"Slowness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subject, feeling evidently that if the matter got abroad, it might injure the sale of the really excellent porgy oil which is the product of their sole manufacturing interest. This reluctance to advertise the skeleton in their closet, superadded to the slowness of these obtuse, fishy, matter-of-fact people to recognize the transcendent importance of the case, must be accepted as explanation of the fact that John Newbegin's spirit has been on earth between three and four months, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... followed me," continued Herman, speaking with painful slowness, so that every word seemed to poor Ninitta to fall upon her like a curse; "so you have played the ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... and, like. AEneas, he may be hidden in a cloud amidst his associates. The celebrated FABIUS MAXIMUS in his boyhood was called in derision "the little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his disposition. His sedateness and taciturnity, his indifference to juvenile amusements, his slowness and difficulty in learning, and his ready submission to his equals, induced them to consider him as one irrecoverably stupid. The greatness of mind, unalterable courage, and invincible character, which Fabius afterwards displayed, they then imagined had lain ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... ill-spent life, actually squandered his last breath in the pursuit of his own elusive tail. But there are few of us who would care to see the monumental calm of our fireside sphinx degenerate into senile sportiveness. Better far the measured slowness of her pace, the superb immobility of her repose. To watch an ordinary cat move imperceptibly and with a rhythmic waving of her tail through a doorway (while we are patiently holding open the door), is like looking at a procession. With just such deliberate dignity, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... a snarl of a buzz-saw as it bites into hard wood. Tam, who was walking along a deserted by-road, his hands in his breeches pockets, his forage cap at the back of his head, looked up and shaded his eyes. Something as big as a house-fly, and black as that, was moving with painful slowness ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... suffice it until it was grown to manhood or womanhood, and when the bottle was half-emptied the mother returned it to me. How much time all this occupied I do not know, but the child took the milk with extreme slowness. I may say that it took the milk drop by drop. A great deal of time ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... hurling forth fresh accusatory words and ignoring the punishment he had just received—would be himself the scourger of sin. Sometimes he even took to imitating Chamberlain's own methods, and pointing a finger at his distinguished victim, would hiss out his charges word by word with a vibrant slowness. Even the impassive Chamberlain used sometimes to color a little under this mimicry. If ever a man went thoroughly out of his way to be hated it was Lloyd George. But he gained way. Once under an unsparing attack by Lloyd George, Chamberlain winced, ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... The slowness of these proceedings drove the English wild with impatience. Winchester had hoped to bring the trial to an end before the campaign; to have forced a confession from the prisoner, and have dishonored King Charles. This blow struck, he would ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... with sufficient confidence or ability on his part to manoeuvre his troops." It is very doubtful whether Warren ever put his opinion in so strong a way as thus quoted by Hooker from memory. His report does speak of Gibbon's slowness in coming up, and of his thus losing the chance of crossing the canals and taking the breastworks before the Confederates filed into them. But beyond a word to the effect that giving the advance to Brooks's division, after the capture of the heights, "necessarily ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... day of patient plodding; two, three. Raf, led by the hand, helped over rocks and obstacles which were only dark blurs to his watering eyes, raged inwardly and sometimes outwardly, against the slowness of their advance, his own helplessness. His fear grew until he refused to credit the fact that the blurs were sharpening in outline, that he could now count five fingers on the hand he sometimes waved ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... who die through sickness or old age. Here she possesses a habitation protected by exceedingly high walls and strongly barred gates. Her hall is called Elvidnir; Hunger is her table; Starvation, her knife; Delay, her man; Slowness, her maid; Precipice, her threshold; Care, her bed; and Burning Anguish forms the hangings of her apartments. The one half of her body is livid, the other half the color of human flesh. She may therefore easily be recognized; ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... his ease, free from all bodily complaints, and with rapt attention, should recite the text without too much slowness, without a labouring voice, without being fast or quick, quietly, with sufficient energy, without confusing the letters and words together, in a sweet intonation and with such accent and emphasis as would indicate the sense giving full utterance to the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and sometimes a deep wound in the flesh, through which the poison of hydrophobia, which is a living virus or animal poison, may be introduced, to be taken up slowly by the nerves themselves, reaching the central nervous system in about forty days. The slowness and method of this absorption renders the use of a ligature useless and unsafe. The treatment for dog bite is ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... to trouble you,' she replied, almost fretfully. He looked up in surprise. I wondered at his slowness. ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... been produced, late in her material history, and gifted with foresight that distinguished him from all else in her scheme, his own evolution gathered thereby that speed which is so perplexing a contrast to the inconceivable slowness of the orbing of stars and the building of continents. He has used his powers of prescience for his own ends; but, fanciful as the thought is, might it happen that through his control of elemental forces and his acquaintance with infinite space, he should reach the point of ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... going well. At first I had been surprised at the slowness of their gait, but I soon realized that they could keep it up all day, in spite of their loads. Yet once an hour they stopped for a breathing spell of a few minutes, during which they wiped their foreheads and sometimes ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... proverb still used in relation to people of dull wits, 'In sei piu tondo che l'O di Giotto,' (round as Giotto's O,) the significance of which consists in the double meaning of the word tondo, which is used in the Tuscan for slowness of intellect, and slowness of comprehension, as well as for an exact circle. The proverb besides has an interest from the circumstance ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... highly dangerous state, on which account I thought to go along with a convoy, which was about to start for Andalusia. Two days, however, before its departure, understanding that the number of people who likewise proposed to avail themselves of it was likely to be very great, and reflecting on the slowness of this way of travelling, and moreover the insults to which civilians were frequently subjected from the soldiers and petty officers, I determined to risk the journey with the mail. This resolutions I carried into effect. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... submit to the slowness of this people. And, while the darkness falls like a veil over the Japanese town, I have leisure to reflect, with as much melancholy as I please, upon the bargain that is ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... reached the Zoological Gardens at Fordham she had fallen blissfully asleep. He ran the car with considerate slowness, and looked at her very often. She waked as they crossed the river. Her eyes shrank from the piled serried buildings of Manhattan. The air was no longer clean ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... shortage of clothing was felt the more because of the extreme severity of the winter. After the initial difficulties had been passed supplies of this kind were furnished in profusion; but lack of preparation on the part of the War Department and the slowness of Congress to appropriate promptly produced a temporary situation of extreme discomfort and worse. The provision of food supplies was arranged more successfully. Soldiers would not be soldiers if they did not complain of their "chow." But the quality ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare's skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor's conviction, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... with s's, m's, and n's:—here (more obviously) is mastery of literation. In the second paragraph, notice how the rhythm suddenly hurries when Markheim is startled to his feet; and in the last sentence, consider the monotonous and measured slowness of the movement, ominous ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... door, but his breath came easier. The footsteps moved with ridiculous slowness up the stairs, down ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... slowness that night. The plodding ascent of the fat white mare and creaking buggy was nerve-rackingly deliberate. Young Denny shifted the shaft of his pike-pole to the other hand to wipe his damp palm against the ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... busts and statues are, in many instances, unrivalled for character as well as execution. A letter to one of his friends lies before us, in which he responds to an amicable remonstrance at his apparent slowness of achievement. The reasoning is so cogent, the principle asserted of such wide application, and the artistic conscience so nobly evident, that we venture to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... masters of their own time, and was perhaps in their case, the best that could be adopted; for slowness of progress, which is its greatest objection, was rather desirable in George's then state ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... sight of her. He would neither seek an opportunity of being in her company nor avoid it. To convince himself of his power of self-control, he lingered over every piece of business this afternoon; he forced every movement into unnatural slowness and deliberation; and it was consequently past eight o'clock before he reached Mr. Hale's. Then there were business arrangements to be transacted in the study with Mr. Bell; and the latter kept on, sitting over the fire, and talking ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mechanically, for a string in her brain seemed to be pulled by a persistent knocking at the door. With great slowness the door opened and a tall human being came towards her, holding out her ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... children read the stanza. In the first line, the voice should show how funny it all is; in the second, the demureness of the "proper" child and the slowness of the growth should be revealed in the reading; in the third and fourth lines, there should be an imitative response to the sudden up-growth of the shadow and to the childish surprise at his ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Strange the slowness with which Darke draws nigh! Can he still be in dread of the unearthly? No, or he would not be there. It may be that sure of his victim, he but delays the last blow, scheming some new horror before ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... rosy and robust children which bless every household. If health and virtue cannot secure happiness, nothing can, and these Norrlanders appear to be a thoroughly happy and contented race. We had occasional reason to complain of their slowness; but, then, why should they be fast? It is rather we who should moderate our speed. Braisted, however, did not accept such a philosophy. "Charles XII. was the boy to manage the Swedes," said he to me one day; "he always kept them in ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... with which its labors were received, and the victorious acknowledgment which at last crowned them. Surviving nearly all his contemporaries, he had, if ever any man had, a foretaste of immortality, enjoying in a sort his own posthumous renown, for the hardy slowness of its growth gave a safe pledge of its durability. He died on the 23d of April, 1850, the anniversary of the death ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... succeeded to the former silence. One of the learners, whose turn it was to run on errands, was overwhelmed with commissions to a chandler's shop close by; a wry-faced, stupid little girl she was, and they called her, because of her slowness, the 'funeral horse.' She had strange habits, which made laughter for those who knew of them; for instance, it was her custom in the dinner-hour to go apart and eat her poor scraps on a doorstep close by a cook-shop; she confided to a companion that the odour of baked joints seemed ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... direction, and as the crowd was then scattering, there appeared in the midst of them, and advancing with the slowness of a phantom, a human being, bent, lean, entirely naked, and covered down to his flanks with long hair bristling with dried leaves, dust and thorns. About his loins and his knees he had wisps of straw ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... without haste. Their brown nets, like the cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and, looking up from the end of the street, the people of the town would recognise the two Carvils by the creeping slowness of their gait. Captain Hagberd, pottering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his head to see how they got on in ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... be a triumph of faith over figures. And to add to the trial of our faith, we find, on bringing the figures down to the close of the year 1895—and we cannot bring them later on account of official slowness—the amounts of silver and gold in the world, as presented in values at our ratio, are almost exactly equal, the greatest divergence claimed by the most extreme monometallist being 16-3/10 ounces of ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... stops judiciously through his copy, and having done so began to upbraid his partners for their slowness. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... he thanked God for Brokaw's slowness. He had a clear recollection afterward of almost having spoken the words as he lay dazed and helpless for an infinitesimal space of time. He expected Brokaw to end it there. But Brokaw stood mopping the blood from his face, as if partly blinded by it, while from beyond the ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... from the Peninsula, this has been the history of the last two years; and there is nothing in the present condition of affairs which would appear to forebode a departure from this uniform progress of our arms. We may complain, perhaps justly, of the slowness of this process. In the ardor and impatience of our patriotism, we may demand more rapid and energetic action, claiming that our immense resources shall be used with greater vigor and concentration, and our vast armies hurled like a thunderbolt upon the enemy, to crush him with one sudden ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... spite of the Centaurians' clumsy slowness, they maneuvered with a cool strategy that constantly kept the Earth man's superior strength at bay. Always as Dixon tried to close with one of them he was forced to retreat when a flanking attack from the other ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the movements; accordingly we perform them all slowly and with difficulty; but the habit once acquired, the acts, which have now become instinctive and unconscious, are performed with ease and rapidity. The reader must therefore not be uneasy about the slowness of the critical processes; he will see later on how they ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the vacuum with extreme slowness, for fear that the gases distributed through the blood, becoming free on account of the difference of their tension from that of rarified air, might escape in the vessels and so bring on immediate death. Moreover, I watched, every moment, the effects of the vacuum on the intestinal ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... ear was alert. He wheeled as if on a pivot, killed the left bird and the right one. Then dropped in another shell with a slowness that set Bart Hodge wild, and killed the third bird, which had gone off at a difficult tangent, at a distance of at ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... barges and canal-boats which slowly pass like floating and vulgar Venices. If, as is often the case, they lie across the track, we shall have plenty of opportunity to observe at our leisure their still life. I have always thought that canal-life—by reason of its amphibiousness, its phenomenal slowness, its monotony amid endless change, its solitude amid busy and peopled scenes which it is always touching but never entering—must be a unique existence, a modus vivendi quite apart from other human experiences by land or sea. A distinct type of character and of habit cannot fail to be evolved, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... girl selling silver at a stall, who had spent four years in Chicago. Never have I heard better American, except it be from a Budapest man who had come back to revisit his native town, and was disgusted with its smallness and slowness. Per contra, I met an American girl in Switzerland who had lived much in Germany, and whose English had such a Teutonic intonation that it was difficult to realise she was not speaking German. And language is but typical ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the end of the balcony. Dolores walked to the doorway, and discerned two figures approaching with a strange slowness. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... people ride together on horseback, the married have ever been warned, one must ride behind. And when two people are speaking slowly one must needs be the slowest. Comparative success implies the comparative failure. But where this actor or that actress fails, the great cause of slowness profits, obviously. The record is advanced. Pshaw! the word "advanced" comes unadvised to the pen. It is difficult to remember in what a fatuous theatrical Royal Presence one is doing this criticism, and how one's words should go backwards, without exception, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... could be urged in favour of transubstantiation and auricular confession. In the court of her brother in law she was equally deaf to all that could be urged in favour of a general union among Protestants. This slowness and obstinacy made her important. It was a great thing to be the only member of the Royal Family who regarded Papists and Presbyterians with an impartial aversion. While a large party was disposed to make her an idol, she ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... if you will spare me a little patience: Saxon slowness is a blemish you'll have to grow accustomed to. If Lord Danesbury should know that you are an acquaintance of the Kilgobbin family, and ask you what would be a suitable mode of showing how their conduct has been appreciated in a high quarter, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... sitting meditatively in the room set apart for her use, Alton passed the half-opened door, and noticing the curious slowness of his pace she signed him to enter. She had, somewhat to the indignation of Mrs. Margery, taken the room in hand, and with the aid of a few sundries surreptitiously brought from Vancouver with Seaforth's connivance, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... longer wonders at the slowness of an army's movement out here. The standard of speed is the trek-ox, lurching pensively along under his yoke, very exacting about his mealtimes, and with no high notions about supreme efforts, when he ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... as the happy addition. This youth was a fellow of decidedly quick parts, and in one forenoon made such a clearing in our garden that I was delighted. Bed after bed appeared to view, all cleared and dressed out with such celerity that I was quite ashamed of my own slowness, until, on examination, I discovered that he had, with great impartiality, pulled up ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... warlike Five. "This time, forgive me, I go alone." And before their natural Spartan slowness enabled them to combat this resolution, their leader was by the side of his rival, alone in the Chian vessel, and ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... and conjecturing with an agonizing pain, and without the least hope of profit. I could not drive from my thoughts, the vexing circumstances of the last night in the city; and, for the first day of our journey, the hours moved with oppressive slowness. Objects which I had formerly loved to contemplate and always found sweet and refreshing, now gave me little pleasure and exacted little of my attention; and I reached our stopping-place for the night with a sense of weariness and stupor which no mere fatigue of body, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... purposes in question, and the whole superstructure of Christian morals is grounded on their deep and ample basis. Sometimes these truths are represented in Scripture, generally, as furnishing Christians with a vigorous and ever present principle of universal obedience. And our slowness in learning the lessons of heavenly wisdom is still further stimulated, by almost every particular Christian duty being occasionally traced to them as to its proper source. They are every where represented as warming the hearts of the people of God on earth with continual admiration, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... witnessed a slow political reconstruction, and men have generally been obliged to be satisfied with the slowness of the process. In a sense it is wholesome that it should be slow, because then it is solid and sure. But I believe that this war is going so to quicken the convictions and the consciousness of mankind with regard to political questions that the speed of reconstruction ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... then he was fool enough to make way for you again, and did not perceive that by getting rid of your creditors he once again put you into a position to be his rival. I don't know whether I hate him most for the hardness of his heart, or despise him for the slowness of his intellect." ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the censor's officers; now let me see," and she produced from under her robe a number of wooden, wax-covered tablets, strung together: "the last praetor's edict; the will of old Publius Blaesus;" and she ran over the headings with maddening slowness: "the speech in the Senate of Curio—what an impudent rascal; the money paid yesterday into the treasury,—how dull to copy all that down!—the meteor which fell over in Tibur, and was such a prodigy; oh, yes, here it is at last; you may as well hear what all Rome knows ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... as Cranford we do not rate at its true value. But in after life how their quiet shades and tints come out! There is no glory in them, no carnage, no combat; but there is charm and fascination in the very slowness of their movement, the shortness of their range, their lack of intensity, the absence of the shrill, high notes ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... this knave here? Get you gone, sirrah: the complaints I have heard of you I do not all believe; 'tis my slowness that I do not; for I know you lack not folly to commit them, and have ability enough to ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... imbued with her husband's slowness of intellect, for she had perforce to read the few simple lines over and over again, before she ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the head-hunter and pursued the boa-constrictor and the orang-utan. It was then, a boyhood dream come true when I stood at daybreak on the bridge of the Negros and through my glasses watched the mysterious island, which I had so often pictured in my imagination, rise with tantalizing slowness from the sapphire sea. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... of the Master with the slowness of the scholars is beautifully exemplified here, as is also the method, which He lovingly and patiently adopts, of sending men back to consult their own consciousness as illuminated by His teaching, and to see whether there is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the same labored slowness, "comes before gen'leman. An' the regrets—will be yours. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the cabin, let down a foot or so of centerboard. The excitement of the struggle had chased all unpleasant thoughts from his mind. Patterning after the other boy, he had retained his coolness. He had executed his orders without fumbling, and at the same time without undue slowness. Together they had exerted their puny strength in the face of violent nature, and together they ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... took good care to reload and prime his rifle before rising, and even then he came up with the utmost slowness, peering toward the tree from which had come the missile. He was not surprised because he saw nothing of the Shawanoe. Having discharged the weapon, it was natural that the latter should shelter himself from the bullet that was to be expected in return. Deerfoot (so reasoned the Pawnee), would ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... signify the temple of prostitution. A woman might come and go, taking away her prey whithersoever seemed good to her. So great was the crowd attracted thither at night by the women, that it was impossible to move except at a slow pace, as in a procession or at a masked ball. Nobody objected to the slowness; it facilitated examination. The women dressed in a way that is never seen nowadays. The bodices cut extremely low both back and front; the fantastical head-dresses, designed to attract notice; here a cap from the Pays de Caux, and ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... drift, in sheets and lines, would ultimately have covered the country to a great thickness, with lines of drift probably deposited in various directions at the bottom by the larger streams. As the climate became warmer, the lower beds of frozen snow would have melted with extreme slowness, and the many irregular beds of interstratified drift would have sunk down with equal slowness; and during this movement the elongated pebbles would have arranged themselves more or less vertically. The drift would also have been deposited almost irrespective of the outline of the underlying ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... have been more than one," drawled the duck man with exasperating slowness. "Foster was down in the first, but that was burned. I don't think he ever saw the others, but he knew he wasn't a favorite ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... improvement in boys' rocking horses, by means of which a trotting motion is given to the legs of those docile animals, has suggested to a mechanic of this city the construction of a very good automatic steed, whose only fault is slowness. May I suggest that a very great improvement indeed may yet be made on that horse, and that the two-forty of a coming generation may be the result, not of oats and hay, but of steel springs and cylinders? The first wooden horse burnt ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... five days of uneasy pretence passed with a swiftness that irritated certain members of the party and a slowness that distressed the others. Days never were so short as those which the now recklessly infatuated Brock was spending. He was valiantly earning his way into the heart of Constance,—a process that tried his patience exceedingly, for she was ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3) the "magnanimous man is slow and leisurely." Now slowness is contrary to solicitude. Since then prudence is not opposed to magnanimity, for "good is not opposed to good," as stated in the Predicaments (viii) it would seem that solicitude does not belong ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... twinkling, and speaking with exasperating slowness, "do you happen to remember an eventful night on Pine Island, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... sloth more nearly than any other animal's; and it seems to represent, beneath the earth, that well-known and singular inhabitant of trees—for its motions, so far as can be conjectured from its conformation, must also be executed with extreme slowness. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... the cheek muscles, pendulous lips, inability to grasp the feed, often a slow and weak movement in chewing, and difficulty and slowness in drinking. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... half of the word, and swallowing the other. The tendency to make the long vowels diphthongal is noticed by foreigners as a peculiarity of the orthoëpy of our language; and this tendency will, of course, be strengthened by any cause which produces greater slowness and fullness of articulation. Besides the influence of the habit of reading, there is some reason to think that climate is affecting our articulation. In spite of the coldness of our winters, our flora shows that the climate of even our Northern States belongs, upon the whole, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the patriotic and popular party. Baptists lost favour by threatening to appeal to England for a redress of their grievances at the very time when resistance to English oppression was being determined upon. The result was slowness of growth and failure to secure religious liberty. Though a large proportion of the New England Baptists co-operated heartily in the cause of independence, the denomination failed to win the popularity ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... it that distinguishes one motion, or one part of extension, from another? Is it not something sensible, as some degree of swiftness or slowness, some certain magnitude or ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... wounded. The demand for provisions must vastly increase, and the increase will be followed by a great rise in prices. That an immense army cannot exist on the resources of an enemy's territory is plain, especially when the slowness of advance in a struggle for fortified positions is taken into account. Communications by sea will be interrupted at the very outbreak of war. In this respect England is ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... satisfied with half doing it. Phyllis was not altered, except that she cried less, and had in a great measure cured herself of dawdling habits and tricks, by her honest efforts to obey well- remembered orders of Eleanor's; but still her slowness and dulness were trying to her teachers, and Lily had often to reproach herself for being angry with her 'when she ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hours dragged with terrible slowness. Sleep was impossible and eating was difficult, even though all knew that they would have need of the full measure of their strength. Seaton set up various combinations of switching devices connected to electrical timers, and spent hours trying, with all his marvelous quickness ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... the man within. The presence becomes the mould of the spirit within, large or small, noble or mean, coarse or fine, as he makes it. The strength of a man's will or its weakness; the purity of his heart or its lack of purity; the ideals of his life, high or low; the keenness or slowness of his thinking—all these express themselves in ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... dissimilar cases of Hayti and Mexico. While Hayti, it is true, has failed to make great progress in one century, it has made quite as much progress as England made during any equal period immediately after Rome withdrew from it. And that degree of slowness in growth, which with equanimity has been endured by us in Hayti, could certainly be endured by us in islands on the coast of Asia. It cannot be gainsaid that, through our insisting on the policy of non-interference ourselves, and of ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... repartee to this extent, old Greenleaf resumed a certain acidity of countenance, which may be said to characterise those whose preferment hath become frozen under the influence of the slowness of its progress, and who display a general spleen against such as have obtained the advancement for which all are struggling, earlier, and, as they suppose, with less merit than their own. From time to time the eye of the old sentinel ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... together in one place, and failing entirely in the art of making friends. Susie was the best of them, and had been the pretty one at home; yet she was not in the least a success in London. She put it down to Peter's indifference, to his slowness in introducing her to his friends. It was no more Peter's fault than it was her own. It was not her fault that she was not pretty—there never had been a beautiful Dobbs—and it was not her fault that she was so unfortunately frank, and never could and never did conceal her feverish ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... either his danger or the benefit of any prey required the same. There he meditated awhile with himself how he might counterplot and bring the bear to disgrace (who he knew loved him not) and himself to honor; at last he came forth, and said, "Dear uncle Bruin, you are exceeding welcome. Pardon my slowness in coming, for at your first speech I was saying my even song, and devotion must not be neglected. Believe me, he hath done you no good service, nor do I thank him which hath sent you this weary and long journey, in which your much sweat and toil far exceeds the worth of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... something singular in the manner in which the Quakers deliver themselves when they preach. In the beginning of their discourses, they generally utter their words with slowness; indeed, with a slowness, which sometimes renders their meaning almost unintelligible to persons unaccustomed to such a mode of delivery; for seconds sometimes elapse between the sounding of short sentences or single words, so ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the stranger, with dubious slowness. "A poet—a genius, you say? And I understand that I am reputed to have been the true ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... present hour," said Anthony, with impressive slowness, "I personally owe so great a debt of thankfulness, it would be churlish of me even to hint a criticism. And yet—and yet—how shall I express it? Eppur' si muove. It moves, it hastes away;—while I could ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... The slowness of Mrs. Plinth's mental processes was always allowed for by the club; but this instance of it was too much for ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... of the Eastern army of the Union, under McClellan, gave them time to strengthen their defences, and reinforce their army, which had dwindled to a very low ebb during the winter. But while the commander of the East was planning strategy that, by the slowness of its development, if by nothing worse, was destined to dim the lustre of the Union triumphs, and lose the results of a year of war, the West was in motion. Down the Mississippi swept our invincible ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... began to suck it. She got dreadfully lewd, and seizing upon my now-again-standing prick, drew me upon her, and introduced once more my master weapon. With greater slowness until the final crisis drew near, we had another delicious fuck. She was a woman of very warm passions, and the long pent-up seclusion she had kept herself in with regard to our sex being once broken, now that the flood-gates were opened, there was no resisting the torrent of ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... obstacles kept arising at every turn. The dilatoriness of the French Government seems past all belief, and yet, in spite of his faith in the more expeditious methods of his own country, he was fated to encounter the same exasperating slowness at home. It was, therefore, only natural that in spite of the courageous optimism of his nature, he should at times have given way to fits of depression, as is instanced by the following extracts from a letter written to his brother Sidney ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... upon them before they had done spinning. The next moment they had kissed the two pieces already in his possession, and he had transferred all four to his pocket. I held out my hand for the paper, and he gave it to me grudgingly, with a spiteful slowness of movement. He would have stayed beside me as I read it, but I sternly bade him keep his distance; then kneeling before the fire to get the light, I opened the paper. It was written upon in a delicate, woman's ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... enjoyable by every one. Nearly all young players object to the speed which Schumann has marked, and many play it much more slowly; this, however, is not warranted, since in the nature of the case Schumann must have known what he intended, and when we have made an allowance for the undue slowness of his metronome at given tempi, we are still not warranted in making this slower than eighty for quarters. To take it still more slowly is to change the character of all the latter part of the piece. If well played it is sufficiently reposeful in the form in which ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... the fire; and in this way, it is believed, many of Collins's finest pieces were destroyed. Such of his Odes as were published, on his own account in 1746, were not popular; and, disappointed at the slowness of the sale, the poet burnt the remaining copies with his ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... have been expected;—but those who have never considered with attention the extreme slowness of the progress of national improvements, WHERE NOBODY TAKES PAINS TO ACCELERATE THEM, will doubtless be surprised when they are told that in most parts of England, though the use of potatoes all over the country has for so many years been general, yet, to this hour, few, comparatively, who ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... dresser, and he helped her to take down the cups and plates and set the table for their supper. In all her movements there was a curious slowness and constraint, as if she were spinning time out, thread by thread. It ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... his zeal, undertakes to philosophise, and says, that the evils existing among the free colored people, will be found in exact proportion to the slowness of emancipation; and complains that New Jersey was taken as the standard, in this respect, instead of Massachusetts, where, he asserts, "all the negroes in the commonwealth, were, by the new constitution, liberated in a day, and none of the ill consequences objected followed, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... tone of mind had grown up in his family from which only Sophy had been entirely freed; seeds of ineradicable evil had been sown, mischiefs had grown by neglect, abuses been established by custom; and his own personal disadvantages, his mauvaise honte, his reserved, apparently proud manner, his slowness of speech, dislike to interruption, and over-vehemence when excited, had so much increased upon him, as, in spite of his efforts, to be serious hindrances. Kind, liberal, painstaking, and conscientious as he had become, he was still looked upon as hard, stern, and tyrannical. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bracy and his friend Roberts were tripping and stumbling along with their company, the slowness of the baggage giving them time to halt now and then to gaze in awe and wonder at the stupendous precipices around and the towering snow-mountains which came more and more into sight at every turn of ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... explanation, when he, as if quite indifferent to it, led the way up a great stone staircase, as wide as many rooms, and having on each landing-place massive iron wickets, in a heavy framework; these the porter unlocked with the solemn slowness of age. Indeed, a strange, mysterious awe of the centuries that had passed away since this chateau was built, came over me as I waited for the turning of the ponderous keys in the ancient locks. I could almost have fancied that I heard a mighty rushing murmur (like the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... system. If there be no interruption from any external source at present unknown to us, we can predict—in outline, at all events—the subsequent career of the moon. We can see how the moon will still follow its outward course. The path in which it revolves will grow with extreme slowness, but yet it will always grow; the progress will not be reversed, at all events, before the final stage of our history has been attained. We shall not now delay to dwell on the intervening stages; we will rather attempt to sketch the ultimate type to which our system tends. In the dim future—countless ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... around S an additional arc of about 8 deg.. In the same way it may be shown that the two succeeding conjunctions will take place at the points q, q', r, r' respectively 8 deg. in advance of Q, Q', R, R'. Thus we see that the points of conjunction will travel with extreme slowness in the same direction as that in which the planets revolve. Now since the angular distance between P and R is 120 deg., and since in a period of three synodic revolutions or 21,758 days, the line of conjunction travels through an arc of 8 deg., it follows that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... woodsman had straightened himself up and was wiping his brow. The timing of the strokes was very slow. Probably, therefore, the labour itself was fatiguing. Sometimes, too, the axe fell with a different swing, as if other hands grasped it, but always with the same dull thudding and irritating slowness. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... not notice how long it was before Irene really began to button her waist. She did note, though, that she began at the bottom, a proceeding Split fancied merely because it drove her junior nearly frantic. She buttoned with maddening slowness up to the middle, when she capriciously left this point and ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... through the vales of Arcady, among pickles and cheeses. He lifts up his eyes wonderingly to snowy Olympus crowned with Pillsbury's Best. He discovers a magic fountain, not spurting up as if it were but for a moment, but issuing forth with the mysterious slowness that befits the liquefactions of the earlier world. "What is that?" he asks, and I can hardly ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... hitherto discovered have not very much merit. We may gather from them that the sculptors were unacquainted with the animal itself, had never seen the king of beasts sleeping in the shade or stretching himself and yawning as he awoke, or walking along with a haughty and majestic slowness, or springing with one bound upon his prey, but had simply studied without much attention or interest the types furnished them by Egyptian or Assyrian artists, who were familiar with the beast himself. The representations are consequently in every case feeble and conventional; ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... was everything she had seen of him, and how stupid and miserable all that he had seen of her, from her first scream of fright when the dog touched her, to her blush of shame and her tears; from the clumsy help she gave him, to her slowness in preparing the food. And to think that when he looked at her she was not able to speak; not even to say No, when he asked her if she sat under the hill every day—for she didn't sit there every day! Might not her silence then have seemed like an invitation to him to come ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... a bright idea," remarked Buck, with exasperating slowness; "they always said you had a brain in your head, Fenton. It's a good, strong vine too, and even a sharp knife hacks into it pretty hard. Oh! no doubt about it holding a fellow of your nimbleness, when you manage to get a grip ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... like a lethargy, has seized my will. I'm not myself, since from her sight I went; I lean my trunk that way, and there stand bent. As one, who, in some frightful dream, would shun His pressing foe, labours in vain to run; And his own slowness, in his sleep, bemoans, With thick short sighs, weak cries, and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... did not always appear the most patient and kindly of leaders. He would have been the first to admit how he wounded tender hearts, and, perhaps, even repulsed some who could have been of greater helpfulness to him had he been able to endure more patiently their slowness and timidity. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... information, sometimes it gives false information. For first, there are very many things which escape the sense, even when best disposed and no way obstructed; by reason either of the subtlety of the whole body, or the minuteness of the parts, or distance of place, or slowness or else swiftness of motion, or familiarity of the object, or other causes. And again when the sense does apprehend a thing its apprehension is not much to be relied upon. For the testimony and information of the sense has reference ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... breeze; and having hitherto seen them hanging lazily by their claws to boughs, I was surprised at the rapidity of their movements. I have often heard people assert that the sloth spends his torpid existence in a perpetual state of pain, from the peculiar sighing noise he makes, and the slowness of his movements when placed on the ground. In the first place, I cannot believe that God has created any animal to pass an existence of pain. The fact is, that the sloth is formed to live in trees, to climb, and ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... very sympathetic task," he said, "to explain the slowness of the masses in feeling their way to a comprehension of all that the democratic idea meant for them, but it is one equally difficult and thankless to account for the blank failure of the philosophers, historians, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... their wealth, and stood aghast by their empty counting-houses; for their gods had been cast down; commerce was at a standstill. There were many, therefore, who hated the French, and cherished a secret love of those bluff British captains—so like themselves in build, and thought, and slowness of speech—who would thrash their wooden brigs through the shallow seas, despite decrees and threats and sloops-of-war, so long as they could lay them alongside the granaries of the Vistula. Lately the very tolls had been collected by a French customs service, and the wholesale smuggling, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... that his mother was displeased, began in the same instant to be frightened; he hurried on as fast as he could, without understanding one word more of what he was reading; his precipitation was worse than his slowness: he stumbled over the words, missed syllables, missed lines, made the most incomprehensible nonsense of the whole; till, at length, Mrs. Harcourt shut the book in despair, and soon afterward despatched Herbert, who was also in despair, to bed. At this catastrophe, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... got up and left the room, walking with a strange slowness, as if she put upon herself an ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... spring, or a well, or anything liquid—to anything but awful miles of dust and heat, trudged over by anything but three-leagued boots. Despite the spur of Winder's speech the brigade moved with dispiriting slowness. It was not the first in column; there were troops ahead and troops behind, and it would perhaps have said that it was not its part to overpass the one and outstrip the other. The whole line lagged. "Close up, men! close up!" cried the officers, through ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a sore blow to The Pilot, who had set his heart upon a church, and neither Mrs. Muir's "hoots" at her husband's slowness nor her promises that she "wad mak him hear it" could bring comfort or ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... said Patrocleas, "The slowness and delay of the deity in punishing the wicked used to seem[807] to me a very dreadful thing, but now in consequence of his speech I come as it were new and fresh to the notion. Yet long ago I was vexed when I heard that ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... will always act with extreme slowness, I fully admit. Its action depends on there being places in the polity of nature, which can be better occupied by some of the inhabitants of the country undergoing modification of some kind. The existence ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the shadowy background. Some, with the white patches on heads, arms, hands, and upper bodies, were walking; others, with the white on feet and legs, limped and hobbled painfully, leaning on the parapet or using their rifles crutch-wise; and others lay on the stretchers that moved with desperate slowness towards safety. The line appeared unending; the dim figures could be seen trickling along the parapets as far as the eye could distinguish them; the white dots of the bandages were visible moving as far along the parapet as the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... pull aside until I finish putting down this description," and the bully continued to write with tantalizing slowness. ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... hour's work, during which I raged about the deck like a man with a strong toothache. The transition from the wild sea to the comparative immobility of the lagoon had wrought strange distress among my nerves: I could not hold still whether in hand or foot; the slowness of the men, tired as dogs after our rough experience outside, irritated me like something personal; and the irrational screaming of the seabirds saddened me like a dirge. It was a relief when, with Nares, and a couple ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cerebral paralyses produced by narcotics closely resemble in their psychopathological physiognomy the organic paralyses which result from slow atrophy of the cerebral cortex, as in general paralysis—exaltation of sentiment, tremor and slowness of movement up to total paralysis, disorders of orientation in time and space, profound mental dissociation affecting the subconscious ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the difficult task of harmonizing the provincial governors and legislatures, and he also made many presents to the Indians to bind them to the cause. Five of the Six Nations, alarmed by the French successes and the slowness of the Americans and English, still held neutral, but the Mohawks were full of zeal, and the best of their young chiefs and warriors stood by Johnson, ready to march when he marched, and to cover his van with their ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... relentlessly. The rock in general, more especially the primary igneous rock, is not stable in presence of the atmosphere and of water. Some of the minerals, such as certain silicates and carbonates, dissolve relatively fast, others with extreme slowness. In the process of solution chemical actions are involved; oxidation in presence of the free oxygen of the atmosphere; attack by the feeble acid arising from the solution of carbon dioxide in water; or, again, by ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... and counted the number of rings in each inch, beginning at the center, thus:" And then follows a table of figures filling a page. "Of those eight, average growth about one seventh of an inch per year. Calling the smallest number of rings in an inch in each tree one, the comparative slowness of growth of the inches is thus expressed." Then follows another carefully prepared table of figures. Before one is done with these pages one fairly suspects the writer is mad, the results are so useless, and so utterly fail to add to our knowledge of the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... extremely narrow and the most constant vigilance, together with the best judgment and foresight, are needed to avoid unnecessary cost. In the laying and covering of the tile, on the other hand, it is best to disregard a little slowness and unnecessary care on the part of the workmen, for the sake of the most perfect security ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... employed in this business by Mr. Thomas Osborne the bookseller, who purchased the library for 13,000l., a sum which Mr. Oldys says, in one of his manuscripts, was not more than the binding of the books had cost; yet, as Dr. Johnson assured me, the slowness of the sale was such, that there was not much gained by it. It has been confidently related, with many embellishments, that Johnson one day knocked Osborne down in his shop, with a folio, and put his foot upon his neck. The simple ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth; the one proceeds with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... find yourself becoming bound to the dismal thought of your test and its terrors, free yourself from it every time, by concentrating upon the weight of your body, or the slowness of the slowest breaths you can draw. Keep yourself truly free, and these feelings of discouragement and all other mental distortions will steadily lose power, until for you they are no more. If they last longer than you think they should, persist in every endeavor, knowing that the after-result, ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call |
