"Humanly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my view, the work of my life appeared a mockery; hope was dead in me. I would rather repair such tools as I had than go abroad in quest of others that must certainly prove worse; and a scandal is, at the best, a thing to be avoided when humanly possible. Right or wrong, then, I determined on a quiet course. All that night I denounced and reasoned with the erring pastor, twitted him with his ignorance and want of faith, twitted him with his wretched attitude, making clean the outside of the cup and platter, callously ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Think of her mournfully, Gently and humanly; Not of the stains of her— All that remains of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... his comparative want of so-called culture did not now jar on her intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that was humanly not great could co-exist with attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and here ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... aperture in the wall and the kindling of the gradual fire; did you not stand amazed to think that all the year round these dread chambers are heating, white hot - and cooling - and filling - and emptying - and being bricked up - and broken open - humanly speaking, for ever and ever? To be sure you did! And standing in one of those Kilns nearly full, and seeing a free crow shoot across the aperture a-top, and learning how the fire would wax hotter and hotter by slow degrees, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... similar power to see the future augmentation of holiness in a soul under physical affliction and God's will that no cure be wrought; and still another, to see some impending cross awaiting at home a pilgrim, of whom humanly speaking, he knew nothing, and to hasten his departure; or to know by interior sight alone, a cure wrought at a distance. Surely miraculous gifts and all were possessed by ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... motive shouldn't matter. One was that even should he desire her without a penny she wouldn't marry him for the world; the other was that she felt him, after all, perceptively, kindly, very pleasantly and humanly, concerned for her. They were also two things, his wishing to be well, to be very well, with her, and his beginning to feel her as threatened, haunted, blighted; but they were melting together for him, making him, by their combination, only the more sure that, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... idea, none!... I implore you, you who must know influential people in high places, do not leave any stone unturned, do all that is humanly possible to ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... political, though not by party, considerations. And throughout the years of his public career the pressure of daily work inside and outside Parliament left him small leisure for reading other than that through which he kept himself acquainted with every movement, and as far as was humanly possible with every fact, that seemed to bear upon the wide range of subjects handled by him. So prodigious was his industry, however—only Dominie Sampson's adjective will serve—and so quick his faculty for detecting at a glance the quality of a book and extracting ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... period of our national history with which the Queen of England so kindly, so "gently and humanly" associated herself—I mean the illness and death of President Garfield. To this day, that association is a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup of our sorrow and humiliation. From the 2d of July, 1881, the date of her first telegram of anxious inquiry addressed ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... go first to Grauble and determine without delay if he could be relied on to make the attempt to reach the outer world. Once I knew that, I could go then to Marguerite with an invitation for her to join me in flight—if such a thing were humanly possible. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... sake. The snows have come. They are already fitting runners to the stages. The mails and the 'dust' must get through in spite of all. I go out on the first sleigh; this one you must take. This winter I shall vindicate my name, if it is humanly possible to do so." He kissed the end of one long curl of her hair, ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... I may choose to come back; I may prefer to make an end. Impossible to foresee my state of mind after living humanly for a year or two. And what shall you do if you come in for ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... no more sympathy with the pietistic movement than Daudet, Kielland yet manages to get, psychologically, closer to his problem. His pietists are more humanly interesting than those of Daudet, and the little drama which they set in motion is more genuinely pathetic. Two superb figures—the lay preacher, Hans Nilsen, and Skipper Worse—surpass all that the author had hitherto produced, in depth of conception and brilliancy of execution. The marriage ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... the edge, looked into the water, and turned away shaking her head. Somerset could for the first time see her face. Though humanly imperfect, as is every face we see, it was one which made him think that the best in woman-kind no less than the best in psalm-tunes had gone over to the Dissenters. He had certainly seen nobody so interesting in his tour hitherto; ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... diminished by the fact that he was the complacent victim of many of our insular prejudices and exhibited a good deal of the national tendency to a crude and self-confident Philistinism. These things come so humanly from him that his wisest admirers have scarcely the heart to complain or disapprove. They laugh at him, and with him, and love him still. But they could not love him as they do if he embodied only the weaknesses of his race. The position he holds ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... after her. Several times this was necessary. Once he took the time to examine the thongs on her ankles, apparently wishing to make sure that she was not uncomfortable. Once he looked up into her sullenly distressed face and said, "Tired?" in a humanly sympathetic tone that made her blink back the tears. She shook her head and would not look at him. Al regarded her in silence for a minute, led Snake to his own horse, ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... impenetrable mountain ranges where the sheriff before had lost the trail after the escape from the cabin and the killing of Mat Henshaw. Towards this same region, again, he had retreated after the notorious Killing at Alder. There was no doubt, then, humanly speaking, that he would make for the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... length, and Dorothy was subjected to a careful examination, and, though all shrank from such a trying ordeal for the delicate girl, the five learned M.D.s agreed that it was the one thing, humanly speaking, left to try. That was all that could be said about it—it might, or ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... forward and affirm on oath that in them Jeanne never provoked any carnal desires. Such a circumstance fills these old captains with astonishment; they boast of their past vigour and wonder that for once their youthful ardour should have been damped by a maid. It seems to them most unnatural and humanly impossible. Their description of the effect Jeanne produced upon them recalls Saint Martha's binding of the Tarascon beast. Dunois in his evidence is very much occupied with miracles. He points to this ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... training a turret crew in this way, for instance, one does not have to consider much outside of the turret itself. The ammunition can be sent up and down, and the guns can be loaded, pointed, and fired with just as much quickness and accuracy as is humanly practicable, without much reference to the ship itself, the fleet, or the navy. In fact, knowledge of outside requirements hinders in some ways rather than advances training of this kind. Knowledge, for instance, of the requirements of actual battle is a distinct ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... complexionally superannuated from the bold and courageous thoughts of youth and fervent years. But the contempt of death from corporal animosity promoteth not our felicity. They may sit in the orchestra and noblest seats of heaven who have held up shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended for glory. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... is the testimony of one of his contemporaries: "He had more virtues and less faults, than I ever yet knew in any human being; and the goodness of his head, admirable as it was, was exceeded by that of his heart." His own measure of true greatness, humanly speaking, he has left behind him, in very emphatic words: "If I am asked, who is the greatest man? I answer, the best. And if I am required to say, who is the best? I reply, he that has deserved most ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... of these pipes was to carry off the gas still mingled with the oil; and, looking attentively, Miselle could distinguish a flickering column ascending from each pipe and forming itself so humanly against the evening sky as to vindicate the superstition of the Saxons, who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... a virtuous life are, however, confessedly numberless, and, humanly speaking, insurmountable. To raise one's self above the clamor of passion, the power of evil, the bondage of the flesh, is acknowledged, in mournful language, to be a hopeless task. A cloud of sadness shades the brow of Plato as he contemplates ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... But however humanly confident Chivers was in his companion's faithfulness, he was not without a rascal's precaution, and determined to select a position for Collinson where he could do the least damage in any aberration of trust. At the top of the grade, above the mill, was the only trail by which ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... only the people on the coast who were really alarmed. Nelson wrote immediately to the Admiralty, that "even on leaving the French harbors the landing is impossible were it only for the difficulties caused by the tides: and as to the notion of rowing over, it is impracticable humanly speaking." An attempt to land a large army on the English coast was soon to become a fixed idea in Bonaparte's mind; but then he used his armaments to disquiet the British Government. Twice Nelson attempted to destroy our fleet, and ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... by these considerations, is not accustoming one's self to mildness and a human temper of mind an admirable thing? For who would wrong or injure a man that is so sweetly and humanly disposed with respect to the ills of strangers that are not of his kind? I remember that three days ago, as I was discoursing, I made mention of a saying of Xenocrates, and how the Athenians gave judgment upon a certain person who had flayed a living ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in him was, that Laetitia became humanly and avowedly beautiful. Her dark eyelashes on the pallor of her cheeks lent their aid to the transformation, which was a necessity to him, so it was performed. He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... whether personal or political. It is only too common for the science specialist to respect cause and effect in a test-tube and despise it in a newspaper. In science no passions are evoked in favour of one solution or another. The search for truth may well be disinterested, since it is, humanly speaking, uninterested. A liberal education must train the mind to master prejudice and self-interest, and this training cannot be given in a material where prejudice and self-interest will not ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... of heathenism were eradicated, the great mass of the people became not only well educated and moral, but earnest and enlightened Christians. The satisfactory progress made by the inhabitants of the islands where Mr Williams resided was owing, humanly speaking, to the wonderful rapidity with which he had acquired their language, and was able to preach to them, in it, the ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... down;' it is the verb which corresponds to the technical expression for 'tradition;' and the words translated 'having had perfect understanding of all things from the first,' might be rendered more properly, 'having traced or followed up all things from the beginning.' And again, as it is humanly speaking certain that in St. Luke's Gospel there are passages, however they are to be explained, which were embodied in it from some other source, so, though extremely probable, it is not absolutely certain that those passages in the Acts in which ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... is a pretty little coloured relief of the Virgin adoring, which I covet, from a tabernacle in the old Piazza di Brunelleschi. Here too are relics of the guild houses of some of the smaller Arti, while perhaps the most humanly interesting thing of all is the great mournful bell of S. Marco in Savonarola's time, known as ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... human faith and trust, which is that it has to step out beyond the light of knowledge into the darkness of uncertainty. On the other hand, to suppose that He knew nothing, is to deny to Him that humanly heroic resolution with which He set His face to tread the path which led Him to suffering. In our ignorance let us grip this certainty, that for Him the one sufficient thing was that the Father knew all things—the times and the ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... his head, and prayed for sudden death. The Martian spoke to the dwarfs. They started forward, saliva drooling from their tusks. Darl gritted his teeth. He would hold out as long as was humanly possible. ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... never sure, for Pa certainly added nothing to the conversation thereafter. Was it real? Or had her too excited brain played her a trick? Jenny pinched herself. It was like a fairy tale, in which cats talk and little birds humanly sing, or the tiniest of fairies appear from behind clocks or from within flower-pots. She looked at Pa with fresh awe. There was no knowing where you had him! He had the interest, for her, of one returned by miracle from other regions, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... a false one. I did not yet know how exceedingly rare an undivided feeling is, did not understand that my feelings towards Mathilde were just as incomplete as those I cherished for Louise. I looked on Mademoiselle Mathilde as on a work of art, but I came more humanly close to Mademoiselle Louise. She did not evoke my enthusiastic admiration; that was quite true, but Mademoiselle Mathilde evoked my enthusiastic admiration only. If there were a great deal of compassion ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... himself and Jackson did their duty nobly that morning. The pursuit now led into a country covered with forest, and using every advantage of such shelter, the Northern companies checked the Southern advance as much as was humanly possible. Many of them were good riflemen, particularly those from Ohio, and the cavalry of Ashby, Funsten and Sherburne found the woods very warm for them. Horses were falling continually, and often their riders fell with them ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the race in question. It is this curious instinctive adaptation—which is so intelligent when it carries out its proper task, so stupid and incapable when diverted to some other purpose—that has deceived so many scientists and philosophers by its insidious analogy with humanly constructed machines. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... man, who counsel can bestow, Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know? Unbiass'd, or by favour, or by spite; Not dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right; Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere; Modestly bold, and humanly severe: Who to a friend his faults can freely show, And gladly praise the merit of a foe? Bless'd with a taste exact, yet unconfined; 640 A knowledge both of books and human kind; Generous converse; a soul exempt ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... day it might almost have seemed as if the stage required censorship less than the ballad. Probably, if it had been thought humanly possible to prevent the publication and the circulation of scurrilous poems against eminent men and women, Walpole might have ventured on the experiment. But he had too much robust common-sense not to recognize the impossibility of doing anything effective in the way of repression in that ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... cannot be so in my case, since you are perfectly aware that my destiny is, humanly speaking, already decided," replied Clara, with ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of entering upon the war with Prussia "with a light heart"; for in his very next sentences he spoke of that war as being absolutely forced upon France, and of himself and his colleagues as having done all that was humanly and honourably possible to avoid it. Assuredly he would not have spoken quite as he did had he realized at the time that Bismarck had merely forced on the war in order to defeat the Emperor Napoleon's intention to invade ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... she takes his conceit for grave wisdom, and his kindness for infinite tenderness. She looks upon him as an importation from the priesthood of the Grand Llama,—perhaps he is the Grand Llama himself; certainly the inhabitant of a land where young men do not grow humanly. He is a rara avis, a glorious phenomenon, a marked consideration in the world, a being to be devoutly gazed at to come to ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... scornfully; Think of her | mournfully, Gently, and | humanly; Not of the | stains of her: All that re |-mains of her Now, is pure ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... life, and so faces hazards and uses himself up—in brief, one who lives at high tempo and with full joy, what Nietzsche used to call the ja-sager, or yes-sayer. He may, in fact, die slightly sooner than the teetotaler, but he lives infinitely longer. Moreover, his life, humanly speaking, is much more worth while, to himself and to the race. He does the hard and dangerous work of the world, he takes the chances, he makes the experiments. He is the soldier, the artist, the innovator, the lover. All the great works of man have been done by men who ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... a shudder of regret, he knew not why, passed through him, as he Saw the mob tearing down pictures, and dashing statues to the ground. Heathen they were, doubtless; but still, the Nymphs and Venuses looked too lovely to be so brutally destroyed... There was something almost humanly pitiful in their poor broken arms and legs, as they lay about upon the pavement.... He laughed at himself for the notion; but he ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... "better" or the "stronger," if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority, whether in size, strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of diminished fertility; and where the life led by a species does ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... so far is that Bloch has not come true—yet. I think in the end he will come true, but not so far as this war is concerned, and to make that clear it is necessary to trouble the reader with a little disquisition upon war—omitting as far as humanly possible all ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... over a river as he who stands near its source. No one has such power over the tree as he who plants and tends it while yet it is a pliant sapling. And no earthly power is to be compared with that which, humanly speaking, determines the course and destiny of an immortal soul. Under God the mother is the first guardian of the child's eternal interest. It is from the mother, who moves constantly among her little ones, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Mrs. Sohlberg and then of Antoinette Nowak as factors in the potpourri, the situation became more difficult. Humanly fond of Aileen as Cowperwood was, and because of his lapses and her affection, desirous of being kind, yet for the time being he was alienated almost completely from her. He grew remote according as his clandestine affairs were drifting or blazing, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... maternal tenderness and makes it injurious to the energy of a manly character. Monnica was severe and a little rough. If she let her feelings be seen, it was solely before God. And yet it is most certain that in the depth of her heart she loved Augustin, not only as a future member of Christ, but humanly, as a woman frustrated of love in a badly assorted marriage may spend her love on her child. The brutality of pagan ways revolted her, and she poured on this young head all her stored-up affection. In Augustin she loved ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... manner. But Rita's determination was curiously fixed. Unmoved by every kind of appeal, she proceeded to the appointment which Sir Lucien had made—ignorant of that which Fate held in store for her—and Sir Lucien, also humanly blind, walked on ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... mistaken. But it is another and more serious matter to bridge over the very real gap that separates philosophy and common-sense. Such an aim is realized only when philosophy is seen to issue from some special interest that is humanly important; or when, after starting in thought at a point where one deals with ideas and interests common to all, one is led by the inevitableness of consistent thinking into ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and racial characteristics Italy at one time furnished most of the great singers of the world, and the world with its usual lack of judgment and discrimination gave Italian teachers all of the credit. That the best of the Italian teachers were as near right as it is humanly possible to be, I have no doubt whatever, but along with the few singers who became famous there were hundreds who worked equally hard but were never heard of. A great voice is a gift of the creator, and the greater the gift the less there is to be done by the teacher. But in addition to what nature ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... not the shibboleth of a sect or the cabalistic insignia of philosophy; it excludes all error and includes all Truth. More mistakes are made in its name than this period comprehends. Divinely defined, Science is the atmosphere of God; humanly construed, and according to Webster, it is "knowledge, duly arranged and referred to general truths and principles on which it is founded, and from which it is derived." I employ this awe-filled word in both a divine and human sense; but I insist that Christian Science is demonstrably ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... For an hour he was spared even indirect references to the unhappy interview, though in his over-sensitive condition he fancied that Agnes was unwontedly frigid in manner, as though a new barrier had been placed between them. Conversation centred about her brother. Humanly speaking, he would be released from Switzerland within a few weeks and would come either to Paris or London; he was, of course, debarred from active service, but the War Office would no doubt test his capabilities of health and ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... walls, but to break soil, to build barns and factories, and to find a high employment for himself in what hitherto has been despised as degrading. How to elevate labour—how to make it beautiful—how to enlist the spirit in it (for in no other way can it be made humanly profitable), that is the problem which he looks wistfully to the future to solve for us. He may look to the past as well as to the future; in the old Ionia he will find all for which he wishes. The ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Humanly speaking, the decision was made by two groups of persons—the Careys and Cecils, and the Romanists of England—both of whom were determined that James of Scotland should succeed. The latter had been working ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... save the wirreenun, whose spirit-tree it was, would dare to touch a refugee at a Minggah; and should the sanctuary be a Goomarh, or spirit-stone, not even a wirreenun would dare to interfere, so that it is a perfectly safe sanctuary from humanly dealt evil. But a refugee at a Minggah or Goomarh runs a great risk of incurring the wrath of the spirits, for Minggah are taboo to all ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... at once the most easy and the most difficult that the author may assume. Technically it is the easiest, because the writer is absolutely free in the selection and the patterning of his narrative materials; but humanly it is the most difficult, because it is hard for any man consistently to play the god, even toward his own fictitious creatures. Although George Eliot assumes omniscience of Daniel Deronda, the consensus of opinion among men of sound judgment is that she ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... moment when he was needed most, that Angela had melted toward him as snow melts in the spring sun. She had not only forgiven, but forgotten—for the moment—that there had been things to forgive; so she answered this question of his, humanly and simply. "I wonder?" she said. "If it were not a question of a country, but a person? I can't tell. I've never fallen deep in." Then she pulled herself up abruptly. "Luncheon must be ready," she went on in a changed ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... unstintingly to secure the information I need before I take each step. I hire the best investigators, bribe employees and persons in position to give me the information I want, and only when I am as certain as humanly possible that I cannot be wrong do I move. And the system never fails. Seven million dollars in the bank is proof ...
— There is a Reaper ... • Charles V. De Vet
... be expected? Where judges sob like children, and jurors swoon away with emotionalism; where floods of bombast—go to the courts, and listen!—take the place of cross-examination and duly-sworn affidavits; where perjury is a humanly venial and almost praiseworthy failing—how shall the code, defective as it is, be administered? Rhetoric, and rhetoric alone, sways the decision of the courts. Scholars are only now beginning to realize to what an extent the ancient sense of veracity was tainted with this vice—how ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... is scarcely a fair statement of facts. And yet they were all spread before Hooker, in the reports of the Sixth Corps and of Gibbon. No doubt Sedgwick was bound, as far as was humanly possible, to obey that order; but, as in "losing every man in his command" in its execution, he would scarcely have been of great eventual utility to his chief, he did the only wise thing, in exercising ordinary discretion as to the method of attacking the enemy in his path. Hooker's assumption that ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... will they understand the development of the dynamic consciousness. But why should they understand? It is the business of very few to understand and for the mass, it is their business to believe and not to bother, but to be honorable and humanly to fulfill their human responsibilities. To give active obedience to their leaders, and to possess their own souls ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... also she wished that she had thought of mentioning the "rudimentary rules of metrical composition" instead of infant classes. She smiled as disagreeably as was possible to such humanly kissable lips ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... firemen, the wild rush and terror of the streets; then the great hush that fell upon the crowd; the sea of upturned faces, with the fire-glow upon it; and up there, against the background of black smoke that poured from roof and attic, the boy clinging to the narrow ledge, so far up that it seemed humanly impossible that help could ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... soils that make up the continent have sprung, one generation succeeding another in regular order. His latest offspring is in the South and Southwest, and in the interior. These are the new countries, geologically speaking, as well as humanly speaking. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... called Dennis. "We're level with the gun," and, trying to squeeze themselves flatter, if such a performance had been humanly possible, they heard the rhythmical tac-tac abreast of them and the weird whistle of the deadly stream of bullets a few feet ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hat preparatory to going. "With quiet, and care, and a strict adherence to my instructions, I daresay that by the end of that time you will be sufficiently recovered to leave here for your own home. Humanly speaking, sir, you owe your life to this gentleman," indicating Ducie. "But for his skill and promptitude you would have been a dead ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... that gentleman, as he has not many equals in the nobleness of his nature, so he is not likely, I doubt, to have many followers, in a reformation begun in the bloom of youth, upon self-conviction, and altogether, humanly speaking, spontaneous. Those ladies who would plead his example, in support of this pernicious notion, should find out the same generous qualities in the man, before they trust to it: and it will then ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the years, and as far as was humanly possible she kept Jase working. She did not soften, except toward Billy Louise, who rode sometimes over from her father's ranch on the Wolverine to the flowery delights of the Cove. The place was a perfect ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... his life at the link which death had broken, and continued his natural walk into age and decay (though interrupted by a thousand years of the sepulchre) as if his life had been without this black hiatus, and he was proceeding steadily and humanly from the cradle. But collecting that the vital spark could never have been extinguished in him, I understood that time, which has absolute control over life, still knew him as its prey during all those forty-eight years in which he had lain frozen; that it had ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... safety, however, and set to work at once with marvellous activity to organize resistance against the invasion. He was ably seconded by M. de Freycinet, and between them these two did all that was humanly possible to perform; but from the first their task was one of formidable difficulty, and all chances of repelling the Germans from French soil vanished after the shameful capitulation ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... to treat the boy on my own theory. I don't expect him to play games; I don't think that it is, humanly speaking, possible to expect a sensitive, frail boy to continue to play a game in which he only makes himself ridiculous and contemptible from first to last. Of course if a boy who is incapable of success in athletics does go on playing games perseveringly and good-humouredly, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... obligation that they so much value, in [not] giving them the protection possible—so that while the faith does not advance, it may not decrease, nor lose what has been planted in the vineyard of God our Lord. This will be attained (humanly speaking), as long as the two extremes on which this mean depends do not fail, those two extremes being the states maintained by the two crowns in the Orient: that of Portugal, in India; and that of Castilla, in Filipinas. As India is the gateway for all the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... man—by the difference between the Universe and You or Me. Those who are anxious to learn what can be learnt about the creative process, and to explain it to themselves, not in terms of abstract thought, but in terms of the humanly intelligible and appreciable, may be satisfied with a lower degree of truth, with something more certain though not fully explained. We may be content if we can hit upon some least common denominator free from ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... makes marriage when complete and successful the happiest human experience. Soberly speaking, it is then the flower of existence, satisfying biologically and humanly, giving peace and satisfaction to body and mind. This is the ideal, the "happy ending" at which most romances, novels, plays, and all the daydreams of youth leave us. Warm, cozy, intense domesticity, where passion is legitimate and love and friendship eternal; where children play around ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... in this direction would be enough to affect the British market; but we did believe, and believe still, that not only is there a consistency in a preference for free produce, but that this preference is encouraging to the free laborer, and that humanly speaking nothing is more calculated to nerve his hand and heart for vigorous effort. The principle of abstinence from slave produce may be smiled at, but we are quite sure it is an honest one, and, as a good old proverb observes, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... in which they had been concerned; and the silk-capped gentleman told, to the common admiration, of a fearful escape of his, on the Erie Road, from being thrown down a steep embankment fifty feet high by a piece of rock that had fallen on the track. "Now just see, gentlemen, what a little thing, humanly speaking, life depends upon. If that old woman had been able to sleep, and hadn't sent that boy down to warn the train, we should have run into the rock and been dashed to pieces. The passengers made up a purse for the boy, and I wrote a full account ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wonder, and his countenance softened. She saw that he was moved and hastily turning from him, she approached Henrich, who had risen from the couch, and now stood an earnest spectator of the scene, on the issue of which his life or death, humanly speaking, depended. She took his band, and led him to her father, and again pleaded earnestly and passionately for his life; while the touching expression of his own deep blue eyes, and the beauty of his fair young face, added greatly to the power ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Instead, therefore, of objurgating the timid intrusions of Philosophy, invoke her presence, I pray you. History without her is the skeleton map of events: Fiction a picture of figures modelled on no skeleton-anatomy. But each, with Philosophy in aid, blooms, and is humanly shapely. To demand of us truth to nature, excluding Philosophy, is really to bid a pumpkin caper. As much as legs are wanted for the dance, Philosophy is required to make our human nature credible and acceptable. Fiction implores you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... risk the maharajah's unchancy friendship by dismissing himself; but he suspected there were limits. He could not imagine why, but he had noticed that insolence to Blaine himself was fairly safe, Blaine being super-humanly indifferent as long as Mrs. Blaine was shown respect, even exceeding the English in the absurd length to which he carried it. It was a mad world in Chamu's opinion. He went and fetched the hamal, who slunk through his task with the air of a condemned felon. Tess smiled ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Yule seldom addressed anything but a curt inquiry or caustic comment; if he spoke humanly at table ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... scruple of conscience which disturbed it. Madame de Saint- Simon all devoutly tried what she could to put a drag upon our tongues, but the drag broke, so to speak, and we continued our free discourse, humanly speaking very reasonable on our parts, but which we felt, nevertheless, was not according to religion. Thus two hours passed, seemingly very short. Madame d'Orleans went away, and I repaired with Madame de Saint-Simon to receive ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... not far to seek. Too long had the moral sense of educated men been outraged by common fraud and deceit for any continuance of a regime which had disgraced China for four long years to be humanly possible. Far and wide the word was rapidly passing that Yuan Shih-kai was not the man he had once been; he was in reality feeble and choleric—prematurely old from too much history-making and too many hours spent in the harem. He had indeed ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... the divine Principle and practice of Jesus were misunderstood. He was at work in divine Science. His words 53:12 and works were unknown to the world because above and contrary to the world's religious sense. Mortals be- lieved in God as humanly mighty, rather than ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... judgment up at the big cote house. But unless I can get some confidential information frum you I don't know where else I'm likely to git it, and at the same time I sort of feel as ef I should try to get hold of it somewheres or other ef it's humanly possible." ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... said, "we have done all that is humanly possible, and all that in conscience we can or ought to do. Nothing could be more natural than our desire to see Jacintillo connected with that great family, the first in Orbajosa; nothing more natural than our desire to see him master ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... and "Red," humanly embarrassed now that his secret was out, paced the room, his hands behind his back, digging his heel every now and then in the floor. "Aw—" ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... a curious people, but this commission did undoubtedly interest Sebastian the jeweller. Professionally speaking, it was a delicate piece of work; humanly, could have but one explanation. So, at least, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... is the utterance of the atom trying to understand the universe. It is ignorant, because it is impossible for that human atom who uttered it to form any adequate conception of the infinitely great whole of which he was an infinitely small part. And yet, humanly speaking, it is the soundest and hardest of common sense. If God is honest He must respect honesty, no matter whether it is the honesty of belief, or of disbelief, always supposing that the belief and ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... too long, I have hoped too much, I have been too happy this year; and I no longer wish anything else. After so many years of toil and misfortune, to have been free as a bird of the air, a thoughtless traveler, super-humanly happy, and then to come back to a dungeon! . . . is that possible? . . . I dream, I dream by day, by night; and my heart's thought, folding upon itself, prevents all action of the thought of the ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... own elixir, and have lots and lots of years in which to find the ivory, without being beholden to him for help. Wily old scaramouch! But I had a better card up my sleeve. He has taken to discarding ancient prejudices—doesn't drink or anything like that, but treats his harem almost humanly. Lets 'em have anything that costs him nothing. Even sends for a medico when they're sick! Getting lax in his old age! Sent for me a while ago to attend his favorite wife—sixty years old if she's a day, and as proud of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... his macaroni and must pause to shovel the outlying strings of it into his mouth. But the haste with which he did so was sufficient guaranty for his eagerness to reply as soon as it was humanly possible ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... was, humanly speaking, a failure; the natives were hostile, the missionaries not sufficiently numerous; it was necessary in the end to give ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... it is the especial obligation of the Federal Government to devise means and effectively assist in the education of the newcomer from foreign lands, so that the level of American education may be made the highest that is humanly possible. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... would-be chastity of cold calculation is equally unbeautiful and unreal, and without any sort of value. A true and worthy chastity can only be supported by an ardent ideal, whether, as among the early Christians, this is the erotic ideal of a new romance, or, as among ourselves, a more humanly erotic ideal. "Only erotic idealism," says Ellen Key, "can arouse enthusiasm for chastity." Chastity in a healthily developed person can thus be beautifully exercised only in the actual erotic life; in part it is the natural instinct of dignity and temperance; in part it is the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lounging in the same absurd attitude, with his elbow on the grate, but his voice had altered abruptly for the third time; just as it had changed from the mock heroic to the humanly indignant, it now changed to the airy incisiveness of a lawyer ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of documentary and ethnologic study, we came to know one another humanly by the hard proof of the Frontier. Thousands of miles of wilderness and desert we trudged side by side—camped, starved, shivered, learned and were Glad together. Our joint pursuits in comfort at our homes (in Santa Fe and Isleta, respectively) ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... of plot, glancing play at witty talk, characters really human and humanly real, spirit and gladness, freshness and quick movement. 'Half a Rogue' is as brisk as a horseback ride on a glorious morning. It is as varied as an April day. It is as charming as two most charming girls can make it. Love and honor and success and all the great ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... twice—it was with a satisfaction like that when body and brain are fed at once, invisibly, by the same lustre of force, that he put it away. One part of it, though, left him humanly troubled enough. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... And he'll come to it. I have made some inquiries; I am on his tracks; and I know that he has just about reached the end of his rope. He'll come, depend upon it he'll come around, and when he does he will whine. Then I am going to take him into the business. In this way we will see whether it is humanly possible to make a useful man out of him. If I can, and if he sticks, I'll call him into the office, tell him the whole story, make everything as clear as day to him, and then offer to take him in as a partner in the firm. You have got to admit that he ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... drawn to this odd, efficient woman. Beside that her skillful, untiring nursing had humanly, been the means of saving her father's life, which alone had warmed her with an earnest gratitude that was restless to prove itself, and that welled up in every glance and tone she gave Miss Sampson, there were a certain respect ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... loved for myself. I have been called a successful man, but in my own heart I know that this is the only real success I have ever had during fifty-five years. It is certainly a great pleasure to think, as I do, that I shall be able to give my Gabrielle all (humanly speaking) ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... volunteered in a further note, "as that of the majority of his French confreres, you will find it in the artistic sketches of the men and women in La Boheme" "His guardian angel, humanly and ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... her and speaking very humanly]. You are making fun of me. Why does everybody make fun of me? Is ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... intellect and the eye by its beautiful outlines. [We are not yet ready to discuss beauty of expression.] The Bacchus less ideal and more humanly natural cannot so satisfy a highly aesthetic temperament. In neither work is there much of sentiment expressed. The distinctively moral side plays a secondary part, unless we consider beauty itself a moral factor,—a theory that may be sustained. In neither beautiful marble is there revealed ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... know. It seems humanly reasonable that the three of us can woman-handle a mere man of your elderly and insulting avoirdupois. What do you say, girls? Let's rush him. He's not a minute under forty, and he has an aneurism. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... promptly turned his back on her and devoted himself to Hope. In her passing vexation, she quite forgot to take into account that she herself, not Billy, had been the movable quantity, and that the time she had given him had been hours of keen enjoyment to herself. Theodora was no saint. She was humanly tempestuous, superhumanly jealous. She could love her friends to distraction; she could give her time and strength and thought to them unreservedly; but in return she demanded a soleness of affection which should ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... sure I am in the right. I wish to help you to see that there is another reading to your facts. If love is essentially the same from protoplasm to man, it does not for this reason become worthless. By virtue of being universal it is enhanced and most divinely humanly binding. You tell me that love is involuntary, compelled by external forces as old as time and as binding as instinct, and I say that because of this, life is finally for love. What! The cavemen, and the birds, too, and the fish and the plants, forsooth! What! The inorganic, perhaps, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... you. There are scores of clergymen to-day in our pulpits who are in my eyes little better than open skeptics, yet I am not allowed to refuse communion with them. Why should you refuse it with me? You must at last trust in some mysterious and humanly incomprehensible form of words. Even Strong has to do this. Why may you not ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... creating some confusion. The officers and men of the Battalion gallantly pressed on against these odds, however, and succeeded in reaching their objective; but the enemy machine gun and rifle fire became so intense that their advanced positions were rendered humanly untenable. Our men, though forced to retire in places, established themselves in shell-hole posts, where an ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... was, or he would n't have written a book about it, and come to so lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly puzzled me at that instant to define my identity. "Thirty years ago," I reflected, "I was nothing; fifty years hence I shall be nothing again, humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am I, sure-enough?" It had never before occurred to me what an indefinite article I was. I wish it had not occurred to me then. Standing there in the rain and darkness, I wrestled ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Ladies,—It is proposed to make a small presentation to you, in commemoration of your prompt and courageous action in warning the train on the —- inst., and thus averting what must, humanly speaking, have been a terrible accident. The presentation will take place at the —- Station at three o'clock on the 30th inst., if this time and place will be convenient ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... side into what we call Democracy. And Democracy—while surely we cannot claim for it that it is perfect—yet Democracy, it seems to me, is the best expedient hitherto invented by mankind, not for annihilating distinctions and equalities, for that is impossible, but, so far as it is humanly possible, for compensating them. Here in our little towns in the last century, people met without thinking of it on a high table-land of common manhood. There was no sense of presumption from below, there was no possibility ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... I am going. For I see no other way of making your life even bearable for you. It has become impossible for us to go on as we are—and the fault is mine, only mine. You have been an angel of goodness and patience, you have done all that was humanly possible for any woman to do, but circumstances were against us. I had no right to ask you to make such a marriage. I cannot undo it. I cannot give you your freedom, but I can by my absence make your life easier than it has been. I have arranged everything with the lawyers in London and with ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... to present him and Tayoga to many of the notables. He met the governor, Mr. Watts, and more De Lanceys, Wilsons and Crugers than he could remember, and he received invitations to great houses, and made engagements which he intended to keep, if it were humanly possible. Willet and Hardy exchanged glances when they noticed how easily he adapted himself to the great world of his day. He responded here as he had responded in Quebec, although Quebec and New York, each a center in its own way, ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... question of recognizing the Confederacy came before Parliament, it was withdrawn after discussion by request of Mr. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He assured the House that "the main result of the American contest is not, humanly speaking, in any degree doubtful." He thought "there never was a war of more destructive, more deplorable, more hopeless character." The contest in his judgment was "a miserable one." "We do not," said he, "believe that the restoration of the American ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... you're in the best position of anybody in town, Henry. You've got a following that'll see you through, if it's humanly possible." ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... among the men. Always a lively craft, she now showed a Vokes-like agility; for, as is ever the case, she had no ballast, and who would take the trouble to ship a few tons of sand? At such moments the engine was our sole stand-by: had it played one of its usual tricks, the Mukhbir, humanly speaking, was lost; that is, she would have been swamped and water-logged. As for setting sail, it was not till our narrow escape that I could get the canvas out ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... poet in Mr. Keir Hardie but much more of the prophet, and withal a good deal of shrewd political common sense. Where Mr. John Burns wants, humanly, the approval and goodwill of his friends and neighbours for his work, Mr. Keir Hardie is content with the assurance of his own conscience; and in times of difficulty he chooses rather to walk alone, communing with his own heart, than to seek ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Seddon, a prominent solicitor of Burslem. She was not only not in my cousins' generation but not in their set, she was one of a small hardworking group who kept immaculate note-books, and did as much as is humanly possible of that insensate pile of written work that the Girls' Public School movement has inflicted upon school-girls. She really learnt French and German admirably and thoroughly, she got as far in mathematics ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... she outcried the stream, and through the comparative quietness that followed a hideous noise rumbled and shrieked upwards from the hollow. Bestial, but humanly inarticulate, it filled the air and ceased: there was the loud thud of furniture overthrown, a woman's voice, and silence. Then, while Miriam's legs shook and her back was chilled, she heard a sweet, clear whistling and the sound of feet. A minute later George ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... foul murder stirred slightly. Polycarp started and bent over her again, somewhat disconcerted, perhaps, but more humanly anxious. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... note, as I did, that those baronial halls of Edward Teach—for a while the playground of King Alcinoues—are rapidly being reclaimed by the savage wilderness, fiercely swallowed minute by minute by the fanged and serpentine vegetation—which, after all, was only stayed for a moment, and which, humanly speaking, will now submerge them for ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... background, like the portrait, is handled with perfect discretion. The reader who is searching for an authoritative biography of Washington, brief, and made humanly interesting from the first page to the last, will find it here."—From a column review of the book in The New York ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... comfort in all things: "do you think my heart is not ready to break, like yours? But I trust in God. This trouble came upon us while we were doing right; let us do right still, and we need not fear. Humanly speaking, our children are safe; it is only our own terror which exaggerates the danger. They may not take the disease at all. Then, how could we answer it to our conscience if we turned out this poor soul, and ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the letter he had written her; most of their intercourse of late had been of this sort, for his uncle's recent death had opened again the vexed question of Boston residence and his inability to comply with her unreasonable demands had strained anew relations never very close, humanly considered. The unfortunate early years of family restraint, the lack of all those weak and tender intimacies, not uncommon in New England families, had borne their legitimate fruit, and my mother's gentle ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... New York, 1897, p. 292.] "forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious moment"—this is the type of noetic unity on which rationalism insists. Empiricism on the other hand is satisfied with the type of noetic unity that is humanly familiar. Everything gets known by SOME knower along with something else; but the knowers may in the end be irreducibly many, and the greatest knower of them all may yet not know the whole of everything, or even know what he does know at ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... prepared to sacrifice everything for it. But we must not sacrifice the African nation itself upon the altar of independence. So soon as we are convinced that our chance of maintaining our autonomous position as Republics is, humanly speaking, at an end, it becomes our clear duty to desist from our efforts. We must not run the risk of sacrificing our nation and its future to a mere idea which can no ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... of Katte's execution, and of the Prince's and other people's position in regard to it, has never yet been humanly set forth, otherwise the response had been different. Not humanly set forth,—and so was only barked at, as by the infinitude of little dogs, in all countries; and could never yet be responded to in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is the great Bayeux tapestry. But its threads breathe history; its stitches sing romance; and we who love to touch humorously the spirits of brothers who lived so long ago, find here the matter that humanly unites the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... now mind and be converted, or you shall go to prison." The effect this foolish speech produced on the Gipsies may be easily imagined, and likewise how useless it rendered the situation of the Missionary who desired to labour among them. They took to flight whenever they saw him approach, and thus, humanly speaking, there appeared not the least prospect of success, as the seed of the word could not so much as be sown. But HE, who alone is able to turn the heart, mercifully looked upon the work, and directed him to the right means effectually to bring ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb |
