"Paucity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an ancient creed. The matter of the Sacrifice must come from China. He that would drink Indian Tea would smoke hay. The Pot must be of metal, and the metal must be a white metal, not gold or iron. Who has not known the acidity and paucity of Tea from a silver-gilt or golden spout? The Pot must first be warmed by pouring in a little boiling water (the word boiling should always be underlined); then the water is poured away and a few words are said. Then ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... authorities of our history there is not so much cause to complain of their paucity as of their extreme abundance, since it is indispensable to read them all to obtain that clear view of the whole subject to which the perusal of a part, however large, is always prejudicial. From the unequal, partial, and often contradictory narratives of the same occurrences ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... The paucity of learning shown in the answers of the nuns being sufficient to convince any fairminded person that the whole affair was a ridiculous comedy, the bailiff felt encouraged to persevere until he had unravelled the whole plot. Consequently, at three ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... taught the Greeks to steer by Ursa minor instead of Ursa major; and other astronomical observations are assigned to him. But his writings are lost, as is also the case with those of Phocus the Samian, and the history of astronomy by Eudemus, the pupil of Aristotle; hence the paucity of our knowledge of Thales's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... before this become conscious that he was not welcomed here quite so cheerily as in the old days. He remarked it distinctly on that evening when he accompanied Amy home from Mrs Yule's; since then he had allowed his pressing occupations to be an excuse for the paucity of his visits. It seemed to him perfectly intelligible that Reardon, sinking into literary insignificance, should grow cool to a man entering upon a successful career; the vein of cynicism in Jasper ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... steamboat was quite empty, the few passengers being outside; and this paucity of voyagers afforded De Stancy a ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... restrict their kill more nearly to their needs, though during the winter I was there hundreds were slaughtered for tongues and sinew alone. Large quantities of the venison are dried and stored up against a season of paucity. Pemmican, which was formerly so largely used by our western Indians, is occasionally though not generally made by those of Labrador. When deer are killed some bone, usually a shoulder blade, is hung in a tree as an offering to the Manitou, that he may not interfere with future hunts, and ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... natives have but a scanty and precarious subsistence, which may in some measure account for the paucity of their numbers in some localities. In many parts of the country in which I have been I feel satisfied they can seldom procure animal food, as they would not otherwise resort to the use of some things which no ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... meeting at all, or, at least, not in such familiar intercourse prior to the arrival of the white people. This single cause, with the diseases and miseries which it entails upon the Aborigines, is quite sufficient to account for the paucity of births, and the additional number of deaths ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... their external appearance is not such as to give at first sight a good opinion of them. To come and pay a visit to the object of their love with a leg without any ornaments, a hat without any feathers, a head with its locks not artistically arranged, and a coat that suffers from a paucity of ribbons. Heavens! what lovers are these! what stinginess in dress! what barrenness of conversation! It is not to be allowed; it is not to be borne. I also observed that ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... the Elizabethan drama. If his plays are Elizabethan in their defects and limitations, such as their trivial puns and word-play, their overcrowded imagery, their loose and broken structure, their paucity of female roles, their mixture of comic and tragic, their reliance on disguise and mistaken identity as motives, their use of improbable or absurd stories; they are Elizabethan also in the qualities of ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... the remarkable paucity of proverbs relating to religion in the older collections, we infer that this saying is Henderson's own, as it only ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... size and shape of a Pullman section. Its distinction was that it had a port-hole of its own through which I could freely admit the local climate. When I first surveyed the contracted proportions of this stateroom, the paucity of its fittings and entire lack of the usual accommodations, I was filled as full of acute melancholia as an egg is of meat and had I not paid the passage money I would have bolted from the Cork out into utter darkness; but I was ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and leading lady, the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of quill that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles, saucepans and fragments of bonnets as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls to peck at. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... concerning Sir Antonio Panizzi, who many years ago visited the library at Hawarden. Looking round the room and at its closely packed shelves, he observed in a patronizing tone, "I see you have got some books here." Nettled at this seemingly slighting allusion to the paucity of his library, Mr. Gladstone asked Panizzi how many volumes he thought were on the shelves. Panizzi replied: "From five to six thousand." Then a loud and exulting laugh rang round the room as Mr. Gladstone ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... teens, however, I was invited to join the Life School of the Hibernian Academy, as there happened to be a paucity of students at that institution, and in order to secure the Government grant it was necessary to bring them up to the required number. But here also there was no idea of proper teaching. Some fossilised member ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... alone in a small, somewhat dismal apartment which was chiefly remarkable for the business-like paucity of its furnishings and its indefinable air of secrecy. There was a plain writing-table and a hard chair or two; a map of London, much discoloured, on the wall; a few faded photographs of eminent bands in the world of crime, and a similar number ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... Words.—In other kinds of writing there is a tendency to use relation words, phrases, and clauses freely between sentences and paragraphs. But in news writing the paucity of such expressions for subconnection—moreover, finally, on the other hand, in the next place, now that we have mentioned the cause of the divorce—is noteworthy. Editors and the news-reading public demand that the ideas follow each other so closely and that ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... all attempts to overstep the limits insisted upon by such proportion, are inartistic thoroughly, and tend to reveal the paucity of the means used, instead of concealing the same, as required by Art ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... And yet, THIRDLY, it cannot be the visible figure or magnitude, since that remains the same, or is rather lesser, by how much the moon is nearer to the horizon. It remains therefore that the true cause is that affection or alteration of the visible appearance which proceeds from the greater paucity of rays arriving at the eye, and which I term FAINTNESS: since this answers all the forementioned conditions, and I am not conscious of any other ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... feeling confident what the result would be, and then, despite a certain jealousy, not confined entirely to savage rival leaders, Lame Wolf had confidence in Stabber's judgment. Ray had expected long range flank fire, and possibly occasional resistance in front; but, assured of Stabber's paucity in numbers and believing Lame Wolf too busy to send Stabber substantial aid, he thought a sharp lesson or two would clear his front of such Indians as sought to check him, and so rode serenely forward, rejoicing in his mission and in his ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... arenaceous and muddy sediments, the latter being sometimes red, but more commonly nearly black in colour. It has often been supposed that the Cambrians are a deep-sea deposit, and that we may thus account for the few fossils contained in them; but the paucity of fossils is to a large extent imaginary, and some of the Lower Cambrian beds of the Longmynd Hills would appear to have been laid down in shallow water; as they exhibit rain-prints, sun-cracks, and ripple-marks—incontrovertible evidence of their ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... descendants of an old and polished civilization, more than is warranted by the facts of our history or even by the capabilities of human nature in its present stage. And this, too, arises from a false estimate of the difficulties which have beset us on every side, and from the paucity of the world's experience, and consequent knowledge, of such experiments as our own. The march of human advancement has but just begun in this its new path; and it is but little wonder that, excited by our past successes, and stimulated to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... this family on its shores, excepting from the total absence of any one plant of Proteaceae at those parts of Rottnest and Dirk Hartog's Islands visited during the Bathurst's voyage; an inference may be drawn of the general paucity of any part of the order on the shores of the neighbouring main. Although no species have been found common to shores opposite to each other, in the higher latitudes, the identity of Grevillea mimosoides, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... themselves at one period of their lives. Why these people are called Miguelets it is not easy to say, but it is probable that they have derived this appellation from the name of their original leader. I regret that the paucity of my own information will not allow me to enter into farther particulars with respect to this corps, concerning which I have little doubt that many remarkable ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... smallness &c. adj.; littleness &c. (small size) 193; tenuity; paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... I am apt to be guilty of repetitions. The compass of the heart, in the musical style of expression, is much more bounded than that of the imagination; so the notes of the former are extremely apt to run into one another; but in return for the paucity of its compass, its few ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... our own country. Here we are met at the outset by the great paucity of general catalogues of American literature, and the utter impossibility of finding any really comprehensive lists of the books published in the United States, during certain periods. We can get along tolerably well for the publications within ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... the dirt; but, when he continued down the trail that spiralled the pit-wall, she followed, cringing and whimpering her terror. That the red sphere had been dug out as a precious thing, was patent. Considering the paucity of members of the federated twelve villages and their primitive tools and methods, Bassett knew that the toil of a myriad generations could scarcely ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... once in love, you'll soon invention find And not to cunning tricks and freaks be blind; The youngest 'prentice, when he feels the dart, Grows wondrous shrewd, and studies wily art. This passion never, we perceive, remains In want from paucity of scheming brains. The god of hearts so well exerts his force, That he receives his dues as things of course. A bucking-tub, of which a tale is told, Will prove the case, and this I'll now unfold; Particulars I heard some days ago, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... had a difficulty with 'a blackamoor and two witches,' against whom he found no statute of the realm, so he dispatched them 'by natural law.' Although Jeffreys, at the Bloody Assizes, did not come near Drury, the latter found it necessary to apologise to the English Government for the paucity of his victims, saying, 'I have chosen rather with the snail tenderly to creep, than with the hare swiftly to run.' With the Government in Ireland, as Mr. Froude has well remarked, 'the gallows is ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... man, with very popular manners; and though he showed that he would not allow tricks to be played, he ingratiated himself wonderfully with all classes. He took great pains to conceal from the Dutch the paucity of our numbers, and hinted that as long as the inhabitants behaved themselves he would keep his troops on board instead of quartering them on the town. These troops were represented by the idlers of the different ships and occasionally seamen, dressed up in red coats and made to parade ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... mob. The few legions who were in the city had been cut off from the Palatine, and though they were making vigorous efforts to break through the close ranks of the crowd, they had, up to this hour, been wholly unsuccessful, owing no doubt to the paucity of their numbers, since the bulk of the army was not yet home from that insensate and mock ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... how impracticable it would have been for us to have consumed our small stock of provisions while manufacturing a fish-net from bark; and how we did resort to every method at our command of procuring food. Unfortunately we fell upon a year of paucity. The old men of the country bore witness that never before within their memory had there been such a ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious, but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has done well.' Ib. viii. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... would die with him, and were he remembered at all it would be as a dreamer; or as a failure because he had died before accomplishing what his brain and energy and enthusiasm alone could force to fruition. None realized better than he the paucity of initiative and executive among the characteristics of the Slav. What mattered it? He had had glimpses more than once of the apparently illogical sequence of life, the vanity of human effort, the wanton cruelty of Nature. ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... acquisition of general ideas. Language is thus the best index of intellectual progress, the best standard of the intellectual attainment of an age or nation. The language of barbaric tribes is exceedingly simple and meagre; the paucity of general terms clearly indicating the absence of all attempts at classification and all speculative thought. Whilst the language of educated peoples is characterized by great fullness and affluence of terms, especially such as are expressive of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the most shallow of all the lakes, its average depth being only sixty or seventy feet. Owing to this shallowness the lake is readily disturbed by the wind; and for this reason, and for its paucity of good harbors, it has the reputation of being the most dangerous to navigate of any of the Great Lakes. Neither are its shores as picturesquely beautiful as those of Ontario, Huron, and Superior. Still it is a lovely and romantic body of water, and its historic memories ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... connotation with the least possible change in the denotation; and this is what is aimed at in every definition of a general name already in use. But we must not confound the use of names of indeterminate connotation, which is so great an evil, with the employment, necessitated by the paucity of names as compared with the demand, of the same words with different connotations ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... Then what paucity of ideas is revealed in the fact that a number of names are simply common nouns, or, worse yet, spinster adjectives, "singly blest"! Such are Hill, Mountain, Lake, Glade, Rock, Glen, Bay, Shade, Valley, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... side-shows, to which Mrs. Beale could introduce the little girl only, alas, by revealing to her so attractive, so enthralling a name: the side-shows, each time, were sixpence apiece, and the fond allegiance enjoyed by the elder of our pair had been established from the earliest time in spite of a paucity of sixpences. Small coin dropped from her as half-heartedly as answers from bad children to lessons that had not been looked at. Maisie passed more slowly the great painted posters, pressing with a linked arm closer to her friend's pocket, where she hoped for the audible ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... lined up his Legionaries for inspection and final instructions. Standing there in military array, fully armed, they made rather a formidable body of fighters despite their paucity of numbers. Courage, eagerness, and joy—still unalloyed by all the fatigues and perils of the long trek after adventure—showed on every face. Even through the eyeholes of "Captain ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... be published in the autumn following each reunion. lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed on file in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the next historian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity of information concerning the alumnae ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... rapid review like this of woman's achievements on the field of Jewish scholarship, the results recorded must appear meagre, owing partly to the paucity of available data, partly to the nature of the inquiry. Abstruse learning, pure science, original research, are by no means woman's portion. Such occupations demand complete surrender on the part of the student, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... The paucity of baggage would not have mattered so much had the march begun at the commencement of summer, instead of just as winter was setting in. In the former case, men could have slept in the open air, and a solitary blanket ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... his Goorkhas had promptly taken possession of the rocky eminence which was the object of their desire, and now prepared, with commendable determination, to maintain themselves at the post thus captured; an impossible feat in consideration of the paucity of their numbers, which fact a wily enemy had ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... changed the conversation, but with a wandering mind, as Count Victor could not fail to notice. The little man, to tell the truth, had somehow laughed at the wrong moment for Count Victor's peace of mind. For why should he be amused at the paucity of the visitors from Argyll's court to the residence of Doom? Across the table at a man unable to conceal his confusion Montaiglon stole an occasional glance with suspicion ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... satisfied him; and such was his imitative turn, that he himself could preach by the hour, in the manner—so far at least as voice and gesture went—of all the popular ministers of the district. There was, however, rather a paucity of idea in his discourses: in his more energetic passages, when he struck the book and stamped with his foot, he usually iterated, in sonorous Gaelic—"The wicked, the wicked, O wretches the wicked!" while a passage of a less depreciatory character served him for setting off his middle ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... determination to vindicate their written word; they had embarked on a troublous sea for which they had "neither mast nor sail, nor chart nor rudder." So they went bobbing about in a tub, and we, with a like paucity of equipment, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... popularity and influence is the absence of serious criticism or controversy over the expense of its maintenance. Perhaps the only practical expression of disapproval affecting the Monarchy heard during Queen Victoria's long reign was an occasional grumbling as to the paucity of Court functions, the absence of Royal splendour and expenditures from the City of London, the sombreness and quiet which characterized the ordinary, everyday life of the Sovereign. The total financial cost of the ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... before occurred within the memory of any living inhabitant of the city. The regular troops were comparatively few in number, every male Izreelite being armed and liable to be called upon for active service, should occasion for such service arise; but the paucity of numbers was an altogether insignificant detail; the one thing that was of importance, and counted, was that they had fought and signally defeated a force of overwhelming numerical superiority, and inflicted upon their immemorial enemy a blow of such crushing ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... if we except the American Civil War, ours have been comparatively little wars. The British regular army has policed an empire and sent punitive expeditions against rebellious tribes with paucity of numbers, in a work which the British so well understand. Our little regular army took care of the Red Indians as our frontier advanced from the Alleghenies to the Pacific. To put it bluntly, we have hired someone to do ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... attracted universal attention on the Continent when it appeared in 1494. In his preface, Barclay admits that "it is not translated word by word according to the verses of my actor. For I have but only drawn into our mother tongue in rude language the sentences of the verses as near as the paucity of my wit will suffer me, sometime adding, sometime detracting and taking away such things as seemeth me necessary." The classes and conditions of society that Barclay knew were as deserving of satire as those of Germany. He tells us that his work ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his lingering was his desire to obtain the revolver belonging to Miss Marlowe. Recalling the paucity of firearms among the people on the boat he felt that a single weapon could be ill spared. But above and beyond this cold truth was a vague, shuddering suspicion, amounting to a belief, that the young woman would soon need that very weapon; that, without ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... The officers here occupied a fine roomy building of two stories, while the men were housed in comfortable sheds round the enclosure. We still furnished guards at the Ajmir and Lahore Gates, the term of duty, through paucity of men for relief, extending over three days. The officer on guard at the former gate visited detachments and sentries at the "Delhi" and "Turkoman" Gates, a distance of a mile and a half through streets in which dead bodies in the last stage of decomposition were still lying. While one day ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... expert may apply himself to his problem, it will be impossible to work at it with real interest if he finds no co-operation, no interest, and no understanding among those for whom he, at least formally, is at work. We may be certain that the paucity of respect we get from the scientific representatives of other disciplines (let us be honest,—such is the case) comes particularly from those relations we have with them as experts, relations in which they find us so unintelligent and so indifferent with regard ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... their operations and endeavor to strike some decisive blow as early as possible. It was a matter of life and death for them, as if they had gone by the more southern route they could not have hoped, in view of the paucity of roads and the strength of the fortresses, to have got through without formidable opposition entailing great loss of time. This loss of time would have meant time gained by the Russians for bringing up their troops to the German frontier. Rapidity of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... nowhere is the country thickly peopled; some dire disease occasionally breaks out among the natives, and carries off large numbers.... But there are two other causes which, in my opinion, principally account for their paucity of numbers. The first is that infanticide is universally practised; the second, that a belief exists that no one can die a natural death. Thus, if an individual of a certain tribe dies, his relatives ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... that Milby respectability refused to recognize the Countess Czerlaski, in spite of her assiduous church-going, and the deep disgust she was known to have expressed at the extreme paucity of the congregations on Ash-Wednesdays. So she began to feel that she had miscalculated the advantages of a neighbourhood where people are well acquainted with each other's private affairs. Under these circumstances, you will imagine how welcome was the perfect credence and admiration she met ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... abode. The selection of the particular thing or place has been determined by local conditions—by what was supposed to be observation of facts, or by what was conceived to be appropriate. The obscurity of the subject has allowed free play to savage imagination. The paucity of data makes it impossible to give a complete statement of the views that have been held, or to arrange such as are known in accurate chronological order; but the principal opinions may be mentioned, following in a general way ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... under Sir Thomas Smith. All of the projected plantations, however, were never located; and few were settled to the extent planned by the company. Historical records are scarce for these projects and this paucity of material has left much of the story incomplete. It is certain that the following additional plantations were actually established in Virginia: Archer's Hope on the James River, Bargrave's Settlement, Bennett's Welcome, Society of Truelove's Plantation, Persey's or Flowerdieu ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... could only muster the support of seventy members against three hundred and ninety-four. This motion greatly damaged the prestige of Mr. Disraeli: it was thought that he was not competent to lead a great party, and but for the paucity of talent in the conservative ranks, his leadership would have immediately terminated. In the country generally, but especially in the large cities and manufacturing districts, the speech excited a stronger political hostility to Mr. Disraeli ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... from Murat to St. Flour, a distance of fifteen miles, in five minutes under three hours. Not bad! My diary notes that it was frequently very difficult to find my way in walking about Auvergne, from the paucity of people I could find who could speak French, the langue du pays being as unintelligible as Choctaw. This would hardly ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... desire is whatever is of advantage to the desiring person, an object of aversion whatever is of disadvantage; with both one person enters into relation by turns. On account of the comparative paucity of the objects of desire, and the comparative multitude of the objects of aversion, both may be comprised under the general term, 'object of aversion.' Now, these objects of aversion we mean when we use the term 'causes of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... is the silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation.... St. Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education.... The students, however, are represented as, at this time, not exceeding a hundred. I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present professors.' Johnson's Works, ix. 4. A student, he adds, of lower rank could get his board, lodging, and instruction for less than ten pounds for the seven months of residence. Stockdale says (Memoirs, i. 238) that 'in St. Andrews, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... never talked much to me about religion; but when he did, it was with such evident awe in his spirit, and reverence in his demeanor, as had more effect on me, I am certain, from the very paucity of the words in which his meaning found utterance. Another thing which had still more influence upon me was, that, waking one night after I had been asleep for some time, I saw him on his knees by my bedside. I did not move or speak, for fear of disturbing him; and, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... actions; to such and so many only, as reason in a creature that knows itself born for society, will command and enjoin. This will not only procure that cheerfulness, which from the goodness, but that also, which from the paucity of actions doth usually proceed. For since it is so, that most of those things, which we either speak or do, are unnecessary; if a man shall cut them off, it must needs follow that he shall thereby gain much leisure, and save ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... South, where, owing to the great size of states and to the paucity of railways and telegraphs, interstate association was not yet a force. Each state, being in square miles ample enough for an empire, retained to a great extent the consciousness of an independent nation. The ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Gardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille Jullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs on Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but the extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of the early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made by Fustel de Coulanges in La Cite Antique, which offered a complete interpretation of early society in terms of religion. Less harmonious but more convincing pictures ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... obtained by reference to a changeable, and practically unauthoritative board of judges. Moreover, this government, weak and unorganized as it was, was withdrawn on the adjournment of Congress; for the Committee of States, appointed to act in the recess, was useless, as well from the paucity of its powers, as from the fact that a quorum of its members could ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... soss (60), and the sar (3600), while the arrowhead expresses the decades of each series, or the numbers 10 and 600. The notation is cumbrous, but scarcely more so than that of the Romans. It would be awkward to use, from the paucity in the number of signs, which could scarcely fail to give rise to confusion,—more especially as it does not appear that there was any way of expressing a cipher. It is not probable that at any time it was the notation in ordinary use. Numbers were ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... Frenchmen and women can, touching life lightly like a skilled musician, running nimble fingers over the keys, and striking a chord half by accident here and there which was sonorous and had a deeper meaning. He ordered the luncheon, argued with the waiter, and rallied him on the criminal paucity of his menu. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... hearing what she had to say, "and this is the source of this organic illness! Had it in past days been treated with such medicine as could strengthen the heart, and improve the respiration, would it have reached this stage? This has now overtly made itself manifest in an ailment originating from the paucity of water and the vigour of fire; but let me make use of some medicines, and we'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to Eusebius: "Nor were the apostles of Christ greatly concerned about the writing of books, being engaged in a more excellent ministry which is above all human power." Eccles. Hist. 1. iii. c. 24.—The same consideration accounts also for the paucity of Christian writings in the first ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... has already more than he enjoys. He who would show the extent of his views and grandeur of his conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and magnificence, may talk, like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet {24} obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the inconveniences of superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred pounds a year; a fortune indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with the expenses of pride and luxury, but to which it little becomes ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... foremost contemporary Dickens; and Stevenson, who resembles him in the subdued realistic style of narrating a perilous fight or adventure, has left us a larger bequest. But they are amply sufficient to build up for him a lasting monument in English literature; and their very paucity may serve as a warning against the prevailing sin of copious and indiscriminate productiveness, by which so many second-rate novelists of the present day exhaust their powers and drown a respectable reputation in a flood of writing, which ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... facts in the records of Shakspere's life. They, however, are not the important facts. The main fact in his life is his work, the matchless collection of literary masterpieces that bear the imprint of his genius. It is also well to keep in mind that our paucity of definite documentary records is not characteristic of Shakspere alone. We may know little of Shakspere, but we know less of Marlowe, his ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... above our heads, many hanging down straight to the ground, while numberless curious air-plants hung suspended from the branches. Now and then gaily-plumaged birds were seen flitting amid the thick shade; but we were surprised at the paucity of animal life which existed. Not a quadruped was to be seen. A few monkeys and parrots were occasionally heard, though rarely caught sight of. We had numerous streams to cross; often, indeed, the same stream to cross several times. Frequently the passage was almost as dangerous as that I have ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... vilest and foolishest on earth, and among such I now pass my unprofitable hours. There seems to me less gaiety and bustle here than formerly, but as much villany as ever. From want of money or of enterprise, or from greater distrust and a paucity of spectators, there is very little betting, and what there is, spiritless and dull. There are vast crowds of people to see the Princess Victoria, who comes over from Wentworth to-day, and the Due de Nemours is here. I am going to run for the St. Leger, which I shall ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... wouldn't hev believed me," Lora-linda Byars said drearily, when certain disappointed wights, who had sought elsewhere and far a-field, repaired to the cabin laughing at their own plight and upbraiding her with the paucity of the cache. "I knowed all the time what war in that box. The man lef' it thar in the niche arter he war shot, it bem' heavy ter tote an' not wuth much. But he brung the money with him, an' tuk it off, bein', he said, without orders ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... is too limited in amount to draw inland the growing people, intercourse is too difficult and infrequent, transportation too slow and costly. Hence the inhabitants of such a coast are forced to look seaward for their racial and commercial expansion, even if a paucity of good harbors limits the accessibility of the sea; they must lead a somewhat detached and independent existence, so far as the territory behind them is concerned. Here the coast, as a peripheral organ of the interior, as the outlet ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... is the only animal the Tasmanian sheep-farmer is annoyed with; and from its paucity, they have not, as in New South Wales, the trouble of securing their flocks in yards or folds ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... already more than he enjoys. He who would shew the extent of his views, and grandeur of his conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and magnificence, may talk like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the inconveniences of superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred pounds a year; a fortune, indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with the expenses of pride and luxury, but to which it little becomes a philosopher ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... argument in hand: our knowledge, I say, is not only limited to the paucity and imperfections of the ideas we have, and which we employ it about, but even comes short of that too: but how far it reaches, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... realize something of the interest which attaches to the explanation of this phenomenon—may even experience a sort of mental vertigo, as if he had witnessed the evolution of a world out of nothing. Owing to the paucity of the facts to be observed, the finesse requisite for the observation, and the intellectual dexterity needed to retain such minute circumstances before the mind long enough to think about them, the problem is one of the most delicate and intricate offered by physiological science. Once ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... examination, however, I have never suggested, much less asserted, that the "Acts of the Apostles" was not in existence at this date. The only interest attachable to the question is, as I have before said, the paucity of the testimony regarding the book, to demonstrate which it has been necessary to discuss all such supposed allusions. But the apologetic argument characteristically ignores the fact that "many took in hand" at an early date to set forth the Christian story, and that the books of our New Testament ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... feature of the Prussian revolution that the army had never for a moment wavered in its fidelity to the throne. The success of the insurrection of March 18th had been due to the paucity of troops and the errors of those in command, not to any military disaffection such as had paralysed authority in Paris and in the Mediterranean States. Each affront offered to the army by the democratic ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of the linguistic factor may help to throw light on the point in question. Here again we may trace the same isolation and the same uniformity which we have also seen in the world of economics. There was an infinity of dialects, but a paucity of languages, in the Middle Ages. One is told that to-day there are dialects in the Bight of Heligoland and among the Faroes which are peculiar to a single family. Something of the same sort must have existed in the Middle Ages. Just as there were local customs of the manor, the town, and the fief, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... content of the benign stupor are as follows: From the utterances during the incubation period of the psychosis, from the ideas expressed in interruptions of the deep stupor, as well as from the memories of recovered patients, we find an extraordinary paucity and uniformity of autistic thoughts. They are concerned with death, often as a plain delusion of being no longer alive, or with the closely related fancy of rebirth. The rule is a setting of apathy for these ideas, but when they are formulated so as to connect them ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... beauty which may be imitated but not excelled. The reasoning powers of the ancient philosophers who, long before Christ was born, debated the still unanswered riddles of existence, when we compare the paucity of data on which they had to work with the wealth of knowledge now available, must be ranked as high as the intellectual ability of our foremost thinkers of to-day. In mechanical proficiency the world has indeed advanced to an astonishing extent, ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... which, although hardened throughout its ligneous formation by many blows, would not be proof against their united efforts. And we scarcely know how or where to begin. The instincts and different phases, under which this interesting race appears, are so numerous, that far from complaining of the paucity of materials we have to work upon, we are overwhelmed by mental suggestions, and rapidly-dissolving views, of the various classes from Guy's to the London University, from St. George's to the London Hospital, perpetually crowding upon our brains (if we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the second, you have nothing to say. We cannot afford to print words merely—much less pay for them. What is worse, many of your sentences are so unnatural and turgid as to suggest that you sought in stimulants a remedy for paucity of ideas. Take friendly advice. Attempt something that you are capable of doing, and build your hopes on that. Any honest work—even sawing wood—well done, is better than childish efforts to perform what, to us, is impossible. Before you ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... systematises the hitherto somewhat vaguer custom; the transition from the aparchai to a feast was perhaps in practice still somewhat incomplete. In the paucity of positive data one is justified, however, in speaking of a substantial agreement, inasmuch as in the two cases the idea of the festivals is the same. Very instructive in this respect are two sections of Hosea (chaps. ii. and ix.), which on this account deserve to be fully gone ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... other there is a paucity of woodpeckers on the Nilgiris. The Indian Empire can boast of no fewer than fifty-four species; of these only six patronise the Nilgiris, and but two appear to ascend higher than 5000 feet. The only woodpecker ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... are saloons to cater to his cheer. In contradistinction to the custom in this country, the business has been taken up by others than the worthy order of sextons. That this condition should be, is accounted for by the fact that there is a paucity of churches in the town, and that the sextons were unable to accomplish the work that devolved upon their craft. Death is not attributable, in the main, to natural causes in Wilkes-Barre; it is brought about by the engines of destruction ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... established on the Ridge where the British could fight for final mastery on even terms with the enemy. "Slight losses" came the reports from corps and divisions and confirmation of official reports was seen in the paucity of the wounded arriving at the casualty clearing stations and in the faces of officers and men everywhere. Even British phlegm yielded ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of the 'Suppliants' cannot be determined; but the simplicity of its plot, the lack of a prologue, the paucity of its characters, and the prominence of the Chorus, show that it is an early play. The scene is Argos. The Chorus consists of the daughters of Danaues, and there are only three characters,—Danaues, a Herald, and Pelasgus ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Andromeda almost succeeds in that impossible feat—the revival of the hexameter in English. It may be a hard saying to the countrymen of Longfellow, but the truth is that the hexameter is a metrical monster in our English speech. The paucity of easy dactyls and the absence of all true spondees in English words, the preponderance of consonants over vowels, the want of inflected forms, and other peculiarities in our language—make the hexameter incapable ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... survivals of primitive sex customs. They may be traced in our common language, especially in the words used for sex and kin relationships. We can also find them shadowed in certain of our marriage rites and sex habits to-day. The difficulty does not rest in paucity of material, but rather in its superabundance—far too extensive to allow anything like adequate treatment within the space of a brief and necessarily insufficient chapter. For this reason I shall limit my inquiry almost wholly to those cases which have some facts to tell us of the ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Peasants' War in Germany. 1889. (Based chiefly on Janssen, and unscholarly, but worth mentioning considering the paucity of English works). See also articles Carlstadt, Karlstadt, T. Muenzer, Sickingen, etc. in the Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge and other ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... books, all evidently used as texts in the adjoining college. A table, much littered; a wooden dressing stand, with a small mirror; and an old-fashioned, haircloth trunk, bearing numerous foreign labels, eked out the paucity of furnishings. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... per day, or a little more than fifty cents per week, counting five working days. This matter is wisely left to be regulated by the character of the seasons, and the mutual agreement of the parties concerned. As the island is suffering rather from a paucity of laborers, than otherwise, labor must in good seasons command good wages. The present rate of wages is extremely low, though it is made barely tolerable by the additional perquisites which the people enjoy. They have them houses ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... do not in the least affect any case of evidence which your Managers had to support. The paucity and inapplicability of instances of this kind convince your Committee that the Lords have ever used some latitude and liberality in all the means of bringing information before them: nor is it easy to conceive, that, as the Lords are, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... spots. If the Argonauts, those hardy adventurers who flung their gold round so regardlessly and were not satisfied unless they paid outrageously big prices for everything, could come back today they would have no cause to complain at the contemptible paucity of the bill after they had dined at any one of half a dozen ultra-expensive hotels that are to be found dotted along ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... the ducks. There were not many of them, as I could judge by the whistling of their departing wings and by the silvery furrows where they had left the water. It is curious how strong the daylight must become before the eye can distinguish a duck in flight. The comparative paucity of numbers, I reflected, was probably due to the fact that the ducks used this pond merely as a loafing place during the day. Therefore I should anticipate a good flight as soon as feeding time should be over; especially as one end of the pond proved to be fairly ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... exceptions are so numerous that they deserve examination in some detail. In certain parts of the world, notably among the native races of South America, Australia, and many of the islands of Polynesia and Melanesia, a surprising paucity of numeral words has been observed. The Encabellada of the Rio Napo have but two distinct numerals; tey, 1, and cayapa, 2.[20] The Chaco languages[21] of the Guaycuru stock are also notably poor in this respect. In ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... has constituted itself the protector, par excellence, of the Irish people. May we not fairly suppose that, when Mr O'Connell denounces his friends, he would not hesitate to drag his political opponents to the bar of public opinion; and that the paucity of facts which he is able to adduce against the landed gentry, is a proof that they have not neglected the duties of their station, in so flagrant a manner as his wholesale denunciations would lead us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... have noticed is that of Eligio Ancona, who, claiming that Mayab is the correct form, and that this means "not numerous," thinks that it was applied to the first native settlers of the land, on account of the paucity of their numbers![15-3] ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... its appearance, after a long while, and was most plentiful, . . . . so that, having measured our appetite in anticipation of a paucity of food, we had to make more room for ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all that she received after the settlement of his business, which had never been in a very prosperous condition. On this, under the exercise of extreme frugality, she had been enabled to live for nearly a year. Then the paucity of her little store made it apparent to her mind that individual exertion was required, directed toward procuring the means of support for her little family. Ignorant of the way in which this was to be done, and having no one to advise her, nearly two months more passed before she could ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... way back he entered the huts of some peasants, and inquired about their mode of living. The same complaints of the paucity of land, hunger and degradation he heard everywhere. He saw the same pinched faces, threadbare homespuns, bare ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... omni verbositate in fraudem emptoris omissa. (Herberstein, 52.) In the England of the present day, the custom of marking each piece of goods with its price is very general. Concerning the rapidity and the paucity of words with which prices are settled in that country, where business men do not even salute their customers, nor customers the business man, see C. G. Simon, Observations recueillies en Angleterre, 1835, I, 129 f. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the second question, we have examined briefly the extant evidence regarding the actor's employment of gesture and business, his delivery of the dialogue, make-up and character delineation, and found a disappointing paucity, but a general and irresistible trend towards liveliness, vivacity and broad undiluted comedy that must have been the sort of dramatic fare demanded by the primeval appetite of the Plautine audience. But again we find ourselves falling ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... closer. She thought Helena already the most eloquent person alive, and she envied her deeply, although without bitterness, loving her devotedly. The great gifts of expression and of personal magnetism had been denied her. She had no hope, and at that time little wish, that the last paucity could ever be made good by the power of will; but that articulate inner self had registered a vow that hard study and close attention to the methods of Helena and others as—or nearly as—brilliant should one day invest her brain and tongue ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... connoisseurs. 'What do you ask for him?' 'Too much for any of you to pay,' said I. 'A horse like this is intended for other kind of customers than any of you.' 'How do you know that?' said one; the very same person whom I had heard complaining in the street of the paucity of good horses in the fair. 'Come, let us know what you ask for him?' 'A hundred and fifty pounds,' said I; 'neither more nor less.' 'Do you call that a great price?' said the man. 'Why, I thought you would have asked double that amount! You do yourself ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... limited remarks here made. This intimation may be equally applied to the whole subject of New Holland: about which the reader may promise himself very ample satisfaction in the course of this collection. Let this then be accepted as a pledge in apology for the paucity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr |
