"Circumstance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what are we comparing? A Galilean peasant accompanied by a few fishermen with a conqueror at the head of his army. We compare Jesus, without force, without power, without support, without One external circumstance of attraction or influence, prevailing against the prejudices, the learning, the hierarchy, of his country; against the ancient religious opinions, the pompous religious rites, the philosophy, the wisdom, the authority, of the Roman empire, in the most polished and enlightened ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... with a rope round his neck, and the other with one round his foot; this was on the first day of our landing. On the following day they found two other corpses farther on, and one of these was observed to have a great quantity of beard; this was regarded as a very suspicious circumstance by many of our people, because, as I have already said, all the Indians are beardless. This harbor is twelve leagues[298-2] from the place where the Spaniards had been left under the protection of Guacamari,[298-3] the king of that province, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... some other discourse with him, which now I cannot call to mind; and I fear I have already tired your Lordship. I shall only add one circumstance, That on his death-bed he declared himself a Nonconformist, and had a fanatick preacher to be his spiritual guide. After half an hour's conversation I took my leave, being half stifled by the closeness of the room. I imagine he could ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... thereby render the appearance less strong and vivid: now, faintness of appearance caused in this sort hath been experienced to coexist with great magnitude. But when it is caused by the interposition of an opaque sensible body, this circumstance alters the case, so that a faint appearance this way caused doth not suggest greater magnitude, because it hath not been experienced to ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... of Sicily. The chief surviving record of his sojourn in Sicily is an account from his washerwoman, "Mrs. De Lass," dated at Syracuse the 8th of March, 1809. His distaste for the army was now complete. His sister Polly had ended her school days and, by a fortunate circumstance, had gone out to Canada "under the protection of Sir William Johnstone's lady" and to Canada Tom was himself resolved to go. Early in 1810, he was back in Edinburgh, taking a few weeks' holiday with the Kers, resolved to go on half pay at once, if possible, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... indications that this Painted Tomb at Veii is of very great antiquity, and may be considered as probably the oldest tomb in Europe. No inscription of any kind has been found on its walls or any of its contents; and this circumstance, which is almost singular so far as all Etruscan tombs yet discovered are concerned, of itself indicates a very remote date, when the art of letters if known at all was only known to a privileged few, and confined to public and sacred monuments. No clue remains to inform us who the Veientine ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... this delay, might it not be providential? Must he always be striving against fate? against every circumstance that would tend to relieve him? against every obstacle thrown into his path to prevent him from bringing calamity on his own head? Must he?—but the query went no further. The angel with the flaming sword came back to guard the gates ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... high esteem as text-books and writing exercises in schools—a circumstance to which we owe the preservation of many of them. For a considerable number of important and interesting poems, letters, and narratives are only known to us from school exercise-books. The pupil at the 'Chamber ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... illumine her course, should have made of them allies, and "let loose those horrible hell-hounds of war against their countrymen in America, endeared to them by every tie which should sanctify human nature," was a most lamentable circumstance—in its consequences, blighting and desolating the fairest portions of the country, and covering the face of [157] its border settlements, with the gloomy mantle of sorrow ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... think that he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. For though Milton could without remorse absent himself from publick worship [Johnson's Works, vii. 115] I cannot. On the contrary, I have the same habitual ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Prince Ausberg, and the King was desired to invest him with it. As soon as the King received it, he ran into the Prince's room; whom he found in his shirt, and without his breeches: and, in that condition, was he decorated with the star and ribbon by his Majesty, who has wrote the whole circumstance to the Emperor. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... those who had sent her beloved White Brother of the Snow to destruction in the deadly place of evil spirits must die. How she should compass their death she did not yet know; this was a detail for circumstance to decide, but it must be done. White Brother of the Snow was of her tribe; the law of her savage nature told her ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... blazonry find place Supported, scrolled with gold, A glowing dignity and grace On honoured walls and old; And let it likewise be attended In stately circumstance With mottos writ o' Latin splendid Or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... picking up his rolling hat. "Of course I had a little share in it: why, you know it well enough, my dear. A man's first business is to create a career. I have to rise: you approve of that yourself; it is a man's duty to make use of every circumstance that comes to hand. Had I not done so, I should be a mere magistrate, somewhere in Szabolcs, who at the end of every three years kisses the hands of all the 'powers that be,' that they may not turn him out of office.[45] The present chancellor, Adam Reviczky, was one class ahead ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... anything like all you say, Mr. Lindsay." Her head was bent and she kept her hand within his arm. He seemed to be a circumstance that brought her reminiscences of how one behaved sentimentally toward a young man with whom there was no serious entanglement. It is not surprising that he saw only one thing, walls going down before him, was aware only of something like invitation. Existence ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... supposed that Razumov had actually dozed off and had dreamed in the presence of Councillor Mikulin, of an old print of the Inquisition. He was indeed extremely exhausted, and he records a remarkably dream-like experience of anguish at the circumstance that there was no one whatever near the pale and extended figure. The solitude of the racked victim was particularly horrible to behold. The mysterious impossibility to see the face, he also notes, inspired a sort of terror. All these characteristics of an ugly dream were present. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... received from Louis XIV. And what is very remarkable about this woman is, that she should so easily have supplanted Madame de Montespan in the full blaze of her dazzling beauty, when the King was in the maturity of his power and in all the pride of external circumstance,—she, born a Protestant, converted to Catholicism in her youth under protest, poor, dependent, a governess, the widow of a vulgar buffoon, and with antecedents which must have stung to the quick so proud ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... is founded upon a fact, which is related by Madame de Sevigne in her Letters under date Feb. 26, 1672, as follows:—"M. Boufflers has killed a man since his death: the circumstance was this: they were carrying him about a league from Boufflers to inter him; the corpse was on a bier in a coach; his own curate attended it; the coach overset, and the bier falling upon the curate's neck choaked him." M. de Boufflers had fallen down dead a few days before. He was the eldest brother ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... species were sacrificed to those of the other; as stones from the same quarry are buried in the foundation, to sustain the blocks which happen to be hewn for the superior parts of the pile. In the midst of our encomiums bestowed on the Greeks and the Romans, we are, by this circumstance, made to remember, that no human ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... of a good old Boston family, to which she clung with a desperate clutch which her relatives ignored so far as with dignity they were able. Her father had been a lawyer of reputation, and his portrait was still displayed prominently in the daughter's parlor, a circumstance which had given Chauncy Wilson opportunity for a jest rather clever than elegant concerning Judge Welsh's well-known fondness in life for watching the progress of criminal cases. Of her husband, the late Mr. Sampson, there was very little said, and not much was known beyond the fact that having ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... effect. He saw that I stood his gaze with but few symptoms of giving way, and he changed his tactics with an adroitness that did honour to his training. Approaching me, he held out his hand. "Charles, why should we quarrel about trifles? I was really not acquainted with the circumstance to which you allude, but I shall look into it without delay. Pray, can you tell me the when, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... just as you lose sight of something in the hands of a conjurer who has succeeded in directing your attention to something of momentary interest. In this connection it is well to say that the habit of spending must be avoided. Let a large expenditure be a circumstance. You can afford, however, to spend money on charities even to the point of dissipation. It is a cultivation of the heart. It might prove a career; and so, before your object is chosen, you approach it, as a possibility, afterward, as a ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... the Introductions to Professor Foerster's recent editions. When we speculate upon the development of Chretien's moral ideas we are not on such sure ground. As we have seen, his standards vary widely in the different romances. How much of this variation is due to chance circumstance imposed by the nature of his subject or by the taste of his public, and how much to changing conviction it is easy to see, when we consider some contemporary novelist, how dangerous it is to judge of moral convictions as reflected ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the bore of the gun will not be in a condition to withstand any pressure because the tensile stress due to such pressure, and which acts tangentially to the circumference, will increase the stress, already excessive, in the layers of the cylinder; and this will occur, notwithstanding the circumstance that the metal, according to the indications of test pieces taken from the bore, possessed the high elastic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... to shy at wheelbarrows. They tried to make him admit that the wheels would slip on the smooth rails, but he knew that they would bite without teeth. One of the committee said, "Suppose that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the engine; would not that be a very awkward circumstance?" To which the countryman had a ready reply, "Very awkward—for the cow!" The opposition, which was largely animated by the existing canal interest, ventured some views which the experience of the next five ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... of allowing himself to listen to the gossip, but glad to have been informed of such an important circumstance. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... determined to dwell upon the latter fact as in some measure an extenuation of his offence. In his silent hours of remorse he had cherished it as one atoning circumstance. It had been the first fruits of a sudden resolution of reform. Sobered by the sense of what part he had played in crime, the money that had lain in his hand was a witness against him; and when he had ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... name out of delicacy to his family; and therefore, as your excellent Magazine has a more extensive circulation in Scotland than the Quarterly, I beg of you to give this letter an early place. I understand one circumstance which satisfied Mr Lockhart that the story did not apply to Lord Braxfield is, that the family had assured him that he never played at chess—a fact of which I could also have assured Mr Lockhart. But the search of the records of Justiciary, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... was enveloped in a piebald pall of smoke, yet no return fire came from the two 4.1 inch guns that were known to be with von Lindenfelt's column. Apart from the bursting shells and bombs there were no evidences of movement in the Huns' stronghold—a circumstance that caused the Waff officers to wonder deeply and mutter under ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... sobbed aloud, while Irene found it difficult to repress her own tears of sympathy and joy that her friend had found such relatives. Of the three, Electra was calmest. Though glad to meet with her father's family, she knew better than they that this circumstance could make little alteration in her life, and therefore, when Mrs. Young had left the room to acquaint her husband and son with the discovery she had made, Electra sat down beside her friend's sofa just as she would ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... touch of age, my Celia, In you, in me, in everyone, we join God's growing mind. For in no separate place or time, or soul, we find Our meaning. In one mingled soul reside All times and places. On a tide Of mist and azure air We journey toward that soul, through circumstance, Until at last we fully care and dare To make within ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... arrived at Milan on the 14th of May. His nuptials took place about a month later. At the marriage-dinner Petrarch was seated at the table where there were only princes, or nobles of the first rank. It is a curious circumstance that Froissart, so well known as an historian of England, came at this time to Milan, in the suite of the Duke of Clarence, and yet formed no acquaintance with our poet. Froissart was then only about thirty years old. It might have been hoped ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... They must be held at a distance, avoiding familiarity. . . . If they show a leaning towards right principles and present tributary offerings, they should be treated with a yielding etiquette; but bridling and repression must never be relaxed for conforming to circumstance. Such was the constant principle of the sage monarchs in ruling and ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... arise from the local agents over-estimating, in perfect good faith and sincerity, the capacity of the room. Such a mistake, I am assured, was made last night; and thus all the available space was filled before the people in charge were at all prepared for that circumstance. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... education and thought have tended more and more to regard these beings as related to absolute Being, as well as to others. It has been seen that, as the breaking of no bond ought to destroy a man, so ought the missing of none to hinder him from growing. And thus a circumstance of the time, which springs rather from its luxury than its purity, has helped to place women on ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... however, as, indeed, in most of the other seats of this race, the inhabitants are distinguished from each other by a very considerable diversity in the shades of what may be called the common hue. Crozet was so much struck with this circumstance that he does not hesitate to divide them into three classes—whites, browns, and blacks,—the last of whom he conceives to be a foreign admixture received from the neighbouring continent of New Holland, and who, by their union with the whites, the original ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... coincidence their meeting; but altogether Lady Anne thought it was best to say nothing about the circumstance to grandmamma. I myself am puzzled to say which would have been the better course to pursue under the circumstances; there were so many courses open. As they had gone so far, should they go on farther together? Suppose they were going to the same house at ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the record of my sister's life at Manchester, I must mention a circumstance which gave her very great pleasure there. In the summer of 1875 she and I went up from Aldershot to see the Exhibition of Water-Colours by the Royal Society of Painters, and she was completely fascinated by a picture of Mr. J.D. Watson's, called "A Gentleman of the Road." ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... in caution and self-control is indeed an indispensable preparation for official existence; the ability either to keep a position won, or to resign it with honour, depending much upon such training. The most sinister circumstance of official life is the absence of moral freedom,—the absence of the right to act according to one's own convictions of justice. The subordinate, who desires above all things to keep his place, is not supposed to have personal convictions or sympathies—save by permission. He is not the slave ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... accustomed to undervalue the character of very youthful religion, may hereby see that the Lord of grace and glory is not limited in the exercise of his power by age or circumstance. It sometimes appears in the displays of God's love to sinners, as it does in the manifestations of his works in the heavens, that the least of the planets moves in the nearest course to the sun; and there enjoys the most powerful influence of his ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... and then nourish it for some years unimpaired, should at length gradually cease to do so, and the debility of age and death supervene, would be liable to surprise us if we were not in the daily habit of observing it; and is a circumstance which has ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... incompatible even with a statement that he fought at the battle of Rimenant on August 1, 1578, though, had he been present on so famous an occasion, it would have been more like him to refer somewhere to the circumstance. But if there is no sufficient ground for questioning the belief in his participation in the war of the Low Countries, there is yet less for disputing his residence in England from 1576. His signature to a family deed, already ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... been won without a battle. That there remained a Spanish nation ready to fight to the death for its independence was not a circumstance which Napoleon had taken into account. His experience had as yet taught him of no force but that of Governments and armies. In the larger States, or groups of States, which had hitherto been the spoil of France, the sense of nationality scarcely existed. Italy had felt it no disgrace to pass under ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... service. To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness. Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one's true business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by circumstance into an uncongenial calling. A right occupation means simply that the aptitudes of a person are in adequate play, working with the minimum of friction and the maximum of satisfaction. With reference to other members of a community, this adequacy of action signifies, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... usually surmounted by a shaft constructed throughout by herself. It is a genuine work of architecture, standing as much as an inch above the ground and sometimes two inches in diameter, so that it is wider than the burrow itself. This last circumstance, which seems to have been calculated by the industrious Spider, lends itself admirably to the necessary extension of the legs at the moment when the prey is to be seized. The shaft is composed mainly ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... anticipated by the priest, and not overlooked by the people; for the former, the reader may have observed, in the whole course of his address never once mentioned the word "charity;" nor did the latter permit the circumstance to go without its reward, according to the best of their ability. So keen and delicate are the perceptions of the Irish, and so acutely alive are they to those nice distinctions of kindness and courtesy, which have in their hearts a spontaneous ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... up: There are in me certain milieux especially favorable to imagination. When any circumstance brings me into one of them, it is rare that an imaginative network does not occur; and, if one is produced, association of ideas will perform the work. When I give myself up to serious work, I have to mistrust myself: and in this connection I shall surprise people when I say that ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... proportions of things so strangely reversed, the serious matters of life so utterly set aside, and so much made of the things which many people take no sort of trouble about, as companionships and affections, which are so often turned into a matter of mere propinquity and circumstance. But of this I shall have to speak later in ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as to their reality. There hung the rich purple clusters such as he had seen on his first visit to Vinland, and such as he had been wont to see in his own land in days long gone by. He pinched himself, pulled his hair, punched his eyeballs, but no—all that failed to awaken him; from which circumstance he naturally came to the conclusion that he was awake already. He then uttered a wild, probably a Turkish, cheer, ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... years' acquaintance with George F. Hoar, through Oliver Wendell Holmes, to the circumstance that the Hoar family lived in Gloucester from the time of the Tudors, if not earlier; and this has led him to pay repeated visits to our old city, with the object of tracing the history of his forefathers. In doing this ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... dwellings had to be erected. Moreover, they possessed wagons, and now that the dry season was approaching were able to fetch stores of every kind from the borders of Natal. Lastly, thanks to Dorcas's banking account, money was by comparison no object, an unusual circumstance where missionaries are concerned. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... bright sunny afternoon, a year or two back, and rather later in the season, I had an opportunity of noticing a curious circumstance in natural history. Standing close to the edge of the stream, I remarked a singular appearance on a large tuft of flags. It looked like bunches of flowers, the leaves of which seemed dark, yet transparent, intermingled with brilliant ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... victory, the six Papists saw the procession rearrayed. Kenna had recovered and wiped his face with one coat sleeve, his Bible with the other. The six dispensers of purity could not resist it; they must charge again. Hartigan wheeled the horses to make the turn at a run. But with every circumstance against him—speed and reckless driving, a rough and narrow roadway beset with stumps—the wagon lurched, crashed, upset, and the six went sprawling in the ditch. The horses ran away to be afterward rounded up at a farm stable three miles off, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... we even now, and capable of changing overnight, capable of infinite adaptation to circumstance; you live as readily on Pluto as on Mercury or Earth. Any place is a home-world to you. You can adapt yourselves to any condition. And—most dangerous to them—you can do it instantly. You are their most ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... leave the faint, vital spark to smoulder down or leap out. The moor was very unfrequented at this hour; at certain periods of the day, portions of it, intersected by meandering tracks, were crossed by men labouring in the adjacent fields or quarry; but till then it was only the circumstance of alarm being excited on Harry's account, or her protracted absence giving rise to surmise and search, that ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... on the energy of character. A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope, because it knows the mutability of human affairs, and how slight a circumstance may change the whole course of events. Such a spirit, too, rests upon itself; it is not confined to partial views or to one particular object. And if at last all should be lost, it has ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... I was secretary of the club, and to that circumstance the reader is indebted for the treat to which I am about to admit him. For in my official capacity I became custodian of not a few of the poetical aspirations of our members; and as, after the abatement of the disease, they none of them demanded back their handiwork—if poetry can ever be ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... whom, however, he was fond enough), but to that collection of manuscript notebooks in which his life lay buried. That he should ever have made up his mind to separate himself from these collections, and go forth upon the world with no other resources than his memory supplied, is a circumstance highly pathetic in itself, and but little creditable to the wisdom ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... four nights out of every seven, from the moment that he closed his eyes till he opened them again the morning, it would seem to him that he had been in the company of Angela, under every possible variety of circumstance, talking to her, walking with her, meeting her suddenly or unexpectedly in crowded places or at dinner-parties— always her, and no one else—till at last poor Arthur began to wonder if his spirit took leave of his body in sleep and went to seek her, and, what is more, found her. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... this case, I may mention a rather mysterious circumstance which occurred at an up-country bank, situated in a quartz-mining district. I must first explain that the bank building is situated in a street, with houses on both sides, and that any noise in it would readily be heard by the neighbours. One ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... plans of the Unknown come to disaster through the difficulty of getting the telegraph on Sunday? The office here was closed. The Unknown, being a woman, I ungallantly reflected, would have neglected to take so small a circumstance into consideration, and she might even now be besieging the telegraph office in San Francisco in a vain effort ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... proceeds to sea in War-time with little or no outward circumstance. There was no apparent increase of activity onboard the the great fighting "townships" even on the eve of departure. As the late afternoon wore on the Signal Department onboard the Fleet Flagship was busy for a space, and the daylight signalling searchlights splashed and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... value of a compliment as well as any man, and I can say, with perfect truth, that in the whole of my career (such as it has been), professional, scientific, or literary, no compliment—I may say no circumstance—has occurred which has given me so much honest gratification as your letter of the 3d. I know you are a man not to say what you do not truly think, nor to express yourself strongly where you have not observed carefully. I shall therefore ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... sufficient to bestow a work of mercy on all those who need it. Wherefore, as Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 28), "since one cannot do good to all, we ought to consider those chiefly who by reason of place, time, or any other circumstance, by a kind of chance are more closely united to us." He says "by reason of place," because one is not bound to search throughout the world for the needy that one may succor them; and it suffices to do works of mercy to those one meets with. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... left no confessions or self-analytic diaries; still less did he discuss his peculiarities with other people. With excellent good sense and no small courage, he accepted things as they were; he felt his individuality in no way diminished by the circumstance that it was intermittent or exchangeable; and perhaps it seemed no more strange to him than the nightly falling asleep of all mankind does to them. The one mystery is quite as strange as the other, only the sleep of seven hours is common to all, while that of seven ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... romance—if Michelangelo's Penseroso translate in marble the dark broodings of a despot's soul—if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the Roman courtesan magnificently throned in nonchalance at a Pope's footstool—if Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate the pomp and circumstance of scientific war—surely this Medea exhales the flower-like graces, the sweet sanctities of human life, that even in that turbid age were found among high-bred Italian ladies. Such power have mighty sculptors, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... or could have loved: Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies—but to recur, ere long, Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; And Circumstance, that unspiritual god And miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, Whose touch turns hope to dust—the dust ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... estimate of the population of the valley, I believe I have taken into consideration every circumstance of importance. The occurrence of several old burial places on the route, some of which are of considerable extent, might be considered by some as a proof, that the population has undergone a decrease; but I conceive that it ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... as I tell you, D'Artagnan; but he is a great man, or at the very least a great tailor, is this M. Moliere. He was not at all put at fault by the circumstance." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... when I looked upon his handsome and noble face and figure and to his proved affection for me and his goodness of heart. Accordingly, in due time the marriage was celebrated with royal pomp and circumstance. But what escape is there from Fate? On that very night, the night of the wedding, a King of Zanzibar who dwelt hard by that island, and had erewhile practised against the kingdom, seizing his opportunity, attacked us with a mighty army, and having put many to death, bethought ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... knew what he was saying; yet what he did say, utterly as it defied all checks of law or circumstance, had so gallant a ring, had so kingly a wrath, that it awed and impressed even Baroni in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... adjacent mining towns, but I do not go to Aurora. No, I think not. A lecturer on psychology was killed there the other night by the playful discharge of a horse-pistol in the hands of a degenerate and intoxicated Spaniard. This circumstance, and a rumor that the citizens are "agin" literature, induce me ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... cue from Kitty, treated Miss Keys as a stranger. She was very daring and determined, and she looked better than she had ever looked in her life before. Her eyes were shining and her clear complexion grew white and almost dazzling. No circumstance could ever provoke colour into her cheeks, but she always looked her very best at night, and no dress became her like black lace, so dazzlingly fair were her neck and arms, ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... sacred warfare in the soul of his mother. What added to the acerbities of this preliminary war was, that the very nature of the contest required actions which showed not only unbecoming in a son, but mean and disgraceful in themselves. There was no pride, pomp, or circumstance of glorious war in this poor, domestic strife, this seemingly sordid and unheroic, miserably unheroic, yet high, eternal contest! But now that Francis was awake to his duty, the best of his nature awoke to meet its calls, and he ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Kayans or Kenyahs. It is probable that the Klemantan tribes have borrowed freely from these more powerful neighbours. Many of them are very skilful in wood-carving, and it is probably largely owing to this circumstance that they make a larger number of images in human form. Some of these are kept in the house, while others stand before the house like those before the Kayan houses. The former are generally more highly regarded, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the most widely distributed of Cactuses in the Old World-a circumstance due to their having been introduced for the sake of their edible fruits, and more especially for the cultivation of the cochineal insect. In various places along the shores of the Mediterranean, and in South Africa, and even in Australia, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... a more pathetic figure. Every circumstance that could contribute to this effect is skilfully seized and emphasised: Charles's incredibly selfish weakness, the implacable sternness of Pym, the triste prattle of Strafford's children and their interrupted joyous song in the final scene, all serve to heighten our ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the poor maiden; all night she lay in deep meditation. She recalled to her memory the dream which she had while asleep on the Mountain; each circumstance came up vividly before her imagination, and it seemed like a strange revelation made known to her, too awful ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... day, and Millman Street, never a cheerful thoroughfare, looked gloomier than ever as he turned into it. But one of those dingy fronts held Matilda—a circumstance which irradiated ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... the small extent of country thus temporarily assigned to the Winnebagoes, utterly destitute of all preparation for the reception of them, slenderly supplied with game, and, above all, the circumstance that the Sac and Fox Indians were continually at war with the Sioux, the object of the purchase having utterly failed, the neutral ground, so called, proving literally the fighting ground of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... ministering page. The Kyrie was being uttered when the attention of the congregation was attracted by the sound of steps approaching the chapel door to the accompaniment of an ominous clank of steel. The men rose in a body, fearing treachery, and cursing—despite the sanctity of the place—the circumstance ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... home and in the newspapers; whereas when that exemplary young student, Mugger, after a term's hard labour, receives as a reward a volume of Macaulay's Essays, in calf, price two and sixpence, very little is said about the matter; and, at all events, the dismal circumstance is not ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... and after the lapse of half a century, some parts of his speeches are still read with mournful admiration. No man, we are inclined to believe, ever rose so rapidly to such a height of oratorical excellence. His whole public life lasted barely two years. This is a circumstance which distinguishes him from our own greatest speakers, Fox, Burke, Pitt, Sheridan, Windham, Canning. Which of these celebrated men would now be remembered as an orator, if he had died two years after he first took his seat in the House of Commons? Condorcet ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... charmed with the neatness of his house, and with the amiable and happy appearance of his family. He had never before seen Mrs. Cambray or her daughters, though he had met the doctor in Dublin. The circumstance which Harry had declined mentioning, when Corny questioned him about his acquaintance with Dr. Cambray, was very slight, though Father Jos had imagined it to be of mysterious importance. It had happened, that among the dissipated set of young men with whom Marcus O'Shane ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... circumstance indicates, in particular individuals, a denser mass, capable of reflecting light with greater intensity. Even in Herschel's large telescope, only two comets, that discovered in Sicily in 1807, and the splendid one of 1811, exhibited ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... travelers found themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in a faraway angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in the early summer twilight and had very promptly put themselves to bed; thanks to which circumstance and to their having, during the previous hours, in their commodious cabin, slept the sleep of youth and health, they began to feel, toward eleven o'clock, very alert and inquisitive. They looked out of their windows across a row of small ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... that he has no time or opportunity. Some young men will make more out of the odds and ends of opportunities which many carelessly throw away than other will get out of a whole life-time. Like bees, they extract honey from every flower. Every person they meet, every circumstance of the day, adds something to their store of useful ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... them. The peculiar attenuation of the head in front of the antennae at once suggests to the practised eye the existence of a mouth adapted for suction. This mouth differs from that of the Hemiptera (bed-bug, etc.) generally, in the circumstance that the labium is capable of being retracted into the upper part of the head, which therefore presents a little fold, which is extended when the labium is protruded. In order to strengthen this part, a flat band of chitine is placed on the under surface, just as the shoemaker ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... suspicions which were changed into something like certainty by George's flight. A particular circumstance aided and almost confirmed her doubts. An abbe who was a friend of her husband, and knew all about the disappearance of George, met him some days afterwards in the rue des Masons, near the Sorbonne. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... remarkable circumstance is that Mr. Wells proposes to remedy these consequences of, for instance, "sins of waste and carelessness," not by dealing with those sins but by the simple method that "a woman with healthy and successful offspring will draw a wage for each one of them ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... beds that you owe a grudge to," replies Muff; whereat all the class laugh, except the last comer, who takes it all for granted, and makes a note of the circumstance in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... of all this a circumstance occurred that would have made a vain man, or indeed most men, fling the whole thing away. Helen and he came to a rupture. It began by her fault, and continued by his. She did not choose to know her own mind, and, in spite of secret warnings from her better judgment, she was driven by curiosity, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... of a manuscript is of ten established by the peculiar circumstance of its existing BENEATH another writing. Some invaluable manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures, and not a few precious fragments of classic literature, have been thus ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... had a match between his daughter Isabel and her cousin, the son of that Francis Esmond who was killed at Castlewood siege. And the lady, it was said, took a fancy to the young man, who was her junior by several years (which circumstance she did not consider to be a fault in him); but having paid his court, and being admitted to the intimacy of the house, he suddenly flung up his suit, when it seemed to be pretty prosperous, without giving a pretext for his behavior. His friends rallied him at ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... was informed, that on the next morning would be the best chance to speak with him. I then went there but he had not much time to speak, because he had to go to his office, and he invited me to see him in his office. From that circumstance I concluded, that he did not keep in mind the contents of my letter in which I assured him, that his office would not be the proper place for our lessons, but that the night hours in his house would suit best for our lessons; ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... thousand corroborations of his theory. He views her amazing success in the first ages of Christianity—the rapid propagation of her tenets and the growth of her influence—and sees behind these things nothing more than the fortunate circumstance of the existence of the Roman Empire. Or he notices the sudden and rapid rise of the power of the Roman pontiff and explains this by the happy chance that moved the centre of empire to the east and left in Rome an old prestige and an empty throne. He sees how the Church has profited ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... her former beauty then remained, but we were all her lovers and her slaves. The talent, labour, and skill which she wasted in her salon, would have gained and governed an empire. She was virtuous, if it be virtuous to persuade every one of a dozen men that you wish to favour him, though some circumstance always occurs to prevent your doing so. Every friend thought himself preferred. She governed us by little distinctions, by letting one man come five minutes before the others, or stay five minutes after. Just as Louis ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... months, until it dawned on Mompesson and his friends that possibly the case was not one of ghosts but one of witchcraft. This suspicion rose from the singular circumstance that voices in the children's room began, "for a hundred times together," to cry "A witch! A witch!" Resolved to put matters to a test, one of the boldest of a company of spectators suddenly demanded, "Satan, if the drummer set thee to work, give three knocks ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... all his life?" she demanded. "Not even Jose, who's nursed half the kiddies at the Mission one time or another?" She shook her head. "Besides, you only know the things Susan's handed you out of her fool head. And when Susan talks, truth isn't a circumstance. I wouldn't say but what John Kars hasn't got shot up at ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... Manco Ccapac had pointed out. Seating himself there, he was presently turned into stone, and was made the stone of possession. In the ancient language of this valley the heap was called cozco, whence that site has had the name of Cuzco to this day[51]. From this circumstance the Incas had a proverb which said, "Ayar Auca cuzco huanca," or, "Ayar Auca a heap of marble." Others say that Manco Ccapac gave the name of Cuzco because he wept in that place where he buried his brother Ayar Cachi. Owing to his sorrow ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... looked at it in the sanity conferred by food and warmth—to reflect that Frank was within a quarter of a mile of them—certainly in dreary surroundings; but it was for the last time. To-morrow would see him restored to ordinary life, his delusions and vagaries plucked from him by irresistible circumstance, and the ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... always been obedient to his father and mother. I have never known him to swear or tell an untruth, and he never took anything that was not his own—that is," the poor lady hastened to add when she recalled the painful circumstance, "he never forgot himself ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... speculations this circumstance set awhirl in P. Sybarite's weary head were so many and absorbing that he forgot altogether to be surprised or gratified by the favour of Kismet which had caused their paths to cross at precisely that instant, as if solely ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... squadron in the roads of Aboukir occurred during the absence of the General-in-Chief. This event happened on the 1st of August. The details are generally known; but there is one circumstance to which I cannot refrain from alluding, and which excited deep interest at the time. This was the heroic courage of the son of Casablanca, the captain of the 'Orient'. Casablanca was among the wounded, and when the vessel was blown up his son, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... memory of that God's work in man, by which alone we know Him and can approach Him. Well, of that work—I have tried to prove it to you a thousand times—Jesus of Nazareth has become to us, by the evolution of circumstance, the most moving, the most efficacious of all types and epitomes. We have made our protest—we are daily making it—in the face of society, against the fictions and overgrowths which at the present ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... supposed him a smuggler stationed at that place to assist his comrades in landing their goods among the rocky coves of the island. Others that he was a buccaneer; one of the ancient comrades either of Kidd or Bradish, returned to convey away treasures formerly hidden in the vicinity. The only circumstance that throws any thing like a vague light over this mysterious matter is a report that prevailed of a strange foreign-built shallop, with the look of a piccaroon, having been seen hovering about the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... fellow, who was probably not a little vain of his skill, took me into the forecastle, and was on the point of complying with my request, when my father happened to own the gangway—a circumstance that rather ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... elaboration than in completeness for their practical purposes, in adaptation and in capacity. The uncertainty, however, of success in raising the necessary funds in time enforced the abandonment of much that was merely ornate—a circumstance which was proved fortunate by the excess in the demands of exhibitors over all calculations, since the means it was at first proposed to bestow upon the artistic finish of the buildings were needed to provide additional ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... every circumstance to the admiral. Now the Assistance was boarded by the Dutch. Now two ships ran alongside the Prosperous, and in spite of the valour of her crew, she was captured by the enemy. The Oak shared the same fate, though her people fought long ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... the story of my mother's life, every incident of which she related to me herself. I have neither exaggerated nor curtailed a single circumstance in relating this story. I have supplied nothing through imagination, nor have I heightened the coloring of her unusual experiences. Had I done so I could not possibly feel as sure of her approval as I now do, for she is as near to me to-day as ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... of bringing this circumstance forward. Usually she had Brigham march on at the head of his great family and counsel the youth to take more wives, in order that he should be exalted in the Kingdom. Whereupon the young man would fold his love in his arms and speak words of scorn, in the same ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... far as the Cardinal's immediate object was concerned, my visit was a total failure. I had no sympathy with his scheme for the endowment of denominational teaching, and, with all the will in the world to please him, I could not even meet him half way. But this untoward circumstance did not import the least difficulty or restraint into our conversation. He gently glided from business into general topics; knew all about my career, congratulated me on some recent success, remembered some of my belongings, inquired about my school and college, was interested to find that, like ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... pan and large knife; and on reaching some hopeful-looking locality, he makes experiments on the soil by washing. The considerations that determine his calling the company to the spot are of course influenced by the circumstance of their having a common or a quicksilver cradle. He calculates the average value of the gold he finds in several panfuls of the soil at different depths; and he takes into account the distance it has to be carried for washing, the means of transit there exist, and how far off is the nearest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... over the delicious meal, but a curious constraint seemed to rest upon the captain and Chris. Once Walter surprised them exchanging glances full of a strange, expectant uneasiness. The circumstance aroused his curiosity, but he refrained from asking any questions, deciding that the captain would explain the trouble ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... stay in the room," said Lady Staveley, who came in at that moment. But they both did stay in the room, and said a great deal more about the hunt, and the horse, and the accident before they left it; and even became so far reconciled to the circumstance that they had a hot glass of brandy and water each, sitting ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Advertiser, June 10, 1800:—"On the 12th ult., in the Island of Anglesea, Mr. Henry Ceclar, a gentleman well known for his pedestrian feats, to Miss Lucy Pencoch (the rich heiress of the late Mr. John Hughes, Bawgyddanhall), a lady of much beauty, but entirely deaf and dumb. This circumstance drew together an amazing concourse of people to witness the ceremony, which, on the bride's part, was literally performed by proxy. A splendid entertainment was given on the occasion by the bridegroom; but a dreadful catastrophe ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... advantage of one who appears elated with success, or cast down with ill fortune, from our being able to read his cards in his face; so the man of the world, having to deal with one of these babbling countenances, will take care to profit by the circumstance, let the consequence, to him with whom he deals, be as injurious ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... from Amsterdam with despatches from their High Mightinesses the States of Holland. The only circumstance which happened on our voyage worth relating was the wonderful effects of a storm, which had torn up by the roots a great number of trees of enormous bulk and height, in an island where we lay at anchor to take in ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... would bring home in a few small phials in his waistcoat pockets, and in a moderate-sized collecting-box, after an afternoon's excursion, a booty often much richer than his companions had secured with their more elaborate apparatus. The second circumstance in Mr Kirby's study of insects, to which I allude, was the deliberate and careful way in which he investigated the nomenclature of his species. Every author likely to have described them was consulted, their descriptions duly estimated; and it was only after ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... once dare to face them, they held them in the highest contempt, and looked upon themselves as invincible. On the first report of the enemy being in motion, the Carthaginians had put to sea a fleet fitted out in haste, as appeared from every circumstance of it: the soldiers and seamen being all mercenaries, newly levied, without the least experience, resolution, or zeal, since it was not for their own country they were going to fight. This soon appeared in the engagement. They could not sustain the first attack. Fifty of their ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... his head. He has lost his fore-teeth, however, a point in which, Unfortunately, I, though his grandson, have strong resemblance to him. The truth is, they were knocked out of him in rows, before he had reached his thirty-fifth year—a circumstance which the kind reader will be pleased to receive in extenuation for the same defect in myself. That, however, is but a trifle, which never gave either of us ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... incidents." "To be hurried away by every event, is to have no political system at all. His victories were only so many doors, and he never for a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the present circumstance. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He would shorten a straight line to come at his object. Horrible anecdotes may, no doubt, be collected from his history, of the price at which he bought his successes; but he must not therefore be set down as cruel; but only as one who knew ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... my resolution to make the COMFORT of the poor people, who were to be provided for, the primary object of my attention, I considered what circumstance in life, after the necessaries, food and raiment, contributes most to comfort, and I found it to be CLEANLINESS. And so very extensive is the influence of cleanliness, that it reaches even ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... effect of the accumulated tendencies of the family past, she was tender and forgiving to their actions. The mother came in there, and superseded the student of heredity: she found excuse for them in the perversity of circumstance, in the peculiar hardship of the case, in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "Another gruesome circumstance!" cried Hadria, with a half laugh; "for that only proves that her life has dulled her self-respect, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... commanded whatever the habitable world could contribute to augment the material splendor of their social life—were scarcely native to the territory of the empire; but the comparative rarity of these gems in Europe, at somewhat earlier periods, was, perhaps, the very circumstance that led the cunning artists of classic antiquity to enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest the common onyx and cornelian with a worth surpassing, in cultivated eyes, the lustre of the most ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett's and the Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. So as neither ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... accept the invitation, Woronzow. Announce that to the regent's messenger. But still it is sad and humiliating," continued Elizabeth after a pause, a cloud passing over her usually so cheerful countenance, "yes it is still a melancholy circumstance for the daughter of the great Peter to be so poor that she is not able to dress herself suitably to her rank. Ah, how humiliating is the elevation of my high position, when I cannot even properly reward you, my friends, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the entire circumstance of the timber to Lettice. "I just happened to be by the stream," he continued, "and overheard them. Your father and Simmons evidently had arranged the thing, and Simmons was going to crowd you out of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... everything is smiling round her. The star of Mademoiselle de la Valliere was being drowned in clouds and tears. But the gayety of Madame de Montespan redoubled with the successes of the king, and consoled him for every other unpleasant circumstance. It was to D'Artagnan the king owed this; and his majesty was anxious to acknowledge these services; he wrote ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... up by a woman of excellent principles and considerable attainments, who died a year or so before the marriage. And owing to the circumstance that her mother had been dead many years, and her father bedridden, and not altogether rational for a little while before his death, they had few visitors but her uncle. He often stopped with them a month or two at a stretch, particularly in winter, as he was fond of shooting snipe, which are ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... of all is poverty and ignorance. Educate the children, and give them fair wage for fair work in their maturity, and crime will gradually diminish and ultimately disappear. Man is God-made, says Theism; man is circumstance-made, says Atheism. Man is the resultant of what his parents were, of what his surroundings have been and are, and of what they have made him; himself the result of the past he modifies the actual, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... at the mercy of this torturing realisation of empty years and eternal loss? Did Christopher love her or not? The assured "yes" and the positive "no" were as two shuttlecocks tossed over her strained mind by the breath of circumstance. Her own erroneous idea that her still unconquered passion kept them apart was breeding morbid misery for her, as all false beliefs must do. She had kept herself under control to-day by dint of isolation, and the inadequacy of that course filled her with self-contempt. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... circumstance of his early life stood out bright and vivid as if touched with a sunbeam:—an act of childish folly, done fifteen years before, for which his grandfather had made him learn the text, "Thou God seest me." It came flashing ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... 1837. Four trials came upon me this morning, without my having previously had opportunity for secret prayer. I had been prevented from rising early, on account of having to spend part of the night in a sick chamber; but this circumstance shows, how important it is to rise early, when we are able, in order that we may be prepared, by communion with the Lord, to meet the ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... good taste rejects as inadmissible in a work of imagination. Sudden death by disease or casualty is no very uncommon occurrence in real life; but it cannot be used in a novel to clear up a tangled web of circumstance, without betraying something of a poverty of invention in the writer. He is the best artist who makes least use of incidents which lie out of the beaten path of observation and experience. In constructive skill Cooper's rank is not high; for all his novels are more or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various |
