"Inordinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right, and Godfrey knew it, and this vexed him the more. He had an inordinate opinion of himself and his own consequence, and felt humiliated at being disobeyed by a servant, without being able to punish him for his audacity. This feeling was increased by the presence of a third party, who was ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint's and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... was elementary in her strong nature, inherited from strong, full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter inordinate passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished at any moment? What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything else could ever ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... a whole has been curiously blind to the inordinate self-valuation characteristic of the German spirit. So long ago as the beginning of last century, we find Fichte assuring his countrymen that: "There are no two ways about it: if you founder, the whole of humanity founders ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... Lord Grantley and his Brother General Norton, who were vastly taken with him, as indeed are every one. And I should be mortified in the highest degree to see the honourable feelings of my little fellow exposed to insult by the inordinate Indiscretions of any Servant. He has Ability and a quickness of Conception, and a correct Discrimination that is seldom seen in a youth, and he is a fit associate of men, and choice indeed must be the Company that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... who, indeed, was admired and accounted happy by all men, and unenvied by every one that was good; except so far as it seems the province of some god to lessen that happiness which is too great and inordinate, and so to mingle the affairs of human life that no one should be entirely free and exempt from calamities; but, as we read in Homer, that those should think themselves truly blessed to whom fortune has given an equal share of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of a rebuke that Richardson's amiable but inordinate egotism on one occasion received, much to Johnson's secret delight, which is certainly worth quoting before we dismiss the old printer altogether. "One day," says Boswell, "at his country house at Northend, where a large company ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the disease is caused by the conjurations of an enemy, through which the patient becomes subject to an inordinate appetite, causing him to eat until his abdomen is unnaturally distended. By the same magic spells tobacco may be conveyed into the man's body, causing him to be affected by faintness and languor. The enemy, if bitterly revengeful, may even put into the body of his victim a worm or insect ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... for a moment,—not a word of that had escaped his lips. He had as little guessed the height of Angelique's ambition as she the depths of his craft and wickedness, and yet there was a wonderful similarity between the characters of both,—the same bold, defiant spirit, the same inordinate ambition, the same void of principle in selecting means to ends,—only the one fascinated with the lures of love, the other by the charms of wit, the temptations of money, or effected his purposes by the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... should be elected from the commons; all matters of great importance, and such as could not be attained without the greatest struggles. A contest therefore for all those objects, of which there is ever an inordinate desire among men, viz. land, money, and honours, being now proposed, the patricians became terrified and dismayed, and finding no other remedy in their public and private consultations except the protest, which had been tried in many previous contests, they gained over their colleagues to oppose ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... points if an old one failed, that he could not escape from us. A most remarkable circumstance is, that I really don't think he grasped this sum even so much for the gratification of his avarice, which was inordinate, as in the hatred he felt for Copperfield. He said so to me, plainly. He said he would even have spent as much, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the colonists think they were independent of the British, and, having an inordinate proportion of lawyers among them, they did not lack plausible arguments. They admitted the right of the British parliament to impose external taxes, such as customs duties, on the colonies, but denied its ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... inordinate development of this emotion always betokens a neurotic diathesis, and not infrequently indicates the oncoming of insanity. It is responsible for much useless suffering and not a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... originally hostile to the constitution of the United States, and adverse to its adoption; and "that his avowed opinions tended to national disunion, national insignificance, public disorder, and discredit." Under the garb of democratic simplicity, and modest retiring philosophy, he covered an inordinate ambition which grasped unceasingly at power, and sought to gratify itself, by professions of excessive attachment to liberty, and by traducing and lessening in the public esteem, every man in whom he could discern a rival. To this aspiring temper they ascribed, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... exclaimed Augustus in an inordinate fit of enthusiasm, at the supposed sympathy of his companion, "I never met with a gentleman so peculiarly to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... the time which he ought to bestow there; they rob his family of their due support, by the man's neglecting that business by which they are to be supported and maintained; and they oftentimes rob the creditors of their just debts, the tradesman sinking by the inordinate use of those innocent diversions, as he calls them, as well by the expense attending them, as the loss of his time, and neglect of his business, by which he is at last reduced to the necessity of shutting up shop in earnest, which was indeed as good as shut before. A shop ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... his own country rode in the marshal's landau to court, with a retinue of Lancers that was also his guard. Soon they entered the Paseo, which Maximilian was making beautiful at inordinate cost as a link between the City and his summer palace, the alcazar of Chapultepec. Turning into the wide, stately boulevard, Driscoll was that moment plunged into an eddying splendor of Europe transplanted, and he blinked his eyes, half humorously. There were mettlesome steeds, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Father," assented little Eve Edgarton. "Only—" ruggedly the soft little chin thrust itself forth into stubborn outline again. "Only, Father," she articulated with inordinate distinctness, "you might just as well understand here and now, I won't budge one inch toward Nunko-Nono—not one single solitary little inch toward Nunko-Nono—unless at London, or Lisbon, or Odessa, or somewhere, ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as the Seeker and by no other name. As none could remember when he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco, that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle, he had been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise—the same despair at eve. Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage, wearing a high-crowned hat, shaped somewhat ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and West's was even of more than the usual degree of English fairness. For some time after, if it be not still in use, the expression of "as fair as the Cardinal" acquired proverbial currency in the Roman conversations, applied to persons who had any inordinate conceit of their ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... look for the more characteristic peculiarities of the Negro stock, must search. But it is the bad side which will preponderate; it is the darkest practices which will develop themselves most typically. What we find in germs and remnants elsewhere, grow, in Dahomey, to inordinate and ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... character so interesting to all present, the sitting was prolonged to quite an inordinate length, and though no one, except perhaps the professor, noted the fact, it was past midnight when the adventurous quartette rose from the table, and taking their wine and cigars with them, moved into the music-room, at the same time dismissing the patient George ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... their heredity that they achieved this unholy concept. The breed will out and sometimes most fantastically. Thus in them did cursed Albion array herself a scheming wanton, a bold, cold-calculating, and artful hussy. After all, I do not know. But this I know: it was out of their inordinate desire for joy that ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... flourished undisturbed, and saloons closed only when some member of the saloon-keeper's family died. The anti-gambling league had succeeded in suppressing the slot machines for a fortnight; this was the only triumph virtue could mark down for herself. There were reformers in plenty, but their inordinate love of publicity ruined the effectiveness of their work. A brass band will not move the criminal half so quickly as a sudden pull at the scruff of his neck. So the evil-doer lay low, or borrowed the most convenient halo and posed as a deeply-wronged ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... which the example of Tazewell presents to the American mind is of yet greater significancy. If there be one unpleasant trait more revolting than another in our national character, it is the inordinate pursuit of wealth: rem, quocunque modo rem. To get money is the first lesson of childhood, the engrossing purpose of middle age, and the harassing employment of declining years. Such is the rabid thirst for money, its effects are seen over the whole moral and intellectual character ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... Pennsylvania, says, "I cannot but be apprehensive that the Indian trade, as it is now carried on, will involve us in some fatal quarrel with the Indians. Our traders, in defiance of the laws, carry spirituous liquors among them, and take advantage of their inordinate appetite for it, to cheat them of their skins, and their wampum, which is their money." In 1753 governor Hamilton appointed Richard Peters, Isaac Norris and Benjamin Franklin, to hold a treaty with the Indians ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... thus moderately in the seventeenth century, the complaints concerning their avarice and extortions were loud and universal. This public discontent was due to the inordinate exactions of judges and place-holders rather than to the conduct of barristers and attorneys; but popular displeasure seldom cares to discriminate between the blameless and the culpable members of an obnoxious system, or to distinguish between the errors ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... as he was, Dick found himself floundering along an extremely crooked path. He wrote a half dozen pleasant, non-committal letters to David and Lucy, spending an inordinate time on them, and gave them to Walter Wheeler to mail at stated intervals. But his chief difficulty was with Elizabeth. Perhaps he would have told her; there were times when he had to fight his desire to have ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that even the Germans, who are not nice in their modes of warfare, cried out against him. It is an evil fortune that has thrown us into his hands; still, although grasping and avaricious, he can hardly demand for a simple knight any inordinate ransom. The French themselves would cry out did he do so, seeing that so large a number of their own knights are in our hands, and that the king has ample powers of retaliation; however, we need not look on the dark side. It is not likely ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... and repulsive that any detailed description thereof will be passed over. I never saw the like before, and never have seen it since. I always thought that one thing which aggravated this trouble was the inordinate quantity of sugar some of the men would consume. They would not only use it to excess in their coffee and rice, but would frequently eat it raw, by handfuls. I happen to think, right now, of an incident that illustrates the unnatural appetite of some of the ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... will not say, but the best men may die of a consumption, a dropsie, or a surfeit; yea, that these may meet upon a man to end him: yet I will say again, that many times these diseases come through mans inordinate use of things. Much drinking brings dropsies, consumptions, surfeits, and many other diseases; and I doubt, that Mr. Badman's death did come by his abuse of himself in the use of lawfull and unlawfull things. I ground this my sentence upon that report of his life ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... with the mud of the highway. The very dray horses were gorged with an unending nourishment of snatched mouthfuls picked from backboard, from barrel top, and from the edge of the sidewalk. The entire locality reeked with the fatness of a hundred thousand furrows. A land of plenty, the inordinate abundance of the earth itself emptied itself upon the asphalt and cobbles of the quarter. It was the Mouth of the City, and drawn from all directions, over a territory of immense area, this glut of crude subsistence was sucked in, as if into a rapacious ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... while the motives which led to its delineation, were such, as must excite universal admiration. Bold and daring, yet generous and disinterested, Colonel Clarke sought not his individual advancement in the projection or execution of this campaign. It was not to gratify the longings of ambition, or an inordinate love of fame, that prompted him to penetrate the Indian country to the Kaskaskias, nor that tempted him forth from thence, to war with the garrison at St. Vincent. He was not ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... gentleman, who touches objects in order to avert the evil chance? This being has great gifts and many amiable qualities; but does not everybody see that his besetting sin is selfishness? He fixes his mind on certain objects, and takes inordinate interest in them because they are his own, and those very objects, through the providence of God, which is kindness in disguise, becomes snakes and scorpions to whip him. Tired of various pursuits, he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... error. Doubtless Demosthenes was honest, but he was mistaken in his views of what was best for Greece and even for Athens. Philip and Alexander, however selfish, were neither in purpose nor in fact so hostile to Greek freedom as the mighty orator makes out. Inordinate ambition possessed both. In this they are to be ranked with Napoleon and Julius Caesar rather than with Washington. They, however, clearly saw the vanity of the old Greek regime, the total uselessness of trying to unify Greece or to make her independent of Persia through any of the devices paraded ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... me that this is the little girl who used to take me for walks, and who had such an inordinate appetite for stories! Good ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... I had scarcely read a baudy book, none of which excepting "Fanny Hill" appeared to me to be truthful, that did, and it does so still; the others telling of recherche eroticisms, or of inordinate copulative powers, of the strange twists, tricks, and fancies, of matured voluptuousness, and philosophical lewedness, seemed to my comparative ignorance, as baudy imaginings, or lying inventions, not worthy of belief; although I now know by experience, that they may ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... professional secretary, who also addresses the envelopes, encloses the proper number of cards, and seals, stamps and posts the invitations. The address of a professional secretary can always be furnished by the stationer. Very often, especially where lists do not run into inordinate length, the envelopes are addressed and the invitations sent out by the bride herself and some of her friends who volunteer to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... strange a death? Would to God thou hadst perished in some of those tempests which thou hast escaped! then thy death had not been so lingering, and so terrible in all its circumstances. But thou hast drawn all this upon thyself by thy inordinate avarice. Ah, unfortunate wretch! shouldst thou not rather have remained at home, and quietly enjoyed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... mistress of Art, and sink down, lost in sensual pleasure and excess, till the Siren grows tired and destroys them. Other men wed Art, and from the union beget them fair, lovely, ay, immortal children, as Raphael did. Some again, confounding Art with their own inordinate vanity, grow stern and harsh with making sacrifices to the stone idol, grinding down their own hearts in vain experimenting after properer pigments, whereby themselves may attain to a chill and profitless immortality. But there are others still, who, elevating Art into a grand divinity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... against God, and against all who sincerely love God. To make terms with the world is to forfeit God's love. The Church has lost much of the heroic heart, the militant power, the iron nerve, and the fire of the Holy Spirit, by reason of ease, indulgence, compromise, and inordinate desire for the friendship of the world. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... tastes of varying audiences. She has a vivid imagination curiously controlled by the most prosaic common sense. He rarely errs in taking her advice.... To her further credit balance, she is more saving than extravagant. Bits of jewellery please her, but she does not crave inordinate adornment. When he buys a touring-car for the greater comfort of their vagrant life, she is appalled by the cost and upbraids him with more than a touch of shrewishness. Her tastes do not rise ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... and died in 1761. He was a very diligent collector of antiquarian materials, and the author of a Life of Raleigh. He was intimate with Captain Grose, Burns' friend, who used to rally him on his inordinate thirst for ale, although, if we believe Burns, it was paralleled by Grose's liking for port. The following ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... bringing our horses. The meat was soon cooked, and it was wonderful to see how quickly it disappeared in the jaws of our two new friends. We had yet about twelve pounds of it, and we were entering a country where game would be found daily, so we did not repine at their most inordinate appetites, but, on the contrary, encouraged them to continue. When the first pangs of hunger were a little soothed, they both looked at us with ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... from October to April; they bring inordinate amounts of rain which can damage roads and houses; sandstorms and dust storms occur throughout the year, but are most common between March ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... companies of men, are parties, they are in the highest degree ceremonious; they require a variety of symbolical acts and words intended to impress the business on the memory of all who take part in it; and they demand the presence of an inordinate number of witnesses. From these peculiarities, and others allied to them, springs the universally unmalleable character of the ancient forms of property. Sometimes the patrimony of the family is absolutely inalienable, as was the case with the Sclavonians, and still oftener, though alienations may ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... the charmed commentator may well keep before him, simply did all the usual English things—under the happy provision of course that he found them in his way at their best; and it was exactly most delightful in him that no inordinate expenditure, no anxious extension of the common plan, as "liberally" applied all about him, had been incurred or contrived to predetermine his distinction. It is difficult to express on the contrary how peculiar a value attached ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... away from him. His holdings, in the eight years since he had come to the border, amounted to several thousand well-cultivated acres; and he looked like a man who, when he set out to get anything, would get it. He had an inordinate desire to grab up some more territory. Tall and thin, and sharp-featured, as well as sharp-tongued, he resembled a hawk. It was difficult to realize the fact that the pert and lovely little Angela—who lived up to her name only once in a while!—was his own flesh and ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... trait attributed to Manbos and other people of Mindano. It is true that they do not take inordinate risks. The favorite hour for attack on an enemy's house is dawn. They prefer to thrust a spear through the floor rather than to call the enemy out to fight a hand-to-hand battle. In other cases they prefer to ambush him on the trail, 5 or 10 men against ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... you very much, Mr. Cottingham," she said as we conversed in low voices, "I cannot conceal from myself that you are a thief. Well, now to be perfectly frank, I want a thief's help—and I know that, as we are friends, you will assist me. You know my inordinate love of jewels. Indeed, I wouldn't have married Owen if he had not given me my pearls. And you know the other ornaments I have—which I might very well never ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Paris, come home, like all traveled gentlemen, with a variety of elegant accomplishments, the chief of which is a disgust for their own language and customs. This, indeed, seems to be a characteristic of several other nations—an inordinate desire to become denationalized by imitating whatever is meretricious and absurd in other people; and you need not be surprised should you fail to recognize even your unpretending friend and correspondent on his return to ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... realization hopeless, thus affording a superfluous illustration of the truth that the one deadly evil to be shunned by those who would remain philanthropists is a practical knowledge of men, and of the truism that the statesman's bane is an inordinate fondness ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... reason, there is a delusion that can hardly be described in any other phrase. We cannot glance our eye over the face of our country without beholding such scenes: and, so long as they are exhibited; so long as we permit ourselves to invest objects of little or no real importance with such an inordinate imaginary interest that we are ready to go to every extremity rather than relinquish them; so long as we yield to the impulse of passion, and plunge into excitement, and take counsel of our feelings rather than our judgment,—we are following in the footsteps ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... character being strongly imbued with that false pride which chafes at a subordinate position. I had often heard him declare that he was born to be a leader of men, and had laughed at what seemed to me to be his inordinate conceit. He hated work as heartily as he loved trashy, sensational literature; and he displayed a quite childish love of dainty food and showy clothes. And these were not his only faults: he was an unblushing liar; he scoffed at such old-fashioned virtues as honesty and truth ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... party, like every one which promises to effect a great political change, was embraced by many equally careless of the one motive or the other; but who hoped to indulge their licentious passions, repair their broken fortunes, or gratify their inordinate ambition ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... that fearless line of duty my sacred calling prescribes, were I not, as a friend, to urge you to reflect on your present line of conduct, and ask you to pause on it, ere you wreck, not only the happiness of others but your own, at the shrine of inordinate vanity. Shall I honestly own, that mine has narrowly escaped being wrecked; and that, from your own lips, I learnt such was the case. Believing you good and amiable, as you seemed, I was fascinated, and allowed my feelings ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... The inordinate love of money, no doubt, may be and is "the root of all evil," but money itself, when properly used, is not only a "handy thing to have in the house," but affords the gratification of blessing our race by enabling its possessor ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: in the which ye also walked some time, ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... festal days the middle and lower classes of the capital come hither in large numbers to amuse themselves with the tall swings, the merry-go-rounds, and the scowlike boats, to eat dulces at the booths, and to drink inordinate quantities of pulque at the many stands at which it is dispensed at popular prices. The pungent liquor permeates the surrounding atmosphere with its sour and offensive odor. Here one sees numerous groups busy at that besetting ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... the House was appointed. The creation of this committee, which had been pending since 1913, was now finally granted in September, 1917. To be sure this was accomplished only after an inordinate amount of time, money and effort had been spent on a sustained and relentless campaign of pressure. But the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... always short, unadorned, and practical. He has endeavoured, by moving a resolution, to reduce the inordinate length of the speeches in the House as the only way of saving time to get through the yearly increasing work of legislation, and he has proposed some other resolutions for facilitating the business ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Tajura, a slave-port, with a miserable old man for its master, the mission once more set forth for Shoa; yet even here we glean a specimen of Arab speech. "Trees attain not to their growth in a single day," said an Arab, when remonstrating with the sultan on his inordinate love of lucre. "Take the tree as your text, and learn that property is to be gathered only by slow degrees." "True," said the old miser; "but, sheik, you must have lost sight of the fact, that my leaves are already withered, and that, if I would be rich, I have not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... their important duty; the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe meeting-place; and the out-pickets on this particular day had been somewhat lax from the beginning, and grew laxer during the inordinate length of the discourse. Francie lay there in his appointed hiding-hole, looking abroad between two whin-bushes. His view was across the course of the burn, then over a piece of plain moorland, to a gap between two hills; nothing moved ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eagerly repeated by some, that the wish to limit offspring arises most frequently from an inordinate desire of indulgence. We reply to such, that they do not know the human heart, and that they do it discredit. More frequently the wish springs from a love of children. The parents seek to avoid having more than they can properly nourish and educate. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... self-glorification. For, in the first place, it would be necessary to ascertain the worth of the conquered culture. This might be very little; in which case, even if the victory had involved the most glorious display of arms, it would still offer no warrant for inordinate rapture. ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... quitting the place, I accidentally stopped longer than usual, to gaze on the Venus, and I never saw so clearly her superiority over the Apollo, the impositions of whose style, even more than the great beauties with which they are mingled, have gained for it an inordinate and indiscriminating admiration. On this day, very few, if any of the statues had been taken away—and many said that France would retain them, although she was losing the pictures. On the following morning I returned, and the pedestal on which ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... am considerably worse than I was before. A feeling of utter prostration accompanied by an inordinate thirst comes over me. This is followed by a sensation as of sea-sickness and overpowering lassitude. I am parched with thirst, but I have neither strength to express my want in words nor to indicate it by suitable gestures. Some refreshing draught is, however, placed to my lips, which ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... day you must pay the penalty. Witness the wanton destruction of your beautiful forests, the depletion of your coal beds and crude oil deposits. All this waste is the result of lack of Spiritual guidance; a gross materialism: an inordinate selfish greed. Instead of laying up Spiritual treasures you are worshiping at the altar of Mamon. Ultimately you will find your hoardings nothing but tarnished brass—an illusion leading ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... not want telling twice, and avenged himself for the abuse he had received by the inordinate ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... being present, resisted him, and endeavouring to free her from his intended Rape, whereat the Spaniard enrag'd, cut off her Hand with a short Sword, and stab'd the Virgin in several places, till she Expir'd, because she obstinately opposed and disappointed his inordinate Appetite. ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... arrayed against each other once more. Everybody, of course, still remembers the sudden rivalry between these two American citizens, which sprang up in June of that year, for the gem's possession. The complexity of causes which simultaneously inspired them with an inordinate desire for the Paternoster ruby—a desire which seemingly could be appeased only by possession, regardless of cost—was much of a mystery, and afforded the energetic correspondents a fruitful text for many a day. Both, as is well known, had unlimited means with which to indulge their sudden ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... suspended like dew on a shrub; it was short, thick, and black as a coal. His teeth had not yet been turned by tobacco smoke to the color of juice, his clothes did not stick to nor hang to him; he had an engaging smile, and, what I liked the dog for, his vanity, which was inordinate, was in its proper place, his heart, not in his face, jostling mine and other people's who have none,—in a word, he was what one oftener hears of than meets,—a young gentleman. He was conversing in an animated ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... strongest? And could the Spanish armie the last yeere (who had all prouisions that could be thought on for an Armie, and tooke the fittest season, in the yeere for our Climate) auoyd sicknes among their souldiers? May it then be thought that ours could escape there, where they found inordinate heat of weather, and hot wines to distemper ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... could not venture on a statement, he was scarce allowed to finish a phrase, before Hadden swept him from the field with a volley of protest and correction. That projector, his face blazing with inspiration, first laid before him at inordinate length a question, and as soon as he attempted to reply, leaped at his throat, called his facts in question, derided his policy, and at times thundered on him from ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... glance" as being quite as strained as any effort of her own. But then we can no more approach George Eliot by copying a few of her mannerisms than we can become Napoleons by wearing an old coat, or William the Thirds by cultivating an inordinate taste for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like a civet-cat for weeks ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... may plead the same. I understand you better. It is your inordinate vanity that prompts you ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... Queen Pomare, and the affairs of far-off Tahiti, had a strange, inordinate amount of attention from the English public. French interference in the island, the imprisonment of an English consul and Protestant missionary, roused the British lion. The dusky island-queen claimed the help ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... years was due in no small measure to the inordinate zeal for profits that seized slave traders both in Old and in New England. Finding it relatively easy to secure negroes in Africa, they crowded the Southern ports with their vessels. The English Royal African ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... God is an omniscient mind. This is the last vestige of that barbaric theology which regarded God as a vigorous but uncertain old gentleman with a beard and an inordinate lust for praise and propitiation. The modern idea is, indeed, scarcely more reasonable than the one it has replaced. A mind thinks, and feels, and wills; it passes from phase to phase; thinking and willing are a succession ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the time the most sacred spot on earth—if on earth it could be called—and he consigned to those generous postal receptacles which ornament with their brilliant hue the London street-corners, an inordinate number of the most voluminous epistles that had ever been dropped into them. He took long walks, alone, and thought all the way of Angela, to whom, it seemed to him, that the character of ministering angel ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... worth your reading. He will make you see that inordinate love is the root of all evil" inordinate love of wealth brings on avarice; of wine, brings on intemperance; of power, brings on cruelty; and so on. He deduces from inordinate love ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... mischief he had created; and, reflecting upon how it served his purpose, he might well be. Intemperate lover, of the ancient pattern, that he was, his aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means. Her pitiable position appealed to the best of him; his inordinate desire of her aroused the worst. It was, besides, an element of his coxcombry, that he should, in apeing the utterly inconsiderate, rush swiftly to impersonate it when his passions were cast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they would now "concentrate." He returned on the Lahn, and he must have been in better health and spirits, for it is said he kept the ship very merry during the passage. He told many extravagantly amusing yarns; so many that a court was convened to try him on the charge of "inordinate and unscientific lying." Many witnesses testified, and his own testimony was so unconvincing that the jury convicted him without leaving the bench. He was sentenced to read aloud from his own works for a considerable ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tried to carry out that threat. It was no constructive treason that was sought to be proved, but treason involving the shedding of brave men's blood. The accused had been led on, not by the desire to aid his friends in a lawful agitation for redress of a grievance, but by his inordinate vanity and desire for power ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... if Jimmy, making his long rounds, was meeting with inordinate success; for life smiles on those who smile and the happy salesman is like the Happy Warrior, because all things, sooner or later, come to his feet. The art of salesmanship is the art of winning, and there is no such animal as a successful drummer with a perpetual grouch. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... that room and found his way into Park Lane. In after days he had some memory that he remained there, he knew not how long, standing on the very spot on which she had left him; and that at last there grew upon him almost a fear of moving, a dread lest he should be heard, an inordinate desire to escape without the sound of a footfall, without the clicking of a lock. Everything in that house had been offered to him. He had refused it all, and then felt that of all human beings under the sun none had so little right to be standing there as he. His very presence in ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... inquire which of these were adopted in it and with what modifications. We find it divided into five acts and nine scenes. A Chorus, though it takes no other part, sings its moralizing lyrics at the end of each act except the last. Speeches of inordinate length are made—three consecutive speeches in Act I, Scene 2, occupy two hundred and sixty lines—the subject-matter being commonly argumentative. Only through the reports of messengers and eye-witnesses do we ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... George himself—had ever surprised so much as a passing shadow upon her face. The young man's untiring pursuit of managers and of players had left her continually alone, but she busied herself cheerfully about her housekeeping, and found diversion in yielding to an inordinate curiosity concerning her neighbours. Once or twice she had questioned him about his absence, and this was especially so the morning after his ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... pie-men, porters, coal—heavers, sweeps; organ-grinders, monkey-exhibiters and ballad mongers, those who vended with those who sang; ragged artizans and exhausted laborers of every description, and all full of a noisy and inordinate vivacity which jarred discordantly upon the ear, and gave an aching ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... but the re-action comes surely, and only a stronger dose next time accomplishes the end desired. Nervous headaches, hysteria in its thousand forms, palpitations, and the long train of nervous symptoms, own inordinate tea and coffee drinking as their parent. Taken in reasonable amounts, tea can not be said to be hurtful; and the medium qualities, carefully prepared, often make a more wholesome tea than that of the highest ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... water through the first shallows of the lake, plunge in, as far as they could stand above it with their heads and shoulders. Some there were whom inconsiderate fear induced to try to escape even by swimming; but as that attempt was inordinate and hopeless, they were either overwhelmed in the deep water, their courage failing, or, wearied to no purpose, made their way back, with extreme difficulty, to the shallows; and there were cut up on all hands by the cavalry of the enemy, which had entered the water. Near upon six thousand ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Morgante of his cuts both ways, or rather one way, and that sheer against us; and then there was Aretino, who dealt so hard with the poveri frati; all writers, at least Italian ones, are not lick spittles. And then in Spain,—'tis true, Lope de Vega and Calderon were most inordinate lick-spittles; the 'Principe Constante' of the last is a curiosity in its way; and then the 'Mary Stuart' of Lope; I think I shall recommend the perusal of that work to the Birmingham ironmonger's ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... According to his own principles, he would have committed a great sin if he had interfered for the purpose of obtaining a benefice on the most honourable terms for the most pious divine. Yet to such a degree had his manners been corrupted by evil communications, and his understanding obscured by inordinate zeal for a single object, that he did not scruple to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind, and to use a bishopric as a bait to tempt a divine to perjury. Hough replied with civil contempt that he wanted nothing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Caesar, we must look for it in the history of Christian VII. of Denmark, and Paul of Russia. In all three we find the same ghastly pallor, the same sleeplessness which compelled them to rise, and pace their rooms at night, the same incessant suspicion; the same inordinate thirst for cruelty and torture. He took a very early opportunity to disembarrass himself of his benefactors, Macro and Ennia, and of his rival, the young Tiberius. The rest of his reign was a series of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... And light, like a stound of golden din, A shadowless light like weather of infinite plains, Light not narrowed into place, Amazes the naked nerves of the soul; And like the pouring of immortal airs Out of a flowery season, Over us blows the inordinate desire.— Ah, who from Hell did the wisdom bring That would make life a formal thing? Who has invented all the manner and wont, The customary ways, That harness into evil scales Of malady our living? But how they shrivel and craze If love ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... believed himself the lover of a woman if he merely kissed her hand. It was thus that he boasted of making innumerable conquests at every hour of the day; and, to hear him talk, always tired and exhausted with love, he was a wreck at twenty, as the price of his inordinate exploits. Enamoured of his appearance, he saw nothing beyond the blankness of his little soul, or rather he made it the origin and the end of everything. Poor empty head! Wretched puppet, whose ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... sort of premature senescence and decay. The New World is pitied for her failure to know without illusion the futility of the hurried pursuit of wealth, of the passion for extravagant opulence and inordinate display, of all the hostages youth in America eternally gives to old age. "America has produced great artists," admits Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. Yet he maintains that "that fact most certainly proves that she is full ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... so that he may be made the slave of desire and afterward if possible imbruted by sensuality. He is artfully brought into contact with Margaret, whom he instantly loves, who presently loves him, whom he wins, and upon whom, since she becomes a mother out of wedlock, his inordinate and reckless love imposes the burden of pious contrition and worldly shame. Then, through the puissant wickedness and treachery of Mephistopheles, he is made to predominate over her vengeful brother, Valentine, whom ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success. So you see that though we have abolished poverty and the fear of it, and inordinate luxury with the hope of it, we have not touched the greater part of the motives which underlay the love of money in former times, or any of those which prompted the supremer sorts of effort. The coarser motives, which no longer move us, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... nevertheless suggests to men (as will be shown hereafter) some very dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man's attention upon himself; and it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification. The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire diametrically contrary principles. There is no religion which does not place the object of man's desires above and beyond the treasures of earth, and which does not naturally raise ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... "I would here gladly drop the subject, lest I give offense; but duty compels me to remark, what can not be denied, that an inordinate attachment to certain systems and forms of religion, has occasioned all the strifes, animosities, and persecutions, that have so long agitated the Christian world; and if God be just, every one must ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... Maude would report the late scene in the garden to the Countess of Mecherscroft, who would tell it to her company at her country-house!—How the Lady Georginas would discuss it over luncheon, and the Lord Georges talk of it out shooting! What a host of pleasant anecdotes would be told of his inordinate puppyism and self-esteem! How even the dullest fellows would dare to throw a stone at him! What a target for a while he would be for every marksman at any range to shoot at! All these his quick-witted ingenuity pictured ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... M. Comte's later speculations is this inordinate demand for "unity" and "systematization." This is the reason why it does not suffice to him that all should be ready, in case of need, to postpone their personal interests and inclinations to the requirements of ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... rejoiceth in the Lord." Alas! alas! how does even the Christian heart, which has professed to be satisfied with God, and content with his holy will, often depart from him, and "provoke him to jealousy" with many idols! Inordinate affection for some earthly object absorbs the soul which vowed to love him supremely. In its undisguised excess, it says to the beloved object, "Give me your heart; Jehovah must be your salvation, but let me be your happiness. A portion of your time, your attention, your service, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the croisade against the Albigenses. This nobleman was greatly honoured by Henry III., to whose sister, the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, he paid his addresses, and was married, with the consent of her brother. For the favour thus shown him by his sovereign, he, however, proved ungrateful: his inordinate ambition, cloaked by a pretended zeal for reform, was the cause of those rebellions which, in the reign of Henry III., kept the kingdom in such a continued turmoil. The different oppressions and successes of the confederate barons, who at length got possession of the king's person, and the civil ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... lord of that fair estate and many others in that dim time centuries before the building of the villa. Atlas was he named not at his baptism, but half in admiration, half in derision by his mates, for his burliness of body and his inordinate greediness of all kinds, for he coveted, say they, the entire earth, clutched at a mighty part thereof, and ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... speed, let me say a little. All important it is, indeed, in this age of fast progress. When I first sailed for Australia, in 1840, we were, I think, 141 days on the way. Nor was that a very inordinate passage then. This time I expect, within that interval, to go and return, besides having nearly two and a half months to spare—a space of time which now, with rails and fast steamers everywhere, will enable me ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... as if he were not quite sure what to do with it. One boy proceeded to turn in an inordinate quantity of sugar, another to pour in the brown coffee that sent out a refreshing steam enough to make any one hungry. George Grant spread the butter, cut the sausage in half, put it on the bread, ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... become victims to inordinate passion, without power to discern between reality and illusion, ignorant of what is true happiness, living for mere sense, with their moral nature enclosed in the iron mail of superstition, while the good seeds of truth sown upon their hearts "wither away, because they have ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... a task, and one that consumed an inordinate amount of her valuable time. And her time was extremely valuable. Computed upon the basis of her weekly salary of one thousand dollars, it figured out just $142.85 per day, or very nearly $6 per hour, or 10 cents per minute, for each minute and hour of ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... inordinate pride in his parterre, arranges and overlooks all the flowers himself. I often tell him I am jealous of my beautiful rivals; they monopolize his leisure ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... duty turkeys, and duty geese.—In many leases in Ireland, tenants were formerly bound to supply an inordinate quantity of poultry to their landlords. The Editor knew of thirty turkeys being reserved in one lease of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... help can such Instruction as this give to the subduing the corrupt Affections, and the bridling betimes the inordinate Desires and Appetites of Humane Nature, whereby Men are inabled to live like rational Creatures, and to acquit themselves well in all the Relations they shall be hereafter plac'd in, in the World? When it does not so much as perswade them, or even allow them to ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... the Lord's help, I will overcome this infatuation!" he repeated, as he paused in his hasty walk, bowed his head, and folded his hands in prayer to God for deliverance from the power of inordinate and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... your capacious digestive apparatus is a psycho-physical exhibit of the racial proclivity to overeat. Here, in this exhibit, the race's inordinate craving for food and drink, its gluttonous thought, have embodied themselves; and this exhibit, this apparatus, is accordingly not merely physical, but also psychical, for its sub-conscious outreach for "more and always more" ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... for this variability, it would be difficult to conceive the inordinate variety of human nature. But when you consider that all the important tendencies of the creature, his appetites, his loves, his hates, his curiosity, his sexual cravings, his fears, and pugnacity, are freely attachable to all sorts of objects as stimulus, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... guilty of inordinate ambition, or acts of injustice, is far from being the only instance of such conduct in men thus raised from humble situations. The officers of government in general, though intended by the constitution as a kind of barrier between the prince and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as "the Seeker," and by no other name. As none could remember when he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing a high-crowned hat shaped somewhat like ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... disgraced our language even so late as in 1736, when the "Inquiry into the Life of Homer" was published. That author was certainly desirous of all the graces of composition, and his volume by its singular sculptures evinces his inordinate affection for his work. This fanciful writer had a taste for polished writing, yet he abounds in expressions which now would be considered as impure in literary composition. Such vulgarisms are common—the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... has given rise to an inordinate amount of unnecessary comment. Lamarre[170] is at great pains to defend Plautus from "le reproche d'avoir introduit dans la peinture de son principal personnage des traits outres et hors de nature." Indeed, he possesses few traits in accord with normal human nature. But curiously enough, as we ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... night-life of the Gipsy; his familiarity with deep ravine and lonely wood-path, moonlight and field-lairs; his use of a secret language, and his constant habit of concealing everything from everybody; his private superstitions, and his inordinate love of humbugging and selling friend and foe, tend to produce in him that goblin, elfin, boyish-mischievous, out-of-the-age state of mind which is utterly indescribable to a prosaic modern-souled man, but which is delightfully piquant to others. ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... is that the patients are younger in acute forms, the course is more rapid and the wasting away is more marked. The onset of the disease is gradual and either frequent passing of urine (six to forty pints in twenty-four hours) or inordinate thirst attracts attention. When it is fully established, there is great thirst, the passage of large quantities of sugar urine, a terrible appetite, and, as a rule, progressive emaciation. The thirst is one of the most distressing symptoms. Large quantities of water are required ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... in charge of a gang of log-wreckers. Now the money put into this new venture is very nearly exhausted. It will hold out for one more pay-day, but that is all. And as yet only barren rock has come up from that yawning shaft that seems to gulp down money with an appetite at once inordinate and insatiable. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... spirit of the martyr before him. The scene was Cranmer's degradation at Oxford, with which solemn and painful act Bonner was charged; but the strongest words used by the bishop in answer to Cranmer's continued protests and recriminations were, according to Foxe himself, merely that " for his inordinate contumacy, he denied him to speak any more, saying that he ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... intellectual endeavor, of life artificially preserved or ingeniously prolonged, had sapped the fiber of the men who were about to inaugurate the modern world. Severely nurtured, unused to delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance were like boys in their capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for enjoyment. No generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical, disillusioned, trod them down. Ennui and the fatigue that springs from skepticism, the despair of thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted senses rendered them keenly ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hie, and pit my hairt in the buildin' of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa', I think, laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife that loves ye, and that kenned your mither. And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae inordinate desires; hand your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh; dinna send it up like a bairn's kite into the collieshangie o' the wunds! Mind, Maister Erchie dear, that this life's a' disappointment, and a mouthfu' o' mools is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his fantastic bows, and waved his hand, dismissing Madame Fontaine from further attendance on him. Secretly, he was as eager as ever to show the keys. But the inordinate vanity which was still the mad side of him and the incurable side of him, shrank from opening the leather bag unless the widow first made a special request and a special favor of it. Feeling no sort of interest in the subject, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... much struck by the significance of the ordinary traffic along these lines as he is by the huge embankments and cuttings on which nothing has yet had time to grow, and by the inordinate extent and number of the sidings to be seen everywhere. Baby trains, consisting of a locomotive and four short cars, dodder along two or three times a day, and if a freight train happens to be encountered, it will be found to be ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... are inordinate vanity in their appearance, causing them to impoverish themselves for the sake of gorgeous clothes, and gambling. They gamble to an excessive degree, heaping debt after debt upon their heads. Both these vices have caused an active legislation. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... spiritual circumcision. These texts, at the same time that they set forth its necessity, describe it as consisting in a readiness and willing disposition to conform to the will of God, and submit to it when known, in every particular. They in consequence require a retrenchment of all inordinate and superfluous desires of the soul, the keeping a strict guard and government over ourselves, a total abstinence from criminal, and a prudent reserve even in the lawful gratifications of sense and appetite. If such instances of spiritual circumcision were required of those under ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... himself, that possibly she had returned. Yes, she had returned! Why not? He had stupidly lost his head, without cause, carried away by his fears, by the inordinate suspicions which had for some ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... strait, narrow, toilsome, and laborious. Though there be infinitely more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good, it expatiates towards the All fulness of God, yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of these inordinate lusts, that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all enclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects, but because the imagination of men supplies ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... forward. "What things?" he said. He was almost ashamed of the sudden, inordinate satisfaction that welled up at ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... one or two; 4. Vesper Brod; 5. Abend Brod; all which does really seem a very fair allowance for a man who means to lecture upon abstinence at night. But I shall cut this matter short by stating one plain fact; there were two things, and no more, for which Kant had an inordinate craving during his whole life; these were tobacco and coffee; and from both these he abstained almost altogether, merely under a sense of duty, resting probably upon erroneous grounds. Of the first he allowed himself a very small quantity, (and everybody knows that temperance ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... He fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great many people who were not. He was often wilful and petulant, and I used to think him dreadfully insincere. It was due, I think, chiefly to his inordinate desire to please. Poor Cyril! I told him once that he was contented with very cheap triumphs, but he only laughed. He was horribly spoiled. All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... all reigning women to be traitoresses and rebels against God; discharges all men thenceforward from holding any office under such monstrous regiment, and calls upon all the lieges with one consent to "STUDY TO REPRESS THE INORDINATE PRIDE AND TYRANNY" OF QUEENS. If this is not treasonable teaching, one would be glad to know what is; and yet, as if he feared he had not made the case plain enough against himself, he goes on to deduce the startling corollary ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ordered C.C. Pinckney to join them. Talleyrand refused them official reception, and sent to them, in secret, nameless minions—known officially, later on, as X.Y.Z.—who made shameful proposals, largely consisting of inordinate demand for tribute. Marshall and Pinckney threw up the commission in disgust. The Opposition in Congress demanded the correspondence; and Adams, with his grimmest smile, sent it to the Senate. It was a terrible blow ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... I engage to select for you, out of the innumerable mass of their dealings, all conducted very nearly alike, one contract only the excessive profits on which during a short term would pay the whole of their year's dividend. I shall undertake to show that upon two others the inordinate profits given, with the losses incurred in order to secure those profits, would pay a year's ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... March, 1554. Soon after Mary came to the throne, she appointed a commission of bishops to deprive the bishops appointed during the reign of her brother. On various charges, and especially on that of "inordinate life" (meaning marriage), the bishopric of Harley was declared void. He is said to have spent the remainder of his life wandering about in woods "instructing his flock, and administering the sacrament according to the order of the English book, until he died, shortly after his deposition, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... your Majesty's most important action, the decay of your greatest strength, and the destruction of your faithfullest servants?' His fury against Ralegh seems too excessive to have been genuine. In part it may be explained by his knowledge, on which Sir John Pope Hennessy has laid inordinate stress, that Ralegh was the most strenuous opponent of his Irish policy. He would detect the voice and hand of Ralegh in all the hindrances to, and in every criticism upon, his measures. He would imagine he heard him arguing adversely at sittings of the Council, to which he was ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... although they are vices totally different in their operation on the human heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of the heart; but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,—thus destroying peace of mind,—is probably productive of much more misery in heart, and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is not so inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly proceed ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... of murder he is self-reliant, coolly calculating, fierce and fatal as a tiger. Yet his religious fervour is sincere; his impulses are generous; and his heart on the whole is good. His vanity is inordinate; and his unmistakable courage is impaired, to Northern apprehension, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... still there, but in my heart a chill had entered to drive out the warmth. My ruin, my failure, the poverty to which I had brought Sally and the child through my inordinate ambition, and the weight of the two hundred thousand dollars of debt on my shoulders—all these things returned to my memory, with an additional heaviness, like a burden that has been lifted only to drop back more crushingly. And as always in my thoughts now, this sense of my failure came ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow |
