"Weighty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distinction. He was, through life, a celebrated 'cutter,' and Brummell's cut was as much admired—by all but the cuttee—as Brummel's coat. Then he had some L25,000 as capital and how could he best invest it? He consulted no stockbroker on this weighty point; he did not even buy a shilling book of advice such as we have seen advertised for those who do not know what to do with their money. The question was answered in a moment by the young worldling of sixteen: he would enter a crack regiment ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... where to find a buyer for my machine," he said, "so I'll just get on his trail. To-morrow I'll start getting my camera outfit together. Andy, I'll turn this end of the expedition over to you; that idea of getting food supplies here is all right, within certain limits. Don't buy any cheap, weighty stuff here, because the freight will eat up all you save. But I'll leave that to you folks; I guess you've ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... "Go, fix some weighty truth; Chain down some passion; do some generous good; Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile; Correct thy friend; befriend thy greatest foe; Or, with warm heart, and confidence divine, Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Church of Ireland? It is not necessary on this occasion to decide whether the arguments in favour of the ecclesiastical establishments, or the arguments in favour of the voluntary system, be the stronger. There are weighty considerations on both sides. Balancing them as well as I can, I think that, as respects England, the preponderance is on the side of the Establishment. But, as respects Ireland, there is no balancing. All the weights are in one scale. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said Norman, blandly, slightly moving as if to arrest Hamilton's progress towards the door, "you entirely misunderstand me. Master Mortimer and I now understand each other better. Indeed, I am laid under a weighty obligation to Master Louis for my acquaintance with your royal self and various members of your court; and could not possibly have any intention of quarrelling with so kind a benefactor. As for you, I have made up my mind to know and like you. Shake ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... shall count upon your friendly countenance and encouragement. I shall not be inaccessible. The cables and the wireless will render me available for any counsel or service you may desire of me, and I shall be happy in the thought that I am constantly in touch with the weighty matters of domestic policy with which we shall have to deal. I shall make my absence as brief as possible and shall hope to return with the happy assurance that it has been possible to translate into action the great ideals ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... all your kindness, it behoves: There's none so small but you his aid may need. I quote two fables for this weighty creed, Which either of them fully proves. From underneath the sward A rat, quite off his guard, Popp'd out between a lion's paws. The beast of royal bearing Show'd what a lion was The creature's life by sparing— ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... our Poetry, and I think the greatest it is liable to, is, that we study Form, and neglect Matter. We are often very flowing, and under a full Sail of Words, while we leave our Sense fast aground, as too weighty to float on Frothiness; We run on, upon false Scents, like a Spaniel, that starts away at Random after a Stone, which is kept back in the Hand, though It seem'd to fly before him. To speak with Freedom on this Subject, is a Task of ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... plane to S. Through S draw a plane at right angles to MS. This meets the given plane in a line m which may be taken as corresponding to the point M. Another very important method of setting up a one-to-one correspondence between lines and points in a plane will be given later, and many weighty consequences will be ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... blame the relief which was then given by Parliament to the land. It was grounded on very weighty reasons. The administration contended only for its continuance for a year, in order to have the merit of taking off the shilling in the pound immediately before the elections; and thus to bribe the freeholders of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... know, no doubt the latter with a word would have explained the whole mystery to her. Then it seemed to her as if the mere fact of speaking to someone of her trouble would have cured her. But the secret had become too weighty; to reveal it would be more than she could bear, for the shame would be too great. She became quite artful for the moment, affected an air of calmness, when in the depths of her soul a tempest was raging. If asked why she was so ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... we do with ourselves. If any amount of endeavour could induce you to join us there—Cartwright, Russell, the Vatican and all—and if such a step were not inconsistent with your true interests—you should have it: but I know very well that you love Italy too much not to have had weighty reasons for renouncing her at present—and I want your own good and not my own contentment in the matter. Wherever you are, be sure I shall follow your proceedings with deep and true interest. I heard of your successes—and am now anxious to know how you get on with the great picture, the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Arden indulgently. "Not for worlds would I hinder your weighty affairs, dear old thing, but I sleep more sound o' nights when I know my trinkets are locked up ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace with their hats on; and, if his own narrative may be trusted, the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to answer this argument except by crying out, "Take him away, gaoler." [28] Fox insisted much on the not less weighty argument that the Turks never show their bare heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great animation, whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to surpass Turks in virtue. [29] Bowing he strictly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reconciling them; that is level to the meanest apprehension, I judge. No sir: it can't be done till I have seen Jim, and got things in train. Properly handled, the secret—that is, my possession of it, which is a second secret, almost as weighty as the original one—may be a tool to manage both these intractable subjects with, and bring them to terms: in a fool's hands, and thrown about promiscuously, it would be an infernal machine to blow us up. No: I'll take whatever guilt there ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... Over there sits Favorinus, the sophist; I dare say he is proving to Ptolemaeus that the stars are mere specks of blood in our eyes, which we choose to believe are in the sky. Florus, the historian, is taking note of this weighty discussion; Pancrates, the poet, is celebrating the great thoughts of the philosopher. As to what part the philologist there can find to take in this important event you know better than I. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... then, there is and can be no title more appropriate than "Smalcald Articles." Tschackert remarks: "Almost all [all, with the exception of the suspected theologians] subscribed and thereby they became weighty and important for the Evangelical churches of Germany; and hence it certainly is not inappropriate to call them 'Smalcald Articles,' even though they were written at Wittenberg and were not publicly deliberated upon ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... done in Fosters' shop, and later hours were kept than usual. Some perplexity or other was occupying John and Jeremiah Foster; their minds were not so much on the alert as usual, being engaged on some weighty matter of which they had as yet spoken to no one. But it thus happened that they did not give the prompt assistance they were accustomed to render at such times; and Coulson had been away on some of the new expeditions ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... adds that the evidence which was weighty enough to turn such men as Black and others from the phlogiston idea ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... occasion; we pant to be free; we in-breathe the spirit of liberty, as we don our blouses. We loop our long tresses under such head-coverings as would drive any artist hatter to despair; to us they prove a weighty argument against hats in general, as we feel their heavy rims press on our tender brain-roofs. However, when the saucy eyes of Mon Amie look out sparkling from under her begrimed helmet, the effect is not bad; on the contrary, the masquerade ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... make the same mistake whenever the chance of a holiday broadens and brightens. A small library, reduced by a process of natural selection, helps to make weighty the bag. But I do not at once close the bag; a doubt keeps it open; I take out the books again and consider them. When the problem of carrying those volumes about faces me, it is a relief to discover how many of them lose their vital importance. Yet a depraved sense of duty, perhaps the residue ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... clear to ourselves what we are to investigate and why. It is the people, and the object is that they may be happy. Whatever may be one's view of life, every one will agree that there is nothing more important than human life, and that there is no more weighty task than to remove the obstacles to the development of this life, and to ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... few days that intervened before Dick's birthday, little else was talked of anywhere than Mr. Hardcastle's party, which was never spoken of, by the way, as Mrs. Hardcastle's party, though upon that good lady devolved the onus of the weighty preparations. It seemed purely Mr. Hardcastle's affair, just as every thing did in which he was in any way concerned. Impromptu meetings were held at every house in turn to discuss the coming event, and the latest bits of information ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... with the structure of the various subjects which are put before him, to travel easily over the steps of the more important deductions. In this way a good tone of mind is cultivated, and selective attention is taught to dwell by preference upon what is weighty and essential. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... a synod was held at Whitby to give the advocates of either system an opportunity of stating their views. St. Wilfrid, the great upholder of Roman customs, brought such weighty arguments for his side that the majority of those present were persuaded to accept the Roman computation. {27} St. Colman, however, since the Holy See had not definitely settled the matter, could not bring himself to give up the traditional computation ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... spiritual teacher, John Robinson, besides his more general exhortations to brotherly kindness and charity, had spoken, in the spirit of prophecy, some promises and assurances which came now to a divine fulfillment. Pondering "sundry weighty and solid reasons" in favor of removal from Holland, the pilgrims put on record that "their pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached against them would practice as they did if ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of the Dean and Chapter of Wrychester was housed in an ancient picturesque building in one corner of the Close, wherein, day in and day out, amidst priceless volumes and manuscripts, huge folios and weighty quartos, old prints, and relics of the mediaeval ages, Ambrose Campany, the librarian, was pretty nearly always to be found, ready to show his treasures to the visitors and tourists who came from all parts of the world to see a collection well known to bibliophiles. And ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... I raided the archives of the Personnel Department at Headquarters, my "towney" Captain Brown of Grand Haven, Michigan, helping me, and studied all Orders and Bulletins bearing on the subject, "how to identify, register and bury the dead." The responsibility was indeed weighty and the work vast—to organize, equip and drill burial details; to bury our own dead, all enemy dead and horses; to assemble personal effects and identification tags found on the persons of the deceased; to bathe, clothe and prepare ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... signs, and they attached this to both man and horse. Their companies were usually composed of only fifty men each, twenty of whom, clothed in strong cuirasses, and armed with swords and short pikes, were placed in the front, and behind those came the remaining thirty in less weighty armor, and with bows and arrows or javelins for weapons. When they encountered an enemy, two men from each company advanced as scouts, and then arranging their troops so as to attack from four sides, they approached the foe at a gentle trot ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... on this," he said, as he returned in search of still more. "She can't do better"—he lifted up the weighty tome of Maspero's Dawn ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... of so many swords, That I can check thee when thou wouldst pass; But a little lever, if us’d but clever, Can overturn a weighty mass.” ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... neatly-trimmed beard of Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen. After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not ridiculous-looking: a friendly critic might have called his heaviness weighty, and he was at his best in the attitude of vacant passivity which brings out the oddities of the restless. She fancied he was the kind of man whose sentimental associations would be stirred by the conventional imagery of a wedding, and she ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... whose general tastelessness was heavily banked up by a multitude of towers, gables and high copings, suggested an old-fashioned residential city of the days of urban fortifications. The uniform arrays of buildings, all pretending to the effect of sumptuousness thickened by weighty proportions and blasphemed by rococo hesitations and doubts, seemed constructed to exalt the doughty glory of Augustus the Strong—Dresden's local Thor, its chief heroic figure in the favorite Teuton galaxy of muscled ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... through a hole in my waist pocket and on to the floor and out of sight. In the end it takes a broom handle poked about diligently under the bottom shelf of our table to make a recovery. Before the key appear chocolates of many shapes and sizes, long reposing in oblivion under the weighty table. The thrifty Spanish woman behind me gathers up all the unsquashed ones and packs them. "Mus' be lots of chocolates under these 'ere tables, eh?" she notes wisely and with knit brows. As if to say that, were she boss, she'd poke with ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... at Rome belonged to the people, yet they seldom enacted anything without the authority of the Senate. In all weighty matters, the method usually observed was that the Senate should first deliberate and decree, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... would not impeach the liberty of their persons, provided they did not permit themselves to imagine that any neglect of duty would be allowed to pass unpunished under shelter of this privilege; and she engaged not to deny them access to her person on weighty affairs, and at convenient seasons, when she should have leisure from other important business ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Lear good; and was unmannerly only because Lear was mad. He had been a most faithful counsellor in times past to the king, and he besought him now, that he would see with his eyes (as he had done in many weighty matters), and go by his advice still; and in his best consideration recall this hideous rashness: for he would answer with his life his judgment, that Lear's youngest daughter did not love him least, nor were those empty-hearted ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his force of ninety Iroquois and over a hundred Frenchmen fell upon Schenectady, killed sixty, and captured eighty or ninety more. Only a corporal's guard escaped to Albany with the sad news. This attack had weighty influence, as occasioning the first American congress. Seven delegates from various colonies assembled at New York on May 1, 1690, to devise ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... you have acknowledged so much, my blessed mother, I am going to sit down by you, and seriously to give you my well weighed opinions upon this most weighty matter." So Catherine drew a low stool, and sat too down by her mother's knee, and threw her arm over her lap, and looked up in her face and began ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... thoroughly canvassed, however, the attitude of the principal having weighty influence and governing the preponderance of opinion; and by the time the supper bell rang almost every student in the house had learned the whole story and decided that, for the present at least, she would give the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... effects of guilt with regard to private fortune for the scandal it brings them into in public reputation. After the business had ended in India, the causes why he should have given the explanation grew stronger and stronger: for not only the charges exhibited against him were weighty, but the manner in which he was called upon to inquire into them was such as would undoubtedly tend to stir the mind of a man of character, to rouse him to some consideration of himself, and to a sense ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of Webster were not only weighty in matter, but were wonderful for their style,—so clear, so simple, so direct, that everybody could understand him. He rarely attempted to express more than one thought in a single sentence; so that his sentences never wearied an audience, being always logical and precise, not involved ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the Cleve Journey to-morrow. Let us accompany Dickens. Readers may remember, George II. has been at Hanover for some weeks past; Bielfeld diligently grinning euphemisms and courtly graciosities to him; Truchsess hinting, on opportunity, that there are perhaps weighty businesses in the rear; which, however, on the Britannic side, seem loath to start. Britannic Majesty is much at a loss about his Spanish War, so dangerous for kindling France and the whole world upon him. In regard to which Prussia might be so important, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... case, and indeed there is no necessary connexion or ratio between the quantity of heat liberated in any form of chemical reaction—of which ordinary combustion is the commonest type—and the temperature attained by the substances concerned. This matter has so weighty a bearing upon acetylene generation, and appears to be so frequently misunderstood, that a couple of illustrations may with advantage be studied. If a vessel full of cold water, and containing also a thermometer, is ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... to inquire who is the person for whom you and others are engaged, or whether there be more candidates from that side, than one. You tell me nothing of either, and I never thought it worth the question to anybody else. But, in so weighty an affair, and against your judgment, I cannot look upon you as irrevocably determined. Therefore I desire you will give me leave to reason with you a little upon the subject, lest your compliance, or inadvertency, should put you upon what you may have cause ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... this long letter, which must have bored you very much, by comprising all the single points I have mentioned to you in a final and weighty bundle of prayers. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the most unlikely boy in all Willoughby to keep a diary. He was not usually credited with overmuch intelligence, and certainly not with much sentiment, and the few remarks he did occasionally offer on things in general were never very weighty. He was a good-tempered, noisy, able-bodied fag, who was at any one's service, and who in all his exploits did about as much work for as little glory as any boy in ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... at first thou wert allow'd to crown The 'honorable' head of some grave senator; Or judge astute; or member of 'the other House;' pregnant perforce with weighty matters; 'Petitions' humbly praying to abolish Slavery and 'hard times.' 'Bills' to promote The better culture of morality And morus multicaulis! Mayhap a brief And formal letter to a brother member, In courteous phrase requesting ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... and instantly roused every one on board to the horrors of shipwreck on an inhospitable coast, where they might linger for years without succour. However, the captain and his officers and crew were equal to the emergency, and by throwing everything weighty overboard that could be spared, the ship floated, but was making water rapidly. Had the weather been at all stormy, no human power could have saved their vessel. As it was, the fine weather continued long enough to enable them to draw ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... said. "We will now talk to one another as men who have weighty affairs to deal with simply and directly. The story of the meeting between your two rulers which you, Prince Korndoff, have alluded to as a fairy tale, was a perfectly true one. I have known of that meeting ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... coupled with my speeches in the House and in my constituency, gave dire offence to the Whigs; and I was chastened with rebukes which, if not weighty, were at any rate ponderous. "Not this way," wrote the St. James's Gazette, in a humorous apostrophe, "not this way, O Junior Member for Aylesbury, lies the road to the Treasury Bench," and so, indeed, it seemed. But, on returning from an evening ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... that is supposed to cure the Arab; whatever his complaint may be, he applies to his Faky or priest. This minister is not troubled with a confusion of book-learning, neither are the shelves of his library bending beneath weighty treatises upon the various maladies of human nature; but he possesses the key to all learning, the talisman that will apply to all cases, in that one holy book the Koran. This is his complete pharmacopoeia: ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... articles as I thought would be most curious and rare in my own country, and most likely to produce conviction with those who might be disposed to question the fact of my voyage. I was obliged, however, to limit myself to such things as were neither bulky nor weighty, the Brahmin thinking that after we had taken in our instruments and the necessary provisions, we could not safely take more than twenty or thirty ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... left and disappeared in the darkness of the distance. The lights were motionless. There seemed to be something in common between them and the stillness of the night and the disconsolate song of the telegraph wire. It seemed as though some weighty secret were buried under the embankment and only the lights, the night, and the wires knew ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... she answered solemnly, "and tasks to treacherous memory committed may be forgotten; but will you forget these weighty words: will you be constant, oh, will you prove true; for did I give you all I have, my love, what were there left me should you throw ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Then weighty matters recalled M. de Nueil to France. His father and brother died, and he was obliged to leave Geneva. The lovers bought the house; and if they could have had their way, they would have removed the hills piecemeal, drawn off the ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... inexperience, viciously planned hospitals were erected; but these and the Crimean blunders have served us as beacons, and the anxious care of the Government has been untiring, the outlay of money and things more precious unbounded; and those who have had this weighty matter in charge have no reason to fear an account of their stewardship. The Boston Free Hospital in excellence of plan and beauty of design can be excelled by none. Philadelphia boasts the two largest military hospitals in the world. Of the twenty-three in and about Washington many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... may for this reason acquire an antipathy to cats lasting for the whole of life. It is upon the undoubted fact of such experiences as these, that those build their case who maintain that sexual perversions originate in chance impressions during childhood or early youth. But weighty reasons can be ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... acknowledge it. You have pity on my wretched body, which is but grass, and must soon be trodden under: but O, Haddo! how much greater is the yearning with which I yearn after and pity your immortal soul! Come now, let us reason together! I drop all points of controversy, weighty though these be; I take your defaced and damnified kirk on your own terms; and I ask you, Are you a worthy minister? The communion season approaches; how can you pronounce thir solemn words, "The elders will now bring forrit ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the thought of her flanks I shudder, for thence depends a mass so weighty that it obliges its owner to sit down when she has risen and to rise when ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... point has been bitterly disputed for years. It may be said, however, that, at the present day, practically all philosophers and scientists, with few exceptions (e.g., James, Schiller, Bergson, etc.), believe in Determinism. The arguments for that doctrine are certainly weighty, and may be summarized, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... assistance in hoisting, I doubt not," said Jack, looking with an expression of humour, which he could not repress, towards the weighty dame. "We'll try what can be done." They could not venture to remain long in the cabin, so they hurried back on deck. They were as much puzzled as ever to know what next to do. Their great fear was that the pirates would return from the shore ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... a philosophic strain Makes you regard as wholly vain Our human bliss and woes; What matters, whether State affairs, Or news of good, or weighty carts, Or tidings relative to shares Within ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... Edinburgh Geographical Journal, may be considered as an error entirely of the editor's, who, by taking it upon himself, will relieve the burden of the mistake from the traveller, and thus lighten the weighty doubts which might in consequence bear upon the remainder of the details; for the situation of that city, as given by Jomard, is quite inconsistent with the situation it must be in, from the ascertained source, direction, and termination of the river. There can ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... for succour in her extremity. Tortured by these and similar imaginings, Herrera paced wildly up and down in the gloom and silence of the forest, and accused himself of indifference and cowardice for yielding to the representations of the Mochuelo, plausible and weighty though they were, and for not proceeding at once, alone even, and unaided, to the assistance of the defenceless and beloved being, the uncertainty of whose fate thus racked his soul. Cooler reflection, however, came to his aid, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... by interdicting all communication with the English, and signifying, in an order of the day, that their Commodore was a madman. This, being believed in the army, so enraged Sir Sidney Smith, that in his wrath he sent a challenge to Napoleon. The latter replied, that he had too many weighty affairs on his hands to trouble himself in so trifling a matter. Had it, indeed, been the great Marlborough, it might have been worthy his attention. Still, if the English sailor was absolutely bent upon fighting, he would send him a bravo from the army, and show them a smell portion of neutral ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Doctor Castleton had simply been drawing for him a picture of delights—at least, so I conjectured. This propensity of the doctor sometimes led to startling surprises and results, and, once at least, to a discovery of weighty ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... death in the form of a pair of four-foot jaws the old man turns the ferry over to one of his children and sets out to fulfill the terms of his contract by capturing the offending saurian, recovering from its stomach the weighty bracelets, anklets and earrings worn by the deceased, and restoring them to the next of kin. In order to make good he sometimes has to kill a number of crocodiles, but he keeps on until he gets the right one. This is not ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... As the weighty import of the query slowly dawned on Beard's consciousness, his face contracted until it took on the expression of one whose mental vision is gradually clearing; before whose dazed mind certain images are again taking compact shape, revealing themselves out of the surrounding darkness, sharply ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... the ordinary books on English history, and who can therefore unriddle these little enigmas without difficulty. The manner of the book is, on the whole, not unworthy of the matter. The language, even where most faulty, is weighty and massive, and indicates strong sense in every line. It often rises to an eloquence, not florid or impassioned, but high, grave, and sober; such as would become a state paper, or a judgment delivered by a great magistrate, a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had got a house ready to receive them, and then they moved up and took possession. Mary and Tom were from the first copartners, and, latterly, Miss Thornton had invested her money, about 2,000 pounds, in the station. Matters were very prosperous, and, after a few years, Tom began to get weighty and didactic in his speech, and to think of turning his attention ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... She doubted that the weighty pair of tears had dropped for the country. Captain Con would have shed them over Erin, and many of them. Captain Philip's tone was too plain and positive: he would be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... after the colonel had left the room—"now, my dear Leuchtmar, you know all my views and plans. But the most weighty, important, and difficult task I have ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... firm foothold who pretends to it Silence and such signs are like revelations in black night The defensive is perilous policy in war The greater wounds do not immediately convince us of our fate The rider's too heavy for the horse in England The weighty and the trivial contended Their hearts are eaten up by property Unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive Well, sir, we must sell our opium Won't do to ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... of the treaty, however, went on between the two kings. Louis had submitted to exorbitant conditions on the score of money, and to another, moreover, sufficiently weighty. It was that Charles, converted to the Romish faith, should share with him in the conquest of Holland, should send a considerable military force thither, and should keep for himself the Dutch islands opposite to England—an ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... to all our 'joyment," sighed Chloe, grown more weighty in flesh; "de Lord knows what's going to become of us—an' all her host o' bad niggers mixin' in wid our'n, and she domineerin' ober eberyting. O, it's an orful bad day for us, sure! An', then, that hateful boy o' her'n—he's worse 'an pizen, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... as though she were seated somewhere in the East, pushed her ringlets back roughly from her face, and then placed her two hands to her sides so that her thumbs rested lightly on her girdle. When alone with something weighty on her mind she would sit in this form for the hour together, resolving, or trying to resolve, what should be her conduct. She did few things without much thinking, and though she walked very boldly, she walked warily. She ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... men, they would not take the matter in charge themselves; they needed a leader, both to plan and to set a wholesome example, and this was one reason for their asking Mr. Palmer to become a partner. This reason was a weighty one with him; but before deciding the question, he ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... that name on the form of jocularity to which I refer—is the very reverse of pure and delicate: a sense in which it is impure and indelicate in the highest degree. On this it is necessary, however briefly, to touch; and to the weighty and many-counted indictment which may be framed against Sterne on this head there is, of course, but one possible plea—the plea of guilty. Nay, the plea must go further than a mere admission of the offence; it must include an admission of the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... victorious and conquer and hold as your own the kingdom of Ireland.—We trust in God that Your Majesty and the Council will weigh well the advantages that will ensue to Christendom from this enterprise—since the opportunity is so good and the cause so just and weighty, and ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... minds under some certain degree of cultivation,) and whose disgust arises naturally from what they may suppose to be a sign of weakness or ill health. It would be futile to proceed into farther detail. I pass to the last and most weighty theory, that the agreeableness in objects which we call beauty is the result of the association with them ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... come, by sin oppressed, Unburden here thy weighty load; Here find thy refuge and thy rest, And trust the mercy of thy God. Thy God's thy Saviour—glorious word! For ever ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... them their weapons, as did the Jews at the rebuilding of the Temple. So we sallied forth with our guns and pikes, and heard the whoop of these incarnate devils, already in possession of a part of the town, and exercising their cruelty on the few whom weighty causes or indisposition had withheld from public worship; and it was remarked as a judgment, that, upon that bloody Sabbath, Adrian Hanson, a Dutchman, a man well enough disposed towards man, but whose mind was altogether ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... would not move. She had pulled it up so vigorously that the cord had slipped from the wheel, and rendered the curtain immovable. By stepping on a chair she could, indeed, reach and adjust it; but the only chairs in the room were cane-seated, and seemed altogether too fragile for such a weighty lady as Ann Harriet. To add to her perplexity, the dwelling directly opposite was a boarding house, full of young men; and she noticed that one or two of them had already discovered her, and that the news was probably being communicated to all their fellow boarders, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a series of violent storms continually heaved. And these storms, by some mysterious process or other, were incessantly casting up on the shore of political popularity and making heroes of men whose virtues were not weighty enough to keep them at the bottom. "Be an humble citizen, my son," said he: "learn to value a quiet life. You are not given to loud and boisterous talking, to lying, or to slandering; which things, at this day, are essential to political success. Worthy and well disposed persons are too much ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... native generosity might have prompted him perhaps to find some excuse for the fur-trader's apparent want of candour, or to believe that there might be some explanation of it, but, as it was, he flung into the other scale not only the supposed injury inflicted by Redding, but all his weighty disappointments at the loss of his old home, and of ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... knew him by sight: his name was Peticius. It happened the night before that Peticius saw Pompeius in a dream, not as he had often seen him, but humble and downcast, speaking to him. And it happened that he was telling his dream to his shipmates, as is usual with men in such weighty matters, who have nothing to do; when all at once one of the sailors called out that he spied a river-boat rowing from the land with men in it who were making signals with their clothes and stretching out their hands to them. Accordingly Peticius turning his eyes in ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... asking me to Brighton. I hope much that you will enjoy your holiday. I have told Murray to send a copy for you to Mansion House Street, and I am surprised that you have not received it. There are so many valid and weighty arguments against my notions, that you, or any one, if you wish on the other side, will easily persuade yourself that I am wholly in error, and no doubt I am in part in error, perhaps wholly so, though I cannot see the blindness of my ways. I dare say when thunder and lightning ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... adjoined her father's castle. Her gaze was riveted on a silk mantle, trimmed with costly furs, which depended from a hook inside the doorway. Her lovely features wore an expression of extreme dissatisfaction. She was replacing a purse, apparently by no means weighty, in her embroidered girdle. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... having, on the Continent, met with Grove's paper on "Novelty," it quickened his curiosity to visit Britain, for he thought, if such were the lighter periodical essays of our authors, their productions on more weighty occasions must be ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... on how this new shift in Europe is going to affect foreign exchange, or a hunch as to what the administration means to put over in regard to the railroad muddle. He's a solemn-faced, owl-eyed old party, this Mesaba Matt. Looks like he was thinkin' wise and deep about weighty matters. You know. One of these slow-movin', heavy-lidded, double-chinned old pelicans who never mention any sum less than seven figures. So I'm putting up a serious secretarial front myself when he ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... your light so shine before men.' I have thought that it may be interesting and instructive if in this sermon we throw together these three applications of this one saying, and try to study the threefold lessons which it yields, and the weighty duties which it enforces. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Lastly, I desire to make one declaration: Every time I referred to the new generation, I did not want to mention only the youth educated in the lay schools of the Government, but all the youth educated in modern ideas, all the men and women of whatever age who, throwing aside the weighty burden of the Legacy of Ignorantism (Le gado del Ignorantismo), have accepted modern ideas, have modified their mentality, have been modernized, thanks to the example of, and the contact with, the representatives of American democracy. All the change, all ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... found and declared that the said Colin ought to do the same." On the 4th of May following, Mackenzie binds himself to keep his sureties scaithless in the matter of this caution. On the 16th of the same month, the King and Council "for certain necessary and weighty considerations moving his Highness, tending to the furthering and establishing of his Highness' obedience and the greatness and safety of his peaceable and good subjects from burnings, riefs, and oppression," ordain Colin to enter in ward ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... such as on page 268, which is thirty-eight hundred words long, is in these days of hurry apt to be repellent, because of its length, and on the other hand that a theme of fifteen hundred words seems to the ordinary undergraduate a weighty undertaking, the nature of this difficulty becomes clear. To put it another way, speeches on public subjects of great importance are apt to be at least an hour long, and not infrequently more, and in an hour one easily speaks six or seven thousand words, so that fifteen ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... outside world. But if, according to the measurement of undergraduates, Emerson's ability as a poet was not conspicuous, it must also be admitted that, in the judgment of persons old enough to know better, he was not credited with that mastery of weighty prose which the world has since accorded him. In our senior year the higher classes competed for the Boylston prizes for English composition. Emerson and I sent in our essays with the rest and were fortunate enough to take the two prizes; but—Alas for the infallibility of academic decisions! Emerson ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... express. He had deep, but not the deepest, human feeling; he could think, but not profoundly; he had a sense of beauty, delicate and acute out of all comparison with yours or mine, reader, but far less keen than Mozart's or Bach's. Hence his music is rarely comparable with theirs: his matter is less weighty, his form never quite so enchantingly lovely; and, whatever one may think of the possibilities of the man in his most inspired moments, his average output drives one to the reluctant conclusion that on the whole his life must have been favourable to him and enabled him ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... I am no willing complainer in this weighty matter. No damage has arisen, save to the breakers of the peace themselves. I fear only great power could have encouraged such lawless audacity; and I were unwilling to put feud between my native town and some powerful nobleman on ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... laurinea between Angostura and the mouth of the Orinoco, as well as on the banks of the Gulf of Paria, commonly called the Golfo triste. It was not intended to establish docks on that spot, but to hew the weighty timber into the forms necessary for ship-building, and to transport it to Caraque, near Cadiz. Though trees fit for masts are not found in this country, it was nevertheless hoped that the execution of this project would considerably diminish the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... spare for Sylvia; which, believe me, is the greatest affliction of my life; and I have no prospect of ease in the endless toils of life, but that of reposing in the arms of Sylvia: some short intervals: pardon my haste, for you cannot guess the weighty business that at present ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... There were several weighty reasons for this. In the first place, those bags of coin behind the rocking stone weighed on his mind. He was a miser, and never before had he so much wealth he could call his own. A few hundred dollars at ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... other weighty reasons and considerations (as popish education, conversation, etc.) We protest against, and disown the pretended Prince of Wales from having any just right to rule or govern these nations, or to be admitted to the Government thereof: and whereas (as ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... charity. The Lord Mayor himself almost invariably draws upon his own resources to a large amount, in order to maintain the ancient reputation and actual present influence of the City of London. Demolish Gog and Magog, put down the civic banquets, break up and melt down the weighty and many-linked chains of solid gold round the neck of my lord mayor and the sheriffs, strip off the aldermen's gowns, make a bonfire of the gilded carriages, wring, if you will, the necks of both ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... I was ready enough to spar with my sister; to-night I had not the spirit. To-night, moreover, she, whom as a rule I could treat with good-humoured indifference, had power to wound. The least weighty of people speaking the truth can not be wholly disregarded. I prepared to go to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... elect the largest and goodliest conies," and enters into minute details. Even with respect to seeds of plants for the flower-garden, Sir J. Hanmer writing about the year 1660[487] says, in "choosing seed, the best seed is the most weighty, and is had from the lustiest and most vigorous stems;" and he then gives rules about leaving only a few flowers on plants for seed; so that even such details were attended to in our flower-gardens two hundred years ago. In order to show that selection has been silently carried ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... out that these weighty and well-considered declarations—which are a complete answer to M. Antoniadi's bold claim—were made by the most experienced observer of Mars, who, as even his opponents admit, possesses the finest site in the world for his astronomical work, and is equipped ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the first hint of an investigation into Crazy Laura's story. Three weeks of prying into "vice conditions", gambling, profiteering and the usual petty nonsense with which so many grand juries have managed to fritter away time under the misapprehension of applying some weighty sort of superhuman reasoning to ordinary things, and then good news. The body of twelve good men and true had worn themselves out with other matters and adjourned without even taking up the mystery of the Blue Poppy mine. But the joy of Fairchild and Harry was short-lived. In the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled off, and forty-eight hours on a handful of rice. On the contrary, Tartarin's body was a stout honest bully of a body, very fat, very weighty, most sensual and fond of coddling, highly touchy, full of low-class appetite and homely requirements—the short, paunchy body on stumps of ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... prevalence of a doxology of some sort at the end of the Lord's Prayer; the general prefix 'for thine'; the prevailing mention therein of 'the kingdom and the power and the glory'; the invariable reference to Eternity:—all this constitutes a weighty corroboration of the genuineness of the form in St. Matthew. Eked out with a confession of faith in the Trinity, and otherwise amplified as piety or zeal for doctrinal purity suggested, every liturgical formula of the kind ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... practical. The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him at a time of life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. Skilful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty observations which at seventeen the Prince made on public affairs, and still more surprised to see a lad, in situations in which he might have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. At eighteen he sate among the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we have got along for eighteen hundred years, and shall we change now? Our fathers have for many generations maintained the principle of the common law in this regard, for some good and weighty reasons." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... so wise, so anxious, so tender, so truly chivalrous, to keep the failing breath for a few moments more in the body of one who had no earthly claim upon his care, that doctor was bearing a testimony, unconscious yet most weighty, to that human instinct of which the Bible approves throughout, that death in a human being is an evil, an anomaly, a curse; against which, though he could not rescue the man from the clutch of his ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... any argument against the legal regulation of vivisection more weighty than this assertion, that the most illustrious man in English medicine was "obliged to go to France" because he could not make his researches on English soil? Could doubt of the story exist when it was related by the President of the American Medical Association ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... his shoulders and knotted at his waist, was a broad scarf of white woollen stuff, or wadmel, very soft-looking and warm. In his belt he carried a formidable hunting-knife, and as he faced the two intruders on his ground, he rested one hand lightly yet suggestively on a weighty staff of pine, which was notched all over with quaint letters and figures, and terminated in a curved handle at the top. He waited for the young man to speak, and finding they remained silent, he glanced at them half angrily and again repeated ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Christian people of Dedham had invited him to that plantation beforehand. He did not, however, accept their invitation, but being much in request, 'and called divers ways, could not resolve; but, at length, upon weighty reasons concerning the public service and foundations of the college, he was persuaded to attend to the call of Cambridge;' and, adds an American writer, 'he might have been the first head of that blessed institution.' On the calling of the Long Parliament, he and his wife returned to England, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... worth of the evidence relative to the time of the martyrdom; and his endorsement of the statement of Eusebius must be accepted as a testimony entitled to very grave consideration. Some succeeding writers assign even a later period to the death of Polycarp. It is a weighty fact that no Christian author for the first eight centuries of our era places it before the reign of M. Aurelius. The first writer who attaches to it an earlier date is Georgius Hamartolus, who flourished about the middle of the ninth century. Dr. Lightfoot confesses that what he says ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... at liberty," said he, "to disturb Mr. Gwynn with what are no more than just my personal concerns. He has much more weighty matters of his own to consider; and he ought not to be loaded down with those of other men. Besides, in this instance, his magnificent generosity has anticipated me. He tells you that I am to have the assistance of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... realised that he was face to face with the stranger of the day before,—she of the veil, the alluring voice, the unfaltering spirits, and the weighty handbag! ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... ranked himself among the big boys, felt the shame and humiliation to be intolerable. By the most strenuous exertions he started the game going with the first fall of snow, but it was difficult to work up any enthusiasm for the game in the face of Foxy's very determined and weighty opposition, backed by the master's lazy indifference. For, in spite of Hughie's contempt and open sneers, Foxy had determined to reopen his store with new and glowing attractions. He seemed to have a larger command of capital than ever, and he added several very ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... are weighty objections to the measure; but the reasons for it appear to me to outweigh the objections; and, in times like these in which we live, it will not do to be over scrupulous. It is easy to sacrifice ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... began from that day to be much pleased with himself for his complaisance to the Chevalier de Grammont; however, he could not help remarking that she looked but coldly upon him. This appeared to him a very extraordinary return for his services, and, imagining that she was unmindful of her weighty obligations to him, he entered into conversation with her, and severely reprimanded her for having sent back his partridges with ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... zealous Puritan been acquainted with the real crime of De Mehun, he would not have joined in the clamour against him. Poor Jehan, it seems, had raised the expectations of a monastery in France, by the legacy of a great chest, and the weighty contents of it; but it proved to be filled with nothing better than vetches. The friars, enraged at the ridicule and disappointment, would not suffer him to have Christian burial. See the Hon. Mr. Barrington's very ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... flush of his enthusiasm for the older civilization of Europe, and especially of Italy. He would not have wished them to be reprinted, but the present editor's course is justified by their quality, which won the admiration at the time of Tennyson and other weighty critics. Had Henry James reprinted them at all, he would have doubtless rewritten them in his later manner, and we should have lost these first clear outpourings of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and conscientious." He goes on to say that, "notwithstanding the gentleness of his temper, his political conscience is so firm and pure, that he will never yield in what he considers his obligation, even when it interferes with the most intimate friendships, or most weighty considerations." One would think that the writer had foreseen the present emergency. I have not yet read the pamphlet which the friends of the author consider an equal proof of his noble independence, bold patriotism, and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the same point other weighty reasons: "It is absurd (saith he) to imagine that the Holy Ghost, by Luke, speaking with the tongues of men, that is to say, to their understanding, should use a word in that signification in which it was never used before his time ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his dialogue with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb |
