"Present times" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the island from the peninsula, the want of harmony and of personal sympathy between the inhabitants of the colony and those sent thither to rule them, and want of adaptation of the ancient colonial system of Europe to the present times and to the ideas which the events of the past century have developed, the contending parties appear to have within themselves no depository of common confidence to suggest wisdom when passion and excitement have their sway and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... cried Leuchtmar, "yes, you will gain it. It stands written on your lofty brow, it shines forth from your fiery eyes, and is spoken by every feature of your noble, energetic face. You will gain your end. From the confusion and chaos of the present times you will emerge as a distinguished, mighty Prince; out of nothingness and disorder you will construct a powerful state, and to your towering titles give a firm ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... ungrateful labours; if they have given me much pain by my assiduity, they have repaid me by the fine things they have taught me, and by the opinion which I have conceived that posterity, more just than the present times, will award a more favourable judgment." Thus a miserable translator terminates his long labours, by drawing his bill of fame on posterity, which his contemporaries will not pay; but in these cases, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... fine, and may be true," Said Juan; "but I really don't see how It betters present times with me or you." "No?" quoth the other; "yet you will allow By setting things in their right point of view, Knowledge, at least, is gained; for instance, now, We know what slavery is, and our disasters May teach us better to behave ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... incarnation; the end of life is nothing but a sinking into an ever-deepening rut for those who crystallise in only one direction; the force of habit sets up its reign, and man finds himself bound by the chains he himself has forged. This is the reason an old man does not like the present times; he has stopped whilst time has advanced, and he is now being carried along like the flotsam and jetsam of a wreck; the very tastes and habits of his contemporaries violently clashing with his beloved past. Speak ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... announced that two celebrated dialecticians were to hold a public dispute, persons flocked from all parts to witness the conflict; they listened with avidity, and with all the feelings of partisans. This appears ridiculous; but, in the present times, is there no ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... turn. The front door stood almost always open, and the suburban neighborhood about it was during pleasant days largely flecked by the grave gowns and white caps belonging to our pension. Nearly all were Bonapartists (for was not trade good during the Empire?) and found the present times sadly out of joint. Nearly all had stood behind counters or at cashiers' desks, and had thus never learned more strictly feminine employments, and now, retired upon their rentes, they found time heavy upon their hands. None were conspicuously devote: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... is being replaced in the present times by something more definite and simple, and instead of the term Energy, we shall find, in the development of this phase of natural phenomena, that that term is being replaced by the simple idea of motion, or modes of motion, and that all forms of energy, as light, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... consideration, and urges it as concluding against all strict and faithful versions, in which I must beg leave to dissent, thinking it better to convey down the learning of the ancients than their empty sound suited to the present times, and show the age their whole substance, rather than their ghost embodied in some light air of my own." An anonymous writer presents a group of critics who are disgusted with contemporary fashions in translation and ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... good foundation for a collection, and a sufficient inducement to continue. Further, such a collection, like a set of Greek and Roman coins, affords opportunity for very interesting observations; indeed it completes the conception furnished us by the coins, and brings it up to present times. I may also say that the bull would have to be very perfect, if I am not to have a balance to my credit in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... unless it were a future era, the description of it could not be delivered as a prophecy; and, not being prophetic, it would want much of its grandeur. Yet, as a part of futurity, how is it connected with our present times? Do they and their pursuits lead to it as a possibility, or as a contingency upon certain habits which we have it in our power to eradicate, (in which case this vision of dulness has a practical warning,) or is it a mere necessity, one amongst the many changes attached to the cycles of human ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and dramas of which the action, though taken from a long-distant mythic time, yet was calculated to accomplish this in a higher degree than that of the Persae, stood higher in his estimation accordingly. The Greeks felt, no doubt, with their exquisite sagacity of taste, that an action of present times was too near them, too much mixed up with what was accidental and passing, to form a sufficiently grand, detached, and self-subsistent object for a tragic poem. Such objects belonged to the domain of the comic poet, and of the lighter kinds of poetry. ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... home, sometimes it is the hurry of impending war, or attention to other objects, the stock of which is inexhaustible, and can therefore never fail those who desire nothing but that things shall rest as they are. Perhaps, however, the present times may hasten justice. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I should draw a comparison between the present times and those you mention; I am too sensible of the advantages we enjoy over our ancestors. Faction and ambition have introduced division among us; but we are still free from the guilt of civil bloodshed, and from all the evils which flow from it. Our foes, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a premium on these.(51) Divorce, formerly in Rome almost unheard of, was now an everyday occurrence; while in the oldest Roman marriage the husband had purchased his wife, it might have been proposed to the Romans of quality in the present times that, with the view of bringing the name into accordance with the reality, they should introduce marriage for hire. Even a man like Metellus Macedonicus, who for his honourable domestic life and his numerous host of children was the admiration of his contemporaries, when censor in 623 enforced ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... commercial relations with France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the Levant, were daily increasing. Antwerp was the centre of this prodigious trade. Several sovereigns, among others Elizabeth of England, had recognized agents in that city, equivalent to consuls of the present times; and loans of immense amount were frequently negotiated by them with wealthy merchants, who furnished them, not in negotiable bills or for unredeemable debentures, but in solid gold, and on ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... great deeds of famous men, the nearest approach to present times was the preacher's reference ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... do. But so have all the generations thought in their day. In the field of electricity there are yet to come practical results of which one may have some foreshadowings in the experiments of men like Tesla, which will make our present times and knowledge seem tame ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... are well off nowadays, and not by any means overworked; but somehow you always see in them the historical representative of the serf of yore, and think not so much of present times, which may be prosperous enough, as of the old days when the peasant was taxed beyond possibility of payment, and lived, in Michelet's image, like a hare between two furrows. These very people now weeding their patch ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he says much, he gets, as you at once recognize, from the Scripture. His "Heroes and Hero Worship" is based on an idea of heroism which he learned from the Bible. He is an Old Testament prophet of present times; and, while he degenerated into a scold before he was through with it, he yet spoke with the thunderous voice of a true prophet, and much of the time in the language of the prophets. Some one said once that the only real reverence Carlyle ever had was for the person of Christ. ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... almost a revolution in the policy of the Bank of England necessarily follows: no certain or fixed proportion of its liabilities can in the present times be laid down as that which the Bank ought to keep in reserve. The old notion that one-third, or any other such fraction, is in all cases enough, must be abandoned. The probable demands upon the Bank are so various in amount, and so little disclosed by the figures of the ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... advice of certain friends who are desirous that it may not be supposed that the following work has been written expressly for the present times, the author begs leave to state that it was planned in the year 1842, and all the characters sketched before the conclusion of the year 1843. The contents of the volumes here offered to the public have, with the exception of the Preface, existed in manuscript ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... better to see the contrast between the old and the present times, allow me to recal to your memory what you have read of the first voyage for the establishment of the East-India, Company*. The equipment consisting of four ships, with four hundred and eighty men, three of those vessels were so weakened by the scurvy, by the time they ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... at the height marked by these words, the weather is always subject to the vicissitudes expressed by them. These marks are, however, entitled to no attention; and it is only surprising to find their use continued in the present times, when knowledge is so widely diffused. They are, in fact, to be ranked scarcely above the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... contain a syllable which was not literally true, and was mildness itself when compared with letters and articles which are constantly published with impunity in newspapers of all shades of political opinion in these present times. It appears that, upon the humble and unequivocal submission of the culprit, some of the most severe penalties imposed by the court were remitted, and that he was erelong allowed to resume his business;[22] but all enthusiasm ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... globe; and in seeking for the causes of such phenomena we must be guided by observation of their nature and mode of action. The universality of these phenomena all over the surface of our globe, in past or present times, indicates the existence of a general cause beneath the crust. It is true that there are to be found large tracts from which volcanic rocks (except those of great geological antiquity) are absent, ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... This custom is derived from the earliest ages of Persia, and has been continued down to the present times with no abatement of its pomp or splendor Mr. Morier thus speaks of the progress of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... immediate interest, and be transported by their passions into all the excesses of cruelty and ambition.. Our general knowledge of human nature, our observation of the past history of mankind, our experience of present times; all these causes must induce us to open the door to exceptions, and must make us conclude, that we may resist the more violent effects of supreme power, without ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of documents of olden times is sent out on a mission of Revival of Religion, personal and national, in the present times. It would do a noble work if it helped to humble classes and masses, and led them to return as one man to that God in covenant from Whom all have gone so far away. A national movement, in penitence and faith, for the repeal of the Acts Rescissory and the recognition ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... taken your old one, and made it even more honoured than it was before,—the evening has closed in—the children a-bed—God bless them! We will draw nearer round our cheerful hearth, and talk of days long gone. Barbara, let's have some fresh logs on the fire; and now, for past and present times." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... established in the nation, after which, I do not in the least doubt, their taking the most effectual methods to secure their power against those who must then be Dissenters in their turn, whereof, if we may form a future opinion from present times, and the disposition of Dissenters, who love to make a thorough reformation, the number and qualities will ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... found considerably greater than the author of the "Considerations" was pleased to foretell they would be. The author of "The Present State" avails himself of that increase, and, finding it suit his purpose, sets the whole down in the peace establishment of the present times. If this is allowed him, his error perhaps may be reduced to 700,000l. But I doubt the author of the "Considerations" will not thank him for admitting 200,000l. and upwards, as the peace establishment for extraordinaries, when that author has so much labored ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Grandeur, and misapplied Power, and therefore few People in high Posts, or even Kings or Queens, or Ministers, cou'd ever brag much of my Condescension, in speaking a good Word for them to Posterity, or endeavouring to blind the Eyes of the present Times, by Printing either lies or Truths in their Favour. 'Tis true, I almost as seldom gave them any Proofs of my Spite; partly out of neglect, and a despair of doing any good by it; but chiefly, as I rather chose quarrelling with my Equals, whom I cou'd safely treat as ill ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... contention of those who seek to class the Tinguian as a modified sub-group of Igorot. [45] The Bontoc type of dwelling with its ground floor sleeping box and its elevated one room kitchen and storage room is nowhere mentioned, neither is there any indication that in past or present times the Tinguian had separate sleeping houses for the unmarried men and boys, and for the girls, as do their neighbors ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Martin's window dressing had always been of the plain, old- fashioned kind, not altogether suited to the present times. He only put in a few staple articles and left them unchanged ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer |
