"Difficult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing in Wales—they make if necessary vent-holes for the sulphureous fumes of their temper! I endeavoured to calm the tempest by observing that however different our political opinions might be, the appearance of a clergyman assured me that we were all Christians, though I found it rather difficult to reconcile the last sentiment with the spirit of Christianity! "Pho!" quoth the clergyman; "Christianity! Why we a'nt at "church" now, are we? The gentleman's sentiment was a very good one, because ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Maiz, proves the most useful Grain in the World; and had it not been for the Fruitfulness of this Species, it would have proved very difficult to have settled some of the Plantations in America. It is very nourishing, whether in Bread, sodden, or otherwise; And those poor Christian Servants in Virginia, Maryland, and the other northerly ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... thereat was plainly visible. But presently he sat upright in triumph as he remembered his plan, which he had for the moment forgotten,—to betray Hugo into their hands and keep back Josceline for himself to deliver to the king. How he was to accomplish this difficult thing he did not know, but, in his ignorance, he imagined ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... which had been allotted to her use. For the first time the girl was painfully conscious of the incongruousness of her attire. That the queen might ask her attendance had not occurred to any of them, and had it done so the affair would have seemed easy of explanation, but it had been found exceedingly difficult to get a hearing. She resolved, however, that should occasion present she would tell all hoping that the queen would pardon the deception, if such it ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... object of those forms was to eliminate the source of confusion produced by attempts of different persons at the difficult description of positions and motions. The comprehensive plan required that many persons should be at work in many parts of the world. It will readily be understood that if a number of persons should undertake to describe in words the same motions, whether of pantomimists on the stage or ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... lack of the knowledge presupposed in students ready for high school, and the general courses were to be made flexible so that those who entered deficient might be brought to a fixed standard. The vocational branches were the most difficult, and at Sylvia's suggestion several well-known authorities on technical education were called into conference. One of these had visited Waupegan and expressed his enthusiastic approval of Mrs. Owen's plans. She was anxious to ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... You are rather young, but the duties are not hard or difficult to learn. I think you'll do. I was resolved not to fill that place until I could find a perfectly honest and trustworthy boy for it. I believe I have found him. I discharged the last boy because he lied to me ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in life. I, for my part, wish to be remembered favourably. I put it as a test of breeding to speak of these things as plain matter-of-fact. You marry; I wish you to have something by you to remind you of me. What shall it be?—useful or ornamental. For an ordinary household the choice is not difficult. But where wealth abounds we are in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Charlemagne, and others may be used by teachers who have had opportunity to get acquainted with those great figures, or who have access to some of the authorities listed in the bibliography. This material is more difficult to handle satisfactorily than that already discussed, and may well be sparingly used, if not omitted altogether. For a general collection of legends, the ideal as to choice and method of presentation is Scudder's The ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... with all his imperfections, he is the strongest witness to the discovery of Leo Taxil. I have admitted the great apparent force which belongs to his enormous array of documentary evidence, and I have established the nature of the complications which make that evidence extremely difficult to accept. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... has the art of keeping himself before the public eye. Being myself so constituted—it is not any virtue in me, only a constitutional defect—that I cannot elbow for a place, it is difficult for me to understand how another, especially a man like Grenfell, can bring himself to do so. I had always thought he was miles above ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... tolerably well versed in the dialect, or long resident among the same natives, present many difficulties, and lead to many mistakes, amongst casual inquirers, or those whose pursuits do not keep them long at the place of their inquiries. There are others which are still more difficult to be understood, from the almost utter impossibility of learning (with any reasonable sacrifice of time) the language with sufficient accuracy to enable the inquirer thoroughly to comprehend the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... auspices, soon enough to allow time for the framing before the mamma should come down-stairs. Her recovery proceeded prosperously; and Theodora was quite sufficiently in request in her room to be satisfied, and to make it difficult to find a spare afternoon to go and order one ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Etienne," said Bianchon to Dinah; "he has appealed strongly to your imagination; last night we were talking about you.—He loves you. But he is frivolous, and difficult to hold; his poverty compels him to live in Paris, while everything condemns you to live at Sancerre.—Take a lofty view of life. Make Lousteau your friend; do not ask too much of him; he will come three times a year to spend a few days with you, and ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of this speech it is difficult, if not impossible, to realise its effect upon those who heard it.[1580] As an oratorical exhibition the testimony of friends and of foes is alike offered in its unqualified praise. He spoke distinctly and with characteristic ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... This was a difficult question to answer, and the girls determined to look about them, and observe, and wait for the present, and not expect to earn more money before the holidays. So they spent their leisure time through April and May in reading ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... minute or two I still kept my eyes shut as if I were asleep. We often played with each other at that—"foxing," we used to call it. But generally we couldn't manage it because of bursting out laughing. To-night it wasn't that feeling that made it difficult for me to go on "foxing." It was quite a different one. Yet I was, too, a very little afraid of mother knowing I had been listening—it began to come into my mind that it was not a nice thing to do—a little like telling stories—and I almost ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... demanded of me. I don't! [Her burst of anger is finished. She turns, smiling.] I'm much more cunning than you think. There will be other elections we shall want to fight. With the Under- Secretary for Home Affairs in sympathy with us, the Government will find it difficult to interfere. Don't you see ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... Ireland I have had nearly as much opportunity of knowing you as any of your acquaintances here. I can truly say, that you have earned the hearty respect of all who know you (of whom I have any knowledge), by the industry, energy, and self-respect you have evinced in the course of a long and difficult battle with those adverse circumstances, with which a comparatively unknown and friendless stranger has to contend, in his efforts to effect a settlement in a strange country. Your conduct has been industrious, honorable and in ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... sort altogether from these gods is the ancient Indo-Iranian figure that now claims attention. The older religion had at least one object of devotion very difficult to reduce to ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... She could not, if she tried, associate him with any divine authority. He was too young, too human. There was something a little malicious, teasing, in the way she delighted to tell him about herself, and then walk demurely, repentantly out. At St. Agatha's she had been rather a difficult person to deal with. She was, as the good sisters of the school had readily perceived, too full of life, too active, to be easily controlled. "That Miss Butler," once observed Sister Constantia, the Mother Superior, to Sister Sempronia, Aileen's immediate ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... would have to be very careful about poisons, so as not to select one that would cause a lot of pain. It would be necessary to find out exactly how the stuff acted before using it. It would not be very difficult to do so. Then he remembered that among his books was one that probably contained some information about this subject. He went over to the book-shelf and presently found the volume; it was called The Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, rather an old ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... most anxious not to leave the impression that I have been advocating a vague spirituality tempered by rationalism, I will try in a few words to define my position apologetically, though I am well aware that it is a hazardous and difficult task. ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... it is difficult to appreciate that the Roman Campagna was formerly populous with villas, when one contemplates its green solitudes today, so when one faces the dread malaria which there breeds, one wonders how the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... defending her offspring with the greatest ferocity. A she-bear with cubs is always an awkward customer, and she continues her solicitude for them till they are nearly full grown. The young ones are not difficult to rear if ordinary care be taken. The great mistake that most people make in feeding the young of wild animals is the giving of pure cows' milk. I mentioned this in 'Seonee' in speaking of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... a learned Italian of the sixteenth century, and whose musical genius and industry were most remarkable, is due the greatest homage and gratitude of a music-loving world. Of him an eminent musical writer says, "It is difficult to over-estimate his talent and influence over the art of music in his day. He was regarded as the great reformer of church music. His knowledge of counterpoint, and the elevation and nobility of his style, made his masses and other ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... times mentioned during the trial. Thus, all the accusations had, one by one, fallen upon her, and it was resolved to seek her out in the retreat where she was supposed to be safe. The mission was difficult and very delicate. Desgrais, one of the cleverest of the officials, offered to undertake it. He was a handsome man, thirty-six years old or thereabouts: nothing in his looks betrayed his connection with ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... be such, is easily disposed of; but sometimes it is very difficult to decide whether a construction is anomalous or not. The 3d, 4th, and 5th examples, are generally considered anomalies; but if we supply, as we are, perhaps, warranted in doing, the associated words which modern refinement ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Bordeaux on the mission of piracy and murder, and then would come our turn and that of Latin America. The first attack would come not on us, but on South or Central America—at some point to which it would be as difficult for us to send troops to help our neighbor as it would ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... inability to endure exposure that caused their death; a few winters are related to have so reduced them that they died by hundreds, many mangled by dogs. The hardiest that remained became perfectly wild, and the wood cattle are now more difficult to ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... text with resonant assurance. It was one of the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret properly. It was a text which might seem to the casual observer at variance with the lofty morality elsewhere preached by Jesus Christ. But, he told his hearers, the text ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... agree with the doctrine of atoms: but I find it difficult to understand a vacuum, and ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... the world. The second example of it can be found in the question of pantheism—or rather of a certain modern attitude which is often called immanentism, and which often is Buddhism. But this is so much more difficult a matter that I must approach ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... folded into convenient size, and places the red beads—typical of success and his client upon the white cloth, while the black beads—emblematic of death and the intended victim—are laid upon the black cloth. It is probable that the first cloth should properly be red instead of white, but as it is difficult to get red cloth, except in the shape of handkerchiefs, a substitution has been made, the two colors having a close mythologic relation. In former days a piece of buckskin and the small glossy, seeds of the Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) were ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... of these events made the question difficult to answer. Still, the profound examination to which Beautrelet applied himself ended by pointing to one essential characteristic which was common to them all. Each one of them, without exception, had happened within the boundaries of the old kingdom of Neustria, which correspond very nearly with ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... its mistakes, and surely only the happiest kind of accident could have thrown me into the breach when old John Benham died, for I take little credit to myself in saying that there are few persons who could have fitted so admirably into a difficult situation. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... stillness. Even the barking of a dog sounds like an event. Therefore, expect no amusing letters from this place; for though we are very comfortable, there are no incidents to relate. The Indians come in the morning to drink pulque, (which, by the way, I now think excellent, and shall find it very difficult to live without!) a little child from the village brings us some bouquets of flowers, which the Indians have a pretty way of arranging in a pineapple or pyramidal form; the Chinese cook, with his little slits of eyes, passes by with meat and fruit which he has ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... hurled him down, with a spear-wound in his head and several sompites in his throat. Our men were fasting, and, besides that, laden with provisions and arms, and wearied by the march (which had been more difficult than long); but, like lions, they caused the Moros much more fear in their death than if the port had been taken without bloodshed. The Moros were terrified, too, by seeing our soldiers thus obstinately keep up the battle in a slaughter-house—for this place deserves no other name. And ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... an island in the river, called San Bartolomeo, which the Spaniards had fortified, as an outpost, with a small semicircular battery, mounting nine or ten swivels, and manned with sixteen or eighteen men. It commanded the river in a rapid and difficult part of the navigation. Nelson, at the head of a few of his seamen, leaped upon the beach. The ground upon which he sprung was so muddy that he had some difficulty in extricating himself, and lost his shoes: bare-footed, however, he advanced, and, in his own ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... difficult to trust a friend whose truth you know. There! that has done me good," said the girl, sitting up and brushing away the tears. "Rupert, if there is anything you want to see or to do here in Venice, be about it; for I think we shall go off ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... his part—as great depression. Perhaps, after all, the penitentiary and so soon, was really breaking his spirit, and he had held up so courageously so long. Because of this, now she was madly eager to get to him, to console him, even though it was difficult, perilous. She ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... shall be bent with years, and the recollection of those lover's kisses may no longer drive my blood so feverishly through my veins as to-day, yet the thought of the hour in which, hand in hand with my friend, I experienced the proud pure joy of having accomplished the first and most difficult step towards the redemption of our suffering disinherited brethren out of the tortures of many thousands of years of bondage—the thought of that hour will never lose its bliss-inspiring power as long as I ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the same degree of heat (you must learn to accustom yourself to those words, though they seem difficult to you)—In the same heat, do you think water or ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... meals, and for bed at 8 P. M. The road still in progress of burning. This, together with the tent-fires and those of the picquets, had a very brilliant effect. Two officers went in search of water, and found a running stream under the hills, about a mile from the camp, which was very difficult to reach, from the denseness ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... a piece of pork which was attached to a long line, and then allowed to tow behind the steamer. We were doomed to disappointment, as the albatross, that was then flying with the ship, refused to touch the bait, and it was taken up by a frigate bird. It is said that the albatross is very difficult to catch, as he is exceedingly wary, and constantly on the lookout for tricks. I am told that a live albatross standing on the deck of the ship is a very handsome bird. His back is white, his wings are brown, he has a ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... road with great hillsides to cut out, ledges of rock to blast out and to build dozens of bridges across the mountain streams, difficult gradings, etc., was no easy task. Neither was it an easy task to collect toll from all the travelers. People from the states understood that they must pay toll for the privilege of traveling over a road that had been built at the cost of time and money, but there were other people who thought they ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... had decided to make the new beginning in the United States, where a favorite brother-in-law had gone several years before. But that, never a simple matter for a man who has reached forty-two, is particularly difficult for a foreigner in a strange land. This fact he and his wife were to find out. The wife, also carefully reared, had been accustomed to a scale of living which she had now to abandon. Her Americanization experiment was to compel her, for the first time in her life, to become ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... so long as the war was popular with the people. Again, what war could be more popular than the French war? Has not the noble Lord (Lord John Russell) said, not long ago, in this House, that peace was rendered difficult if not impossible by the conduct of the English press in 1803? For myself, I do not trouble myself whether my conduct in Parliament is popular or not. I care only that it shall be wise and just as regards the permanent ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... is performed in a perfunctory manner, which robs it of its grace and value. This narrowing of the home into a place of hurried meals and sleep is on the whole the worst injury modern industry has inflicted on our lives, and it is difficult to see how it can be compensated by any increase of material products. Factory life for women, save in extremely rare cases, saps the physical and moral health of the family. The exigencies of factory life are inconsistent ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... wights, is a fool. That man who being himself guilty casteth the blame on others, and who though impotent giveth vent to anger, is the most foolish of men. That man, who, without knowing his own strength and dissociated from both virtue and profit, desireth an object difficult of acquisition, without again adopting adequate means, is said to be destitute of intelligence. O king, he who punisheth one that is undeserving of punishment, payeth homage to persons without their knowledge, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it is a little higher flight than the facts will bear out when the writers make the birds go out of sight into the sky. I could easily follow them on this occasion, though, if I took my eye away for a moment, it was very difficult to get it back again. I had to search for them as the astronomer searches for a star. It may be that in the spring, when the atmosphere is less clear and the heart of the bird full of a more mad and reckless love, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... business of equestrian rank, in social standing though not necessarily in wealth, there was in Cicero's time an aristocracy which a Roman of that day would perhaps have found it a little difficult to explain or define to a foreigner. Fortunately all foreigners coming to Rome would know what was meant by the senate, the great council which received envoys from all nations outside the Empire; and the stranger might be told in the first place that all members of that august ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... applied to them. The most noted of the later writers was Yehuda ben Solomon Charisi. Fortune marked him out to be the critic of the great poetic creations of the brilliant epoch just closed, and his fame rests upon the skill with which he acquitted himself of his difficult task. As for his poetry, it lacks the depth, the glow, the virility, and inspiration of the works of the classical period. He was a restless wanderer, a poet tramp, roving in the Orient, in Africa, and in Europe. His most important work is his divan Tachkemoni, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... and other whiles by love and endearments: But if men, notwithstanding all his loving solicitations, do still cherish and cleave to their lusts, and persevere in a state of sin, they are then said to resist the Holy Ghost, whereby their condition becomes very deplorable, and their conversion very difficult; for the more men resist the importunities, and stifle the motions of the Holy Spirit, the stronger do the chains of their corruption and servitude become. Every new act of sin gives these a degree of strength, and consequently ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... teacher may safely trust the children to get the most out of the story. Fifth grade pupils can read it without preparation. Pupils in the fourth grade should first read it in a study period in order to work out the pronunciation of the more difficult words. ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a distinct air of romance to the landscape at all times; but when in summer graceful vines clambered over their rugged sides, and underbrush softened their broken lines, it was not at all difficult to imagine them the remains of an unrecorded ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... old-fashioned place in the immediate vicinity of Waterloo Railway Station—a plain-fronted, four-square erection, essentially mid-Victorian in appearance, and suggestive, somehow, of the very early days of railway travelling. Anything more in contrast with the modern ideas of a hotel it would have been difficult to find in London, and Ronald Breton said so as he and the ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... know now who put in the sovereign! I knew every face in that audience—that wasn't difficult in so small a one—and I tried and tried to fix the sovereign on any one of them, and couldn't. At last I determined that it was the old gentleman who went out in the middle of 'Allan Water,' feeling that he would rather pay anything than stay ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... But how does it work, when we thus anticipate God, by going our own way? We bring, in many instances, guilt on our conscience; but if not, we certainly weaken faith, instead of increasing it; and each time we work thus a deliverance of our own, we find it more and more difficult to trust in God, till at last we give way entirely to our natural fallen reason, and unbelief prevails. How different, if one is enabled to wait God's own time, and to look alone to Him for help and deliverance! When at last help comes, after many seasons of prayer it may be, and after much ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... interrupted, suddenly realising that his position would be a difficult one to explain, even to this good and loyal friend. "We'll drop the matter for the present, ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... however, he was not troubled with many scruples on this head; or if any arose in his mind, they were soon dissipated in the consideration of what he owed to his own safety, which he yet could not greatly flatter himself with the hope of, as he was not ignorant how difficult it was for a delinquent to elude the diligence of those sent in search of him. The chance of such a thing notwithstanding was not to be neglected; and he waited with an impatience adequate to the occasion, for the hour in which he expected ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... knew, it was not difficult to disentangle a thread of truth here and there, or to detect under the most extravagant of these fictions, a substratum of fact. Among other significant circumstances, my father, chancing one day to see a portrait of the late minister ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... is certain beyond all question, that we render the work of our eternal salvation always more difficult when we have not embraced that state of life which God had laid out for us; for the sins which are a consequence of this want of correspondence to the divine will, will have, if not a decisive influence, at least a considerable share in the work of our reprobation. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... dispense with the existence of a Creator. This alternative, then, it must reject, and there is nothing left but to fall back upon the other, and to assume that it existed from all eternity. But it is certainly not less difficult to us to conceive the possibility of inert matter being self-existent and eternal, than it is to recognize the existence of an eternal and all-powerful Spirit. Our own consciousness helps us to realize the possibility of the existence of an Eternal Mind, and of the exercise ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... night after; when, strange to say, a hundred and fifty more found their way into the pouch of his Excellency the Count. Such a sum as this quite set the young nobleman afloat again, and brought back a pleasing equanimity to his mind, which had been a good deal disturbed in the former difficult circumstances; and in this, for a little and to a certain extent, poor Cat had the happiness to share. He did not alter the style of his establishment, which consisted, as before, of herself and a small person who acted as scourer, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dafty as he looks," thought Mrs. Jasher, who was Scotch, although she claimed to be cosmopolitan. "With his mummies he is all right, but outside those he might be difficult to manage. And these things," she glanced round the shadowy room, crowded with the dead and their earthly belongings. "I don't think I would care to marry the British Museum. Too much like hard work, and I am not so ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... difficult to explain the bold introduction of so important an insertion, unless we attribute it to the over-wisdom of some modern printer, who regarded Edward III. as the only excellent and redoubted prince of the ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... there is a whole Pandora's Box of miseries. Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone, but moral Doubt; all sorts of infidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. Perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify since the world began, was a life of Heroism more difficult for a man. That was not an age of Faith,—an age of Heroes! The very possibility of Heroism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism was gone forever; Triviality, Formulism and Commonplace were ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... It is difficult to get confidence if you begin by getting "awfully scared." Every boy, and every girl too, should know how to swim, and both are more than eager to learn. Now, the boy who can swim, and who is properly proud of ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the professor gravely; "whenever I have a difficult problem to solve I always put on my old red fez and have a thorough good think, and then the way seems ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... had strayed on to a topic where expression was a little difficult. Then his face and clerical dress seemed somehow to reassure her, and she began ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... filled" (Matt.), we read, "And blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost" (Nephi). Instead of, "for righteousness' sake," (Matt.) we have "for my name's sake," (Nephi). For the difficult passage, "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" (Matt.), we have the clearer expression, "I give unto you to be the salt of the earth; but if the salt shall ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... men are!" The lady passes through a short phase of collapse from despair over man's faculties, then returns to a difficult task crisply and incisively. "Well, at any rate, you can see this? The girl's got it into her head that the accident was our fault, and that it's her duty to make it ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... moreover, has many days and still more hours. Supposing the son of Sophroniscus had been unjustly condemned, who would hinder his escaping from the prison, especially since he had numerous friends to help him? Was it so difficult for the rich Plato, for AEschines and others to bribe the guards? Then the restless gadfly would flee from Athens to the barbarians in Thessaly, or to the Peloponnesus, or, still farther, to Egypt; Athens would no longer hear his blasphemous speeches; his death would not weigh upon the conscience ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... so difficult to argue with you," she murmured. "All the same, I think that it was most improper. But then everything you do is improper. You had no right to climb over that wall, you had no right to walk here with me the other afternoon, even though you had driven away a ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to that. No; certainly he would not. He had not shaved for years. And they kept no men-servants; which makes it difficult for him to borrow one from a sleeping man. So what he would do would doubtless be to cut off his beard, or part of it, quite close, with a pair of scissors, and then get himself properly shaved next morning in the first country town he ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Hebrew and Greek; even before a tribunal of men like you, who proclaim beforehand that Moses, in Hebrew, and Paul, in Greek, must condemn slavery because "it is a violation of the first sentiments of the Declaration of Independence." You find it difficult to persuade men that Moses and Paul were moved by the Holy Ghost to sanction the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson! You find it hard to make men believe that Moses saw in the mount, and Paul had vision in heaven, that this future apostle of Liberty ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... as he stroked his moustache implied a slight annoyance at her composure. He found it difficult with this dark, self-contained young woman to sustain ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and it would have been more to our advantage had it been stronger. San Rafael Creek, up which we had to go to reach the town, and turn over our prisoners to the authorities, ran through wide-stretching marshes, and was difficult to navigate on a falling tide, while at low tide it was impossible to navigate at all. So, with the tide already half-ebbed, it was necessary for us to make time. This the heavy junk prevented lumbering along behind and holding the Reindeer ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... little interest, more pleasing to him, than they could be to the connoisseur of more exclusive taste. His predilection is, however, for Colour; and we agree with him, "that without the science of colouring, that so difficult science, about which the exclusive partisans of ideal beauty trouble themselves so little, their antiques and their ideal perfection may produce designs, but never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... not but admire the generosity of his friend, though he found it difficult to abandon the thought of the pleasure he anticipated in spending the Fourth in Boston. He stood in silent thought a few ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... that is required is to know the place of the accent, which is simply distinguished by greater stress of voice. This peculiarity of our language makes it more difficult for us than for other peoples to get the Latin accent, which is one ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... he said, "and I am proud of you. I have heard very laudatory reports of you. My agents all agree in reporting that you have, in very difficult circumstances, done your utmost to avoid giving offence to any of your neighbors in Sabinum, and that, if you have given offense, it was not your fault. They also agree in reporting that, mild and peaceful as you are by disposition, you know how to defend yourself when attacked, that you are ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... who caught the Mouse to him who caught the Muffin, "We might cook this little Mouse if we only had some Stuffin'! If we had but Sage and Onions we could do extremely well, But how to get that Stuffin' it is difficult to tell!" ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... much relieved to find nothing more difficult required of him that he gave vent to ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... could not confess. If confession had been difficult yesterday, it was a thousand times more difficult to-day, and it would be a thousand thousand ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... what the best state is, and why. It will not be difficult to perceive of the many states which there are, for we have seen that there are various forms both of democracies and oligarchies, to which we should give the first place, to which the second, and in the same manner the next ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... their evening service. Night after night this mournful dirge was heard gently issuing from the darkness of their cell, in tones so melodious and plaintive that they never died away from the memory of those who heard them. It is difficult to conceive of any thing more affecting than this knell, so softly uttered at midnight in those ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... is almost entirely covered by glaciers and is difficult to approach. It was discovered in 1739 by a French naval officer after whom the island was named. No claim was made until 1825, when the British flag was raised. In 1928, the UK waived its claim in favor of Norway, which had occupied the island the previous year. In 1971, Norway designated ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... position of absolute neutrality which Pitt took up from the beginning of the troubles in France was extremely difficult to maintain amidst the rising passions of the year 1792. The Franco-Austrian war soon led to a situation in which the future conduct of the neutral aroused far more suspicion, and scarcely less hatred, than that of the enemy himself. When brains reeled with rage against tyrants; when cheeks flushed ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... think less of herself and more of others, and thus become more amiable in their sight, and not feel so many mortifications, as by her constant desire for universal homage, she had previously endured. She knew the task was difficult so to conquer herself, and doubting her own strength, was led to seek it where alone it could be found. To none did she confess these secret feelings and determination; calmly and steadily she looked ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... the debauchery and licentiousness which were carried to such an extreme in our armies and encampments. In an age when the passions are strongest, and often blind reason and silence conscience, they have not the means nor the permission to marry; in their vicinity it is, therefore, more difficult to discover one honest woman or a dutiful wife, than hundreds of harlots and of adulteresses. Notwithstanding that many of them have been accused before the tribunals of seductions, rape, and violence against the sex, not one has been punished ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... time to work! It is to be hoped that Thoreau enjoyed his surveying, as he probably did, especially when it took him through sphagnum swamps or scrub-oak thickets or a tangle of briers and thorns. The more difficult the way, the more he could summon his philosophy. "You must get your living by loving." It is a hard saying, but it is a part of his gospel. But as he on one occasion worked seventy-six days surveying, for only one dollar a day, the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... confess that a thing may be difficult from the way in which we regard it, or from the position ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Hargis said that never in his recollection of New York crowds had there been a crowd so hard to contend against or one so difficult to penetrate; he said this between gasps for breath while nursing a badly sprained thumb. The men under him agreed with him. The thing overpassed anything in their professional experiences. Several of them were ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... foolishness of the Renaissance which is the best excuse for the foolishness of the Romantic revival; the new classical movement had in such a degree interrupted the continuity of European art that it was very difficult for men in the eighteenth century to recover the past, and we must make allowance for the often ludicrous terms and forms of the new mediaevalism. Indeed it is a strange and often absurd art—the half-serious, half-parodying imitations of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes. The dress of the future, I think, will use drapery to a great extent and will abound ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... realization, tears were a mockery then: there was too much fire flaming in my eyes, and boiling my blood with indignation; my bosom heaved with quick-drawn sighs, and my lips were smiling in angry scorn. This, then was the result of their secret conferences, to get rid of me! It was not a difficult task, if they only knew it, for my pride would fight more than half their battles for them, and carry me anywhere, to the farthermost corner of the earth, rather than see me trespass upon their privacy or interfere ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... in his several-rank and room. One day as he sat thus, there came into the assembly a stranger, clad in ragged white clothes, who took seat in an obscure place behind the doctors of the law. Then the assembly began to speak and debate difficult questions, it being the custom that the various propositions should be submitted to each in turn, and that whoso bethought him of some subtle addition or rare conceit, should make mention of it. So the question went round till it came to the strange man, who spake ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Cyrus Harding commenced the descent of this abrupt declivity, following almost step for step the difficult path which, during that stormy night, had led them to Dakkar Grotto. In open day the descent was less perilous, and, besides, the bed of ashes which covered the polished surface of the rock enabled them to make their ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... a youthful mother was observed at play with her little nude, brown baby. It lay upon its back on the green sward with wild flowers clutched in either tiny fist, itself only a blossom of humanity, crowing and laughing at its mother's pranks, as she kneeled over it. It was difficult to say which exhibited the more pleasure in the occupation. The Japanese become mothers frequently at fourteen, and here was one who was certainly no older, as brown and nearly as naked as her baby. We had surprised ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... every public work which in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that all hardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... which he considered more or less useless, had learned signalling. He had not entirely forgotten the accomplishment, and it might serve him very well now, only—and he looked up critically at the jagged wall—it would be difficult to get into that upper chamber, a shell of which remained. In any case, he would not think of so extreme a measure, until he was sure that, if he gave an alarm, it would not be ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this proposal, remarking, as they moved forward, that he did not think the stranger of the tribe just named; though he admitted that the use of paint was so general and loose among these warriors, as to render it difficult ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... late a new interest in Mysticism, itself a border-land word, strangely difficult of definition yet meaning generally the persuasion that through certain spiritual disciplines—commonly called the mystic way—we may come into a first-hand knowledge of God and the spiritual order, in no sense dependent upon reason or sense testimony. Some ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... hundred feet from the intersection of those lofty and massive piers which divide transept from choir and nave; what effect of magnitude after the eye gets accustomed to the vast proportions! Oh, what silence reigns around! How difficult, even for the sonorous chants of choristers and priests to disturb that silence,—to be more than echoes of a distant music which seems to come from the very courts of heaven itself: to some a holy sanctuary, where one may meditate ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... embrace; and the result may well be that the disintegration of this staying and stabilizing element in our citizenship—one that retards and mollifies if it does not inhibit change—will produce consequences in its train which may be as dire as they are difficult to foretell. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... every side, except the south, by the lower spurs of the mountain ridge, in which it is so snugly nestled, covered with rich groves of chesnut-trees, and sheltered on the northward by the dark pines of the loftier steeps, it were difficult to conceive a fairer site for a villa, than that ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... can work as neatly as you, Withers," she said gaily, "and I shall ask you to do the most difficult part. I want you to sew my lovely poppies over the collar and facings of the jacket, just spacing them a little and making a dainty irregularity. And then Mary—won't you, Mary?—will do the same with the waistband while I put a border of them round ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... has at least the reality of a bad dream—which, as most people know, is a very real thing indeed while it lasts, and for a little time after. It increases the wonder—though to me it does not increase the interest—to know that Flaubert took the most gigantic pains to make his task as difficult as possible by acquiring and piecing together the available knowledge on his subject. This process—the ostensible sine qua non of "Realism" and "Naturalism"—will require further treatment. It is almost enough for the present to say that, though not a novelty, it had been, and for the matter ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... men and in their veins there flowed the blood of the Puritans. The determination that enabled their progenitors to establish themselves around the shores of the old Bay States upheld them in the scarcely less difficult task of creating for themselves a home amidst the rocky hillsides that encircled ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... from head to foot as Augustina herself. Once amid the prayers and litanies he was reciting with the Sisters, he lifted his head and found that she was looking at him and not at Augustina. Her expression was so forlorn and difficult to read, that he felt a vague uneasiness. But his Catholic sense of the deep awe of what he was doing made him try to concentrate himself upon it, and when he raised his eyes again Laura ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consent of his relatives, and which seems to have satisfied his nautical ambition for a time. As told in the book, Melville met with more than the usual hardships of a sailor-boy's first venture. It does not seem difficult in 'Redburn' to separate the author's actual experiences from those invented by him, this being the case in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... hole so deep that it became difficult to throw up the gravel from the bottom, I suggested that they should dig at some other place. But to this they objected, declaring that the gravel was getting better and better, and it would be well to go on down as long as the quality continued to be so good. ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... to Bolcheretsk had taken up more time than we expected, and we were told that our return might prove still more difficult and tedious, we were under the necessity of acquainting the commander this evening with our intention of setting out the next day. It was not without the utmost regret we thought of leaving our new acquaintance, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... hymns; judge if I love this reinvigorating climate, where I can already toil till my head swims and every string in the poor jumping Jack (as he now lies in bed) aches with a kind of yearning strain, difficult to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fathers—not only the men, but the women—asking for protection, pardon, and penance. Only one has failed to come, and he was the beginning and, as it were, the source of all this disturbance; but I hope that God, in His great mercy, will bring in this man. In truth, it will be very difficult for him to effect a reconciliation with the parties concerned and obtain a pardon, on account of their rank and wealth; for the murdered man (whose name was Humbas) was one of the most noted and valiant ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... same man with much judgment and invention. From what we see, this craftsman appears to have had a very great desire to attain to the standard of Donatello; but he did not succeed, for he aimed too high in a most difficult art. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... their friendliness could bring back the beauty of these old-world villages of Champagne, built centuries ago by men of art and craft, and chiselled by Time itself, so that the stones told tales of history to the villagers. It would be difficult to patch up the grey old tower of Huiron Church, through which shells had come crashing, or to rebuild its oak roof whose beams were splintered like the broken ribs of a rotting carcase. A white-haired priest passed up and down the roadway before ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the Queen, 'will be a very difficult task. His Majesty, I fear, will never consent ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... It was now rather difficult to go on, for they had to climb as if they were climbing a hill; and now the passage was wide. Nearly worn out, they saw light overhead at last, and creeping through a crack into the open air, found themselves on the ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... be difficult to name a single known agnostic who has given to history anything like the amount of thought and study which he brings to a knowledge of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... philological, a fairly regular system of orthography is almost a necessity. The present system is not the phonetic ideal of “one sound to each symbol, and one symbol for each sound,” but it aims at being fairly consistent with itself, not too difficult to understand, not too much encumbered with diacritical signs, and not too startlingly different from the spellings of earlier times, especially from that of Lhuyd, whose system was constructed from living Cornish speakers. The writer ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... It would be difficult, even impossible, to set down in writing my sensations at that moment. All I can particularly recall is that I laughed, though neither from a spirit of bravado nor from hysteria. And I wanted to smoke. Lord! how I did want to smoke; but that was out ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the most delicate and difficult task of the school. Here we encounter some of the fundamental principles of psychology as explained and emphasized by James, McDougall, and Strayer. Here we must begin our quest for the native tendencies that condition successful teaching. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... assembled and watched the flames. There were flames above and flames below, fire shooting to the sky, and fire flowing down on the river's tide. The water reflected the fire above, and the fire that floated on its surface. It must have seemed like a burning world. That was a very difficult task ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... done thoroughly now another chance might never be offered; and these men thought it necessary to abolish the confederation, and establish a federal republic, in which the general government should act directly upon the people. The difficult problem was how to frame a plan of this sort which people could be made to understand and adopt. At the very outset some of the delegates began to exhibit symptoms of that peculiar kind of moral cowardice which is wont to afflict ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... reasons for concealing his numbers, it is his practice for each succeeding man to follow, as nearly as possible, in the footsteps of the warrior who precedes him; thereby rendering a computation difficult, if not impossible. In this manner our foes had evidently marched; but Susquesus, who had been busy examining the marks around the spring, the whole time we were occupied in burying the dead, gave ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... you are better," she said with an effort made doubly difficult in the consciousness of the bright blush on her cheeks. Without moving he replied in what must have once been an agreeable voice: "Thank you. I suppose you are ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... 1282, Oh, fair the fruits of Leto blow, &c.—A curious and rather difficult little ritual hymn explaining how Apollo came from Delos to Delphi. It acts more as an interlude than anything else, to fill the time until we learn the issue of the ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... perversions. These tendencies to perversion may either remain as such, or after the repression sets in they may become motive powers for neurotic symptoms; at all events, the sexual prematurity renders difficult the desirable later control of the sexual impulse by the higher psychic influences, and enhances the compulsive-like character which even without this prematurity would be claimed by the psychic representatives of the impulse. Sexual prematurity often runs parallel ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... 'It is very difficult to make up a number sometimes,' suggested Mrs. Gould; 'but they are certainly very coarse. I hear, when Mr. Ryan and Mr. Lynch go to fairs, that they sleep with their herdsman, and in Mayo there is a bachelor's house where they have fine times—whiskey-drinking ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... along; while, for the same reason, the country is generally open rolling hills, covered with grass or scanty pines, affording a great contrast to the moist country at the coast, where the rivers run through thick woods and impenetrable bush, which render them very difficult to approach and fish unless they are shallow enough for wading. The fishing to be obtained along the Canadian Pacific Railway as it passes through the Rocky Mountains is not very good, the guide-books notwithstanding. At Banff ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... not be wrong, if it were to save a thousand innocent lives, a hundred, ten, even one, if he wronged only himself in the evil he did to attain his end. But as the ratio diminishes, the case becomes manifestly more difficult to judge, and the absolute nature of right asserts itself more strongly when it is not confronted by overwhelming odds in most exceptional circumstances. Stealing is bad, but there is a difference between the case ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... intending," he observed in tones he endeavored to make light, "to tell Miss Van Rolsen she must find some one else to take my place. It would not be very difficult. It is not a position ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Foil, son of Nectan," said Laeg, "and there is not one in the world with whom it is more difficult to contend both in other respects and chiefly in this, that there is but one weapon wherewith he may be slain. To all others he is invulnerable. That weapon is an iron ball having magic properties, and no man ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... monopoly on power. In 1996, the Democratic Union Coalition (DUC) defeated the MPRP in a national election and has attempted to establish a number of reforms to modernize the economy. However, many former communists retain key posts and implementation has been difficult. ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... all German thinkers was the King of Mystics, Jacob Boehme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a ferment of different systems of thought. It is very difficult to unriddle his Aurora, but love of Nature, as well as love of God, is ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... were impassable or homeless, but they were difficult in patches; their paths were rare and laid upon no general system. Their inhabited fields were isolated, their waters tidal, with great banks of treacherous mud, intricate and unbridged; such conditions are amply sufficient for a defensive war. The flight of a small body in such a land can ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... into a wet mould. Turn out when cold. If difficult to turn out, stand the mould in a basin of warm water for 2 ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... certain aloofness as far as he was concerned, although he was not sure that the impression was not due to his absence so long from the society of women. It gave him a feeling of shyness which he found difficult to overcome, and which he contrasted in his own mind with her ease and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... ebony and wedgewood, its costly pictures and bronzes, and recalled the Villa with its luxury and splendour, and the vast sums which Sir Stephen had spent during the last few months. It seemed difficult to realise that the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... and wandered on all sides. While the army was being thus destroyed by the Suta's son, Nakula rushed with speed against that mighty car-warrior. And Bhimasena rushed against Drona's son who was engaged in the accomplishment of the most difficult feats. Satyaki checked the Kaikaya princes Vinda and Anuvinda. King Citrasena rushed against the advancing Srutakarman; and Prativindhya against Citra owning a beautiful standard and a beautiful bow. Duryodhana rushed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... time we had just had the chance of escaping with the fair booty yonder had been present. Without her, flight would have been easy enough, but that was not worth considering for a moment. With her it was more difficult, yet, as I had watched the woodmen, accustomed to cool forest shades, faint under the fiery glare of the world above, to make a dash for liberty seemed each hour more easy. I had seen the men in the streets drop one by one, and the spears fall from the hands of guards about ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... freedom in conforming to the fashionable licence of his age by protesting that his muse may be wanton, but his life is chaste. We can readily believe him, for he was a man of kindly heart and high ideals, whose simple vanity cannot obscure his amiability. But it is difficult to believe that the loss of his poetry is in any way a serious loss to the world.[457] We have given Pliny the poet more space than is his due; our excuse must be the interest of his ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... two distinct things which make the payment of taxes difficult; the one is the large and real value of the sum to be paid, and the other is the scarcity of the thing in which the payment is to be made; and although these appear to be one and the same, they are in several instances riot only different, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and also (but more emphatically) the Suspiria de Profundis. "On these," he says, "as modes of impassioned prose ranging under no precedents that I am aware of in any literature, it is much more difficult to speak justly, whether in a ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... not cause such weariness. Wherefore it will be desirable to act in the way which most people adopt, on account of its easiness; that is, to touch on each topic separately, and in that manner briefly to run over all sorts of argumentation; and also (which is, however, more difficult) to recount what portions of the subject you previously mentioned in the arrangement of the subject, as those which you promised to explain; and also to bring to the recollection of your hearers the reasonings by which you established each separate point, and then to ask of those ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... physical or other ills; and many there were who had faith that could they but reach Him, or even touch the border of His robe, they would be healed.[612] One effect of the people's eagerness, which led them to press and crowd around Him, was to render difficult if not impossible at times the effective delivery of any discourse. His usual place for open-air teaching while He tarried in the vicinity of the sea, or lake, of Galilee was the shore; and thither flocked the crowds to hear Him. At His request, the disciples had provided a "small ship," which was ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... that the gorge of the ravine was about a thousand feet above our last encamping ground. The hills on either side were ragged and abrupt, but of insignificant height: the length of the pass itself was about two miles, and from its head to Koteah Shroof the road was stony and difficult; but, as we had been careful at starting not to overload our baggage animals, they got through their work without ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... charge of piracy, Captain Harrison, our skipper, busily employed himself, as was his wont, in hunting up information relative to the movements, present and prospective, of the slavers upon the coast. And this was not quite so difficult to do as might at first be imagined; for, Sierra Leone being the headquarters, so to speak, of the British Slave Squadron, the persons actually engaged in the slave-trade found that it paid them well to maintain agents there for the sole purpose of picking up every possible item ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... in, or after, Thorfinn's battle, and that he fell a victim not of Groa, Macbeth's wife's cup of poison, but possibly of her husband's dagger at Bothgowanan or Pitgavenny, a smithy about two miles from Elgin. We should also note that Thorfinn's cruelty made it difficult for him ever to hope to obtain and keep the throne of Scotland, ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... possible that the Popish Powers, to wit, of France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland, which are intirely Popish, could heartily unite their Interests, and should join their Powers to attack the Protestants, the latter would find it very difficult, if not ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... districts in Thrace, they crossed the stream day and night, without ceasing, embarking in troops on board ships and rafts, and canoes made of the hollow trunks of trees, in which enterprise, as the Danube is the most difficult of all rivers to navigate, and was at that time swollen with continual rains, a great many were drowned, who, because they were too numerous for the vessels, tried to swim across, and in spite of all their exertions were ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... that Dryden smoked. The snuff-box was his symbol of authority. Budding wits thought themselves highly distinguished if they could obtain the honour of being allowed to take a pinch from it. Of Dr. Aldrich, who was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and who wrote a curious "Catch not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear, to be sung by four men smoaking their pipes," an anecdote has often been related, which illustrates his devotion to the weed. A bet was made by one undergraduate and taken by another, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson |
