"Lowness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has been drawn to the subsidence of the waters of the lakes of Canada by the unusual lowness of Ontario, on the banks of which I lived last year, and by reading the statement of the American writer above quoted, as well as by the fact that in the Travels of Carver, one of the first English navigators ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... a height of 41/2 feet only at the sides. The floor space allowed, however, is 10.2 metres by 12.8 metres, giving us about 1,390 square feet for 64 men, or 651 square feet for thirty men. When all allowance is made for the lowness of the sides in the rather wide loft (it seems to be more than 30 feet wide), this worst accommodation at Ruhleben seems, as regards space available, not inferior to that at Knockaloe. Further details would be needed for a ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... hundred pounds, and found trade not increasing," and had now begun to think of some way of redeeming his fortune. "My mind (as you know) has always been inclined to the stage; nay, so strongly so, that all my illness and lowness of spirits was owing to my want of resolution to tell you my thoughts when here.... Though I know you will be displeased with me, yet I hope when you shall find that I may have the genius of an actor without the vices, you will think ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... well understood that the growth of the cereals and of the most useful vegetables depends chiefly on the intensity and duration of the summer heats, and is comparatively little influenced by the severity of winter cold, or the lowness of the mean temperature during the year. Therefore it is important to observe that the northern shore of Lake Huron has the mean summer heat of Bordeaux, in southern France, or 70 degrees Fahrenheit; while Cumberland House, in latitude 54 ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... explained how and why she had come by them; and though Lady Shuttleworth, remembering the order till now prevailing in the village and the lowness of the wages, could not help thinking that here was a girl more potent for mischief than any girl she had ever met, yet a feeble gleam of amusement did, as she listened, slant across the inky blackness ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... nearly all our competitors had tariffs—the tariffed countries pay the worst wages; and we were to raise ours by having tariffs also. But even that pleasing paralogism did not suffice for the appetite of tariffism in the way of fallacy. The same propaganda which affirmed the lowness of the rate of wages paid in tariffist countries affirmed also the superiority of the rate of wages paid in the United States, whence came much of our imported goods which the tariffists wished to keep out. In this case, the evidence for the statement lay ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... to excite your disdain than your love. Yet you do love me; I feel and know that you do, and thence I draw my most cherished hopes. If pride guided you, or even reason, you might well reject me. Do so; if your high heart, incapable of my infirmity of purpose, refuses to bend to the lowness of mine. Turn from me, if you will,—if you can. If your whole soul does not urge you to forgive me—if your entire heart does not open wide its door to admit me to its very centre, forsake me, never speak to me again. I, though sinning against you almost beyond remission, I also am proud; there ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... staid, what would never have been forgiven her; so she went out. I looked after her to go too; but my master said, Come, Pamela, give another specimen, I desire you, to Longman I am sure you must, if you will but speak. Well, sir, said I, since it seems your greatness wants to be justified by my lowness, and I have no desire you should suffer in the sight of your family, I will say, on my bended knees, (and so I kneeled down,) that I have been a very faulty, and a very ungrateful creature to the ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... naming colors and sorting cards by color and discriminating colors as in a test for color blindness 24 In finding and checking small visual details such as letters 33 In spelling 33 In school "marks" in English 35 In school "marks" in foreign languages 40 In memorizing for immediate recall 42 In lowness of sensory thresholds 43 In retentiveness 47 In tests of speed and accuracy of association 48 In tests of general information 50 In school "marks" in mathematics 50 In school "marks" (total average) 50 In tests of discrimination (other than for color) 51 In range of ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and see his eyes gleaming and his whole face assume a new and wild expression. As we proceeded along the Beagle Channel, the scenery assumed a peculiar and very magnificent character; but the effect was much lessened from the lowness of the point of view in a boat, and from looking along the valley, and thus losing all the beauty of a succession of ridges. The mountains were here about three thousand feet high, and terminated in sharp and jagged points. They rose in one unbroken ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... get his way. He came into the Paragon Hotel and dressed for dinner as sulky as a naturally cheerful soul could be. He showed no readiness to talk, and his father presently condoled with him on his lowness of spirits. Tinker said briefly that he had ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... still a third interval it will be equally amusingly filled by conversation as to the pasts or costumes of the more famous of the female nobs who are present—an interchange of opinion as to the lowness of their necks, conjectures as to the genuineness of their hair, and so ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... whereupon she runs out upon the stage, strikes up a rowdy, rowdy air, dances a shocking little dance, and vanishes from the dismayed vision, leaving us a considerably lower set than we were at first, and glad of our lowness. This is the second lady's own ground, however, and now she comes out—in a way that banishes far from our fickle minds all thoughts of the first lady and her mistaken child—with a medley of singing and dancing, a bit of breakdown, of cancan, of jig, a bit of "Le Sabre de mon Pere," and ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... daggers pointed against him; whereas the humble and the affable, have the people for their guard in dangers. To be humble to our superiors, is duty; to our equals, courtesy; to our inferiors, nobleness: which for all her lowness, carries such a sway that she may command their souls. But we must take heed, we express it not in unworthy actions. For then leaving virtue, it falls into disdained baseness, which is the undoubtable badge of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... Sarah Kantor. In a bedroom adjoining, its high-ceilinged vastness as cold as a cathedral to her lowness of stature, sobs dry and terrible were rumbling up from her, only to dash against ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... of that abominable ailment, influenza, whether a severe cold or the genuine epidemic? Let the faculty dispute about the best remedy if they please; but a sensible man with a bottle of champagne will beat them all. Moreover, whenever there is pain, with exhaustion and lowness, then Dr. Champagne should be had up. There is something excitant in the wine; doubly so in the sparkling wine, which the moment it touches the lips sends an electric telegram of comfort to every remote nerve. ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... have been beautiful and striking; but on the present occasion were still more so, from the remarkable contrast they afforded to the ancient, gloomy, and filthy town through which Vivian had just passed, and where, from the lowness of its situation, the sun had already set. There was as much difference between the old and new town of Reisenburg as between the old barbarous Margrave and the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Negroes under the Spanish flag not intensely Spanish? Wherefore are they so? It is because the French and Spanish nations, who are neither of them inferior in origin or the [118] nobility of the part they have each played on the historic stage, have had the dignity and sense to understand the lowness of moral and intellectual consciousness implied in the subordination of questions of an imperial nature to the slaveholder's anxiety about the hue of those who are to be benefited or not in the long run. By Spain and France every loyal and law-abiding subject of the Mother Country has ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... idleness will certainly reduce you to beggary; whereas those who abound in wealth lie under no necessity either of labour or temperance to keep enough to live on. But this is indeed one part of your happiness, that the lowness of your condition, in a manner, forceth you to what is pleasing to God, and necessary for your daily support. Thus your duty and interest are always ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... self-command, such closeness of grip. Most of us feel pleasure in reading the matchless banter with which Voltaire assailed his theological enemies. Reading Rousseau's letter to De Beaumont we realise the comparative lowness of the pleasure which Voltaire had given us. We understand how it was that Rousseau made fanatics, while Voltaire only made sceptics. At the very first words, the mitre, the crosier, the ring, fall into the dust; the Archbishop of Paris, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... woman— was a tendency to allow rank and position to weigh too much in her esteem. She had also a sensitive abhorrence of everything "low and vulgar," which would have been, of course, a very proper feeling had she not fallen into the mistake of considering humble birth lowness, and want of polish vulgarity—a mistake which is often (sometimes even wilfully) made by persons who consider themselves much wiser than Miss Tippet, but who are not wise enough to see a distinct shade of true vulgarity in their ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... was so important to economise gas, the excessive lowness of the surrounding temperature forced them to consume a certain quantity. They could not do without either its light or heat. Happily the caloric developed by the Reiset and Regnault apparatus slightly elevated the temperature ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... all materials, is one of the prettiest, too, for summer's wear, and with the addition of some bows of delicate-coloured riband, or a bouquet of fresh flowers, forms a most becoming dress. The lowness of the price of such a robe enables the purchaser to have so frequent a change of it, that even those who are far from rich may have half-a-dozen, while one single robe of a more expensive material will cost more; ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... have subdu'd nature To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.— Is it the fashion that discarded fathers Should have thus little mercy on their flesh? Judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... leave but an indistinct impression of its outlines on my mind. At the same instant, the other, a young one, but as tall as a horse, leaped out into the stream, in full sight, and there stood cowering for a moment, or rather its disproportionate lowness behind gave it that appearance, and uttering two or three trumpeting squeaks. I have an indistinct recollection of seeing the old one pause an instant on the top of the bank in the woods, look toward ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the Reformation, New College was especially attached to the old form of the faith, and it has been maintained that the dangerous lowness of the wicket entrance in the Gate Tower was due to the deliberate purpose of the governing body, who resolved that everyone who entered the college, however Protestant his views, should bow his head under the statue of the Blessed Virgin above. At any rate, one New College man in ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... true preparation for life, the true basis of a manly character, is not to have been ignorant of evil, but to have known it and avoided it; not to hare been sheltered from temptation, but to have passed through it and overcome it by God's help. Many have drawn exaggerated pictures of the lowness of public school morality; the best answer is to point to the good and splendid men that have been trained in public schools, and who lose no opportunity of recurring to them with affection. It is quite possible to be in the little world of school-life, and yet ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... forced to hide his light under the bushel of an inferior coat.—Well, from what little I heard, I said to myself, Here now is one with the unprofitable philosophy of disesteem for man. Which disease, in the main, I have observed—excuse me—to spring from a certain lowness, if not sourness, of spirits inseparable from sequestration. Trust me, one had better mix in, and do like others. Sad business, this holding out against having a good time. Life is a pic-nic en costume; one must take a part, assume a character, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... oppression of the working classes by existing monopolies, and the lowness of wages often engaged my attention; and I have held many meetings with them, and heard their appeals with compassion, and a great desire for a radical change in the system which makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer. The various associations and communities, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... diction suited to the characters, at once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of Prospero and Miranda by the appropriate lowness of the style, or as in King John, by the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues or narratives, so that the after blank verse seems to belong to the rank and quality of the speakers, and not to the poet;—or they ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... said, 'I have borne as long as mortal could endure the ill-treatment of the insolent Irish upstart whom you have taken to your bed. It is not only the lowness of his birth and the general brutality of his manners which disgust me, and must make me hate him so long as I have the honour to bear the name of Lyndon, which he is unworthy of, but the shameful nature of his conduct towards your Ladyship; ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it, Miss Squeers's friend was of a playful turn, and hearing Nicholas sigh, she took it into her head to rally the lovers on their lowness of spirits. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... questions that he put to me, that I had read myself into a fever. He gave me medicines, and ordered me to be kept very quiet, and said, he hoped in a few days I should be very well; but as it was a new case to him, he never having attended a little Mahometan before, if any lowness continued after he had removed the fever, he would, with my mother's permission, take me home with him to study this extraordinary case at his leisure; and added, that he could then hold a consultation with his wife, who was often very useful to him in prescribing remedies for the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... I appeal to you; for with that man it is irksome for me to speak. Were these those frequent journeys and long visits at Lemnos? Was this the lowness of prices that reduced ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... said his wife gently, but firmly, and I could have hugged her. My bump of reverence for the Gothic in all its developments is creditably large, but in my present "lowness of mind," as Molly would say, a long procession of cold, majestic cathedrals would have reduced me to a limp pulp. "No," Molly went on, "I can't help thinking that the churches would be a sort of anticlimax after our beloved, warm-blooded chateaux. It would be like being taken to see your great-grandmother's ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... But sir, you have kept me so long answering your questions, that I have not yet come to business. Will you order one of my rods? Look at this specimen one? See: it is of the best of copper. Copper's the best conductor. Your house is low; but being upon the mountains, that lowness does not one whit depress it. You mountaineers are most exposed. In mountainous countries the lightning-rod man should have most business. Look at the specimen, sir. One rod will answer for a house so small as this. Look over these recommendations. Only one ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... and Pastor, says to the same effect, that "the inaccuracy of diction, the inelegance, poverty, and lowness of expression, which is commonly observed in extempore discourses, will not fail to offend every ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... Does an hypochondriac affection, which causes sadness and lowness in all those who suffer from ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... dead, it is an act of God readjusting one of the king. If the heir be found, let the coronet be given back to him. Thus was it done for Lord Alla, King of Northumberland, who was also a mountebank. Thus should be done to Gwynplaine, who is also a king, seeing that he is a peer. The lowness of the occupation which he has been obliged to follow, under constraint of superior power, does not tarnish the blazon: as in the case of Abdolmumen, who was a king, although he had been a gardener; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... he had endured a good deal of physical fatigue. Standing for so many hours a day wearied him much more than walking would have done, and with bodily exhaustion came at times a lowness of spirits such as he had never felt. His resource against this misery was conversation with Allchin. In Allchin he had a henchman whose sturdy optimism and gross common sense were of the utmost value. The brawny assistant, ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... I was obliged to urge her to return; and after watching her till she reached the cottage, I hurried down the stream to the spot where I had left my canoe. I launched it, and paddled back to the part of the lake where I had quitted my companions. They had disappeared, and, by the lowness of the sun, I guessed that they must have returned home. It was a lovely evening, and the scene was one of the most perfect quiet and repose. The water of the lake was as smooth as glass, and over it sported thousands ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... come away from the place in Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come forth again, the fashionable intelligence—which, like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and present, but not the future—cannot ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of Mull, and composed, for the most part, of water very little above the level of the sea. Here, to be sure, the coal is scarce, or not so evident; but there is coal upon the sea coast in several places of this great Bay betwixt Buchan and Caithness; and the lowness of the country, across this part of the island, is almost sufficient testimony that it had been ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... able to stand and look about him with a stupid expression, and immediately the Esquimaux dragged, and pushed, and shook him along towards the snow-hut, into which he was finally thrust, though with some trouble, in consequence of the lowness of the tunnel. Here, by means of rubbing and chafing, with a little more buffeting, he was restored to some degree of heat; on seeing which Meetuck uttered a quiet grunt, and immediately ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... common gooseberry, except in being smaller, and the berry is supported by separate peduncles or foot-stalks half an inch long. There are also immense quantities of grasshoppers, of a brown color, on the plains; they, no doubt, contribute to the lowness of the grass, which is not generally more than three inches high, though it is soft, narrow-leaved, and affords a fine pasture for ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... to "highness" and "lowness," my ideas are only eclectic and not very clear. It appears to me that an unavoidable wish to compare all animals with men, as supreme, causes some confusion; and I think that nothing besides some such vague comparison is intended, or perhaps is even possible, when the question ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... quickly the error in respect to the action of stimulants in which we have been educated, and obtain a clear solution of the well-known experience that all excitement, all passion, leaves, after its departure, lowness of heart, depression of mind, sadness of spirit. We learn, then, in respect to alcohol, that the temporary excitement it produces is at the expense of the animal force, and that the ideas of its being necessary ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... bowels of compassion were moved at it, and he stretched out his right hand to the old man, and besought him to spare his children; yet did not he relent at all upon what he said, but over and above reproached Herod on the lowness of his descent, and slew his wife as well as his children; and when he had thrown their dead bodies down the precipice, he at last threw ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... both in the gathered and the growing crop. The lowness of the river, and great quantity of produce brought to Milton this year, render it almost impossible to get our crops to market. This is the case of mine as well as yours: and the Hessian fly appears alarmingly in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... birth, breeding, and natural capacity, has had the opportunity to know New England so well as she, or who has the peculiar genius so to profit by the knowledge. Already there have been scenes in 'The Minister's Wooing' that, in their lowness of tone and quiet truth, contrast as charmingly with the humid vagueness of the modern school of novel-writers as 'The Vicar of Wakefield' itself, and we are greatly mistaken if it do not prove to be the most characteristic of Mrs. Stowe's works, and therefore that ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... derision among all practical men. No breed or variety of dog has suffered more from the injudicious fads and crazes of those showmen who are not sportsmen also. At one time among a certain class of judges, length and lowness was everything, and soundness, activity, and symmetry simply did not count. As happens to all absurd crazes of this kind when carried to exaggeration, public opinion has proved too much for it, but not before a great deal of ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space." "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... sooner made acquainted with this design, than she starched up her behaviour with a double proportion of reserve; and when the company broke up, she observed with a toss of her nose, that Brown was a civil fellow enough, considering the lowness of his original; but that Fortune, though she had mended his circumstances, was incapable to raise his ideas, which were still ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... are called,' and everything that you and I regard as distinctive of Christianity, 'will be gone and be forgotten.' We believe ourselves to be in possession of an eternal light; the world looks at us and sees that it is like a flickering flame in a dying lamp. Dear brethren, if I think of the lowness of our own religious characters, the small extent to which we influence the society in which we live, of the slow rate at which the Gospel progresses in our land, I can only ask the question, and pray you to lay it to heart, which the old prophet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... They have to be considered in relation to the sex-constitution and the age-constitution of the population, and, above all, they must be viewed in relation to the infant mortality-rate. The bad aspect of the French birth-rate is not so much its lowness as that it is accompanied by a high infantile mortality. The fact that the German birth-rate is higher than the English ceases to be a matter of satisfaction when it is realised that German infantile mortality is vastly greater than English. A high birth-rate is no sign ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... their silly talk, observed their bold demeanor and their vulgar manners, while the impression of weakness, of stupidity, of the lowness and beastiality of humanity made upon his mind by the aged and the mature, was intensified by his observation ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... the more facile it is, the more excellent it is; that it ought to glide along like the Rivers, and not rebound up like Torrents; and that the less constraint it hath, the more perfection it hath; I have endeavoured then to observe a just mediocrity between vicious Elevation, and creeping Lowness; I have contained my self in Narration, and left my self free in Orations and in Passions, and without speaking as extravagants and the vulgar, I have laboured to ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... stone house, the flagged roof and mullioned windows of which proclaimed it as belonging, equally with the Manor, to a period of the past. It was a delightful, roomy, almost medieval kind of a place, so picturesque, in its old-world fashion, that one could forgive the lowness of the rooms, the narrowness of the passages, the steepness of the stairs, and the inconvenience of the fact that the front door opened directly into the dining-room, and the bedrooms nearly all led into one another. None of these drawbacks ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... are saved at last!—saved—saved—saved!" As I shouted, I pulled the canoe round and made for the vessel with all possible despatch. We very soon came up with her, and found her almost stranded, in consequence of the lowness of the tide. I promptly clambered aboard, but failed to find a soul. I thought this rather strange, but as I could see a hut not very far away, close to the beach, I steered towards it. This little dwelling, too, was uninhabited, though I found a number ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the topmost step, and listened: there was no sound from the ledge, or the Eagle's Nest that clung to it. Half timidly he descended the winding steps, and paused before the door of the cabin. "Mornie," he said, in a dry, metallic voice, whose only indication of the presence of sickness was in the lowness of its pitch,—"Mornie!" There was no reply. "Mornie," he repeated impatiently, "it's me,—Rand. If you want anything, you're to call me. I am just outside." Still no answer came from the silent cabin. He pushed open the door gently, hesitated, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the "lowness" of satire, in itself and compared with other genres. This tradition, moreover, had at least two sources: the practice of Elizabethan satirists and the critical custom of assigning satire to a middle or low position ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... I know there are many who like Your talks on the darkness of light, The shortness of length and the weakness of strength And the one on the lowness of height. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... resided—there are gaps in the history that I cannot of my own knowledge fill up,—she taught music; my uncle became enamoured of her, but he was vain and worldly. She removed into Devonshire, and he married her there, under the name of Cameron, by which name he hoped to conceal from the world the lowness of her origin, and the humble calling she had followed. Hold! do not interrupt me. Alice had one daughter, as was supposed, by a former marriage; that daughter was the offspring of him whose name she bore—yes, of the false ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but the winter solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused the hour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here to remind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience of the sky as a dial. In the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its quarters from north-east to south-east, sunset ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... of Zagozhi cannot well be estimated on account of its lowness, and the prevailing flatness of the country round, on which neither a hillock nor eminence of any kind can be discerned. However, it must be immense, and the Landers considered it to be one of the most extensive and thickly inhabited towns, as well as one of the most important trading ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... of the lowness of the Bank dividend, and of the consequent small value of Bank stock, is undoubtedly caused by the magnitude of the Bank capital; but much of it is also due to the great amount of unproductive cashof cash which yields no interestthat the Banking Department of the Bank of England keeps ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... the slaughter. And how I regretted it afterward! I am cynical enough, forsooth, but what I heard that afternoon surpassed my comprehension. I knew that artistic matters were at a low ebb in New York, yet I never realized the lowness thereof until then. I was introduced to a half-dozen smartly dressed men, some beardless, some middle-aged, and all dissipated looking. They regarded me with curiosity, and I could hear them whispering about my clothes, I got off a few feeble jokes on the subject, pointing ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... courage in battle, gave to Murat rather the character of one of those 'preux chevaliers' so well described by Ariosto and Taro, that, that a Republican soldier. The nobleness of his look soon made the lowness of his birth be forgotten. He was affable, polished, gallant; and in the field of battle twenty men headed by Murat were worth a whole regiment. Once only he showed himself under the influence of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... is thrusting with your Sword, turn the Nails of your Sword-hand in Quart, with a full stretched Arm, and your Hand as high as your Face, and when you do this, slope your Point to the lowness of your Adversaries Thigh; and by that means, with the Fort of your Sword, on the Feeble of his, put by his Thrust, always observing to Parie with the Fort of your Sword, and not the Feeble, lest your Adversary having the stronger Arm, force upon you the Thrust ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... gentleman, "it's poor art. I'll show you where the thing is bad. I happen to understand something of these things. Just observe how the top of the head is out of drawing; look at the lowness of the forehead, and the distance between the eyes; all the canons of proportion ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... or defined; the spirit of the universe is merely suggested or hinted at, his great wings enclose all. The elliptical form of this composition is seen again in "Death Crowning Innocence" and "The Dweller in the Innermost," and the same expressive indefiniteness and lowness of the colour tones. In the latter effort we have the figure of Conscience, winged, dumb-faced and pensive, seated within a glow of light. On her forehead is the shining star, and in her lap the arrows which pierce through all disguises, and a trumpet that proclaims peace to the world. Here, ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... The lowness of the bids gave courage to the gathering of second-hand booksellers present, who began to mingle with us, and become more familiar. The dealers in old brass and bric-a-brac pressed forward in their tun, waiting for the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... by his customers. He is paid according to the weight of metal used, the rate varying from four annas to two rupees with an average of a rupee per tola weight of metal for gold, and from one to two annas per tola weight of silver. [643] The lowness of these rates is astonishing when compared with those charged by European jewellers, being less than 10 per cent on the value of the metal for quite delicate ornaments. The reason is partly that ornaments are ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... but showing them to be, at least, men who had courage and command of themselves or had striven for it. She contrasted them with his own weakness and supineness and degradation. Then, her voice softening subtly, she shifted the picture to what he had been, to his days of unutterable lowness in the Legion, the five years of brutal struggle, fiercely won promotion. His gaining of a commission, the cachet of respectability, his years of titanic struggle and study and work through the hardly won grades ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... sun very much in its work of raising vapour. But the most potent factor is undoubtedly the vast size of the basin that these rivers drain." "The great speed at which the atmospheric currents move," said Bearwarden, "coupled with the comparative lowness of the mountain chains and the slight obstruction they offer to their passage, must distribute the rain very thoroughly, notwithstanding the great unbroken area of the continents. There can be no such state of things ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... doubtlessly, they did not leave her by herself during the other nights; and if the vampire had wished to molest her, her moans would have warned those of it who were present. Nevertheless, she dies three days afterwards. Her fright and lowness, her sadness and languor, evidently show how strongly ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... be right, but I trust it is only a temporary lowness of spirits or something of that kind. Maybe she will get over it in a day or two;" and with this remark the conversation dropped, and the gentlemen proceeded to the demolition of the sweetmeats before ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... through a life of great exertions and vicissitudes, produced a vigor and equanimity which are seldom the accompaniments of a laborious mind or of a distracted life. "I do not remember," he says, "to have felt lowness of spirits one quarter of an hour since I was born." "Ten thousand cares are no more weight to my mind than ten thousand hairs are to my head." "I have never lost a night's sleep in my life." "His face was remarkably fine, his complexion fresh to the last week of his ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... heads and tails and bellowing furiously. The whole herd instantly heed the warning and are soon in motion. Buffalo run with forelegs stiff, which fact, together with their ugly-looking humps and the lowness of their heads, gives a rocking swing to their gait. If a herd, when in full motion, have to cross a road on which wagons are traveling, they change their course but little; and, it sometimes happens, that large bands will pass within a stone's throw of a caravan. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... SOS. The lowness of my birth, by which it pleased heaven to humble the ambition of my love; the princess's rank, which puts between her and my desires such an impassable barrier. The rivalry of two princes who can back the offer of their heart by the highest titles; two princes who offer the most ...
— The Magnificent Lovers (Les Amants magnifiques) • Moliere
... ripples already mentioned, there are others of still smaller amplitude and shorter period that are sensible, but as a rule only just sensible, to us as sounds. All the known evidence points to the extraordinary lowness of the earthquake-sound. According to some observers, it seems as if close to their lower limit of audibility; while others, however intently they may listen, are unable to hear the slightest noise. In other words, ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... millions," says Mrs. Gore,[1] "tickles the ear of an Englishman! He loves it so much, indeed, that it all but reconciles him to the National Debt; and when applied to private proprietorship, it secures deference for lowness of mind, birth, habits, and pursuits.... Ambition and money-love, if they tend to ennoble a country, reduce to insignificance the human particles of which the nation is composed. In their pursuit of riches, the English are gradually ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... compelled to disclose my necessity, though I endeavoured to sweeten the discovery by rehearsing to him the daily assurances I received from my patron. But these promises were not of efficacy sufficient to support the spirits of my friend, who no sooner understood the lowness of my finances, than, uttering a dreadful groan, he exclaimed, "In the name of God, what shall we do?" In order to comfort him, I said, that many of my acquaintances, who were in a worse condition than we, supported, notwithstanding, the character of gentlemen; and advising him to thank God ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... the promontory where the sea was beating furiously. Fernando was almost beside himself with joy to find Morgianna clinging to his arm in the ascent, and to hear her sweet voice in low, gentle tones breathing in his ear. It was a fine, clear night, and for all her lowness of spirits, Morgianna kept looking up at the stars in a manner so bewitching that Fernando was clear out of his senses, and plainly showed that, if ever a man were over head and ears in love, that man was himself. The path they were ascending ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... appear small and positively cosy, such as may be found in the house of moderate size belonging to any lady or gentleman of somewhat luxurious habits. English people would probably have chosen a more airy situation for their private abode than the ground floor; but from the lowness of these rooms they are more easily warmed in winter, and from their being vaulted they are cooler in summer. After visiting the private rooms, their guide conducted them up-stairs, when they passed through several fine halls, similar ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... occurring at about this period, which, however differing in detail between themselves, showed that throughout the navy, both in active service before the enemy, and in the more deliberate criteria of opinion which influence Courts-Martial, there was a pronounced tendency to lowness of standard in measuring officer-like conduct and official responsibility for personal action; a misplaced leniency, which regarded failure to do the utmost with indulgence, if without approval. In the stringent and awful emergencies of war too much is at stake for such easy tolerance. Error ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... commonly at 20 s. per cent. than at 10; so that certainly it will bring 12 s. 8 d. a hundred, which will make 16000 (the least salary) amount to 100L per Ann. which it must certainly clear, allowing for all petty charges, out of the lowness of the price stated which is less than the medium between ten and twenty shillings; whereas it might be stated above the medium, since it is oftener at twenty than ten shillings. Besides the payment of the salary, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the great body of intelligent and well informed men. But Gray could see no merit in "Rasselas," and Johnson could see no merit in "The Bard." Fielding thought Richardson a solemn prig, and Richardson perpetually expressed contempt and disgust for Fielding's lowness. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... were obliged to carry the water in small baricos to the boat, over slippery rocks and deep mud: and on the 21st, thinking it better to complete their water at Timor, they set sail. This difficulty of watering only arose from the lowness of the tides (neap) and our ignorance of the country. Subsequently we found no difficulty in procuring it; indeed no country in the world is better watered ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... rich vaulting, the highly decorated triforium, the moulded pier-arches, and at the end of the vista the great east window, produce an impression very different from the more simple and lofty stateliness of the French cathedrals. The great length and lowness of the English interiors combine with this decorative richness to give the impression of repose and grace, rather than of majesty and power. This tendency reached its highest expression in the Perpendicular ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... in the boats, to see if we could find any suitable place for landing, but, after toiling from morning till night, we found no way or passage which we could enter and disembark. We were prevented from doing so by the lowness of the land, and by its being so densely covered with trees. We concluded, therefore, to return to the ships, and make an attempt to land in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... The charge of the judge was clear and decisive. He admitted that there were grounds of suspicion—that there were circumstances connected with the prisoner's peculiar mode of life that were not reconcilable with the lowness of his finances; but yet of direct testimony there was not a vestige, and of circumstantial evidence there were not only links wanting in the chain, but, in fact, there was not a single link extending beyond ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... that effect. As for filthy communication out of his mouth and from his pen,—not, of course, habitual, but occasional,—the subject will not bear more than this mention. These be thy gods, O Atheism! one, in reading Mr. Morley on Diderot, is tempted again and again to exclaim. To offset such lowness of character in the man, it must in justice be added that Diderot was, notwithstanding, of a generous, uncalculating turn of mind, not grudging, especially in intellectual relations, to give of his best to others, expecting nothing again. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... free families of humble means began in the early years of the colony's existence, and continued throughout the 17th century. The lowness of wages and the unfavorable economic conditions that existed in England induced many poor men to seek their fortunes in the New World.[149] The law which allotted to every settler fifty acres of land for each member of his family insured all that ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... from the Incarnate Word was no menacing or dazzling light. He and it were 'full of grace and truth,' perfect Love bending to inferiors and sinners, with hands full of gifts and a heart full of tenderness and the revelation of reality, both as regards God and man. His grace bestows all that our lowness needs, His truth teaches all that our ignorance requires. All our gifts and all our knowledge come from the Incarnate Word, in whom believing we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... and passed in a fog, that left them in much the same uncertainty as before about their position. For one moment it had lifted, and they fancied they had seen "Homborgsund's Fald," a high landmark up the country above Arendal, and from its lowness and dimness on the horizon, they had been encouraged to hope that they had appreciably increased their distance from the coast. About noon they passed an English brig that had been through the same struggle ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... Kotzebue, Bellinghausen, Duperrey, Beechey, and Lutke, regarding the Pacific; and from Moresby (See also Captain Owen's and Lieutenant Wood's papers in the "Geographical Journal", on the Maldiva and Laccadive Archipelagoes. These officers particularly refer to the lowness of the islets; but I chiefly ground my assertion respecting these two groups, and the Chagos group, from information communicated to me by Captain Moresby.) with respect to the Indian Ocean, that in the following cases the ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... pier with great difficulty, owing to the lowness of the water, we were met by two of the Datu Klana's policemen, who threw cold water on the idea of our getting on at all unless Captain Murray sent for us. These men escorted us to this police station—a long walk through a lane of much decorated shops, exclusively Chinese, succeeded by a lane ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Charleston, Havana. If you remain here, you will be another Patty Cannon or go to jail. There! Look at it conservatively: warmth, riches, pleasure, attention, change, dress to become you, a watch and jewels, against villainy and lowness ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Jats, or Jats, with the Getae is not even probable. The anchor exaggerates the lowness of the social rank of the Jats, who cannot properly be described as people of 'very low caste'. They are, and have long been, numerous and powerful in the Panjab and the neighbouring countries. It is true that they hate Brahmans, care little for Brahman notions of propriety, either ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... present general use of tea holds the first and principal rank. The second cause may perhaps be allotted to excess in spirituous liquors. This pernicious custom owes its rise to the former, which, by the lowness and depression of spirits it occasions, renders it almost necessary to have recourse to what is cordial and exhilarating; and hence proceeds those odious and disgraceful habits of intemperance with which too many of the softer sex of every degree are now, alas! chargeable. ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... very much used by the inhabitants. They have a sort of awning to protect the passenger from the rays of the sun; and being light are easily rowed about, although they are exceedingly uncomfortable to sit in, from the lowness of the seats, and liable to overset if the weight is not placed near the bottom. The out-rigger has in all probability been dispensed with, owing to the impediment it offered to the navigation of their canals; these canals offer great ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... in fact, had not been a serious one, probably owing to the lowness of the old rooms and to the high level of the ground without. Beyond a scraped elbow and a blow in the side she ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... which was, to the last degree, lingering, painful, and afflictive, his constancy and firmness did not forsake him. He neither intermitted the necessary cares of life, nor forgot the proper preparations for death. Though dejection and lowness of spirits was, as he himself tells us, part of his distemper, yet even this, in some measure, gave way to that vigour, which the soul receives from a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the Concealed Causes of Nervous Debility, Local and General Weakness, Indigestion, Lowness of Spirits, Mental Irritability, and Insanity; with Practical Observations on their Treatment and Cure. By SAMUEL LA'MERT, Consulting Surgeon, 9 Bedford street, Bedford square, London; Matriculated Member of the University of Edinburgh; Honorary ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... overflowing, and that corruption had reached so unprecedented a step that some great catastrophe must be approaching. A man of unusually lofty morality is, for that reason, more keenly sensitive to the lowness of the average standard, and too easily accepts the belief that the evils before his eyes must be in fact greater, and not, as may perhaps be the case, only more vividly perceived, than those of the bygone ages. A call to repentance easily takes the form of an assertion ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... another mile. It was certainly hard work and made them warm in spite of the lowness of the thermometer. Then they came to a big drift of snow and found it no mean task to get over ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... changed and defiled by all colours. This pureness of white, if it be not in some degree broken or tinged, will cast down or degrade every other colour in a picture, and itself become harsh and crude. Hence the lowness of tone which has been thought a necessity in painting, but is such only because our other colours do not approach to the purity of white. Had we all necessary colours thus relatively pure as white, colouring in painting might be carried up to the full brilliancy of nature; and, in ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... with want of purity and change of air, want of exercise,[31] want of shifting the work of the body—why clergymen, men of letters, and all men of intense mental application, are so liable to be affected with indigestion, constipation, lumbago, and lowness of spirits, melancholia—black bile. The brain may not give way for long, because for a time the law of exercise strengthens it; it is fed high, gets the best of everything, of blood and nervous pabulum, and then men have a joy in the victorious work of their brain, and it ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... where profits are low, the immense importance which used to be attached by political economists to the effects which an event or a measure of government might have in adding to or subtracting from the capital of the country. We have now seen that the lowness of profits is a proof that the spirit of accumulation is so active, and that the increase of capital has proceeded at so rapid a rate, as to outstrip the two counter-agencies, improvements in production and increased supply of cheap necessaries from abroad. A sudden abstraction of capital, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... believed to exercise a medicinal effect on the liver, because of its colour, is a true biliary purgative. An infusion of this bark, made with boiling water, is useful in jaundice from congestive liver, with furred tongue, lowness of spirits, and yellow complexion; also for swollen spleen from malarious exposure. A medicinal tincture (H.) is made of the root-branches and the root-bark, with spirit of wine; and if given three or four times a day in doses of five drops with one tablespoonful of cold ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... to another; and the musicians who were stationed without on the terrace struck up a soft and mellow air, to which were sung the following words, made almost indistinct by the barrier between and the exceeding lowness of the minstrelsy:— ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Don Christoval. She was fully persuaded that at first She had made a terrible breach in his heart: But hearing nothing more of him, She supposed that He had quitted the pursuit, disgusted by the lowness of her origin, and knowing upon other terms than marriage He had nothing to hope from such a Dragon of Virtue as She professed herself; Or else, that being naturally capricious and changeable, the remembrance of her charms had been effaced from the Conde's ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... part of this hero's adventures. The rest is much akin to his earlier novels, but the history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a passage not quite alien to the vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some remarks in the first chapter show that Smollett felt the censures on his brutality and "lowness," and he promises to seek "that goal of perfection where nature is castigated almost even to still life . . . where decency, divested of all substance, hovers about ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... conspire to render an illicit trade between them a matter of little difficulty, and would insure frequent evasions of the commercial regulations of each other. The separate States or confederacies would be necessitated by mutual jealousy to avoid the temptations to that kind of trade by the lowness of their duties. The temper of our governments, for a long time to come, would not permit those rigorous precautions by which the European nations guard the avenues into their respective countries, as well by land as by water; ...
— The Federalist Papers
... considered as totally desperate. But Coligny had remarked, that as the town of Calais was surrounded with marshes, which during the winter were impassable, except over a dike guarded by two castles, St. Agatha and Newnam Bridge, the English were of late accustomed, on account of the lowness of their finances, to dismiss a great part of the garrison at the end of autumn, and to recall them in the spring, at which time alone they judged their attendance necessary. On this circumstance he had founded the design of making a sudden attack on Calais; he had caused ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... of Brabant is likely to be volume the second. The Emperor, and their majesties of Great Britain and Prussia, and his Serene Highness the Republic of Holland have sent a card to his turbulent Lowness of Brabant, and* they allow him but three weeks to submit to his old sovereign: on promise of a general pardon -or the choice of threescore thousand men ready to march without ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... power of this woman, the daughter of a tradesman, mistress, king in all save title. She was, however, less powerful than her successor,—that successor who was less clever and less ambitious, who "never made the least scrupulous blush at the lowness of her origin and the irregularity of her life,"—Mme. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... near the South point North 20 degrees West, distant 3 or 4 Leagues, being in 38 fathoms, a brown Sandy bottom. This Island,* (* It is not an island, but a mountainous peninsula, still called after Mr. Banks, but from the lowness of the land it adjoins, looks like an island. On the north side is the fine harbour of Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch, a town of nearly 40,000 inhabitants. The harbour on the south side, that Cook saw, is Akaroa, a magnificent port.) which I have ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... met him, in the autumn of 1859, he was a man of two-and-thirty—we were of an age. He wore a full beard at that time, and affected woolen sports shirts with an exaggerated lowness of neck; not content with that, he sometimes left the top button undone. His neck appeared to me at first to be remarkably handsome; but little by little he made me his deadly enemy, and then I did not consider his neck handsomer than mine, though I did not show off mine so ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... his work. There is none of it in himself. And it is this, too, which leads to the contempt which southern people feel for northern men. They are working men, and work is flavored to the Southerner with ideas of ignominy, of meanness, of vulgar lowness. Neither can they understand how a man who works all his life long can be high-minded and generous, intelligent ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... respectability, and inspired confidence in those steady good qualities which we seek in a trusty servant. But more closely examined, an habitual observer might have found much to qualify, perhaps to disturb, his first prepossessions. The exceeding lowness of the forehead, over which that stiff, harsh hair was so puritanically parted; the severe hardness of those thin, small lips, so pursed up and constrained; even a certain dull cruelty in those light, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... convulsive leap as he caught sight of the dog, and his intention was to alight upon the frame-work of one of the large grindstones close by his side—one that had just been set in motion, but though he jumped high enough he did not allow for the lowness of the ceiling, against which he struck his head, came down in a sitting position on the grindstone, and was instantly ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... passed," he writes, "without instances of this kind; for, owing to the projecting points of this strangely formed island, the lowness and whiteness of its eastern shores, and the wonderful manner in which the scanty patches of land are intersected with lakes and pools of water, it becomes, even in daylight, a deception, and has often been fatally mistaken for an open sea. It had even become proverbial with some of the inhabitants ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "vegetative repetition," to use Professor Owen's expression, is a sign of low organisation; the foregoing statements accord with the common opinion of naturalists, that beings which stand low in the scale of nature are more variable than those which are higher. I presume that lowness here means that the several parts of the organisation have been but little specialised for particular functions; and as long as the same part has to perform diversified work, we can perhaps see why it should remain variable, that is, why natural selection should ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... theories of men like De Gabalis, who held that beings in process of finer evolution and formation, and known as "elementals," nourishing their own growth into exquisite existence, through the radio-force of air and fire, may be among us, all unrecognised, yet working their way out of lowness to highness, indifferent to worldly loves, pleasures and opinions, and only bent on the attainment of immortal life? Such beliefs serve only as material for the scoffer and iconoclast,—nevertheless they may be true for all that, and may in the end confound the mockery of materialism ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... father; you have been here for seventeen years, during which time you have never seen your daughter; you have lived upon bread and water, and, in consequence, are extremely weak, and suffer from occasional lowness of spirits."—"All right," said the actor of universal capabilities, "ring up." When he was discovered to the audience, he presented an extremely miserable appearance, was very favourably received, and gave every sign of ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... out for her hand across the sheet, found and held it. There were footsteps upon the terrace to the right, the scent of a cigar, Ludovic Quayle's voice in question, Honoria St. Quentin's in answer, both with enforced discretion and lowness of tone. General Ormiston joined them. Miss St. Quentin laughed gently. The sound was musical and sweet. Footsteps and voices died away. A clang of bells and the hooting of an outward-bound liner came up from ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... present moment, give up even that old establishment.' Gibbons's Misc. Works, i. 328. One of Gibbon's correspondents told him in 1792, that the Wealth of Nations had been condemned by the Inquisition on account of 'the lowness of its style and the looseness of the morals which it inculcates.' Ib. ii. 479. See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... perhaps, are to be had from the wooden bridge by Bondgate Green, and from the south-east gate of the graveyard. Unfortunately lack of funds prevented Sir Gilbert Scott from raising the roofs of nave and transept to their original pitch; but what most injures the general effect is the lowness of the central tower, which is no higher than those at the west end. This fault, however, must have been far less noticeable when all three towers were crowned with lofty spires. And, even as it stands, the exterior of Ripon is dignified ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... space in the centre some 8 feet long or more, according to the size of the boat, walled in on each side with the same material, the better to exclude the fierce rays of the sun. Herein sits, or rather lies, the traveller, the lowness of the awning (which is removable) precluding any other position. Boxed up in this manner, but little can be seen of the surrounding country, but as in Sarawak one river is so precisely alike another this is no great loss. In the interior, however, ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... Maestricht are preserved a human frontal and a pelvic bone, stained of a dark peaty colour; the frontal very remarkable for its lowness and the prominence of the superciliary ridges, which resemble those of the Borreby skull, Figure 5. These remains may be the same as those alluded to by Professor Crahay in his memoir, where he says that in a black deposit in the suburbs of Hocht were found leaves, nuts, and freshwater shells in ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... yourself, Sir Simon; and let reason also whisper to you, that, when honest industry raises a family to opulence and honours, its very original lowness sheds lustre on its elevation;—but all its glory fades, when it has given a wound, and denies a balsam, to a man, as humble, and as honest, as your ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... reputation when it comes to that sample of Teutonic culture. Fritz's poison shells dropped almost noiselessly and, without a report, broke open, liberating to enormous expansion the inclosed gases. These spread in all directions, and, owing to the lowness and dampness of the terrain, the poison clouds were imperceptible both to sight or smell. They clung close to the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... sounds, except those above mentioned, are formed in the larynx along with the musical height or lowness of note; but receive afterward a variation of tone from the various passages of the mouth: add to these that as the sibilant sounds consist of vibrations slower than those formed by the larynx, so a whistling through the lips consists of vibrations ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in front of Mr. Penny's workshop in the lower village. They were all brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a steeple; the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of their hats of no use at all as a ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... general are of a tawny or brown colour; but this is not wholly hereditary. The chief cause is probably the lowness of their habits; for they very seldom wash their persons, or the clothes they wear, their linen excepted. Their alternate exposures to cold and heat, and the smoke surrounding their small camps, perpetually tend to increase those characteristics of complexion ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... bear's chair in the story, I replaced the garments with a jacket of chamois leather, and a pair of loose trousers made of the same, after the manner of the country. Then came a grey felt hat, as stiff as a boiler-plate, and of more than quakerish lowness of crown and broadness of brim, but secularized by a silver serpent for a hatband; also, a red silk sash, which—fastening round the waist—held up my trousers, and interfered with my digestion; ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... came and stood within the door. When the rain increased they drew themselves further inward, their forms being distinctly outlined to the gaze of those lurking behind by the light from the tent beyond. But the hiss of the falling rain and the lowness of their tones prevented their words ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... flies about a shepherd's cottage in the spring, when the milk moistens the pails, such numbers of Greeks stood in the field against the Trojans." Lord Kames observes, that it is false taste to condemn such comparisons for the lowness of the images introduced. In fact, great objects cannot be degraded by comparison with small ones in these similes, because the only point of resemblance is number; the mind instantly perceives this, and therefore requires ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth |
