"Speciality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in fact, though I fear she would not wish me to say so, I really liked the unsuccessful competitor better than the winner. Books made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... there, perhaps, there was less scope for the distinctive line—and already they had Garvin. Quite a number of Benham's friends pointed out to him the value of working out some special aspect of our national political interests. A very useful speciality was the Balkans. Mr. Pope, the well-known publicist, whose very sound and considerable reputation was based on the East Purblow Labour Experiment, met Benham at lunch and proposed to go with him in a spirit of instructive association to the Balkans, rub up ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... me they seemed precisely similar. There were "four Charming Lyric Sisters," who performed a dance in long expansive skirts, and in conclusion did all turn heels-over-head in simultaneity; but this, it seems, was—contrary to my own expectancy—not to dance a speciality. Speaking for my humble part, I am respectfully of opinion that lovely woman loses in queenly dignity by the abrupt execution of a somersault; however, the feat did indubitably excite ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the lines of the best Public Schools, combined with Home Comforts under the personal supervision of Mrs. Stimcoe (niece of the late Hon. Sir Alexander O'Brien, R.N., Admiral of the White, and K.C.B.). Backward and delicate boys a speciality. Separate beds. Commodious playground in a climate unrivalled for pulmonary ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... securing in 1864 the position of traffic-manager to the Chemin de Fer du Midi. Subsequently he was entrusted with various missions abroad, and in 1869 the Institute of France crowned a little work of his on the employment of women and children in English factories. Mining engineering was his speciality, but he was extremely versatile and resourceful, and immediately attracted the notice of Gambetta. Let it be said to the latter's credit that in that hour of crisis he cast all prejudices aside. He cared nothing for the antecedents of any man who was willing to cooperate in ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Dr. Rylance was a specialist. He had won his reputation as an adviser in cases of mental disease; and as, happily, mental diseases are less common than bodily ailments, Dr. Rylance had not the continuous work of a Gull or a Jenner. His speciality paid him remarkably well. His cases hung long on hand, and when he had a patient of wealth and standing Dr. Rylance knew how to keep him. His treatment was soothing and palliative, as befitted an enlightened ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... are his speciality. His piece de resistance is a Jewish tradesman whom he has lately supplied with an admirable glass eye—a thing almost unheard-of in these parts. This man and myself were sitting in the shop not long ago when a Moroccan happened to be passing who had known him ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... for instance; Society frothed at the mouth when her name was mentioned. Miss Yvette was the niece of a stock-broker who was wealthy, and she thought that she was in Society, and the foolish public thought so, too. Miss Yvette made a speciality of newspaper publicity; you were always seeing her picture, with some new "Worth creation," and the picture would be labelled "Miss Yvette Simpkins, the best-dressed woman in New York," or "Miss Yvette Simpkins, who is known as the best woman whip in Society." ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... observations. Power that has been laboriously acquired and stored up as statical in one generation manifestly in such case becomes the inborn faculty of the next; and the development takes place in accordance with that law of increasing speciality and complexity of adaptation to external nature which is traceable through the animal kingdom; or, in other words, that law, of progress from the general to the special in development which the appearance of nerve force amongst natural forces and the complexity of the nervous system of man ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... seem to have made a speciality of detective fiction. As you said, I suppose your ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... because he overleaps the level of his life, and is greater than his race, being one of them? If he were of the heroic race, what virtue in being heroic? it is the assertion of his trivial life that makes his speciality evident,—the shadow that throws out the bas-relief. We chatter endlessly about the immense good of Washington's example: I believe its good would be more than doubled, could we be made, nationally, to see him as a human ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... me to carry the principle of division of labor too far, this keeping of the honesty and the other qualities in separate compartments. What is Mr Gunn's speciality, ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... and Crane are arranged on the plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,—so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice versa. The more particular speciality of one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,—that of the other to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counterful of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... was the talented coloured gentleman who had been extracted from small-time vaudeville by Mr. Abrahams to do a nightly speciality at the Flower Garden. He was, in fact, a trap-drummer: and it was his amiable practice, after he had done a few minutes trap-drumming, to rise from his seat and make a circular tour of the tables on the edge of the dancing-floor, ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... summer. Smith would have proposed any appointment to see you on the subject, but he has been dreadfully ill with tic. Whenever I read in London, I will gladly put a night aside for your purpose, and we will plot to connect your name with it, and give it some speciality. But this could not be before Christmas time, as I should not be able to read sooner, for in the hot weather it would be useless. Let me hear from you about this when you have considered it. It would greatly diminish ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... formidable guests, they all split into fragments which went whirling, dancing in divisions, subdivisions, re-subdivisions of scientific nonsense! History split into philology, ethnology, anthropology, and mythology, and these again split finer than the splitting of hairs. Each speciality hugged its bit of knowledge and waltzed it round and round. The rest of the company began to nod, and I felt drowsy myself. To put an end to the solemn gyrations, a troop of fairies mercifully waved poppies over us all, the masque faded, my head fell, and ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... ever saw an angry man in my life it was Leland Stanford. He fairly raved. He jumped at his old speciality, Gov. Low's head; he tore it loose from his body and knocked him down with it. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... and then as "the Punch man," and for some time recognised by that, rather than by his work in other directions. He became more and more highly appreciated as one of those who contributed to that speciality of humour for which Punch had already established a reputation while creating a demand. All the while, during the first ten years, he regarded the paper as a sort of stepping-stone to an independent literary position; and he was not very long in using ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... sorts of subjects, and never letting drop a single word to remind Adela that she was in the presence of a medical man. Nor did he seem to take any notice of her more than was required by ordinary politeness; but behavior without speciality of any sort, he drew his judgments from her general manner, and such glances as fell naturally to his share, of those that must pass between all the persons making up a small dinner-company. This enabled him to see her ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... was obdurate. She was certainly a chic and engaging little person, apparently well educated and refined, but she was as sly as her notorious employer, whom she served so faithfully. She was, she had already told Hugh, the daughter of a man who had made jewel thefts his speciality and after many convictions was now serving ten years at the convict prison at Toulon. She had been bred in the Montmartre, and trained and educated to a criminal life. Il Passero had found her, and, after ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... York the same day would reach Queenstown before us. In fact, a good smart sailing vessel, with a fair wind, might have made it lively for us in an ocean race. The Tub was a broad slow boat, whose great speciality was freight, and her very broadness, which kept her from being a racer, even if her engines had had the power, made her particularly comfortable in a storm. She rolled but little; and as the state-rooms were large and airy, every passenger on board ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... earliest patron of Florence, St. John was the titular saint of every Baptistery in the land. This accounts for the frequency with which we find his statues and scenes from his life, particularly in Tuscany. With Donatello he was to some extent a speciality, and we can almost trace the sculptor's evolution in his presentment of the Baptist, beginning with the chivalrous figure on the Campanile and ending with the haggard ascetic of Venice. We have St. John as a child in the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... our readers may know, is a physician eminent in the speciality of mental disorders. He is at present the head of the Butler Hospital for the Insane in Providence, Rhode Island. The four first chapters of his book, chiefly relating to matters which may be observed outside of a hospital, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... and thus prepared the way for a return to sensualism. He had taught that individuals alone have a real existence, and that the "essence" of things is not to be sought in the elements of unity and generality, or in the idea, as Plato taught, but in the elements of diversity and speciality. And furthermore, in opposition to Plato, he had taught his disciples to attach themselves to sensation, as the source of all knowledge. As the direct consequence of this teaching, we find his immediate successors, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... anything. A translator has three courses open to him, to translate more or less verbally, so as to run the risk of being unintelligible to a reader unacquainted with the original, to generalize what is special, and to borrow something of the imitator's licence, introducing a modern speciality in place of an ancient. Here, as I have found on other occasions of the kind, to be allowed a choice of evils is itself a matter for self- congratulation. To be shut up entirely to one or other of these resources would be a serious ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... amount of which required for such an establishment was enough to frighten a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was from the West, raised on Indian corn and pork, which give a fuller outline and a more humid temperament, but may perhaps be thought to render people a little coarse-fibred. Her speciality was to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class. So this distinguished institution was under the charge of a commissary and a housekeeper, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... her fine figure, the tips of crossed feet peeping from under the hem of the black skirt. Decoud's eyes also remained fixed there, while in an undertone he added that Miss Avellanos was quite aware of his new and unexpected vocation, which in Costaguana was generally the speciality of half-educated negroes and wholly penniless lawyers. Then, confronting with a sort of urbane effrontery Mrs. Gould's gaze, now turned sympathetically upon himself, he breathed out the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... round. Money saved him. On the 'Aurelia' I got hold of all the facts of the case by wireless, and took a grip of the situation. I sized up the doctors here as a couple of well-meaning fools. I wired to Chicago for a man who's made a speciality of opsonic treatment for pneumonia. His own invention—something the other doctors sneer at. I had him packed from Chicago to Golden Beach by special train, with full authority to boss the case.... Yes, it's money that saved my boy. Money, Dean, holds ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... works on taxidermy profess to give descriptions of the attitudes of animals, I cannot do so for the simple reason that I consider the acquirement a speciality and purely a matter of experience. Nature must be closely studied; failing this, reference must be made to illustrated works on natural history. All of Gould's works are grand guides to attitudes of specimens and accessories, as also that beautiful work of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... that whoever comes into conflict with M. Angelo in his own speciality, which is discretion, cannot but be vanquished. It is necessary, M. Lactancio, that we should talk with him about actions or briefs or painting to put him to silence and to ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... (importance) 642. principle, nature, constitution, character, type, quality, crasis[obs3], diathesis[obs3]. habit; temper, temperament; spirit, humor, grain; disposition. endowment, capacity; capability &c. (power) 157. moods, declensions, features, aspects; peculiarities &c. (speciality) 79; idiosyncrasy, oddity; idiocrasy &c. (tendency) 176[obs3]; diagnostics. V. be in the blood, run in the blood; be born so; be intrinsic &c. adj. Adj. derived from within, subjective; intrinsic, intrinsical[obs3]; fundamental, normal; implanted, inherent, essential, natural; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a regular beauty, or that she goes in for any speciality by way of features or eyelashes, or hair, or a figure, or anything really sensational of that sort, as I do in one or two directions. But there's a rose and pearl and gold-brown adorableness about her; ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... improved than to get me to marry her. But she was also driven to think of herself, and that promptly, for trouble arose with regard to her own position in the Magdeburg theatre. There she had met with a rival in her own speciality, and as this woman's husband became chief stage manager, and consequently had supreme power, she grew to be a source of great danger. Seeing, therefore, that at this very moment Minna received advantageous offers from the managers ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... would refrain from sending him back, as he did not consider him a suitable member of a public school. He suggested, in the lad's own interest, that it might be wise to place him in some establishment where a speciality was made of the training of unruly youths. He added that he wrote this with the more regret since Anthony's father and grandfather had been scholars at —— in their day, and her son possessed no mean intellectual abilities. This would be shown by the fact that he was at the head of his class, ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... speciality with country boys. The juvenile hunter utilises the moon as a cavalry patrol would his field-glass for ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... It stands to reason that a man who's responsible for all the largest new eyesores in London would impress any corporation. Clever chap, Corver! Instead of wasting his time in travel and study, he made a speciality of learning how to talk to committees. And he was always full of ideas like the piebald pony, ever ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... old lawyer who made a speciality of ecclesiastical cases, and had acquired a fortune by serving the Jesuits. He had retired with a comfortable sum, and led an existence slightly mysterious; received everywhere, saluted very low, even a little feared, as he represented a great and unknown force ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... my sole companion at the breakfast table, and she eyed me with a peculiar look as I hungrily put away a lot of devilled kidneys, as well as two raw eggs beat up and mixed in my coffee, to which she slyly added a little fine old Cognac, a speciality of my father as a pick-me-up after ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... island—with which it would seem that the city of Troezen, though close at hand, had no connection—meeting there at stated periods, to offer formal sacrifices. These seven cities indeed were not immediate neighbors, but the speciality and exclusiveness of their interest in the temple is seen from the fact that when the Argians took Nauplia, they adopted and fulfilled these religious obligations on behalf of the prior inhabitants: so also did the Lacedaemonians when they had captured Prasiae. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... peculiar white markings; and they are besides characterised by horns so remarkably different in each species and so conspicuous, that it seems probable that the peculiarities in length, twist, and curvature have been differentiated for the purpose of recognition, rather than for any speciality of defence in species whose general ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... England. He has laid out seven francs in decorating it with silver and gold, and fitting it with a silken leash to hang about his shoulder. The hounds have been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Mesmer, or Saint Hubert in the Ardennes, or some other holy intercessor who has made a speciality of the health of hunting-dogs. In the grey dawn the game was turned and the branch broken by our best piqueur. A rare day's hunting lies before us. Wind a jolly flourish, sound the bien-aller with all your lungs. Jacques must stand by, hat in hand, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... IN SOAP.—The Soap Trade is still booming. Almost every week appears a fresh candidate for public favour, its claim based upon some alluring speciality. We hear of a newcomer likely to take the cake (of soap). On all the walls, and in most of the advertisement columns, will presently blaze forth its proud ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... I became an incorrigible because I abhorred waste motion. The prison, like all prisons, was a scandal and an affront of waste motion. They put me in the jute-mill. The criminality of wastefulness irritated me. Why should it not? Elimination of waste motion was my speciality. Before the invention of steam or steam-driven looms three thousand years before, I had rotted in prison in old Babylon; and, trust me, I speak the truth when I say that in that ancient day we prisoners ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... estates of Osborne and Balmoral. The prince was also in favour of working-men's clubs and coffee palaces. It was remarked that whether he spoke to a painter, sculptor, architect, man of science, or ordinary tradesman, each of them was apt to think that his speciality was their own calling, owing to his understanding and knowledge of it. He rose at seven A.M., summer and winter, dressed, and went to his sitting-room, where in winter a fire was burning, and a ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... stagnation, and spur tropical indolence to manifold activities. A variety of thriving industries belong to this far-off colony. Mother-of-pearl shells, and beche-de-mer (the sea-slug of Chinese cuisine) supplement the important export of the cloves, the speciality of Ambon, chosen by the East India Company as the sole place of cultivation for this spice-bearing tree, when the system of monopoly extirpated the clove gardens of the other islands. Vases, mats, and miniature boats, of fringed and threaded cloves, are offered ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... The speciality then of this man's wrong is that it is the only historic wrong that has in it the quality of nonsense. It could only happen in a nightmare; not in a clear and rational hell. It is the top point of that anarchy in the governing mind which, as I said ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... well said that this is the age of the specialist. Everybody, if they wish to leave the world a better and happier place for their stay in it, should endeavour to adopt some speciality and make it their own. Chapple's speciality was being late for breakfast. He was late not once or twice, but every day. Sometimes he would scramble in about the time of the second cup of coffee, buttoning his waistcoat as he sidled to his place. Generally he would arrive just as the rest ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... horse, nor porpoise, nor monkey, nor man, can be distinguished by any essential feature one from the other; there is a time when they each and all of them resemble this one of the dog. But as development advances, all the parts acquire their speciality, till at length you have the embryo converted into the form of the parent from which it started. So that you see, this living animal, this horse, begins its existence as a minute particle of nitrogenous ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of opinion, like the case for self-government, has suffered from the fact that we take the theory so completely for granted that we do not notice how far we are removed from the practice of it. Freedom is supposed to be an Englishman's speciality. "Britons never shall be slaves," we say, and suppose that settles the matter. Very likely Thomson, when he wrote his feeble verses (they have been redeemed by an excellent tune), never paused to reflect that the sailors he was glorifying were ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... of the 'middles,' which he considered to be the speciality of himself and his friend Sandars. The middle, originally an article upon some not strictly political topic, had grown in their hands into a kind of lay sermon. For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... languages, a kind of work then new in this country hence the name "Codman Press," which appears on the books of early date. Works or parts of works were printed in as many as ten Eastern languages, a speciality at Andover which has been continued to the present time. Equally zealous in his department was Dr. Porter, President, and Professor of Sacred Rhetoric, in directing the attention of the clergy to the study of pulpit eloquence. He published largely on that subject, some of his books attaining ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... there," I said, and then we went along to Giacosa's, where we each had that cocktail-like speciality known as ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... difference between rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would; and therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent—the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is graceful, and vastness of what is vast; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the mind of the painter ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to the breast of the skeleton), and your child breathes thus (drew a long inhalation)—is well. Warts (a labourer held up a horny hand, the middle joint of the little finger disfigured with such excrescences)? Nothing easier! You take this bottle—warts are my speciality—you rub the wart with this. Thank you, fifty centimes. Come here next Sunday. If the wart be not gone—I do not say it will not leave a scar, but the scar will disappear in a month—here is a knife, stick it into ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... descendants; even the shape of the loaves has in most cases continued unchanged to the present day. And one curious coincidence is certainly worth mentioning, in that a peculiar method of preparing figs with caraway seeds, which was long supposed to be a local speciality of a remote town in Central Italy, has now been recognized as a common method of dressing this fruit for the table at Pompeii, for large quantities of figs so treated have been unearthed in shops and kitchens. Such grains of information as the wearing of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... speciality of the fabrication of sensational rumours. I could not ask any better vengeance for our beloved country than to have their stories placed before the most loyal of Sovereigns, the most far-seeing of diplomats, of the politician the furthest removed from sordid calculations ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... something of a puzzle, except so far as it is explained by early associations. Even then it is hard to explain the sympathy which Hazlitt, the lover of Rousseau and sentiment, feels for Congreve, whose speciality it is that a touch of sentiment is as rare in his painfully-witty dialogues as a drop of water in the desert. Perhaps a contempt for the prejudices of respectable people gave zest to Hazlitt's enjoyment ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Netherland Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism Maritime heretics Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft Worn nor caused to be worn the collar ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... was what they call an astronomer. His speciality was the stars, nothing less; an' he knew 'em by name an' could tell you how far off they are an' what they weigh an' how many moons they had an'—oh, he knew 'em the same as I know the home herd, an' he didn't only know what ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... Mind, if your head or your stomach aches or you are worried and can't sleep, take a glassful of this: all your worries will at once disappear. Take good care of it and don't on any account give a drop away, it's a speciality; my grandfather got it from the monks at Radecznica, it's as good as ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... customs, as well as dress and outward appearance, the peasant and agricultural population, generally, differ no little from their remote country-people, the Bretons. In this famous cheese-making country, the "Fromage de Brie" being the speciality of these rich dairy farms, there is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and little that can be called poetic. The people are wealthy, laborious, and progressive. The farmers' wives, however hard ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... would have derived from the diligent study of the fourth Gospel. But may he not have derived all this from Philo? No; because, if so, he would have referred Trypho, a Jew, to Philo, his brother Jew, which he never does. The speciality of St. John's teaching is not that he, like Plato or Philo, elaborates a Logos doctrine, but that once for all, with the authority of God, he identifies the Logos with the Divine Nature of our Lord. No other Evangelist or sacred writer does this, ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... the title of this opera, which signifies a man who goes about reciting biblical verse after the fashion of street singers. This means of earning a livelihood is unknown in Germany, but forms a speciality ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... for one,—and there are many who will bear the same testimony,—that I never went to Mr. Parker to talk over a subject which I had just made a speciality, without finding that on that particular matter he happened to know, without any special investigation, more than I did. This extended beyond books, sometimes stretching into things where his questioner's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... each other so well. When I knew him he was a sufferer and would only occasionally play in public, and then place his piano in the middle of Pleyel's room whilst his admirers were around the piano. His speciality was extreme delicacy, and his pianissimo extraordinary. Every little note was like a bell, so clear. His fingers seemed to be without any bones; but he would bring out certain effects by great elasticity. He ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of Mr. Kecskerey. Without him the whole winter season would have been abominably dull. There was no mention even of balls and assemblies until he came back again. Some men have a peculiar talent, a special faculty, for arranging such things, and it was "our friend" Kecskerey's speciality. The whole world of fashion called Kecskerey "our friend," so it is only proper that we should give him ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its speciality—or, if you like, its oddity—was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... strongly distinct, or too acutely exact. But it does not follow, etymologically, that a man is right because he is particular. He may be very good or very bad, and yet be only such because he is particularly so. Singularity, eccentricity, speciality, isolation, oddity, and hundreds of other things which might be mentioned, all involve particularity. But we do not intend, to "grammar-out" the question, nor to disengage and waste our gas in definitions. The particular enters ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Dursley, hey? Little town takes your fancy as you see it from the ridge? Kinduv cuddlesome and umbradewus, isn't it? Yes, I felt that way myself when I came here looking for pedestrial work—repairs a speciality, y' know. Whatsorterjobjerwant?' ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... to those general, uniform, absolute, consistent, and beautiful laws, which control and render harmonious, as a great whole, the entire action, affinities, and destinies of the universe; and when we say nature in the speciality, we would be understood to speak of the nature of a rock, of a tree, of air, fire, water, and land. Again, in alluding to a moral nature in the abstract, we mean sin, and its weaknesses, its attractions, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... done for individuals, they also wanted to do for nations. Humanity was to be divided into national workshops, having each its speciality. Russia, we were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn; England to spin cotton; Belgium to weave cloth; while Switzerland was to train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate city was to establish ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... which the town is famous are brought to the doors of the railway carriage. Further on at Commercy, you are enticed to regale upon unrivalled cakes called "Madeleines de Commercy," and not a town, I believe, of this favoured district is without its speciality in the shape ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... like other people; but the old stagers can still find some of their number who are as richly comical as Mr. Vincent Crummies himself. They are like the dyer's hand, subdued to what they work in. I was thrown a great deal into the society of one elderly young gentleman whose speciality had for years been that sort of high-flying rattling comedy of which Charles Mathews was the chief exponent in my youth. He had the most suasive, genial, and gentlemanly comedy manner conceivable, and was never for ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... underworld. He had bought out a small ship-chandler's business, a rickety, out-at-the-heels place on an equally rickety old wharf on the East River; and it was generally understood that he was a "fence" of a sort, making a speciality of, and catering to, a certain extensive and vicious class of thieves, the wharf rats, who infested the city's shipping—his ostensible business of a ship-chandler enabling him to handle and dispose of that class of stolen property ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... his memory and substituting for number three the question "And how do you like that name?" which he propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a speciality on that particular birthday, and not ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... North Italy. Consequently there are no tropical forests, and the mountain-sides are covered with trees of the temperate zone—the stately deodar cedars, spruce fir, maples, walnut, sycamore, and birch; while in the valley itself grow poplars, willows, mulberries, and most beautiful of all, and a speciality of Kashmir, the magnificent chenar tree—akin to the plane tree of Europe, but larger, fuller, and richer ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes the handicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a slate or tile, if ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... I can't tell you, how many doctors; taken no end of medicine and spent I don't know how much money; but the more we did so, not the least little bit of relief did I see. Lucky enough, we eventually came across a bald-pated bonze, whose speciality was the cure of nameless illnesses. We therefore sent for him to see me, and he said that I had brought this along with me from the womb as a sort of inflammatory virus, that luckily I had a constitution strong and hale so that it didn't matter; and that it would be of no ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... books of romance, and what was then termed 'the black art'; but Webster was the author of a rare volume on witchcraft, so that his books were his literary tools—just as, a century later, John Rennie, the distinguished civil engineer, made a speciality of mathematical books, of which he had a collection nearly complete in all languages. Dr. Benjamin Moseley's library, which was sold by Stewart in March, 1814, was composed for the most part of books on astrology, magic, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Wiltshire, and the pearmain apples from Kent. Exeter was famous for metal and corn; Worcester and London for wheat; Winchester for wine—there were vineyards in England then; Hertford for cattle, and Salisbury for game; York for wood; while the speciality of Oxford was knives. ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... which is still made—though in a small quantity—resembles Doulton ware, but the great development of the industry has been in the direction of glazed ware of great resisting power. Cheavin's patent filters are sent all over the world, and a speciality is made of the chemical trade, immense baths for the electro-plating acids ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... suppression of the lower nobility in 1523, and finally of the peasants in 1526, that any material change took place; and then the centralization, such as it was, was in favour of the princes, rather than of the Imperial power, which, after Charles V's time, grew weaker and weaker. The speciality about the history of Germany is, that it has not known till our own day centralization on a national or racial scale like England ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while in art, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign either ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... does; even the pious individual wishes to be saved and happy. This pole of the antithesis, existing for itself, is—in contrast with the Absolute Universal Being—a special separate existence, taking cognizance of speciality only and willing that alone. In short, it plays its part in the region of mere phenomena. This is the sphere of particular purposes, in effecting which individuals exert themselves on behalf of their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... and eccentricities of phrase. Some other poet—though I know of none such—may have accepted and adopted his theory that "vengeance" must count in verse as a word of three syllables: I can hardly believe that the fancy would sound sweet in any second man's ear: but this speciality is not more characteristic than other and more important qualities of style—the peculiar abruptness, the peculiar inflation, the peculiar crudity—which denote this comedy as apparently if not evidently Marstonian. On the other hand, if it were indeed his, it is ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... men understood—namely, that every nation is fitted by its character, and the nature of its territories, for some particular employments or manufactures; and that it is the true interest of every other nation to encourage it in such speciality, and by no means to interfere with, but in all ways forward and protect, its efforts, ceasing all rivalship with it, so soon as it is strong enough to occupy its proper place. You see, therefore, that the idea of co-operation, in the sense in which ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... for a Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I just came away and left them to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... choppy sea on which the sun is a-shine, and which invigorates while it—not always agreeably—bobs our head, and dashes down our throat. But vigour alone does not produce poetry, and it may easily run into a kind of good-humoured effrontery. The speciality of the volume as compared with its predecessors is that it contains not a little running comment by Browning upon himself and his own work, together with a jocular-savage reply to his unfriendly critics. There is a little too much in all this of the robustious Herakles sending ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... M. Comte in a series, of which each term represents an advance in speciality beyond the term preceding it, and (what necessarily accompanies increased speciality) an increase of complexity—a set of phaenomena determined by a more numerous combination of laws; the sciences ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. (He laughs) Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... said, "no more, no less. You all think me a blackguard, I know. It's my speciality, isn't it?" He spoke with exceeding bitterness. "But in this case you are ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... has only just returned himself after living four years abroad," put in Liputin. "He has been travelling to perfect himself in his speciality and has come to us because he has good reasons to expect a job on the building of our railway bridge, and he's now waiting for an answer about it. He knows the Drozdovs and Lizaveta ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... inconvenience of long hair when our own regimental tonsorial artist is waiting to bob it for you free of charge? Luxurious saloon; deft workmanship; no tips. His speciality—memento locks. Twelve such souvenirs guaranteed from one crop. Bald soldiers supplied to taste from surplus clippings. A delicate, lasting and inexpensive compliment to lady friends on leaving a station. Start ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... The speciality in the form of entertainment at Chateau d'Eu was drives in the sociable chars-a-bancs in the neighbouring forest, ending in dejeuners and fetes-champetres, which the Queen enjoyed heartily, both because they were novel to her and because they were spontaneous and untrammelled. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... himself entirely from his master's wardrobe. The dandy absently drew forth the Telegraph, and the first thing that caught his eye was this: "A beautiful private hotel of the highest class. Luxuriously furnished. Visitor's comfort studied. Finest position in London. Cuisine a speciality. Quiet. Suitable for persons of superior rank. Bathroom. Electric light. Separate tables. No irritating extras. Single rooms from 2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. 250 Queen's Gate." And below this he saw another piece of news: ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... as well as I can remember, since the year 1847, from the peculiar catarrh called by the English "hay fever," the speciality of which consists in its attacking its victims regularly in the hay season (myself-between May 20 and the end of June), that it ceases in the cooler weather, but on the other hand quickly reaches a great intensity if the patients expose themselves to heat and sunshine. An extraordinary ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... abnormal sexual relationships. The boy would rather have been a girl, the girl a boy. In such a case, the choice of a future profession will also be affected by mental peculiarities closely associated with the sexual life. The homosexual ladies' tailor, the music-hall artiste who makes a speciality of feminine impersonations, the ladies' hairdresser, and others in like occupations, will often tell us that the choice of their trade or profession was made while they were still children. In this connexion, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... mistake, for I knew how keenly Holmes would feel any slip of the kind. It was his speciality to be accurate as to fact, but his recent illness had shaken him, and this one little incident was enough to show me that he was still far from being himself. He was obviously embarrassed for an instant, while the Inspector raised his eyebrows and Alec Cunningham burst into ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of executive power. Bourcet described the head of such a department as "the soul of an army." The British navy is without such a department. The army has borrowed the name, but has not maintained the speciality of function which is essential. In armies other than the British, the Chief of the General Staff is occupied solely with tactics and strategy, with the work of intellectual research by which Nelson ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... articles which are sold in London streets for a pot of ferns or a china butter-dish. In another part popular pictures are spread out, oleographs showing the Garden of Eden, or the terror of the Flood, or the Last Judgment, and such like; in another is a wilderness of home-made bamboo furniture, a speciality of Batum. And for ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... it affords us evidence of the truth. But when our reason offers arguments on both sides of the question, so that we can arrive at no certain conclusion, then we act prudently by invoking the authority of wiser minds who make moral questions a speciality, and we are perfectly safe if we follow ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... mathematical developments, would be a fit subject of study. But in this case I do not think the problem could fairly be objected to as puerile—a more legitimate objection would I conceive be its extreme speciality. But this is not an objection that can be brought against Modern Geometry as a whole: in regard to any particular parts of it which may appear open to such an objection, the question is whether ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... classes which lack leisure; she is an exasperating and most entirely selfish woman, and she cannot very well invent her refinements of whining cruelty unless she has a little time on hand; her speciality is to moan incessantly over the ingratitude of people for whom she has done some trivial service; and, as she always moans by choice in presence of the person whom she has afflicted by her generosity, the result is merely distracting. If the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... secret, and she had travelled quite extensively enough for Bobbie's needs. Then, October people were "born with original ideas" and "loved moving." You couldn't have summed up Mary's little jaunt more neatly. February people had "wonderful memories"—Mary's speciality. ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Herbert Deacon, Dentist, Gold Work a Speciality (sic) in black lettering, and Justice of the Peace in gold, was above a store which had been occupied by one unlucky tenant after another, and had suffered long periods of vacancy when ladies' aid societies served lunches there, under great white signs, badly lettered. Some ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... parties occurred. But none abstained from opening the floodgates of their wrath on the authors of the latest menu. The authors' apologists, for—tell it not in Gath!—they had apologists still, argued that there were restaurants in Paris where cooked horse was a speciality. But special pleading so palpable only aggravated the prevailing resentment to the dish. There were a great many customs in Paris equally foreign to our, shall I say, Imperial ways; together with a plethora of scientific chefs who could metamorphose anything—rats as ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... both these conditions are present where a modern firm of manufacturers or merchants succeeds in maintaining during a long period of time a prosperous or paying business. The firm, though in close competition over part of the field of industry, will have a speciality of a certain class of wares, at any rate in certain markets, and it will be fortified by a more or less firmly fixed rate of prices extending over the whole class of commodities. Both of these forces signify a restriction ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... industry; and while they fortified their villages with palisaded walls, or erected towers and earthen forts whereto to repair in case of a new invasion, they soon abandoned the task of defending these towers and forts to those who made of war a speciality. ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... in the matter of caps and ties. May be flattered by an inquiry as to where he got his gaiters, and if they are an idea of his own. Sometimes bursts out into a belt covered with silver clasps. Fancy waistcoats a speciality. His smoking-suit, in the evening, is a dream of gorgeous rainbows. Is sometimes a very fair shot. Generally wears gloves, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... secular state. First, under Christianity slavery is impossible; for man as man—in the abstract essence of his nature—is contemplated in God; each unit of mankind is an object of the grace of God and of the divine purpose. Utterly excluding all speciality, therefore, man, in and for himself—in his simple quality of man—has infinite value; and this infinite value abolishes, ipso facto, all particularity attaching to birth ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... with my arm bandaged and my coat loose over my shoulders, favored my object. Although I had sent Mr. Jaggers a brief account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in town, yet I had to give him all the details now; and the speciality of the occasion caused our talk to be less dry and hard, and less strictly regulated by the rules of evidence, than it had been before. While I described the disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his wont, before the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring at me, with ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... intended for Jewish converts, and exhibits Jesus as the God-appointed Messiah and King, the fulfiller of the Law and of the highest expectations of the Jewish nation. This speciality of aim rather enhances than diminishes its general value. Renan found reason for pronouncing it "the most important book of Christendom— the most important book which has ever been written." Its aim is manifestly ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... is not more necessary if you have organized labour properly; the ploughman and the fisherman are as necessary to society as the scientist or the artist, I will not say more necessary: neither is the difficulty of producing the more special and excellent work at all proportionate to its speciality or excellence: the higher workman produces his work as easily perhaps as the lower does his work; if he does not do so, you must give him extra leisure, extra means for supplying the waste of power in him, but you can give him nothing more. The only reward that you CAN give the excellent workman ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... on the Doecker system, and were manufactured by Messrs. Christoph & Unmark of Niesky. This firm makes a speciality of schools and hospitals, built in what we should call the bungalow style. Of course, this style exactly suits the needs of the school in the forest. There is not a staircase in the place, there is no danger of fire, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... commenting on his decayed condition after he was gone. It appeared to him amazing that he could hold up his head at all, poor creature. 'In the Workhouse, sir, the Union; no privacy, no visitors, no station, no respect, no speciality. Most deplorable!' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... your speciality, heads, or do you go to nature and reproduce her wonderous moods and ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... which it would always seem that a diamond of a tear was lurking whenever any matter of excitement was afoot. Her light-brown hair was soft and smooth and pretty. As hair it was very well, but it had no speciality. Her mouth was somewhat large, but full of ever-varying expression. Her forehead was low and broad, with prominent temples, on which it was her habit to clasp tightly her little outstretched fingers as she sat listening ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the "Grill-room," as is his equally well-known successor, Sir Leslie Ward, the "Spy" of that now defunct paper, who has drawn almost every notability in the kingdom. Sir Leslie is, I am glad to say, still with us. Leslie Ward has the speciality of extraordinary accidents, accidents which could befall no human being but himself. For instance, in pre-taxi days Ward was driving in a hansom, and the cabman taking a wrong turn, Ward pushed up the little door in the roof to stop him. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... carried the conversation away and beyond, and, quoting an "Ole Luk-Oie" story, submitted that the higher realms of generalship should include the closer study of the personal history and characteristics—mental and moral—of enemy commanders. Some one else noted that the supposed speciality of the General immediately opposite us was that of making fierce attacks across impassable marshes. "Good," put in a third some one. "Let's puzzle the German staff by persuading him that we have an Etonian General in this part of the line, ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... always willingly—with marvelous truth and completeness. It is no small matter that Benvenuto, whose most important works have perished half finished, and who, as an artist, is perfect only in his little decorative speciality, but in other respects, if judged by the works of him which remain, is surpassed by so many of his greater contemporaries—that Benvenuto as a man will interest mankind to the end of time. It does not spoil the impression when the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt |
