"More often than not" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of affairs in the drama of Spain. They were years when dogmatic naturalism, with its systematically crude presentation of life, was at its height in France, and France, during the nineteenth century, had more often than not set the fashion for Spain in literary matters. The baldness of Zola and the pessimism of de Maupassant were quickly taken up on the French stage, and Henri Becque and the Thtre libre served slices of raw life ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... uncomfortable suspicion that attacks most of us at times, which cannot fairly be set down wholly to self-consciousness or an exaggerated idea of our own importance. I mean the suspicion that a partly-heard conversation must have ourselves for its subject. More often than not, of course, it proves utterly unfounded, but once in a way, like most presentiments, it finds ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... you have practised on sound lines and are fit to take part in what, after all, should be a test of trained skill, tournaments will then be a great help to you. You will more often than not play against better players than yourself—an advantage denied you in practice—and against all varieties of attack and defence. You have the chance of watching first-class matches and learning at first hand how the different strokes ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... Spider,'" he said to himself. "She displays heroic persistence. Her methods are a trifle crude though. To provoke statements by making them is but a primitive form of diplomacy. Yet why be hard upon Louisa? Like my poor, dear father, she, more often than not, means well." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... appearance at Oldstone Cottage at all, and if the exigencies of business matters took him there on any occasion when Robin chanced to be out, he usually contrived only to leave a note or message for him with Maria. More often than not, however, he would merely send word to him, asking him to come up and see him at Heronsmere. To Ann, puzzled and secretly somewhat piqued, it seemed as though he were studiously avoiding her. Once she mentioned the subject to Robin, introducing ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Westinghouse. And who but the Wright brothers themselves made a commercial success of the aeroplane? Sometimes, it is true, one man conceives an idea which he is unable to work out and which must be made practical by others, but more often than not he stumbles on the idea more by accident than because he is looking for it. So the young man or the young woman who has hopes of winning fame in the world of art, music, or literature should assay himself or herself first of all for a willingness ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... "tout," the procurer, the white-slave agent, and the expert seducer of young girls. All of these agencies of corruption were banded together, and leagued in blood brotherhood with the politician and the police; more often than not they were one and the same person,—the police captain would own the brothel he pretended to raid, the politician would open his headquarters in his saloon. "Hinkydink" or "Bathhouse John," or others of that ilk, were proprietors ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... scent of the flowers mixed with Joan's thoughts and brought a quick vision of Aunt Janet. But more deeply still her mind was struggling with a desire to know what exactly it was that swayed her when Gilbert Stanning spoke to her, or when—as more often than not—he in some way or other contrived to touch her. She had met him first at a dance that she had been taken to by another girl and she had known him now about four months. It was strange and a little disturbing the tumult his eyes waked in her ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... the English Parliament? You speak from your place, standing, in the midst of your own party; you are carried away; you say more often than not what others think instead of what you think yourself. There is a magnetic communication. You are subjected to it. You rise (here the King rose and imitated the gesture of an orator speaking in Parliament). The assembly ferments all round and close to you; you let yourself go. On this ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... agitation. She knew that he had guessed what was passing in her mind, and now was deeply ashamed of what she had done. She had been tortured with jealousy for the past three weeks, but at least she had suffered quite alone: on one had been allowed to touch that wound, which more often than not, excites derision rather than pity. Now, by her own actions, two men knew her secret. Both were kind and sympathetic; but Droulde resented her imputations, and Blakeney had ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... habit, the instant the view-halloa is raised, is to scamper headlong, pounce on the victim and pull him apart (or so it feels) until fortune, superior strength, or some such element decides the point; and then more often than not it is the victim's fate to be carried between two men, each hold of a thigh, each determined to get ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these two things let the passenger assure himself—fight how ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... flush of the westward sky kept hanging its indestructible curtain. He had never got away—everything had left him, but he himself had been able to turn his back on nothing—and now, his day's labour before a dirty desk at the Gas Works ended, he more often than not, almost any season at temperate Properley serving his turn, took his slow straight way to the Land's End and, collapsing there to rest, sat often for an hour at a time staring before him. He might in these ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... night for dinner what Murty O'Toole, having seen in wonder, referred to as "a quare little cobbed-shwaller-tail jacket." He regarded with fine scorn the cheerful carelessness of the boys where clothes were concerned. To Jim and Wally who were generally immensely occupied until dinner-time, and more often than not had further plans for the time following, putting on regulation evening dress seemed a proceeding little short of lunatic; but since Cecil "liked that sort of thing," they let him alone. To-night, however, was different, and when Cecil repeated his ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Shanghai was in constant danger. The Taipings, steadily growing in power, were spreading destruction far and wide. The Ever Victorious Army was the only force capable of opposing them, and the Ever Victorious Army was defeated more often than not. Its first European leader had been killed; his successor ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Historical Romance itself. Not only has fault been found with the deficiencies of unskilled authors in that department, but the question has been asked by one or two critics of standing—What right has the Historical Novel to exist at all? More often than not, it is pointed out, the Romancist gives us a mass of inaccuracies, which, while they mislead the ignorant (i.e., the majority?), are an unpardonable offence to the historically-minded reader. Moreover, the writer of such Fiction, though he ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... The modern novel is very often still a good healthy love tale; the hero is more often than not a gentleman who has not the brains to be a cad; his trouble about marriage is that he wants to marry the right woman to their mutual well being; he is neither a cad nor a hero, but an ordinary Englishman whom we need not walk half a mile to see; he usually marries a girl who can be seen ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... coarseness that mistakes itself for force, may well be glad to follow the mental history of a man who knew how to move and grow without any of these reactions and leaps on the one hand, or any of that overdone realism on the other, which may all make a more striking picture, but which do assuredly more often than not mark the ruin of a mind and the nullification ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... In a hundred details the homemaker should be able to increase the efficiency of the "place to make citizens in." A common mistake in building produces a house which adds to, rather than lessens, the burdens of its inmates. More often than not this is the result of a misapprehension of what houses ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... Vera—or better," said Laramore, with a little laugh. "Vera, I suppose, is worth a million dollars. She is a citizen of a neutral country. She can have the bulliest time any girl could desire, and yet she elects to come to France, drive a car over abominable roads which are more often than not under shell-fire, and sleep in a leaky old shack for forty cents ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... been said, Michelagnolo used to take pleasure in this man's chattering and in the jokes that he was ever making, he kept him almost always at his table; but one day Jacopo wearied him—as such fellows more often than not do come to weary their friends and patrons with their incessant babbling, so often ill-timed and senseless; babbling, I call it, for reasonable talk it cannot be called, since for the most part there is neither reason nor judgment in such people—and ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... imagined that mangrove swamps are unproductive. Fish traverse the intricacies of the arching roots, edible crabs burrow holes in the mud, and in them await your coming, and more often than not baffle your ingenuity to extricate them. Among other stalked-eyed crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly large, and which scuttles among the roots, making a defiant clicking noise—the fiddle or soldier crab (GELASIMUS VOCANS). Oysters seal themselves ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... feeling the effect of the drink. They all laughed heartily, two, at least, in some surprise. Saunders never let an opportunity escape to repeat the joke to his friends in after life; in fact, he made the opportunity more often than not. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... dolphins which are not based upon carcases and skeletons must be accepted with caution. It is most difficult to place species with scientific accuracy which can only be observed swimming in the water, and of which more often than not only blows and the dorsal fins can be observed. The nomenclature of dolphins especially leaves much to be desired, and it is to be hoped that some expedition in the future will carry a Norwegian harpooner, who could do other work as well since they are very good sailors. Wilson was strongly of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... is, surely, the general aspect of the Parisian populace—a people fearful to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisons with which their brains are pregnant; ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... waiter upon Court favour, and wear out the back of my coat against the tapestry at Whitehall, standing in the rear of the crowd, to have my toes trampled upon by the sharp heels of Court ladies, and an elbow in my stomach more often than not. I am come, like Wolsey, girls, to lay my old bones among you. Art thou ready, Angela? Hast thou had enough of London, and play-houses, and parks; and wilt thou share ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... thorn, alas! in my own side, more often than not—and a thistle in the sides of a good many donkeys, whom I feed because they're too stupid or too lazy to feed themselves! But at least I know my place, and the knowledge is more bother to me than all my money, and the race of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... recognized, was indefatigable in her efforts to form him in her own unassailable mould; she insisted in the most trivial, and often tiresome, ways, that he should reach and maintain her standards. He had been in return, more often than not, rebellious, humorously or with a suspicion of annoyance; but now, suddenly, it seemed to him that just that, the limitation of Fanny's determined attitude, was, perhaps, the most desirable thing possible. If it were possible of acquisition! Such a certainty wasn't his naturally—those two diverse ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... prejudice in these matters as his or her pupils. The teacher has seldom been trained to impart even the most elementary scientific knowledge of the facts of sex, of reproduction, and of sexual hygiene, and is more often than not without that personal experience of life in its various aspects which is required in order to teach wisely in such a difficult field as that of sex, even if the principle is admitted that the teacher in class, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... just beyond the water-line, on all fours, only to find that I had not enough impetus to remain there, as the ground was sloping. Sometimes I was able to save myself by jabbing my stick into the ground, though, more often than not, this was impracticable, and my hands could find nothing firmer to catch hold of than a few tufts of grass, which almost invariably gave way, causing me to do a graceful but involuntary backward dive into the dyke. As constant exercise of this sort is very tiring and the weight of water contained ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... trivial vexations; but his poetry aimed at cold, classical correctness. In comparison with Landor, Tennyson's reserve was almost glacial—yet out of it bloomed many a gorgeous garden of romance. Splendid imaginative masterpieces seem to require more often than not a creative mind marked by sober reason, logical ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... the best informed person regarding local happenings, in the small town of Millford. She really knew. Every community has its unlicensed and unauthorized gossips, who think they know what their neighbors are thinking and doing, but who more often than not get their data wrong, and are always careless of detail. Mrs. Crocks was ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... receive any reports you can supply me with, for it is next to impossible to obtain anything like trustworthy information here. We only hear what it is desired that we should know, and all these late changes have come as a complete surprise to me; for what news I do obtain is, more often than not, false. Unfortunately, truth is a virtue almost unknown among the Mahrattas. They have a perfect genius for intrigue, and consider it perfectly justifiable to deceive not ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... in my room, in front of a blackboard. After a few evenings, prolonged into the peaceful watches of the night, I become aware, to my great surprise, that my teacher, the past master in those hieroglyphics, is really, more often than not, my pupil. He does not see the combinations of the abscissas and ordinates very clearly. I make bold to take the chalk in hand myself, to seize the rudder of our algebraical boat. I comment on the book, interpret ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... in the early years of his political career than now. But, for some reason, probably temperamental, he is in the habit of dwelling upon the dangers that beset the republic—dangers which are sometimes very real. Nevertheless an hour in his presence is more often than not depressing; it leaves one with a sense of impending calamity. There are few bright spots on ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... stated hour in the day, a tall, handsome, distinguished, middle-aged man, wearing for the occasion the uniform of a colonel in the Imperial Guard, a blood-stained, tarnished, battered, battle-worn uniform, be it observed, comes into the room. He is more often than not attended by a lovely lady of beauty and grace, in spite of her years, who leads with either hand a handsome youth and a beautiful maiden. The four soldiers are always present in full uniform under the command of their ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... whose opinion is understood by both to be worth as much as his own. Similarly an American lady does not expect to have conversation made to her: it is just as much her duty or pleasure to lead it as the man's is; and more often than not she takes the burden from him, darting along with a gay vivacity which puts ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Islands may not keep; they are forced to give, live by giving. Here lies their historical significance. They dispense their gifts of culture in levying upon the resources of other lands. But finally more often than not, the limitation of too small a home area steps in to arrest the national development, which then fades and decays. To this rule Great Britain and Japan are notable exceptions, owing partly to the unusual ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Nature is seen unforced by the hands of colour-loving men and women, and seen, more often than not, by early morning or evening light—have an ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... field. Gray, she noticed, was not looking towards Guanaco Hill, but swept all parts of the coastline constantly with his binoculars. The Spaniard's field-glasses were slung around his neck. He was not using them. He appeared to be deep in thought. More often than not, his glance rested on the eddy created by the swirl of the current past the ship's quarter. With a species of divination, she guessed somewhat the nature of his reverie. The notion stung her into a sort of fury. To quell it, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... women and children live for the most part in the crooked little streets of the neighbourhood, for the hours of work are long, and to walk back and forth from a distance not to be thought of. When a family has managed to scrape together a little capital, more often than not the head of it opens a tiny shop, while the younger members keep on working at the factory until the business has established itself. Then the family takes a ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... pontiffs, were usually obtained only by circuitous routes and after the expenditure of much time and money. Moreover, the counterfeit book was rarely either typographically or textually correct, and was more often than not abridged and mutilated almost beyond recognition, to the serious detriment of the printer whose name appeared on the title-page. Places as well as individualities suffered, for very many books were sold as printed in Venice, ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... competition was thus the universal rule. The mechanical equipment similarly represented a primitive state of organization. Horses and mules, in many cases hideous physical specimens of their breeds, furnished the motive power. The cars were little "bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more often than not in a desperate state of disrepair. In many cities the driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on entrance deposited their coins in a little fare box. At night tiny oil lamps made the darkness visible; in winter time shivering passengers warmed ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... palms to cover Gwendolyn's mouth. But not to smother mirth. A startled cry had all but escaped her. A little bird! She knew of that bird! He had told things against her—true things more often than not—to Jane and Miss Royle. And now here he was ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... in the fields and woods; he didn't show her things under his microscope any more. If she leaned over his shoulder he writhed himself away; if his hand blundered against hers he drew it back as if her touch burnt him. More often than not he would go out of the room if she came into it. Yet as long as she was there he couldn't keep his eyes off her. She would be sitting still, reading, when she would be aware, again and again, of Eliot's eyes, lifted ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... chair with his back to the wall in conformity to a habit of long standing when, as now, it had stood him in good stead to be in a position to see the other fellow at least as soon as the other fellow saw him. The other fellow being more often than not a large gentleman with a bit of shiny metal pinned to his ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not as a poet, using the term that chemistry gives to the tendency of two substances to unite and form a distinct product. Two beings between whom no affinity existed could meet through false laws of life in perpetual contact, but they could not mix or merge into one another. This happened more often than not between the individuals of different sexes who peopled the earth; a passing sentimentality could exist, or carnal caprice, but seldom love. The poor invalid Lucy was his affinity; they met and they loved. In their pity for human ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... on night duty, on the surgical side, were a lazy lot and slept the whole night through, more often than not on the floor of the kitchen. One night the incomparable "Jefke," who was worse than most, was fast asleep in a dark spot near the big stove, when I went to get some hot water. He was practically ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... machine-guns. That was one of the things that impressed me most—the mechanical ability of the Italians. The railways, cable-ways, machine-shops, bridges, roads, reservoirs, concrete works that they have built, more often than not in the face of what would appear to be unsurmountable difficulties, prove them to be a ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... to the bed, examining it curiously; and again he understood her look of doubt—in China beds were called kang, or stoves, from the fact that they were more often than not a platform of brick with an opening beneath for hot coals. She fingered the ball fringe of the coverlet, and then turned with amazement to the soft pillow. A hand with the stone bracelet falling back from her smooth wrist rose to the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Sabina to look forward to a life of perpetual pleasure, or had assured her with energy that all men were liars, and that the world was a wretched place after all. It was true that the Princess entertained the cheerful view more often than not, which was perhaps fortunate for her daughter; but in her heart the young girl felt that she would have to rely on her own common sense to form any opinion of life, and as her position became more difficult, while the future did not grow more defined, she tried to think connectedly about it all, ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and for the love then to turn gradually into a warm friendship, or even a deep affection, which may go on growing deeper—it's only the romance and the glamour and sparkle that seems to go—the excitement. And that's such a pity. I can't help thinking in many cases it really needn't be. More often than not, I believe, it's the woman's mistake. Just at first, she's liable to take too much advantage of the new sort of ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... Ariadne," Pier della Francesca's "Baptism"; have they ever given me the complete and steady delight which that mediocre Sienese gave me at the end of the wintry drive, in the faintly illumined chapel? More often than not, as Coleridge puts it, I have "seen, not felt, how beautiful they are." But, apart even from fortunate circumstances or enhancing activities, we have all of us experienced how much better we see or hear a work of art with the mere dull help of some historical ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... affection, she foresaw trouble at hand—complications which it would never have entered into the boy's head to consider. For reasons of her own Audrey was still keeping her engagement a secret. She was less regular, too, in making appointments, fixing days for Ted to go over and see her; and more often than not he missed her if he happened to call at Chelsea Gardens of his own accord. At the same time she came to Devon Street as often as, or oftener than, ever, and there her manner to Ted had all its old charm, with something added; it was more deeply, more ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... one inch in his fight against all innovations that would make the country the less Japanese or his faith less Buddhistic. More often than not he stood alone and faced the bitter opposition of the progressives. In no one thing did he so prove his unconquerable spirit and his great ideals for his country as the patience with which he endured the ridicule of his opponents. For ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... accepted and his directions followed, for by so doing the mother will most readily acquire the assurance which is so necessary to success. The habit, easily fallen into, of paying attention to promiscuous advice is unwholesome, for such advice is injudiciously given and is usually incorrect. More often than not the counsel of well-meaning friends only serves to perplex and distress ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... charming stories; then, by ten o'clock, dressed, and her housekeeping arranged for, she was ready to set forth. Usually she had some sort of shopping that took her down town until luncheon, and more often than not ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... departure of the Bullens, a room set apart for him in the house, he might have been already dead and buried, and his old life would not have seemed more remote. And if he found the atmosphere of Blackpool, more often than not, to be of soothing quality, or at least a harmonious setting to the long and aimless course of introspection on which he had embarked, there were also times when it had a certain ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the women at the water-side in a neighbour's garden. But in the winter it was not possible to do this. So I used to occupy myself with music or literature, or with writing these rough notes, which I or some one else will put together some day. But more often than not I sat and listened to the stillness, broken ever and anon by ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... instrument, which can be employed at pleasure to deduce anything from anything. And Philo regards these "points of construction" as the excuse, not as the motive, of his ethical and philosophical teaching. He does not depend on such devices, for he wanders into allegory more often than not without any ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... rarely put to sea, and when he did it was more often than not after nightfall, a time when the good folk of the village were preparing for a ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... removal of the body, is not the only difficulty familiar to the Necrophori. Often, perhaps more often than not, the ground is covered with grass, above all with couch-grass, whose tenacious rootlets form an inextricable network below the surface. To dig in the interstices is possible, but to drag the dead animal through them is another matter: the meshes of the net are too close to give it passage. Will ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... as if a woman's words are to be translated as literally as Homer! Surely he is aware that more often than not "No" is said to a man's importunities because it is traditionally the correct modest reply, and for nothing else in the world. If all men took words as superficially as he does, we should die of decorum ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy |
