"Superfluous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believe that it was at all necessary for you to have groveled in aristocratic crimes in order to win her heart. The yacht cruise and the tandem and the violets and the Fifth Avenue clothes and the ton of candy were quite superfluous. You needed only to tell her the truth, like a man, and say ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... therefore, at all times in danger of occasional degradation; but the simplicity of this new school seems intended to ensure it. Their simplicity does not consist, by any means, in the rejection of glaring or superfluous ornament—in the substitution of elegance to splendour, or in that refinement of art which seeks concealment in its own perfection. It consists, on the contrary, in a very great degree, in the positive and bona fide rejection of art altogether, and in the bold use of those ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... pages of the 'Tribune' are devoted to a perfectly serious discussion of the metaphysics of 'Spirits.' On page 73 he pleasantly remarks, 'Now we shall understand that all said hitherto is superfluous,' and he will not reproach the reader who regards seers not as citizens of two worlds (Plotinus), but ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... forms and ceremonies of the Church were the necessary aids to faith. The reformers, on the other hand, looked to Scripture for the fundamental rules of life and conduct. Any deviation from these rules, no matter on what authority, must be superfluous and might ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... countries where it groweth and is vsed: The Spaniardes generally call it Tobacco. The leaues thereof being dried and brought into powder: they vse to take the fume or smoke thereof by sucking it through pipes made of claie into their stomacke and heade; from whence it purgeth superfluous fleame & other grosse humors, openeth all the pores & passages of the body: by which meanes the vse thereof, not only preserueth the body from obstructis; but also if any be, so that they haue not beene of too long continuance, in short time breaketh them: wherby their bodies are notably preserued ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot
... very short and very simple Adagio cantabile in the Key of F for a solo pianoforte. It appealed at once to me as a singer, for its quiet, unaffected melody seemed made to be sung rather than to be played. The "cantabile" of its heading was superfluous—it was a Song without Words, evidently one of a new set, for I knew it was none of the old. But the sound of a footstep startled me and I guiltily replaced the sheet. The door opened, and I was warmly greeted in excellent ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... almost superfluous to observe that the preceding editions, the last and best not excepted, present a very large number of statements, opinions, and readings, which more recent and more exact information has shown to be ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... harness and help the dogs over a ridge or through a deep drift. We had not yet become hardened, and consequently experienced much difficulty from blistered feet and chafing; but as we got rid of our superfluous flesh these petty troubles became less annoying, and we did not so easily ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... for her ingratitude. In attacking it he is attacking her guilt, in its inferior forms and obscure disguises. It is the nest of her depravity, and the small vices are but hers in the shell, and the whole is a vast confederacy of evil. Here are no "superfluous activities," no desultory talk; Hamlet's preoccupation is one throughout. He alternates between the desire to escape from so vile a world, and the pleasure of exposing its vice and fraud. The one gives us soliloquies, the other dialogues. Now he looks out at an obscure eternity from a time ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... of this initial uncertainty, the discussion whether the poet was of "noble" family or not seems a trifle superfluous. His great-great-grand-father, Cacciaguida, is made to say (Par., xv. 140) that he himself received knighthood from the Emperor Conrad III. (of Hohenstaufen). This would confer nobility; but it would appear that it would be possible for later generations to lose ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... as repositories of paganism some three centuries later still. The collections said to have been destroyed by Caliph Omar when Amru took Alexandria in 640 A.D., on the ground that if they agreed with the Koran they were superfluous and if they contradicted it they were blasphemous, were later ones; but the whole story is discredited by modern scholarship. The world has not ceased mourning for this untold and irreparable loss of the choicest fruits of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... books. I have never myself seen or heard of a 'Caxton' in which an illuminator has painted a preliminary border or initial letters; even the rubrication, where it exists, is usually a disfigurement; while as for pictures, it has been unkindly said that inquiry whence they were obtained is superfluous, since any boy with a knife could have ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... of this celebrated battle, that to mention it here would be altogether superfluous. The Chevalier de Grammont, who, as a volunteer, was permitted to go into every part, has given a better description of it than any other person. Monsieur de Turenne reaped great advantage from that activity which never forsook the Chevalier either in peace or war; and that presence ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... happy, for, Marquis, there is a vast difference between merely enjoying happiness and relishing the sensation of enjoying it. The possession of necessary things does not make a man comfortable, it is the superfluous which makes him rich, and which makes him feel that ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... would have thought it, there were in this school young pupils, who, in their greed to obtain money, clothes and eatables from Hseh P'an, allowed themselves to be cajoled by him, and played tricks upon; but on this topic, it is likewise superfluous ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... his friend and his groom, and which inferred in its consequences, which of the litter should be drowned, which saved. Besides, the Laird himself delayed our young lover's departure for a considerable time, endeavouring, with long and superfluous rhetoric, to insinuate to Sir Robert Hazlewood, through the medium of his son, his own particular ideas respecting the line of a meditated turnpike road. It is greatly to the shame of our young lover's apprehension, that ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... officer of the Royal Artillery on the active list could be selected. It was a big concession I was asking for, and I knew it. I said no more. I knew my man. Kingston grasped a point quicker than any man I have ever known, except perhaps Kitchener. Both disliked superfluous words. Well, Kingston just smiled and said: "Come and lunch ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... off the superfluous fat from the chops, and place them in a casserole with a medium sized onion, sliced and separated into rings. Cover each layer of chops with the onion rings, then add a pint of boiling water. Cover ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... was a voluminous writer, working off his superfluous energy in setting forth his adventures in new forms. Most of his writings are repetitions and recastings of the old material, with such reflections as occur to him from time to time. He seldom writes a book, or a tract, without beginning it or working into it a resume ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... promptly pounced upon by the wives and children in waiting. It sometimes happens, however, that a favourite child—a boy invariably, never a girl (it is the girls who are eaten by the parents whenever there are any superfluous children to be got rid of)—will approach his father and be fed with choice morsels from ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... carelessly, "no, I did not. I deemed that superfluous, because in the Brandenburg Electoral house women have no right to the succession. The Salic law exists here, does ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... in this popular view of wealth is, that in giving the name of wealth to things which we cannot use, we in reality confuse wealth with money. The land we have no skill to cultivate, the book which is sealed to us, or dress which is superfluous, may indeed be exchangeable, but as such are nothing more than a cumbrous form of bank-note, of doubtful or slow convertibility. As long as we retain possession of them, we merely keep our bank-notes in the shape of gravel or clay, of book-leaves, or of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... all young people of both sexes that worthy marriage and parenthood are the highest destiny for average mortals, and they acted on this precept, many of the problems of the day would be solved, the numbers of superfluous women would be greatly reduced, the social evil would perceptibly diminish, the physique of the race would improve, and the birth-rate would quickly rise. In short, there would be less ironical laughter in heaven, and a great deal more honest happiness and health on earth! I ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... many other poems of Rhineland akin to those mustered above, and enough has been said to indicate their general characteristics; while an ancient Rhine classic of yet a different kind, The Mouse Tower, given elsewhere, is so familiar owing to Southey's English version that it were superfluous to offer any synopsis or criticism of it here. Then a class of poems of which the great river's early literature is naturally replete are those concerned with the growing of the vine and the making of Rhenish, prominent among these being one consecrated ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... think that we in England have quite sufficiently taken all this into consideration. We have been in the habit of exclaiming very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all superfluous and the results unnecessary. But I do not remember to have seen any statement as to what the Northern States should have done—what they should have done, that is, as regards the South, or when they should have done ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... stood the winter which actually ensued; for it was the repeatedly expressed opinion of the Spanish officers in Antwerp, that the icebergs which then filled the Scheldt must inevitably have shattered twenty bridges to fragments, had there been so many. It certainly was superfluous for the Prince to make excuses to Philip for accepting the proposed capitulation. All the prizes of victory had been thoroughly secured, unless pillage, massacre, and rape, which had been the regular accompaniments of Alva's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... delicacy; the wielders of the scissors were aghast at a skill which put their own clumsiness to shame, and which to a previous generation would have seemed the wildest fantasy. Yet so strong is habit, that even when the picking of pockets was a recognised industry, the superfluous scissors still survived, and many a rogue has hanged upon the Tree because he attempted with a vulgar implement such feats as his unaided forks had far more ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... to bursting point; but "out-bush" every man carries a "bluey" and a mosquito net in his swag, and as the hosts slept under the verandah, and the guests on the garden paths, or in their camps among the forest trees, spare rooms would only have been superfluous. With a billabong at the door, a bathroom was easily dispensed with; and as every one preferred the roomy verandahs for lounging and smoking, the House had only to act as a dressing-room for the hosts ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... fixing his eyes exclusively on the person within the summer-house, the preacher began to direct a good proportion of his discourse upon his new auditor, turning from one listener to the other attentively, without seeming to feel Somerset's presence as superfluous. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... reader may consider a lecture of this nature superfluous to an emancipated people, but the adherence to injurious monoplies, in spite of independence, was one of the most marked features of the South American Republics, and one which I never lost an opportunity ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... not a champion! You're too fat, Jumbo, and that's the fact. You're all right when it's a question of brute strength, but when agility matters, those superfluous pounds of flesh of yours are an impediment. I'd back Joyce sooner than you; she's as light as ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... and compared them to fertilizing Nile,—whose powers, indeed, they share, to some extent. By their sides ought to be planted willows and poplars, and alders of half a dozen kinds, but are not yet. All in good time. Thirsty trees would drink up superfluous moisture, and in return save fuel by keeping off sweeping winds, and money by diverting heavy snows, those Russian enemies to the Napoleon rail, and by preserving embankments, to which nothing but interlacing roots can give stability. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... who went abroad at this time, intending to live a long while on the continent, being, as he often said, quite superfluous in Russia, visits his sick friend ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a dangerous thing to keep so much valuable treasure on board his vessel which might at any time be overhauled by the authorities, and he therefore landed at Gardiner's Island on the Long Island coast, and obtained permission from the proprietor to bury some of his superfluous stores upon his estate. This was a straightforward transaction. Mr. Gardiner knew all about the burial of the treasure, and when it was afterwards proved that Kidd was really a pirate the hidden booty was all ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... man or woman is in bitterness for nothing: for the things of life, or for sustenance, or for a vain word, if any should chance to fall in; or by reason of any friend, or for a debt, or for any other superfluous things of the ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... surfaces which form the hull of a boat or vessel, smooth and flowing as they are, and controlled, too, by established and well-known laws, bid defiance to all the attempts of mere mechanical motion to follow them. The superfluous iron, therefore, of these dies, must all be cut away by chisels driven by a hammer held in the hand; and so great is the labor required to fit and smooth and polish them, that a pair of them costs several thousand dollars before they are completed and ready ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... judgment of things of which we are ignorant, than in the investigation of the unknown; and although this science contains indeed a number of correct and very excellent precepts, there are, nevertheless, so many others, and these either injurious or superfluous, mingled with the former, that it is almost quite as difficult to effect a severance of the true from the false as it is to extract a Diana or a Minerva from a rough block of marble. Then as to the analysis of the ancients and the algebra of the moderns, besides that they embrace ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... behind them moved more audibly. The thing was done; the priest's words of exhortation were largely superfluous. All else that concerned married life these two would have to find out for themselves. The thing was done, as ordained by the church, according to the rules of society. Now it was for Man and Wife to make of it what ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... painted things, That now in coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings, Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet? Where I to thee eternity shall give, When nothing else remaineth of these days, And queens hereafter shall be glad to live Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise; Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes, Shall be so much delighted with thy story, That they shall grieve they lived not in these times, To have seen thee, their sex's only glory: So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng, Still to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... teachers may not be considered superfluous. In the first place, I have found historical anecdotes an excellent aid in teaching English. Pupils find it far from irksome to relate the stories in their own words, and to reproduce them in compositions. Secondly, whenever a city or country is mentioned, ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... making their way on all fours along it, they reached the scow in time to assist the doctor and Harry Lauder to bring it to the side of the boat. Meanwhile Lawyer Ed stood up on the deck and roared out superfluous orders in a broad Scottish ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... so plainly and its advantages are developed by him with such remarkable clearness that any effort on my part to present argument in its support would be superfluous. I shall therefore content myself with an unqualified indorsement of the Secretary's proposed changes in the law and a brief and imperfect statement of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... appeared. My eyes at once took in the dark blue trousers worn by the otherwise conventionally dressed stranger. That was enough. The situation became so clear that the explanations which followed were superfluous. In a word, I was under arrest, or in imminent danger of being arrested. To say that I was not in the least disconcerted would scarcely be true, for I had not divined my brother's clever purpose in luring me to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... learned that the Americans had retired further, to the Chippewa. The motive for this backward step was to draw necessary supplies across the river, from the magazines at Fort Schlosser, and to leave there all superfluous baggage, prior to a rush upon Burlington Heights, which Brown had now substituted as the point of attack, in consequence of his disappointment about the siege guns.[317] It had been his intention to rest over the 25th, in order to start forward fresh on the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the colour you want, and whose fibres are of the length suitable for the size of the fly you wish to dress. Strip off all superfluous fibres, leaving on the stem of the feather no more than you require for your fly, then having previously waxed about half a yard of fine silk of whatever colour you deem best, take your gut or hair and ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... too, and said, "Now I know why my clothes were so heavy, and felt so intolerably hot at noon. While I get rid of my superfluous clothing, will you go and ask the high-priest if I have leave to quit ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... can certainly manage something between you. Matt will be almost as glad of your coming as my going. I thought we were coming up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely superfluous." ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... of living will seem, and with good reason, to be anything but secure to economists who have any experience of Paris, it will not be superfluous to give a glance to the foundation, uncertain as it was, upon which the prosperity ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... but loans.[***] Had any doubt remained, whether forced loans, however authorized by precedent, and even by statute, were a violation of liberty, and must, by necessary consequence, render all parliaments superfluous, this was the proper expedient for opening the eyes of the whole nation. The example of Henry VIII., who had once, in his arbitrary reign, practiced a like method of levying a regular supply, was generally ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... light-headed, they had quite missed their path in the Wilderness, their stores were already running low. With the further horrors it is superfluous that I should swell this narrative, already too prolonged. Suffice it to say that when at length a night passed by innocuous, and they might breathe again in the hope that the murderer had at last desisted from pursuit, Mountain and Secundra were alone. The trader is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... separate German tribe and nation has kept its peculiarity within the range of the general membership, one with another. The whole constitutes an orchestra of manifold instruments, each with its own timbre, and yet all in tune and harmony, and no one superfluous. The detection of the individual instruments is possible, if we attentively analyze. The present centrifugal tendency of German literature has strongly developed such a sense for the detection of differences. Recently the attempt has been made to group the entire history ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... faith, not so much to its labour-saving devices as to the white spot outside, the white spot of an otherwise aimless life. This tells the world that it is one of THE pipes. Never was an announcement more superfluous. From the moment, shortly after breakfast, when he strikes his first match to the moment, just before bed-time, when he strikes his hundredth, it is obviously THE pipe which ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... how the changes which take place when an organism develops from an egg demonstrate the actuality of true organic transformation without the necessity of concluding or inferring that this process might occur. It is not superfluous to insist again that the essential fact in evolution is the alteration of one organic characteristic into another type; must we not recognize at the very outset that mental transformation is as real ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... this), that this is expedient. Accordingly, the force there should be reduced to only two posts, doing away with the expense of rations for the others—although, in his opinion, all that is being done is superfluous. After considering the said clause of the letter, you will inform me of what occurs to you in this matter, and what is advisable to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... destruction." It would be so. When the author talks therefore of savings on the navy estimate, it is incumbent on him to let us know, not what sums he will cut off, but what branch of that service he deems superfluous. Instead of putting us off with unmeaning generalities, he ought to have stated what naval force, what naval works, and what naval stores, with the lowest estimated expense, are necessary to keep our marine in a condition commensurate to its great ends. And this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... married to her rich old lord, and queen of bals-pares. Thus we may console ourselves with the hope that life has vulgarised her, and that as a girl she was far less objectionable than she now represents herself to have been. We have only to imagine Evelyn Hope putting up a superfluous blind that she might be safe in her corset-lacing, to sweep the gamut of Kate Brown's commonness. . . . Let us remove her from a list which now offers us a figure more definitely and dramatically posed than any of those whom ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the title of "Empress of India" was conferred on the Queen by act of Parliament. Some English people opposed it as superfluous, a sort of anti-climax of dignity, as "gilding the refined gold" of English Sovereignty with baser metal, as "painting the lily" of the noblest of English royal titles with India-ink; but it did no harm. It did not hurt the Radicals and it ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... neutrality of the canal itself. My lamented predecessor felt it his duty to place before the European powers the reasons which make the prior guaranty of the United States indispensable, and for which the interjection of any foreign guaranty might be regarded as a superfluous and unfriendly act. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... succs, m., success, result. suffire, to suffice, be enough. suffrage, m., claim to preference. suite, f., escort; de la — de, in attendance upon, in waiting upon. suivre, to follow, attend. sujet, m., subject, cause. superbe, haughty, magnificent. superflu, superfluous, idle. supplice, m., punishment, penalty. suprme, supreme. sur, on, upon, over. surprendre, to take by surprise, unawares. surtout, above all, especially. Suse, Susa, (in the Bible: Shushan the palace). suspendre, to keep ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... from above which called the superfluous question; he turned from the contemplation of the young lady in brown, who had now reached the bottom stair, to that of the young lady in brown who stood at the top. Towards the latter he mounted with a lingering step, as ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... superfluous when he could confirm Caldwell's statement in half a minute for himself. ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... the little town of Sur, the goal of this day's journey, as it was closed on account of the plague. We therefore passed by, and pitched our tents beside a village, in the neighbourhood of which large and splendid cisterns of water, hewn in the rock, are to be seen. The superfluous water from these cisterns falls from a height of twenty or thirty feet, and after turning a mill-wheel, flows through the vale in the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... duty to provide ourselves with these means of defence, though we had some reason to believe that the generosity of our enemies had, in a great measure, rendered them superfluous. We were informed at Canton, that the public prints, which had arrived last from England, made mention of instructions having been found on board all the French ships of war, captured in Europe, directing their commanders, in case of falling in with the ships that sailed under the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... scatters bright rays in every direction. That humour is generally associated with enjoyment might be concluded from the fact that the genial and good-natured are generally the most mirthful, and we all have so much personal experience of the gratification it affords, that it seems superfluous to adduce any proofs upon the subject. "Glad" is from the Greek word for laughter, and the word "jocund" comes from a Latin term signifying "pleasant." But we can trace the results of this connection ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... special points of infirmity in this old ruinous building. For the present, and until it should certainly appear that there was some use to be derived from this species of knowledge, I forbore to raise superfluous suspicions by availing myself further of his communicative disposition. Taking, however, the precaution of securing his name, together with his particular office and designation in the prison, I parted from him as if to go home, but in fact to resume my sad roamings ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... live in these days, when press and telegraph may be said to have almost rendered the tongue a superfluous member, quite fail to appreciate the rapidity with which intelligence was formerly transmitted from mouth to mouth. Virgil's description of hundred tongued Rumor appeared by no means so poetical an exaggeration ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... in the character of charioteer (since this is not intended to be a novel of adventure) it would be superfluous to dwell at length. Pitman, as he sat holding on and gasping counsels, sole witness of this singular feat, knew not whether most to admire the driver's valour or his undeserved good fortune. But the latter at least prevailed, the cart reached Cannon Street without ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... percussion. Solo and choral singing were to be taught with special regard to dramatic expression. Besides these and the theoretical branches of music, the curriculum included dancing, Polish literature, French, and Italian. After reading the programme it is superfluous to be informed that the institution was chiefly intended for the training of dramatic artists. Elsner, who was appointed director, selected the teaching staff, with one exception, however, that of the first singing-master, for which ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and, as at times strong blasts of hot air broke out, they reinforced the zareba with pickets which the young negro whittled with Gebhr's sword and stuck in the ground. This precaution was not at all superfluous, as a powerful whirlwind could scatter the thorny boughs with which the zareba was constructed and facilitate an attack ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... fast as pen could go, thwartwise on the paper, because he could not stop to set it straight? Dare I pen, even for my own eyes, the venerable truth that an artist is born and not made? It seems not superfluous, in times which have heard disdainful criticism of Scott, on the ground that he had no artistic conscience, that he scribbled without a thought of style, that he never elaborated his scheme before beginning—as Flaubert, of course you know, invariably did. Why, after all, has one ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... make what is on the face of it an absurd demand. It is to ask that the scientific processes of the nineteenth century should have been anticipated in the first, that men should be miraculously guided to supply a kind of evidence which would be utterly superfluous at the time in order to be convincing eighteen hundred years afterwards. This would indeed have put the miraculous incidents in the New Testament narrative altogether out of place, and made the miracles more important than the Revelation which they ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... selection must render any attempt to select mere ornament utterly nugatory, unless the most ornamented always coincide with "the fittest" in every other respect; while, if they do so coincide, then any selection of ornament is altogether superfluous. If the most brightly coloured and fullest plumaged males are not the most healthy and vigorous, have not the best instincts for the proper construction and concealment of the nest, and for the care and protection of the young, they are certainly not the fittest, and will not survive, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... always have the misfortune to arrive too late," said Count Ostermann, "pain and suffering are such hinderances, your grace. And, moreover, I have only come in obedience to the wishes of your highness, well knowing that I am superfluous here. What has the feeble old man to do in the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... spread my mat wherever my uplifted voice can entice together a company to listen. Should my feeble efforts be deemed worthy of reward, those who stand around may perchance contribute to my scanty store, but sometimes this is judged superfluous. For this cause I now turn my expectant feet from Loo-chow towards the untried city of Yu-ping, but the undiminished li stretching relentlessly before me, I sought beneath these trees a ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... came into the Transvaal, for I have seen, in the course of my duties, that a Kafir's life nowadays was not worth a ——, and I believe that no man regretted the change of flags now more than the Kafirs of Transvaal." This information was superfluous, for personal contact with the Natives of Transvaal had convinced us of the fact. They say it is only the criminal who has any reason to rejoice over the presence of the Union Jack, because in his case the cat-o'-nine-tails, except for very ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... are seen by men to reach farther down into the nature of things. Gradually in language they arrange themselves into a sort of imperfect system; groups of personal and case endings are placed side by side. The fertility of language produces many more than are wanted; and the superfluous ones are utilized by the assignment to them of new meanings. The vacuity and the superfluity are thus partially compensated by each other. It must be remembered that in all the languages which have a literature, certainly in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, we are not at the beginning but almost ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... repaid him with such a point-blank beam of glorious tenderness and gratitude as made him thrill with passion as well as triumph. He felt her whole heart was his, and from that hour his poverty would never be allowed to weigh with her. He cleared up, and left off acting, because it was superfluous; he had now only to bask in sunshine. Zoe, always tender, but coy till this moment, made love to him like a young goddess. Even Fanny yielded to the solid proof of sincerity he had given, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... hearth-rug, and lifted her up gently. He had no intention of telling her of Barnby's mistake, or of uttering words of comfort. In the thousand and one recollections that surged through his brain touching his boy, words seemed superfluous. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... history of the ancient world. It is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to ascertain, so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco-Italian nation when the Hellenes and the Italians parted. Nor is this a superfluous labour; we reach by means of it the stage at which Italian civilization commenced, the starting-point of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... ears in thy feet," whereupon he obtained double the favour he had asked. Castruccio used to say that the way to hell was an easy one, seeing that it was in a downward direction and you travelled blindfolded. Being asked a favour by one who used many superfluous words, he said to him: "When you have another request to make, send someone else to make it." Having been wearied by a similar man with a long oration who wound up by saying: "Perhaps I have fatigued you by speaking so long," Castruccio said: ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... are economically absolutely useless. Budua, higher up the Dalmatian coast, which would have been of some use, was handed over to Austria, to which country, already possessed of Cattaro and all the rest of Dalmatia, it was quite superfluous. Greatest tragedy of all for the future of the Serb race, the administration of Bosnia and Hercegovina was handed over 'temporarily' to Austria-Hungary, and Austrian garrisons were quartered throughout those ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... was looking; and had assumed the panoply of the fashionable dragoman. His slim but manly figure well became a tight and many-buttoned vest of murrey velvet, a zouave jacket of blue silky cloth, and baggy trousers of the same material, whose superfluous lengths were tucked away in riding-boots of undressed leather. A scarlet dust-cloak streamed from off his shoulders. The tassel of his fez, worn far back on the head and dinted knowingly fluttered on the breeze; the tassels on his ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... appearance of the Polar bear would be superfluous. Everybody has seen either a living individual in a menagerie, or a stuffed skin of one in a museum; and the long, low, tail-less body—with outstretched neck and sharp projecting snout—covered with a thick coat of white hair, ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... said Uncle Mo. For Dave's torrent of identification was superfluous. "I would have laid a guinea I knew his game," added he to himself. Then to Gwen, inside the house with Dolly on her knee:—"You'll excuse me, miss, my lady, these young customers they do insert theirselves—it's none so easy to find a way round 'em, as I say to M'riar.... M'riar gone out?" For ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of footlight elaboration and gave her a paternal kiss. I did not need to hear her call him father; he was so obviously General Rieppe, the prudent hero of Chattanooga, that words would have been perfectly superfluous in his identification. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... either originally formed of that shape, or posteriorly hewn out by the hand of nature, gradually wasting mountains in the course of time, and operations of the surface. If it is by the first that we are to explain the present state of things, then observation is superfluous, and our reasoning is at an end; for, when even observation should not contradict the proposition, which it actually does, it would be useless, as it can afford no data from a former state, which is supposed to ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... late for the wedding. Still, considering everything, he hardly would have cared to attend anyhow. Either he would have felt embarrassed to be present or else the couple would, or perhaps all three. On such occasions nothing is more superfluous than an extra bridegroom. The wedding in question was the one uniting Melissa Grider and Homer Holmes. It ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... topic say that a man ought always to be able to tell by a woman's demeanor towards him whether she is favorably inclined, and that he need run no risk. Little signs, the eyes alone, draw people together, and make formal language superfluous. This theory is abundantly sustained by examples, and we might rest on it if all women knew their own minds, and if, on the other hand, they could always tell whether a man was serious before he made a definite avowal. There is another notion, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... but that many of these patients are seriously handicapped and others positively killed by unskillful, overzealous, superfluous examinations. A heavy-handed attendant should never be allowed to manipulate swellings in the right iliac fossa, nor in any other suspected region, for fear of destroying nature's defenses, and possibly rupturing an abscess, the ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... we discovered that, we shed our superfluous heads and legs and arms until we had our old shapes again, and no longer ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... premature, Sir Victor, in offering my congratulations?" Charley said, with pleasant cordiality; "if so, the fact of Edith's being my cousin, almost my sister, must excuse it. You are a fortunate man, baronet. It would be superfluous to wish you joy—you have an overplus ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the execution of this law, the exertions of the police and of informers would have been superfluous, as the clergy were compelled to act as their own police and inform on themselves. The act, moreover, seems to have been prepared with a view to another bill, which was soon after passed, for total expulsion. It ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... and spread the blankets out on the wild rose bushes to sun while he cleaned the floor. Billy's way of cleaning the floor was characteristic of the man, and calculated to be effectual in the main without descending to petty details. All superfluous objects that were small enough, he merely pushed as far as possible under the bunk. Boxes and benches he piled on top; then he brought buckets of water and sloshed it upon the worst places, sweeping and spreading it with a broom. When the water grew quite black, he opened the door, ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... protection, and preservation of state. These are not mentioned because they are well known, and their mere enumeration would fill pages. There are many things, to be sure, which are not used by man; but what is superfluous does not do away with the use, but ensures its continuance. Misuse of uses is also possible, but misuse does not do away with use, even as falsification of truth does not do away with truth except with ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... judgment of a flunkey about a lady? My dear, excuse the familiarity from one who may consider himself in a certain sense a contingent uncle—suppose we amend the last clause by the omission of the word not. It strikes me as superfluous. "Provided always the said Harold Ashurst Tillington consents to marry"— I think ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... own class—a lady," which she had never been, poor Bella! but he did wonder just a little how much of real heart beat under the dainty laces that shrouded Lady Ethel's bosom. He had reflected once and not so long ago that that portion of a woman's anatomy was superfluous, but he wavered in his belief now. He could stake his professional honour, his hopes of eternity—of—everything—on the absolute purity of this girl; nothing would ever tempt Lady Ethel to swerve ever ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... subject: "What is the use of religion anyway?" The group of ideas behind the question is not hard to guess: that science gives us all the facts, that facts and their laws are all we need, that the scientific control of life guarantees progress, and that religion therefore is superfluous. But in such a statement one towering interrogation has been neglected: what about the interpretation of the very facts which science does present? Could not one address himself to the question of those students ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... created out of nothing so much new matter, as served to finish the work of the world: or had there been more of this matter than sufficed, then God did dissolve and annihilate whatsoever remained and was superfluous. And this must every reasonable soul confess, that it is the same work of God alone, to create anything out of nothing, and by the same art and power, and by none other, can those things, or any part of that eternal matter, be again changed into nothing; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... guess, or have lost my nerve or—or something." Armstrong smiled,—a crooked smile that failed to extinguish the furrows on his forehead. "By the way, have you got a little superfluous nerve lying about that ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... the Mississippi an important relinquishment of native title has been received from the Delawares. That tribe, desiring to extinguish in their people the spirit of hunting and to convert superfluous lands into the means of improving what they retain, has ceded to us all the country between the Wabash and Ohio south of and including the road from the rapids toward Vincennes, for which they are to receive annuities in animals and implements ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson
... how Ivan Nikiforovitch put on his trousers, how they wound his neckerchief about his neck, and finally dragged on his spencer, which burst under the left sleeve, would be quite superfluous. Suffice it to say, that during the whole of the time he preserved a becoming calmness of demeanour, and answered not a word to Anton Prokofievitch's proposition to exchange something for ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... is the form, above all others, they prefer; handled by an alchemist of genius, it should contain in a state of meat the entire strength of the novel, the long analysis and the superfluous description of which it suppresses...the adjective placed in such an ingenious and definite way, that it could not be legally dispossessed of its place, would open up such perspectives, that the reader would dream for whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... deficient children, victims of adenoids who had been restored to a state of normality by the removal of the affliction. She had no idea what an adenoid was. She had a hazy notion that it was a kind of superfluous bone in the region of the breast, but her anguish was rooted in the fact that this, this was the good and useful book that her Aunt Beulah had found it necessary to resort to for guidance, in the case ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... been said of the different kinds of Tares, perhaps some persons may be inclined to think that it would be superfluous to have more in cultivation than one or two sorts. To this I would beg leave to reply, that they do not all grow exactly in the same situations wild; and if they were cultivated, some one of them might be found to suit in certain lands better than others; and ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... will have cause to repent their rashness. Generals Heath, Spencer, Greene, and Sullivan are promoted by the Honorable Congress to the rank of Major-Generals; and the Colonels Reed, Nixon, Parsons, Clinton, Sinclair, and McDougall to be Brigadier-Generals. We have removed all our superfluous clothing, and whatever is not necessary for present use, to Rye, whither General Putnam's lady has retired. Miss Putnam is yet in town, and the chaise is in readiness for her and Polly to remove at a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Czars, and, if Fate had so willed it, would have revelled in similar pursuits of vice, oppression, and torture. As Fate had ironically made a police official of him, he had to content himself with letting off the superfluous steam of his tremendous temperament by oppressing the criminal classes, and he had performed that duty so thoroughly that before he became the travelling companion of kings his name had been a terror to the underworld of London, who feared and detested his ferocity, his unscrupulous methods of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... to break out in a chorus above him, he found his arms about her, and was vaguely conscious that his lips were smothering some words her lips were trying to shape. Words seemed to him just then so superfluous. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... terrier, yapping furiously, and expending his superfluous energy by snapping right ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... been complaints concerning the service, and Sherman appointed commissions, with the approval of the President, to investigate conditions in New York and elsewhere. The commission which studied the situation in New York reported that one-fifth of the persons employed there were superfluous, that inefficiency and neglect of duty were common, and that the positions at the disposal of the collector had for years been used for the reward of party activity. The commission recommended sweeping changes which Secretary Sherman and President Hayes approved. It then appeared ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... help me!—run hither—hither!—A murder—a murder before your very fane! Help, or the murderer escapes!' As he spoke, he placed his foot on the breast of Glaucus: an idle and superfluous precaution; for the potion operating with the fall, the Greek lay there motionless and insensible, save that now and then his lips gave vent to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... was this "mal de terre" or scurvy amongst the French settlers may be seen from this description of Champlain: "There were produced in the mouths of those who had it great pieces of superfluous and drivelling flesh, which got the upper hand to such an extent that scarcely anything but liquid could be taken. Their teeth became very loose and could be pulled out with the fingers without its causing them pain.... Afterwards a violent pain seized ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... translated sixteen years ago; some four or five years before any part of the present HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH got to paper. The intercalated bits of Commentary were, as is evident, all or mostly written at the same time:—these also, though they are now become, in parts, SUPERFLUOUS to a reader that has been diligent, I have not thought of changing, where not compelled. Here and there, especially in the Introductory Part, some slight additions have crept in;—which the above kind of reader will possibly enough detect; and may even have, for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... but to which I do not intend, on this occasion, to offer any answer. I will, however, just observe, that I apprehend what is generally meant by dissevering the union of the church and state is, that there should be no established religion. To that proposition, I trust it is superfluous for me to say that I am a most decided opponent. It is, however, a subject which I cannot now pretend to discuss. It is my opinion, that to leave religion to rest upon the voluntary efforts of the people, ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... prowess did much to efface the fame of the much younger and slighter Alexis White, and, so far as might be, Angela enjoyed the games with him, keeping well within bounds, but always feeling activity a wholesome outlet for her superfluous strength, and, above all, delighting in an interval of being a child again with her Bear of old times; and her superabundant life, energy, and fun amazed all, especially by the contrast with her poor little languid charge, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... will accept him with the whole hundred servants. But Regan says she will receive him only with twenty-five and then Lear makes up his mind to go back to Goneril who admits fifty. But when Goneril says that even twenty-five are too many, Lear pours forth a long argument about the superfluous and the needful being relative and says that if man is not allowed more than he needs, he is not to be distinguished from a beast. Lear, or rather the actor who plays Lear's part, adds that there is no need for ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... him a quaint courtesy such as the good nuns of Orleans taught their pupils thirty years before, she also extended her hand, which he kissed—an addition to fine manners the nuns had omitted—probably they knew how superfluous such training would be, all Southern girls being possessed of that ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... for talents, in different countries and at different times, have countenanced the stage and even written for it; nay, that some of that description have themselves been actors, further argument may well be thought superfluous: yet we will not rest the matter there, but taking those along with us as authorities, go on and probe the error to which we allude, even to the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... for the married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that Susy's subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then it never occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding on which their marriage had been based not a trace remained in his thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounce each other for their ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... 'cello bow 72 to 73 centimetres (28.347 to 28.740). Many people imagine that the plates of silver or gold with which the nut of a bow is inlaid are nothing more than mere ornamentation. But their first purpose is distinctly one of utility, which is as it should be in a work of art; superfluous decoration has no beauty for an artist. It is by means of these metal "loadings" at the heel that the weight of the head is counteracted and the exact point of equilibrium determined. The centre of gravity in a violin ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... by the denial of matter that I lost the superfluous flesh, for since I was too fleshy to be of symmetrical ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the Declaration, that "all men are born free," had no application to negroes, because at that time they were generally regarded "as so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The case being thus thrown out of court, all further discussion of its merits was superfluous—a mere obiter dictum, without legal force. Nevertheless, the court through its chief-justice went on to pronounce upon the plaintiff's claim and declare it baseless; on the ground that inasmuch as a slave was lawful property, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... if men are not likely to be influenced in the performance of a known duty by taking an oath to perform it, the oaths commonly administered are superfluous; if they are likely to be so influenced, every one should be made to take an oath to behave rightly throughout his life; but one or the other of these must be the case; therefore, either the oaths commonly administered are superfluous, or every man should be made to take an oath to behave ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the rate was one thing, to collect it quite another. Some of the poorer ratepayers protested with tears in their eyes that they could not pay. Superfluous rates (really not necessary ones) were perpetually being inflicted upon them, they urged, and were bringing them, together with a succession of recent bad seasons, to the verge of ruin. They carried ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... take this purse, thou whom the heavens' plagues Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched Makes thee the happier: heavens, deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... spring of temperate human liberty—must look with affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth. These volumes recite the achievement of Dutch independence, for its recognition was delayed till the acknowledgment was superfluous and ridiculous. The existence of the Republic is properly to be dated from the Union of Utrecht in 1581, while the final separation of territory into independent and obedient provinces, into the Commonwealth of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... more human sort of poachers about." Personally we have always felt that the section of the Defence of the Realm Act which forbids one to go chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, when the Zeppelins are approaching is superfluous as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... it is almost superfluous to assert of him that intellectual height so generally admitted there is more occasion for drawing attention to a moral elevation that is less recognized partly because his activities in many directions afforded no occasion for exhibiting ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... course, mackerel and other fish are caught, often in considerable quantity, but the distinctive Cornish fish is the pilchard, and the pilchard has had most to do with the prosperity of Cornish fishing-ports. Unless cooked by the initiated, however, who get rid of the superfluous oil, the fresh pilchard is a very bilious article of diet, and ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... feigned to acknowledge the truth of the ideas which they were assailing. They pretended that their speculations did not affect religion; they could separate the domains of reason and of faith; they could show that Revelation was superfluous without questioning it; they could do homage to orthodoxy and lay down views with which orthodoxy was irreconcilable. The errors which they exposed in the sphere of reason were ironically allowed to be truths in the sphere of theology. The mediaeval principle of double ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... disgust at a secret attempt to stab has impelled me to say what I know on the subject. But I really think that not only those who knew her as she lived In the flesh, but the tens of thousands who know her as she lives in her written words, cannot but feel my vindication superfluous. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... with no prospect of improving our condition; for, however much we might exercise our industry, its products could not enrich us beyond the satisfying of our own wants. We should have no market, thought I, for any superfluous produce, even could we cultivate the whole valley. We could, therefore, become no richer, and would never be in any fitter state to return to civilised society—for, in spite of all, a thought of this still remained in ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid |
