." The meeting was apparently casual; but Jesus was instantly and deeply impressed with the circumstances: he in particular felt compassion for the weeping parent—addressed her in kind and gentle terms—remanded the spirit from its eternal ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... sail, and now we are at Corsica, Napoleon's home. Let us stop at Sardinia, with its wealth of tropical fruits; and we will even down to Sicily,—for this mimic ocean teems with subjects to delight the eye even of the most casual observer, with its majestic boundary of Alps and Apennines, and the velvet carpet of its romantic shores, while its broad breast is dotted with the sails of the picturesque craft whose rig is peculiar to ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... little the average general reader knows regarding the great Persian poet Saadi and his writings. His name is perhaps more or less familiar to casual readers from its being appended to one or two of his aphorisms which are sometimes reproduced in odd corners of popular periodicals; but who he was, when he lived, and what he wrote, are questions which would probably ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of his jealousy even more effectually than he could have wished. He looked round and saw that everyone had thrown a casual glance of contempt upon Clyffurde and then turned away to murmur with scornful indifference: "I always mistrusted that man." Or: "The Comte ought never to have had the fellow in the house," while the words: "English spy!" and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... stopped again, I could not help thinking what a tale of strange plotting the casual conversation suggested. New York, I knew, was full of high-class international crooks and flimflammers who had flocked there because the great field of their operations in Europe was closed. The war had literally dumped ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... childish gladness; and the flexible red lips curled in lines of orthodox Greek perfection, showing remarkable versatility of expression; while the broad, full, polished forehead with its prominent, swelling brows, could not fail to recall, to even casual observers, the calm, powerful face of Lorenzo de' Medicis, which, if once looked on, fastens itself upon heart and brain, to be forgotten no more. Her hair, black, straight, waveless as an Indian's, hung around her shoulders, and glistened as the water from the dripping ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... to hear she's a widow," said he. "She—she might strike a casual observer as somewhat young, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... alone in the warm night air. He had been well treated by everybody, and there had been men present whose attention was a distinction in itself, and yet he felt an uneasiness which he found it difficult to trace back to any particular cause. He decided at last that he was annoyed to find that the casual mention of Holroyd's name should still have power to discompose him—that was a weakness which he ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... along the inner side of the wrist hem. This was, to the woman, the first subterfuge of decaying smartness. When a woman began to send her gloves to the laundry she was on her way down. Other evidences were not entirely lacking in the woman's dress, but they were not patent to the casual eye. Lady Muriel was still, to the observer, of the gay top current in ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... laconic and indifferent their attitude, their relationship was not solely that of officer and subordinate. The elder man, in his gruff way, was the friend of the man under him. The younger had acquired a respect that held something deeper than casual liking, and his face showed it now as he hesitated before breaking his news. Then ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... decomposition; and, excepting that the solid footsteps of the saintly guide, as they smote heavily on the floor of stone, broke the deadly silence, all was still. Stumbling and staggering along, directed only by the casual glimpses of light afforded by the moon, where it broke through the dilapidated roof of the vault, and served to discover only sights of woe, Larry followed. He soon felt that he was descending, and could not help wondering at the length of the journey. He began ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... than a compendium of mush. His very description of the act of kissing is made up of sonorous gabble about heaving bosoms, red lips, electric sparks and such-like imaginings. What reason have we for believing, as he says, that the lungs are "strongly expanded" during the act? My own casual observation inclines me to hold that the opposite is true, that the lungs are actually collapsed in a pseudo-asthmatic spasm. Again, what is the ground for arguing that the lips are "full, ripe and red?" The real effect of the emotions that accompany kissing ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken |
