"Looseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exposure. For nearly a year he lived among these people, adapting himself to their mode of life, and gaining a certain amount of respect; for in addition to being a naturally hard-working man, he had no taste for the gross looseness of life that characterised nine out of every ten white men who in those days lived among the wild people of ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... the outside whereof of the profaner sort are plated over with a lift of silver, which is fastened with small nails with broad silver heads. Most of these are or have been slaves, though love have set them loose at liberty to enslave souls to sin and Satan; and for the looseness of their lives, and public scandals committed by them and the better sort of the Spaniards, I have heard them say often, who possessed more religion and fear of God, they verily thought God would destroy that city, and give up the country into the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... artillery and the train were obliged to take from the fields the green barley and oats, and the army altogether ruined the population where it passed. The men obliged to disperse during a part of the day as foragers, got into the habit of disbanding and of looseness of discipline, and the impossibility manifested itself to keep in order and in ranks the multitude of different races, different in languages, who with their many vehicles represented ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... Mr. Lowe I see a figure which, foreshortened from my point of view, is chiefly distinguishable by a hat and pair of boots. Without absolute Quaker fashion about the cut of the hat or garments, there is a breadth about the former and a looseness about the latter suggestive of Quaker associations. Perhaps if my idea were mercilessly analysed it would appear that it has its growth in the knowledge that I am looking down on Mr. Bright, and ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... gone for a little ramble in the lower woods, but they soon appeared, Mr. Potts seating himself limply on the steps and fanning himself with his broad straw hat—a hat that in its very largeness and looseness seemed to express the inflexible ideals of non-conformity—while Mrs. Potts, very firmly busked and bridled, her head very sleek, her smile very tight, took a chair between Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil, and soon showed, in her whole demeanor, a consciousness ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... requires an almost constant effort. Right at this point is where perhaps more Christians have failed to do what was required of them than at any other; and consequently experience less joy and power than formerly. There are many things employed by Satan to weaken this consciousness of God. Looseness of thought, moments of idleness, or yieldings to self, serve to weaken the reverential feeling in our hearts toward him. A little attention to the world, a little thought for the morrow, a little anxiety, a little too much talking,—these ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... rhythm of that 'Duchess' does more and more strike me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks called pedestrian-metre, ... between metre and prose ... the difficult rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the general measure. Then 'The Ride'—with that touch of natural feeling at the end, to prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the poor horse was driven through all that suffering ... yes, and how that one touch of softness acts back upon the energy and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... trees become pregnant, and they are all employing their natural vigour in the production of leaves and of the fruits that return every year. The requirements of that season render them empty and swollen, and so they are weak and feeble because of their looseness of texture. This is also the case with women who have conceived. Their bodies are not considered perfectly healthy until the child is born; hence, pregnant slaves, when offered for sale, are not warranted sound, because the fetus as it grows ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... The looseness of the grants of power to the President has been more than once the subject of animadversion.[15] This and the unity of the office furnished a text for opponents of the Constitution while its ratification was pending. "Here," according to Hamilton, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Bethel and Aurora communities is the looseness of the bond which keeps the people together. They might break up at any time; but they have remained in community for thirty years. Their religious belief is extremely simple, and yet it seems to suffice to hold them. They have not had among them any good business-men, yet they ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... quality and ships well—altogether a most admirable early grape. There are some minor faults which become drawbacks in the culture of Winchell. The berries, and under some conditions the bunches, are small and the bunch is loose with a large shoulder. Sometimes this looseness becomes so pronounced as to give a straggling, poorly-formed cluster; and the shoulder, when as large as the cluster itself, which often happens, makes the cluster unsightly. The grapes shell when fully ripe, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... to forty-eight hours the patient is conscious of a sensation of chilliness, or may even have a rigor. At the same time he feels generally out of sorts, with impaired appetite, headache, and it may be looseness of the bowels. His temperature rises to 100 or 101 F., and the pulse quickens ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... after going to the field he had to toil there all day until the sun went down. He and his fellow slaves had to work in all types of weather, good as well as bad. Although the master or the overseer were not as cruel as some he had heard of they tolerated no looseness of work and in case a person was suspected of loafing the whip was applied freely. Although he was never whipped, he has heard the whip being applied to his mother any number of times. It hurt him, he says, because he had to stand back unable to render ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... many avalanches as possible and wide views of the forest and summit peaks in their new white robes before the sunshine had time to change them, I set out early to climb by a side canyon to the top of a commanding ridge a little over three thousand feet above the Valley. On account of the looseness of the snow that blocked the canyon I knew the climb would require a long time, some three or four hours as I estimated; but it proved far more difficult than I had anticipated. Most of the way I sank waist deep, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... said dogmatically, but with a coarseness of manner that fully corresponded with the looseness of the principles, and the utter want of delicacy of feeling that alone could prompt such advice. Mrs. Dutton fairly groaned, as she listened to her husband, for never before had he so completely thrown aside the thin mask of decency that he ordinarily wore; ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... very graceful embodiment of adolescence; Suchetet, whose "Byblis" of the same exhibition caused his early death to be deplored; Adrien Gaudez, Etcheto, Idrac, and, of course, many others of distinction. There is no looseness in characterizing this as a "school;" it has its own qualities and its corresponding defects. It stands by itself—apart from the Greek sculpture and from its inspiration, the Renaissance, and from the more recent traditions ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... with a certain wild looseness in their talk that—But I have no right to judge others by mere appearance. Nor is it this that has made me anxious, and, if ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which is too often excluded from the specialist by his habit of thought. "A few years of journalism," said Mr. W.B. Yeats on one occasion, "is an invaluable discipline for the man of letters." No one is more fully alive to the defects of journalism than Mr. Yeats—its frequent looseness, prejudice, obviousness, and dissipation of interest. But, in spite of that, he saw that the good journalist's faculty of addressing himself directly to the subject in hand, of stating it clearly and in its essentials without ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... that his great safeguard was the affection of Russell. For Edwin's sake, and for shame at the thought of Edwin's disapproval, he abstained from many things into which he would otherwise have insensibly glided in conformation to the general looseness of the school morality. But Russell's influence worked on him powerfully, and tended to counteract a ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... set well back amid wisps of white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking hands expressed his moral flabbiness in the general dampness, looseness and limpness of the act,—not that he often shook hands with his pupil, for though that pupil was only a boy made of ordinary flesh and blood like other boys, he was nevertheless heir to a Throne, and in strict etiquette even friendly liberties were not to be too frequently ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... are concerned, the particular type of actress, such as LAURA MURDOCH and ELFIE ST. CLAIR, appeals to him. He likes their good fellowship. He loves to be with a gay party at night in a cafe. He likes the rather looseness of living which does not quite reach the disreputable. Behind all this, however, is a certain high sense of honour. He detests and despises the average stage-door Johnny, and he loathes the type of man who seeks to take young girls out of ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... tears away the soil in some parts, and deposits it in others; by which means their courses are gradually altered; new Islands are formed, and alluvial soil accumulated in some parts of the rivers, while it is washed away in others; and this is more or less the case according to the looseness of the soil, and the bends of the river: so that a man may have a growing estate, or he may see his land diminishing from year to year without the ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... a child," he said, his fingers closing upon the looseness of the linen as he spoke. "A weakling—girl! And so, girl-like, he loves to play at make-believe. You know their games? There is the shell of a ruined house beyond the walls and he holds it against all-comers with a sword of lath, or carries ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... as Isaac did against the inhabitants of the land, that the Philistines had spoiled his well and the fountains of living water? If a free use to all of them and of all Scriptures were permitted, should not the Church herself have more cause to complain of the infinite licentiousness and looseness of interpretations, and of the commencement of ten thousand errors, which would certainly be consequent to such permission? Reason and religion will chide us in the first, reason and experience in the latter ... The Church with great wisdom hath first held this torch out; and though for ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... fine arguments, at the end of a week a looseness ensued, with some twinges, which I was blasphemous enough to saddle on the universal dissolvent and the new-fangled diet. I stated my symptoms to my master, in the hope that he would relax the rigor of his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... approximation is not guesswork, not looseness, and not error. The process of approximation is as exact and correct at every point as that by which an absolute result is secured; the result only fails of exactness because of some inherent difficulty in the problem. The attempt ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... sheets before him, how obviously their interest quickens and their eyes brighten. Even they, in the depths of their hearts, would rather be spoken to, though such a practice might mean, now and then, a little looseness in expression, a little breakdown in the preacher's grammar. More than this may be said:—It has seemed to us, as the result of attending many churches, that in such sanctuaries as we have referred to reading is going out of fashion. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... place, endeavour to settle him in his religion, as the basis of all our other hopes, and the more to be considered in regard of the looseness of the place where you are. I doubt not but you have well considered of the resolve to travel to Italy, yet I have this to say for my fond fears (besides the imbecility of my sex) my affections are all contracted into one head: also I know the hotness ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... expression, that he had hauled up all the dead donkeys in the sea. The principal attack came from The Edinburgh Review (July 1886). "Mr. Payne's translation," says the writer, "is not only a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal.... Mr. Payne translates everything, and when a sentence is objectionable in Arabic, he makes it equally objectionable in English, or, rather, more so, since to the Arabs a rude freedom ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... genuine," laughed Crochard. "The Prince was most indignant at having to remove them. My heart bled for him—but there was no other way. Beyond a little tightness across the shoulders, and a little looseness about the waist, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... necessitate looseness, lightness and warmth, which can be obtained from the union underclothes, a princess skirt and dress, with a shoe that allows full development and use of the foot. While decoration and elegance are desirable, they should ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... every word he had pretended to take from his old authorities were to be found in them, even if the authority of every one of these authors were beyond question, the looseness with which they are used to prove whatever Hahnemann chooses is beyond the bounds of credibility. Let me give one instance to illustrate the character of this man's mind. Hahnemann asserts, in a note annexed to the 110th paragraph of the "Organon," that the smell of the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to the city by companies seeking labor, hastened the deterioration and gave rise to problems where only tendencies existed before. Neighborhood life is conspicuously lax and the spirit of the community quite naturally comports with the looseness and immorality of the district. Though such conditions are plainly evident, no organized influence has been projected to correct them. As with the neighborhood, so with housing, crime, delinquency, education, recreation, industry, and the like, ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... fear of an imaginary contagion, make the nurses very unwilling to introduce their fingers into the reluctant little patient's mouth, and without this scrutiny all is in vain. The physician is compelled to set the example, to try the looseness of the teeth with his own fingers, and to ensure the nurse's entire knowledge of the extent ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... language, always with something that he wants to say but can only suggest. Here, for example, is a personal statement, line by line more or less inarticulate, but as a whole clear enough. With all the mental incompleteness, the verbal looseness, the fumblings and gropings of the traditional Baboo, it is a genuine piece of irony. Seldom can a convert to ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... apprehending had taught him something of the difference of taste between an English and an American audience at a dinner-table; he felt that there must be a certain looseness, and carelessness, and roughness, and yet a certain restraint; that he must not seem to aim at speaking well, although, for his own ambition, he was not content to speak ill; that, somehow or other, he must get a heartiness into his speech; that he must not polish, nor be too neat, and ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... move was to adjust the string. Already a piece of stick, several inches in length, had been fixed to the small of the stock, and, of course, behind the trigger. This was fastened transversely, but not so as to preclude all motion. A certain looseness in its adjustment gave it the freedom required to be worked as a lever—for that was ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Lords of Looseness That hamper faith and works, The Perseverance-Doubters, And Present-Comfort shirks, With brittle intellectuals Who crack beneath a strain— John Bunyan met that helpful set In ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... The vagueness and looseness of the information one receives in answer to that much abused question, "Is he better?" would be ludicrous, if it were not painful. The only sensible answer (in the present state of knowledge about sickness) would be "How can I know? I cannot tell how ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... issuing from the base of the leaves, but they require something they can immediately grow into when just forming, and to be protected from drought. It will be well to remember that its principal habitats are on the sandy shores, as that gives a proper idea of the bottom moisture, and, from the looseness of the sand, the drier condition of the immediate surface. My specimens have always dwindled during summer and failed to appear the following spring, excepting where such treatment as the above has been adopted. I am much indebted for these hints to several amateurs, who grow it ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... the other, adding to the work of art, could draw what was supposed to be a human face upon Moossy, the class was satisfied it had not lost the hour. There were times when Moossy felt the hand even on the looseness of that foolish coat, and turned suddenly; but there was no shaking the brazen impudence of Muirtown, and Moossy, looking into the stolid and unintelligent expression of Howieson's face, thought that he had been mistaken. If one boy was set up to do a verb, the form, reading from their books ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... Religious Helon treat, Refin'd from all the looseness of the Great. Helon who sees his Line of Virtues run } Beyond the Center of his Grave, his own } Unfinisht Luster sparkling in his Son. } A Son so high in Sanedrims renown'd, In Israels Intrest strong, ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... various prefaces. Whatever has been said since is either expansion or variation of what he had said before. His general theory may be stated as an aim at something between the literalness of metaphrase and the looseness of paraphase. "Where I have enlarged," he says, "I desire the false critics would not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine, but either they are secretly in the poet, or may be fairly deduced from him." Coleridge, with his usual ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... stories during the past few years may have observed with interest at rare intervals the work of Mr. Hutchison. In it there was always a promise of an achievement not unlike that of Perceval Gibbon, but a certain looseness of texture prevented Mr. Hutchison from being completely persuasive. In "Journey's End," however, it must be confessed that he has written a memorable sea story that is certainly equal at least to the better stories in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... entertain himself with lewd Comedies? Has he a mind to discharge his Priestcraft, and flesh himself up for a Poet? Yes, this is the consequence, by using to see these smutty things, he'll learn to write 'em. What need I mention the Sham-Oaths, and looseness of Farce, or the Fustian raving against the Gods in Tragedy, were these things really unconcern'd with Idolatry, a Parson, of all Mankind, should not be known to ogle them, for were they not highly Criminal, the foolery of them is Egregious, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... apparent relation, and none that proved afterward. What he had seen at the corner of Palace Square nearest the Vistula was not the face of a Latin woman, nor was any looseness of common birth evident in it. The key might have had to do with the little hat she wore, just a hat for wearing on the head, a protection against sun and rain, and with the austerely simple black dress; but these ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... professions, we had no monopoly of illusion. Germany made the huge mistake of believing that we would stand out—that we dared not support France in face of our troubles and divisions at home. She counted on the pacific influences in a Liberal Cabinet, on the looseness of the ties which bound us to our Dominions, on the "contemptible" numbers of our Expeditionary Force, on the surrender of Belgium. She had willed the War; the tragedy of Sarajevo gave her the excuse. There is no longer any need ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... it can be tightened or relaxed with ease, as a tightish under waistcoat, with a double row of buttons. This is to compress the bowels and increase their absorption, and it thus removes one principal cause of corpulency, which is the looseness of the skin. Secondly, he should omit one entire meal, as supper; by this long abstinence from food the absorbent system will act on the mucus and fat with greater energy. Thirdly, he should drink as little as he ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... an' big, sad eyes that seemed to yearn fer companions. After that, the sisters drove her in to town to school in the old buggy which their father had brought from England. However, she managed to see me quite often, and I encouraged her, although, mind ye, I never let her know the looseness o' the ways o' a tavern. The sisters had the Methodist parson picked out fer her, an' he, poor man, was fair crazy fer her heart, too, but she had the givin' o' it herself, and this it was that caused all ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... crowded the Quai d'Orsay and the hotels of Paris, had only a vague notion as to their duties and waited uneasily, wondering why their chiefs did not set them to work. In truth the making of peace was to be characterized by a looseness of organization, a failure to cooerdinate, and a waste of time and energy resulting from slipshod methods. In the deliberations of the Conference there was a curious mixture of efficiency and ineffectiveness; a wealth of information ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... on being asked to state what facts they might teach, they gave the following sub-topics in almost exactly this order and wording: the ears; food and how obtained; the tongue; paws, including cushions; whiskers; teeth; action of tail; sounds; sharp hearing; sense of smell; cleanliness; eyes; looseness of the skin; quick waking; size of mouth; manner of catching prey; claws; care of young; locomotion; kinds of prey; enemies; protection by society for the prevention of cruelty to animals,—twenty-two topics in all. When I inquired if they would ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Elizabeth, who had been Miss Bay of Albany, who was the mother of the fair and free young waltzing-women in New York, and who floats back to me through the Rhinebeck picture, aquiline but easy, with an effect of handsome highbrowed, high-nosed looseness, of dressing-gowns or streaming shawls (the dowdy, the delightful shawl of the period;) and of claws of bright benevolent steel that kept nipping for our charmed advantage: roses and grapes and peaches and currant-clusters, together with turns of phrase and scraps of remark ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... of a sailor, and his hands were the hands of a sailor, except that they were smooth. Pleasant had an eye for sailors, and she noticed the unused colour and texture of the hands, sunburnt though they were, as sharply as she noticed their unmistakable looseness and suppleness, as he sat himself down with his left arm carelessly thrown across his left leg a little above the knee, and the right arm as carelessly thrown over the elbow of the wooden chair, with the hand curved, half ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... also form a part of the college course. The religious atmosphere which surrounds the college is as genial and cheerful as the natural atmosphere which bathes the hills and valleys around in October days. It has no element of sectarianism or bigotry. Free alike from cant, from looseness and indifference, the religious tone of the college ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... Nobody, at any rate, seems to have thought anything about the matter till it came under Madison's observation after his return home from Congress. To him it meant something more than mere evasion of state laws and frauds on the state revenue. The subject fell into line with his reflections upon the looseness of the bonds that held the States together, and how unlikely it was that they would ever grow into a respectable or prosperous nation while their present relations continued. Virtually there was no maritime law on the Potomac, and hardly even the pretense ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... reputation, decency, or even weakness and cowardice, confine the actions of lesser men. And it must be remembered that the admitted great stain upon Nelson's fame, which it would be wicked to deny, lies not in a general looseness of life, but in the notoriety of one relation,—a notoriety due chiefly to the reckless singleness of heart which was not ashamed to own its love, but rather gloried in the public exhibition of a faith in the worthiness of its object, and a constancy, which never wavered to the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... prevents them from getting the effects they desire, with that vigor and certainty the public so much admires, and rightly so. The golden mean should be observed; between undue tension, which implies inability to control, whether it be in the larynx or the breathing apparatus, and a looseness inconsistent with neat and certain results, the voice-producer must choose, with that common sense so indispensable to success in all undertakings, but which will never be adequately encouraged till students look more frequently for ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... other case the clergyman went before the Chief Justice and confessed as it seems of his own accord.... In 1727 a white woman was indicted in the General Court because she had left her husband and was cohabiting with a negro slave.... So far as general looseness was concerned this law of 1715 had no force. Brickell, who was a physician, says that white men of the colony suffered a great deal from a malignant kind of venereal disease which they took ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... Pio-Clem. iv, 29), where it is performed by ten figures, five Finns and five Bacchanals, but their movements, though extremely lively and energetic, are not marked by any particular indelicacy. Many ancient authors and scholiasts have commented upon the looseness and sex appeal of this dance. Meursius, Orchest., article Kordax, has collected the majority of passages in the classical writers, bearing upon this subject, but from this disorderly collection it is impossible to arrive at any definite description of the cordax. The article ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... figure—what a figure, as he swung against the blackened wall, his scarecrow clothes hanging on him, their once decent material making their pinning together of buttonless places, their looseness and rents showing dirty linen, more abject than any other squalor could have made them. Antony Dart's blood, still running warm and well, was doing its normal work among the brain-cells which had stirred so evilly through the ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... immiscibility.] Incoherence — N. nonadhesion^; immiscibility; incoherence; looseness &c adj.; laxity; relaxation; loosening &c v.; freedom; disjunction &c 44; rope of sand. V. make loose &c adj.; loosen, slacken, relax; unglue &c 46; detach &c (disjoin) 44. Adj. nonadhesive, immiscible; incoherent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... limitless resources, are amusing from start to finish. The book is brimful of its author's high spirits. It has no closely knit plot, but merely a succession of comical incidents, and vivid caricatures of Mr. Pickwick and his friends. Yet the fun is so good-natured and infectious, and the looseness of design is so frankly declared that the book possesses a certain unity arising from its general atmosphere ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... principle, an outcome that can never be finally determined in any case, but sometimes to an actual betrayal or desertion, visible to all eyes, as, for instance, when Ferri left the movement in Italy, or Briand and Millerand in France. That such desertions must inevitably result from the looseness taught by "reformist" tactics is evident. Yet all through Briand's early political career, Jaures was his intimate associate, and even after the former had forsaken the party, the latter confessed ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... a certain pliability, or perhaps I ought to call it looseness of disposition," he admitted. "There are many things connected with the past which I find it almost impossible to associate with you. For a trifling instance," he went on, with a slight smile, inclining his head towards ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... judicatories, EVEN THEN, were the seats of injustice and iniquity. And many in their armies, by miscarriages, became their plague unto the great prejudice of the cause of God, the great scandal of the gospel, and the great increase of looseness and profanity throughout all the land." But, since the time of that acknowledgment there has still been more and more degeneracy, so that judicatories have consisted of, and been filled with perjured traitors to God ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... notice a few cases of looseness, either of thought or of expression, to be met with in these pages; a point of style to be particularly looked to when the occurrence or the absence of such forms one very sensible difference between the first-rate and the second-rate poets ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... home through the telephone. "I want to see you urgently," she said, and Miss Alimony received her in that spirit. She was hatless but she had a great cloud of dark fuzzy hair above the grey profundity of her eyes and she wore an artistic tea-gown that in spite of a certain looseness at neck and sleeve emphasized the fine lines of her admirable figure. Her flat was furnished chiefly with books and rich oriental hangings and vast cushions and great bowls of scented flowers. On the mantel-shelf was the crystal that amused her lighter moments and above ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... spite of their looseness and other faults, the adoption of the Articles of Confederation was a forward step in American public law. Their greatest value was this: they helped to keep before the States the thought of union, while at the same time, by their very inefficiency, they proved the need ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... it can be followed under a microscope; when we remember, too, the imperfection of the compound microscopes which made high powers practical impossibilities; and, above all, when we appreciate the looseness of the ideas which pervaded all scientists as to the necessity of accurate observation in distinction from inference, it is not strange that the last century gave us no knowledge of bacteria beyond the mere fact ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... supremacy was once more threatened. A letter had been received from Henry Lawrence, President of the Council of State in the home government, which seemed to imply that the Governor and his Council and not the Burgesses, were to hold the chief power in Virginia. Lawrence declared that the "looseness" of affairs in the colony had induced Cromwell to take active steps for the settlement of its constitution, but that these measures had been brought to a sudden halt by the Lord Protector's death. The matter was, however, still before the Council ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Thackeray for years before he wrote novels was an essayist, who, when he came to make fiction introduced into it the essay touch and point of view. The essay manner makes his larger fiction delightful, is one of its chief charms and characteristics. And contrariwise, the looseness of construction, the lack of careful architecture in Thackeray's stories, look ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... feminine. Max Muller's way of stating his theory, both in this Essay and in his later Lectures, affords one among several instances of the curious manner in which he combines a marvellous penetration into the significance of details with a certain looseness of general conception. [155] The principles of philological interpretation are an indispensable aid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of many a legend in which the powers of nature are represented in the guise of living and thinking persons; ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... that what is effective and beautiful in one language is a vice in another. Latin and Eskimo, with their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in English. English allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in Chinese. And Chinese, with its unmodified words and rigid sequences, has a compactness of phrase, a terse parallelism, and a silent suggestiveness that would be too tart, too mathematical, for the English genius. While we cannot assimilate ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Artists in England, vol. ii., p. 151. The other characteristics which Dr. Waagen discovers in Turner are, "such a looseness of treatment, such a total want of truth, as I never before ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... above other nations is, generally speaking, an indestructible self-respect and force of individuality. The old Norse sagas abound in illustrations of this untamable vigor and ruthless self-assertion. It was the looseness of the social structure, resulting from this sense of independence and consequent jealousy and internecine warfare, which destroyed the Icelandic republic and made Norway for four centuries a province of Denmark. In all the great men of Norway we recognize something of ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... not at all; and the ordinary mortal had no hope of ever getting beyond the downstairs sitting-room and Dr. Sutherland. For that indefatigable disciple did, indeed, never desert her. He might be impatient, he might be restless, but he remained. His 'incurable looseness of thought', for so she termed it, continued at her service to the end. Once, it is true, he had actually ventured to take a holiday; but he was recalled, and he did not repeat the experiment. He was wanted downstairs. There he ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... a matter of sympathetic sensations. In listening to a faulty singer the hearer feels a sensation of tightness and contraction of the throat. A well used voice awakens exactly the opposite sensation, that of looseness and ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... peculiar oiliness that results in a certain slipperiness of statement. Sometimes it has a bitter, poisonous, acid quality that eats its way into the words. There is a queer backward movement in biting sometimes. Withal a strange looseness of speech regarding the holiest things, and the most awesome truths, and the ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... Polytheists, and though he affected the rigor of geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the Scriptures. A mystery, which had long floated in the looseness of popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, "One incarnate nature of Christ," which are still reechoed with hostile clamors in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Aethiopia. He taught ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... for tilling the lands of her imagination with the spade of her style, is very nearly consummate—in badness. It is a fair example of the worst imitations of Mrs. Radcliffe and Mat Lewis conjointly, though without the latter's looseness. The Marquis di Zoretti was an Italian nobleman—"one of those characters in whose bosom resides an unquenchable thirst of avarice" ["thirst of avarice" is good!], etc. He marries, however, a lovely signora of the odd name of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... through gaps in the Creator's fingers, to be blown hither and thither by the wind. They had become heaped up, but were never before united. Yet in this day which had come to Bengal, even this collection of looseness had taken shape, and proclaimed in a thundering voice, at our very door: "Here ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... unsound horse is called a screw. Let that be discussed by abler hands. Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose. And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to thoughtful and experienced minds. By a process of gradual abbreviation, the phrase indicated passed into the simpler statement, that the unsound steed was himself a screw. By a bold transition, by a subtle intellectual process, the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... names and other words of Oriental languages the Editor has 'endeavoured to strike a mean between popular usage and academic precision, preferring to incur the charge of looseness to that of pedantry'. Diacritical marks intended to distinguish between the various sibilants, dentals, nasals, and so forth, of the Arabic and Sanskrit alphabets, have been purposely omitted. Long vowels are marked by the sign ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... grossly violates either need, or {67} entirely subordinates the one to the other. The fate of Spinosa, with his barren union of all things in one substance, on the one hand; that of Hume, with his equally barren 'looseness and separateness' of everything, on the other,—neither philosopher owning any strict and systematic disciples to-day, each being to posterity a warning as well as a stimulus,—show us that the ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... will keep us from being offended with the loose and blotted handling of David Cox. There is no other means by which his object could be attained. The looseness, coolness, and moisture of his herbage; the rustling crumpled freshness of his broad-leaved weeds; the play of pleasant light across his deep heathered moor or plashing sand; the melting of fragments of white mist into ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... that entire reliance might be placed on their fidelity, and that they knew of three or four other men in Leyden "as firm as trees and fierce as lions," whom they would engage—a fustian worker, a tailor, a chimney-sweeper, and one or two other mechanics. The looseness and utter recklessness with which this hideous conspiracy was arranged excites amazement. Van Dyk gave the two brothers 100 pistoles in gold—a coin about equal to a guinea—for their immediate reward as well as for that of the comrades to be engaged. Yet it ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on many of them and upon investigation I found that the trees were very loose in the ground. At first I thought that planting operations and heaving of the ground by frost in the spring might be the cause, but in testing the looseness of one of these trees, I found that I could pull it out of the ground easily. There I saw what appeared to be the marks of an axe. I was completely convinced that I had personal enemies who went around nights chopping off the roots of my trees, ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... accepted or rejected. The conviction that it was absolutely necessary to remodel the Articles of Confederation was wrought wholly by an experience of the inadequacy of the existing plan (under which a single State could oppose its veto to a law of Congress), from, the looseness of its cohesion and its want of power to compel obedience. The principle of coercive authority, which was represented as so oppressively unconstitutional by the friends of Secession in the North as well as the South four years ago, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... In looseness of the bowels we give a teaspoonful of lemon juice in a little hot water and sugar. That has as much effect as is desirable, and it has no bad effect whatever. Or enema injections may be employed. (See Diarrhoea, Dysentery, Enema). Even infants are treated with "brandy," till we cannot help ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... short couplet, besides monotony, are the tendency to diffuseness of language and looseness of grammatical structure (as in Chaucer and Scott, for instance), and rime-padding, i. e., the insertion of phrases and sometimes even irrelevant ideas, for ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... they found only the cold corpse left of her, on whom they had hoped to work their vengeance. As I was soon discovered to have shared my mother's heresy, I was dragged from her dead body, imprisoned in a solitary cloister, and treated with severity, which the Abbess assured me was due to the looseness of my life, as well as my spiritual errors. I avowed my marriage, to justify the situation in which I found myself—I implored the assistance of the Superior to communicate my situation to my husband. She smiled coldly at the proposal, and told me the church had provided a better spouse ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... chief patrons of these establishments are gentlemen connected with navigation, and very young men who, for the price of a ticket, a cigar, and a glass of beer, purchase the flattering delusion that they are "seeing life," and "going it with a perfect looseness." The performances consist of Ethiopian minstrelsy, comic songs, farces, and the dancing of "beauteous Terpsichorean nymphs"; and these succeed one another with not a minute's intermission for three or four hours. At St. Louis, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... themselves to prompt their sons to marry as soon as they are set up; and the reason they give for it is, the wickedness of the age, that youth are drawn in a hundred ways to ruinous matches or debaucheries, and are so easily ruined by the mere looseness of their circumstances, that it is needful to marry them to keep them at home, and to preserve them diligent, and bind them close to ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... but stern necessity leads to a coarseness and indelicacy which hardens the mind and deadens the natural modesty even of the best girls. Then the low scandals of the village talked over from cottage to cottage, the rude jokes of the hayfield, the general looseness and indifference which prevail as to morality, all prepare the girl for the too common fall. If she remains at home and works in the fields after the age of fifteen, unless uncommonly strong-minded, it is an open question whether she will or will not succumb. If she goes into a farmhouse as servant, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... serve the purpose of a brim), being composed of fragments of tanned skins rudely sewed together. His upper garment differed from a hunting shirt only in wanting the fringes usually appended to it, and in being fashioned without any regard to the body it encompassed, so that in looseness and shapelessness, it looked more like a sack than a human vestment; and, like his breeches and leggings, it bore the marks of the most reverend antiquity, being covered with patches and stains of all ages, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... had taken plenty of wine; she could not too touch yellow wine; she had, what is more, drunk and eaten so many fat things that in the thirst, which supervened, she had emptied several cups of tea; the result was that she unavoidably got looseness of the bowels. She therefore squatted for ever so long before she felt any relief. But on her exit from the private chamber, the wind blew the wine to her head. Besides, being a woman well up in years, she felt, upon suddenly rising from a long ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... went directly to her room when she reached the house. She wished to investigate the feeling of looseness at her knee. The satin band that belonged there was gone. She felt her cheeks grow hot. Doubtless she had lost it at the corral—the Ramblin' Kid would pick it up! The thought tormented her. Once more she wanted to swear vigorously and with ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... and very few horses pull through—perhaps, five per cent. These are called "salted horses," and are very valuable; as, although they are not proof against the disease, they are not so liable to take it. A salted horse may be known by the peculiar looseness and roughness of his skin, and also by a certain unmistakable air of depression, as though he felt that the responsibilities of life pressed very heavily upon him. He is like a man who has dearly bought his experience; he can never forget the terrible ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... secret of Plasden's high morality is found in the fact that the civil governments insist on moral laws and a careful observance of them. One blushes with shame at the looseness and laxity with which the greater municipalities of our Earth are governed, and all this under the shadow of our schools and ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... sound of heavy steps, and Barry glanced toward the door, to see framed there the gigantic form of a grinning, bearded man, his long arms hanging with the looseness of tremendous strength, his gray eyes gleaming with twinkling interest, his whole being and build that of a great, good-humored, eccentric giant. His beard was splotched with gray, as was the hair which hung in short, unbarbered strands about ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... features be de rigueur for a person of his pretensions—was artistically beautiful enough to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things which was said to possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... carelessness of composition. 1. Pointless badinage and padded scenes. 2. Inconsistencies of character and situation. 3. Looseness of dramatic construction. 4. Roman admixture and topical allusions. 5. Jokes on the dramatic machinery. 6. Use of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... Thracian bucklers and quivers of arrows, lay huddled amongst horses' bits, and through these there appeared the points of naked swords, intermixed with long Macedonian sarissas. All these arms were fastened together with just so much looseness that they struck against one another as they were drawn along, and made a harsh and alarming noise, so that, even as spoils of a conquered enemy, they could not be beheld without dread. After these wagons loaded with armor, there followed three thousand men who carried the silver ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... very soon attend the parochial meetings of Lord John Townshend's Committee in Westminster. Notwithstanding all this, the Parliament still continues steadily to Mr. Pitt, which, considering the looseness of morals and of the times, does the members great credit. * * * The Duke of York never misses a night at Brookes's, where the hawks pluck his feathers unmercifully, and have reduced him to the vowels I. O. U. The Prince likewise attends very often, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... politicians, and business men all date their change of fortune from some ironic accident, and in three of these nine stories the author's analysis merits close re-reading by students of short story technique. Behind the apparent looseness of structure you will find a new and interesting method of presentation which is as effective as it is deliberate. I regard "From the Life" as one of the more ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... kneaded with water and exposed to the sun till the dough begins to rise, when it is baked. Salt is a luxury; "he eats salt'' being said of a spendthrift. Bars of rock-salt, after serving as coins, are, when broken up, used as food. There is a general looseness of morals: marriage is a very slight tie, which can be dissolved at any time by either husband or wife. Polygamy is by no means uncommon. Hence there is little family affection, and what exists is only between children of the same ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... think that Richard could scarcely have found a worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when he most required some right principle and purpose he should have this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced in the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... notable for an increase in size. "A Visit to Niagara Falls", by Andrew R. Koller, is an intelligent and animated piece of description, which promises well for the development of its author. What looseness of construction exists may be charged to youth. "An Ambition and a Vision", by Nettie A. Hartman, is a neat and grammatically written little sketch, probably autobiographical, describing the evolution of an amateur. Greater cultivation ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... third to the bulk of earth in which you plant your Roses. Whatever fertilizer is used should be thoroughly worked into the soil before the plants are set out. See that all lumps are pulverized. If this is not done, there is danger of looseness about some of the roots at planting-time, and this is a thing to guard ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... they followed. A single incident of the journey has come down to us: that of the chastisement inflicted in the isle of Cyprus on Brother Barbaro, who had been guilty of the fault which the master detested above all others—evil-speaking. He was implacable with regard to the looseness of language so customary among pious folk, and which often made a hell of religious houses apparently the most peaceful. The offence this time appeared to him the more grave for having been uttered in the presence of a stranger, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... period. Among the novelists, Richardson alone had anything in common with him. Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are equally distant from the dignified pomp of his manner and the ascetic elevation of his morality. In contrast to the looseness of the novels and the skepticism of Hume, the reasoning of Butler was employed in defense of sacred truth, and the stern dissent of Whitefield and Wesley was entered against religious deadness. Poetry began to stir with ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... that which was used by the writer making the quotation" ("Gospels in the Second Century," pp. 16, 17). Besides, it must not be forgotten that the variation is sometimes too persistent to spring from looseness of quotation, and that the same variation is not always confined to one author. The position for which we contend will be most clearly appreciated by giving, at full length, one of the passages most relied upon ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... of the virus of smallpox. That virus is, to all intents and purposes, a seed. It is sown as yeast is sown, it grows and multiplies as yeast grows and multiplies, and it always reproduces itself. To Pasteur we are indebted for a series of masterly researches, wherein he exposes the looseness and general baselessness of prevalent notions regarding the transmutation of one ferment into another. He guards himself against saying it is impossible. The true investigator is sparing in the use of this word, though ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... that his hopes were futile. He must even take her to supper, shamming. He finally went about and asked how she was getting along. The actors were all dressing, talking, hurrying about. Drouet was palavering himself with the looseness of excitement and passion. The manager mastered himself only by a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... last—to gain time, though he could not for the life of him see what use time was to be when all the strategy of his own side seemed to have miscarried. Anyhow, the blackguards would be sold, for they would not find the Princess. But he felt a horrid void in the pit of his stomach, and a looseness ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... matters brings on a certain looseness of style and thought; but the public will have it, and the demand creates the supply of a flimsy, pleasant, literary article. The best leaders are now written by fine scholars. In travelling over ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Cruel Coppinger. In all such traditions Hawker is a most unsafe guide; he did not consciously "falsify the books," but he had misled many who came after, particularly the popular guide-books, by his looseness and his play of fancy. But he came to this district at a period when smuggling, if not actual wrecking and piracy, was at its height—not only in Cornwall, be it remembered, but in many other parts of the coast, such as Sussex ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... through one's art with the greatest effectiveness, there must be a mastery of the delicate balance between natural tendencies and discipline. If the student is subjected to too much discipline, stiff, angular results may be expected. If the student is permitted to play with the flabby looseness which some confuse with natural relaxation, characterless playing must invariably result. The great desideratum is the fine equilibrium between nature and discipline. This may seem an unnecessary observation to some, but many students never seem to be able to strike the happy medium between ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... justice; that Bentley presses Collins's arguments beyond their logical conclusion; that Collins is not what Bentley would have him to be—a mere Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the capital, in the year 157. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plough. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by his punctual discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha was there, and made himself especially useful to Scipio; he forced his way steadily ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... of speakers then, this time a private, still too rangy, but his looseness of frame seeming already to conform to the exigency ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... execution is "tighter", if I may be permitted an expression which will be understood in studios; we are very far indeed from the admirable looseness of handling which is the charm of the portrait of Miss Rose Corder. There every object is born unconsciously beneath the passing of the brush. If not less certain, the touch in the portrait of the mother is less prompt; but the painter's vision is more sincere and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... at last to marry a woman without a farthing? And then, too, would she consent to give up all further consideration for her brother's family? Would she agree to abandon her idea of assisting them, if ultimately it should turn out that the property was hers? No; there was certainly a looseness about such a plan which did not befit him; and, moreover, were he to attempt it, he would probably ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... dramatic scene—the Orange funeral standing still, garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet and refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and tolerant, sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot in appearance, but with Gallic features and looseness of dress predominating; excitable, brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, but with an intelligence which in the lowest was acute, and with temperaments ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be called old fashioned. Her views on life had certainly little in common with those held by most present-day women. She had no taste for bridge, she refused to adopt freak fashions in dress, she discouraged the looseness of tone in speech and manner so much affected by other women of her acquaintance—in a word she was in society but not of it. Naturally, she had more acquaintances than friends, yet she was not unpopular among her intimates. While secretly they laughed at what ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... situation very far from such as comported with his ideas of royal authority and state. Charles was a gay, dissipated, reckless young man. The men whom he had to deal with were stern, sedate, and rigid religionists. They were scandalized at the looseness and irregularity of his character and manners. He was vexed and tormented by what he considered their ascetic bigotry, by the restraints which they were disposed to put upon his conduct, and the limits with which ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... sat with his hands loosely clasped in his lap. His wide eyes looked far away, and there was about his lips that looseness, that lack of compression, which one sees so often in children. He might have sat, in that posture, for ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... to let every body know that their virtue is not to be bought and sold any longer." He also stated that those who live unmarried now are uniformly neglected and suffer great deprivations. Faithfulness after marriage, exists also to a greater extent than could have been expected from the utter looseness to which they had been previously accustomed, and with their ignorance of the nature and obligations of the marriage relation. We were informed both by the missionaries and the planters, that every year and month they are becoming more constant, as husband and wife, more faithful ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... them wet from morning to night, and, even at the beginning of the rain, not so much as stir a few yards to shelter, but continue in it without necessity, till they were, as we say, wet through and through. And that is soon effected by the looseness and spunginess of the plaiding; but the bonnet is frequently taken off, and wrung like a dishclout, and then put on again. They have been accustomed from their infancy to be often wet, and to take the water like spaniels, and this is become a second nature, and can scarcely be ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the whole ownership of the big doll was made over to Anna: I was no worse off, and was very contented with my obstinacy. To-day I found the beautifully wrought bodice, which I had carried beyond reach of even the supreme court of appeal, clothing with ridiculous looseness a rag-doll whose head tottered on its stem like an over-ripe plum, and whose legs had no deportment at all: and am sending it off in charitable surrender to Anna to be given, bag and rag, to whichever one of the children ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... ventures not a sentence which he has not leisurely weighed and measured. An audience also, composed of reading people, or accustomed to the exactness of written composition in the pulpit, acquires something of the same taste, and is easily offended at the occasional homeliness of diction, and looseness of method, which occur in extemporaneous speaking. Whereas those preachers and hearers, whose education and habits of mind have been different, know nothing of this taste, and are insensible to these blemishes; and, if there be only a fluent outpouring of words, accompanied by a manner which ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... last day passed, I was so filled with nervous agitation that I could not control myself, but ran ceaselessly about my cell, like a mouse in a cage. Every moment I thought that the warder would detect the looseness of the bar, or that the sentry would observe the unmortared stone, which I could not conceal outside, as I did within. As for my companion, he sat brooding upon the end of his bed, looking at me in a sidelong ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle |
