"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... AEnone, had left him. Left him for a stripling of a slave—a mere creature from the public market. What was the loss of gold and jewels and quarries to this! And how could he ever hold up his head again, with this heavy shame upon it! For there could be no doubt;—alas! no. Had he not seen her press a kiss upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... vain called to the people to help me; they seemed to think that I was as mad as the bear, or that I was a mere bearish Englishman, who had lived so long amongst animals of that description that I very naturally took it for an old friend Larry continued to shout out to me for help, until Jacques Chacot seized his jaws, and, closing ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... cost almost, these were to be made subservient to the interests of England. So well was this plan carried out, that Ireland found itself being governed by a small English clique and its Houses of Parliament a mere tool in the clique's hands. The Parliament no longer represented the national will, since it did really nothing but ratify what the English party asked for, or what the King's ministers in England instructed should ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... mark of the dissolute manners of those times, that an audience, to whom matrimonial infidelity was nightly held out, not only as the most venial of trespasses, but as a matter of triumphant applause, were unable to brook any ridicule, upon the mere transitory connection formed betwixt the keeper and his mistress. Dryden had spared neither kind of union; and accordingly his opponents exclaimed, "That he lampooned the court, to oblige his friends in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... and her brood is a long one. "Mother Goose," writes Mr. Walter T. Field, "began her existence as the raconteuse of fairy tales, not as the nursery poetess. As La Mere Oye she told stories to French children more than two hundred and fifty years ago." According to the researches made by Mr. Field in the literature of Mother Goose, "the earliest date at which Mother Goose appears as the author of children's stories is 1667, when Charles Perrault, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... studied, that the old unauthenticated stories clash with the analogous tales current on better authority in our own day. But these ancient legends are given, not as evidence, but for three reasons: first, because of their merit as mere stories; next, because several of them are now perhaps for the first time offered with a critical discussion of their historical sources; lastly, because the old legends seem to show how the fancy of periods less critical than ours dealt with such facts as are now reported in a dull undramatic ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... an industrial life and citizenship be given at least a knowledge of an adequate physical standard? To allow the school child to deteriorate whether before or after going to work is only to waste potential citizenship. Citizens who use themselves up in the mere getting of a living have no surplus strength or interest for overcoming incompetence in civic business, or for achieving the highest aim of citizenship,—the art of self-government for the ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... wits she repeated, "I have nothing to forgive, but everything for which to thank you. My starting you in the life intellectual cannot compare with your finding me hanging by a mere thread from a tall tree top and restoring me to the life physical, without which my brilliant intellectual attainments would have been as nothing," she ended gaily, breaking the ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... to be recognized as a great and original composer for a machine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the mere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, wooden flutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins. He made ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... which had been found in the pocket of the murdered soldier. This letter, judging from the half-effaced heading at the top of the note-paper, must have been written in some cafe on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. To discover which precise cafe would be mere child's play; and indeed the fourth landlord to whom Lecoq exhibited the letter recognized the paper as his. But neither he, nor his wife, nor the young lady at the counter, nor the waiters, nor any of the customers present at the time, had ever once heard mention made ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... talking about mere manner. The matter and substance of the orator's speech must depend upon the intellectual quality of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... is to soar to a little height and then drop to the ground, with wings closed, singing as it descends. It invariably affects open plains. There are very few tracts of treeless land in India which are not tenanted by finch-larks. The nest is a mere pad of grass and feathers placed on the ground in a tussock of grass, beside a clod of earth, or in a depression, such as a hoof-print. The most expeditious way of finding nests of these birds in places where they are abundant is ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... galleries clap, Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap; But, wiser far than he, combustion fears, And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers; Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl, It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl, Who from his powder'd pate the intruder strikes, And, for mere malice, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... withdraw from further contracting with the government. Our profits for the year were dazzling, and the actual growth of our beeves in the Outlet was in itself a snug fortune, while the five herds bought at the eleventh hour cleared over one hundred thousand dollars, mere pin-money. I hurried home to find that fortune favored me personally, as the Texas and Pacific Railway had built west from Fort Worth during the summer as far as Weatherford, while the survey on westward was within easy striking distance of both my ranches. My wife was dazed and delighted ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... and mother come to New York City at once? Everett and I are to be married on Friday evening at eight o'clock, then take a night train for California. So my well-laid plans for a grand wedding the last of October will have to end in mere announcement cards. But I'll explain. You know I told you of those wonderful open-air performances of Greek plays that have been going on at a spot not far from Ravenwood, the motion picture studio where Everett ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... that, as a rule, savages do not throw away their lives recklessly. The moment it became evident that darkness would no longer serve them, those who were in the open retired to the woods, and potted at the windows of the ranch, but, as the openings from which the besieged fired were mere loop-holes made for the purpose of defence, they had little hope of hitting them at long range except by chance. Those of the besiegers who happened to be near the stockade took shelter behind the breast-work, and awaited ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... have," he blamed himself, in such seriousness as if it were the gravest matter he had risked, and not the mere touching of a blood-red welt ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... devoid of all human sympathy, feeds its vanity in a cold contempt and derision of everything, and solely occupies itself in aimless detraction? Why exhibit such a moral deformity, which could hardly be tolerated even in Tragedy, for the mere purpose of producing domestic discontent and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... explain further this fruitful principle of "limitation of space." Walter knew the fruit of it, even if he failed to recognize the origin. He was not worried so much by the mere coming home as by the punishment he expected to receive as soon as that New Testament should be missed. He had returned from his little excursion into the country with Glorioso, and now in Amsterdam again the ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... allusions, brought the color to his cheeks so quickly that Dr. Barbesol had nicknamed him "the thermometer of modesty." Was he as innocent as he looked? ill-natured people asked themselves. Was it the mere presentiment of unknown and shameful mysteries or else indignation at the relations ordained as the concomitant of love that so strongly affected the son of Virginie the greengrocer? The urchins of the neighborhood as they ran past the shop would fling disgusting remarks at ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Derryclare, in the Connemara district of Galway, and almost under the shadow of the Twelve Pins, there stands by the wayside a small rude monument of uncut stones, a mere heap, surmounted by a rough wooden cross. Such stone heaps as this are common on the west coast, and originate in the custom of making a family memorial, each member of the family, or, in some cases, each friend attending the funeral, contributing a stone to the rude monument. ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... accordingly by no means a great and splendid city. It was surrounded by what was called a mud wall—that is, a wall made of blocks of clay dried in the sun. The houses of the inhabitants were mere hovels, and even the palace of the king, and all the other public buildings, were of very frail construction; for all the architecture of the Monguls in those days took its character from the tent, which was the type and model, so to speak, of all ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Though I thank you heartily all the same; it would be a shame at my age to be a beggar. But can you think of an employment where I can make something?—what they offer me is so trifling. I have a mother and a brother—a mere child, sir—at home." ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... queer and shaken he had felt when he awoke. Now he came to think of it, he had been strangely jarred. A mere sound could scarcely have ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... looked at her new groom in a manner which expressed frank astonishment. Was he in earnest, or was it mere bravado? An idea came ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... to take a hand in the supper. She was hungry and could not bear that those dusky, dirty hands should set forth her food, so she went to work cheerfully, giving directions as if the Indian woman understood her, though she very soon discovered that all her talk was as mere babbling to the other, and she might as well hold her peace. The woman set a kettle of water over the fire, and Margaret forestalled her next movement by cutting some pork and putting it to cook in a ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... zeal and in union had a great advantage over the Protestants, so had they also an infinitely superior organization. In truth Protestantism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The Reformed Churches were mere national Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was utterly without any machinery for foreign operations. The Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for Scotland ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great Chartres rose of the west front was put there to please her, since it was to be always before her eyes, the most conspicuous object she would see from the high altar, and therefore the most carefully considered ornament in the whole church, outside the choir. The mere size proves the importance she gave it. The exterior diameter is nearly forty-four feet (13.36 metres). The nave of Chartres is, next perhaps to the nave of Angers, the widest of all Gothic naves; about fifty-three feet (16.31 metres); and the rose takes every inch it can get of this enormous span. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... with great suspicion on the legend which has come down to us. He will perhaps be inclined to regard the princes who are said to have founded the civil and religious institutions of Rome, the sons of Mars, and the husband of Egeria, as mere mythological personages, of the same class with Perseus and Ixion. As he draws nearer to the confines of authentic history, he will become less and less hard of belief. He will admit that the most important parts of the narrative ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... battle. He was engaged continually in riding up and down upon spirited horses, and shooting in all directions, backward and forward, and both to the right side and to the left, with his bow and arrow. Nor was all this exhibition of ardor on his part a mere useless display. It had great influence in awakening a corresponding ardor among the chieftains of the troops, and among the troops themselves. They felt proud of the spirit and energy which their young prince displayed, and ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... period is usually described as the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Church, a name which recalls the exile of the Jews from their native land. [5] The long absence of the popes from Rome lessened their power, and the suspicion that they were the mere vassals of the French crown seriously impaired the respect in which they had ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... incandescence, for future globes, with orbits contracting in proportion to condensation, its maximum of attraction. As material space is boundless, so the creation of globes is endless therein, through electric action, by producing gradual centres of material condensation, the mere ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ends, Hammurabi has in mind the patron god of Babylon when speaking of Bel.[150] It is this amalgamation of the old Bel with Marduk that marks, as we have seen, the transition to the use of Bel's name as a mere title of Marduk. Elsewhere, however, Hammurabi uses Bel to designate the old god. So when he calls himself the proclaimer of Anu and Bel[151] the association with Anu makes it impossible that Marduk should be meant. At times he appears to refer in the same inscription, now to the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... enjoyed with avidity the conversation of his chosen friends, he was not satisfied with intellectual epicureanism. He was resolved to make for himself a name, to leave behind him some not unworthy memorial. The history of the Reformation attracted him strongly. If an historian is a man of science, or a mere chronicler, then certainly Froude was not an historian. He made no claim to be impartial. He held that the Oxford Movement was not only endangering the National Church, but injuring the national character and corrupting ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... off, the judges were selected, and all other preliminaries were arranged. We rode our horses ourselves, and coming up to the score nicely we let them go. I saw from the start that it would be mere play to beat the Lieutenant's horse, and therefore I held Tall Bull in check, so that none could see how fast he really could run. I easily won the race, and pocketed a snug little sum of money. Of course everybody was now talking horse. Major North ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... natural reward of his own foolhardiness that Sut had acted. When the warriors were confident of their success, he discharged his rifle with marvelous quickness, and with a more important result than the mere tumbling ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... observed that, in spite of the present absence of all primitive remains (whether mere flints, or actual graves with bodies and relics) of the primeval population between the Fayyum and el-Kawamil, there is no proof that the primitive race of Upper Egypt was not coterminous and identical ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... some fairy mere Embosomed in the leafy screen, And streaked with tints of heaven's sheen, Where'er the water's surface clear Bore not the hues of verdant light From myriad boughs on mountain height, Or near the shadowed banks were seen ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... authors (Leo Diaconus, Johannes Lydus, Corippus, the new fragment of Dexippus, Eunapius, &c., discovered by Mai) which could not be comprised in the former collections; but the names of such editors as Bekker, the Dindorfs, &c., raised hopes of something more than the mere republication of the text, and the notes of former editors. Little, I regret to say, has been added of annotation, and in some cases, the old ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... steward of my own fortunes. I now have to confess to you that my dear wife thought to ease the family burden by an act of sin, lightly regarding the fraud as merely a family matter. The money she secured by unlawful means was, from her point of view, mere surplus wealth belonging to her father—wealth in which she had a reversionary interest. Indeed, we now know that she had more than reversionary interest—that ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... there is no charge for more height than the sixth story and the whole way has one more room. That is no mere change. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... defeat,—may stand as excuse for one more attempt to make plain its operations to the survivors of the one hundred and eighty thousand men who there bore arms, and to the few who harbor some interest in the subject as mere history. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... when he merely replied that the rector had called upon him. The truth was that some tentative advances had been made to him, and Mr. Euston had presented him to a few of the people in his flock; but beyond the point of mere politeness he had made no response, mainly from indifference, but to a degree because of a suspicion that his connection with Mr. Harum would not, to say the least, enhance his position in the minds ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... identify a far worse threat now—bushwhacker ... guerrilla, one of the jackals who hung on the fringe of both armies, looting, killing, and changing sides when it suited their purposes. Such a man was a murderer who would kill another for a pair of boots, a whole shirt, or the mere whim of ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... arc slashed at the trees a mere hundred yards behind. He screamed at the blast. "Damn you, Pete! Damn your robots! Damn, damn ... Oh, Peggy!" He ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... this imagining of men and women of gum-elastic, all but the skeleton, does not seem to me so simple a matter as it appears to have been regarded by M. de Gasparin. Let us take it for granted that his theory of a nervous fluid, which is the agent in table-moving,[57] is the true one. How is the mere disengaging of such a fluid to work a sudden transmutation of muscular and tendinous fibre and cellular tissue into a substance possessing the essential properties of a vegetable gum? And what becomes of the skin, ordinarily so delicate, so easily abraded or pierced, so readily injured? Is that transmuted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... darling of some wealthy house. Often, when she forgot what she was doing, Louie made surmises concerning Frarnie Maurice, wondering if she were the noble thing that Andrew needed to ennoble him—if she were really so strong and beautiful that the mere sight of her had killed all thought or memory of an older love; trying to believe her all that his guardian angel might wish his wife to be, and to acknowledge that she herself was so low and small and ignorant that she could only have injured him—to be convinced that it was neither ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... more than five years (one of them in traveling), to come back without having acquired a profession and settle down into a mere walking ledger! To have princely advantages at his command, and yet throw them madly to the winds and be content to plod along the road of mercantile life, without one spark of ambition, when his mental endowments ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... considered to be skill, nothing ever put him so completely out of temper as to be put in for it. This low gambling became a passion with him; but it was a passion that proved to be the fruitful cause of fights and quarrels without end. Being seldom either cool or sober, he was a mere dupe in the hands of his companions; but whether by fair play or foul, the moment he perceived that the game had gone against him, that moment he generally charged his opponents with dishonesty and fraud, and then commenced a fight. Many a time has he gone home, beaten ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the Company by his friend Clive: nominal: I made more outside; to scurrilous abuse in public and private: mere words; say fifty rupees; to threat to hang me: mere words again: say fifty rupees. Total ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, but I have been here fifteen years—fifteen years of watching rich society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got to be somewhere before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... hills of this kind in the neighbourhood of the accused are mentioned, where the devil, on Walpurgis Night and St. John's Eve, feasts, dances, and wantons with them, and where warlock priests administer Satanic sacraments, which are mere mockeries of those of Divine institution.] was their Blockula), they had talked of my daughter, and Satan himself had sworn to the sheriff that he should have her. For that he would show the old one (wherewith the villain meant God) what he could do, and that he would make ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... crystalline form of boron, and Woehler and Buff the hydrogen compounds of silicium and a lower oxide of the same element. This is by no means a full statement of Woehler's scientific work; it even does not mention all the discoveries which have had great influence on the theory of chemistry. The mere titles of the papers would fill several closely-printed pages. The journals of every year from 1820 to 1881 contain contributions from his pen, and even his minor publications are always interesting. As was truly remarked ten years ago, when it was proposed by a Fellow of the Royal Society ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... western Christianity against the invasion from the East which, except for these bars, would enter here as by a postern. At a hazard, my suspicion would fall on the iron doors that open inwards in the base of chimneys. We have been fondly credulous that there is nothing but ash inside and mere siftings from the fire above; and when, on an occasion, we reach in with a trowel for a scoop of this wood-ash for our roses, we laugh at ourselves for our scare of being nabbed. But some day if by way of experiment ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... me you were dead. At first I did not believe him, and then one of my old servants from Trevose came and said you had died there." She told me this in a trembling voice, as though she were frightened, told me in broken sentences, which revealed to me more than the mere words ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... social skill of Lady Gosstre, who was nevertheless narrow in her range; and on the capacities of mansions, on the secret of mixing people in society, and what to do with the women! A terrible problem, this latter one. Not terrible (to hostesses) at a mere rout or drum, or at a dance pure and simple, but terrible when you want good talk to circulate for then they are not, as a body, amused; and when they are not amused, you know, they are not inclined to be harmless; and in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... anything! And you say that you are not forcing me into this marriage! And you try to think, or to make me think, that it is all for the best, and all delightful and all easy, when you are sacrificing me and my youth and my life and my happiness to the mere idea of a better position in society—because poor papa was a sulphur merchant and bought a title which was only confirmed because he spent a million on a public charity—and every one knows it—and the Count of San Miniato comes of people who have been high and mighty gentlemen ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... whether this is not a mere matter for the craft: in reality the public is concerned. The letter written by one friend to another, gossiping about a play or a book or a picture, exposes the writer to an action for libel unless it can be protected on the ground of truth, privilege or fair comment; and casually ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own voice—with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it—served to ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... and to demand an explanation. I listened to whispered conversations in a salon where I was visiting, but could hear nothing; in order to do us better justice they waited until I had gone. I returned to Brigitte and told her that all these stories were mere nonsense; that it was foolish to notice them; that they could talk about us as much as they pleased and we ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... baptized the catechumens, long retained the names of the twelve first converts, engraved on a monument. King Olas was much pleased with the accounts he heard of the man of God, and many flocked from remote parts, out of mere curiosity to hear his doctrine, and to see him minister at the altar, admiring the rich ornaments of linen, and over them of silk, which he wore in celebrating the divine mysteries, with a mitre on his head, and a crosier, or pastoral ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... who sets up a number of costly volumes, like superfluous furniture, for mere ornament, and is far more careful to keep them from contracting a single spot of ink, than to use them, as the means of instructing his ignorance, and correcting his faults! Better a man without books, than books without ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... and nodded. He judged in a detached spirit—a mere spectator at a play—and he was forced to admit to himself that it was subtly done of his brother, and showed an astuteness in this thing, at least, of which he ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Mere statistics are untrustworthy; dates are even less dependable. But, to avoid hairsplitting, what we call "modern" English literature may be said to date from about 1885. A few writers who are decidedly "of the period" ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... only a mere government security, but is also specially mortgaged on the estates of the person who owes the annuity to the government, and who is, at any time, at liberty to redeem it at from twenty to twenty-five years purchase. Claims of this description, mortgaged on most desirable estates near the metropolis, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... She was a mere child and still under the tutelage of her despotic father when he—Taurus Antinor—tired of the enervating influences of decadent Rome, had obtained leave from the Emperor Tiberius to go to Syria as its governor. The imperator was glad enough to let him go. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Gales and Cloudy, with rain on the Latter part. At 10 departed this Life Jno. Rearden,* (* John Reading.) Boatswain's Mate; his Death was occasioned by the Boatswain out of mere good Nature giving him part of a Bottle of Rum last night, which it is supposed he drank all at once. He was found to be very much in Liquor last night, but as this was no more than what was common with him when he could get ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... indicates the watches! "How often have we heard our guides exclaim in the savannas of Venezuela," says Humboldt, "or in the deserts extending from Lima to Truxillo, 'Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend.'" Cuba is indeed a land of enchantment, where nature is beautiful and bountiful, and where mere existence is a luxury, but it requires the infusion of a sterner, a more self-reliant, self-denying and enterprising race to test its capabilities and to astonish the world with ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... time there had been over her a premonition of something unwonted of much import to her. The very dusty flowers and weeds by the way-side seemed to cry out to her as she passed them. They seemed no longer mere flowers and weeds, but hieroglyphics concerning her future, which she could ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the mere narrowness and crookedness of a road a defect within the meaning of the statutes. Towns and cities are only required to keep highways in suitable repair as they are located by the public authorities, and they have no right to go outside the limits defined by the location in ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... in, the boys found themselves at a spot in which the water that lapped the foot of the great Barrier washed—or would when the ice left it—at the very bases of the mountains, which here were no more than mere hills. They were cut into in all directions by deep gulches into which during the summer it was evident the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... large cities. Like the shepherds who left their flocks on the plains and went into Bethlehem to see the promised redemption, these people sought the centres of excitement. The large cities were overrun with them. The demand for unskilled labor was not great. From mere spectators they became idlers, helpless and offensive to industrious society. Ignorant of sanitary laws, imprudent in their daily living, changing from the pure air and plain diet of farm life to the poisonous atmosphere and rich, fateful food of the city, many fell victims to the sudden change ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... replied the captain. "Eight days would do it. But of course this is mere fine talk. You are not to look for any ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... were unreasonable: not that they were an exorbitant equivalent for what was given up in giving up Egypt, but because they were not feasible. Sir Sidney made Kleber sensible of this. Officers treating for a mere suspension of arms could not include topics of vast extent in their negotiation, such as the demand for the possession of the Venetian Islands, and the annulment of the Triple Alliance. But it was urgently necessary to settle two points immediately: ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Isle of Song. Her ancient history passed unceasingly into the realm of artistic representation; the history of one generation became the poetry of the next, until the whole island was illuminated and coloured by the poetry of the bards. Productions of mere fancy and imagination these songs are not, though fancy and imagination may have coloured and shaped all their subject-matter, but the names are names of men and women who once lived and died in Ireland, and over whom their people raised the swelling rath and reared the rocky cromlech. ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... the term "knowingly" applies, not to the fact of voting, but to the fact of want of right. Any other interpretation of the language would be absurd. We can not conceive of a case where a party could vote without knowledge of the fact of voting, and to apply the term "knowingly" to the mere act of voting, would make nonsense of the statute. This word was inserted as defining the essence of the offense, and it limits the criminality to cases where the voting is not only without right, but where it is done willfully, with a knowledge ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... opportunity of learning from you, and you with that of instructing me. Accordingly, I particularly wish to know whether you think there exist such things as phantoms, possessing an appearance peculiar to themselves, and a certain supernatural power, or that mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my part, I am led to believe in their existence, especially by what I hear happened to Curtius Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and obscure, he was a hanger-on in the suite of the Governor of Africa. While pacing the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east. While we are reading these sentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... pleases her," so the Vicomte said. "You should have seen her looks when your friend M. Jones praised Miss Newcome! She ground her teeth with fury. Tiens ce petit sournois de Kiou! He always spoke of her as a mere sac d'argent that he was about to marry—an ingot of the cite—une fille de Lord Maire. Have all English bankers such pearls of daughters? If the Vicomtesse de Florac had but quitted the earth, dont elle fait l'ornement—I would present myself to the charmante meess ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the shanty of Caleb Clark, a mere squatter now on a farm once his own. As the boys drew near, a tall, round-shouldered man with a long white beard was seen carrying in ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... were but different ways of saying the same thing. She was an only child who had travelled a great deal with her parents, had found her interests in their pursuits, and had grown backward in school work. The little girls with whom she was expected to associate seemed to her mere children. The elder girls did not want her friendship, and snubbed her. I prescribed a change to a small boarding-school with only a few girls, where age differences would not matter so much, and where she could make friends with girls older than ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... when Jimmy came in after the paper was out he found Miss Larrabee in tears, and the foreman leaning over the counter laughing so that he couldn't speak. It wasn't Jimmy's fault. The foreman had done it—by the mere transposition of a little brass rule separating the society news from Jimmy's story with the Kipling verse at the head of it. The rule tacked the Kipling verse onto Miss Larrabee's article announcing the engagement. Here is the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... and in this declaration it gives us marked pleasure to add we are confident that the convention has but spoken the intelligent and patriotic sentiment of the country. Ever inaccessible to the low influences which often control the mere partisan, governed alone by an honest opinion of constitutional obligations and rights and of the duty of looking solely to the true interests, safety, and honor of the nation, such a class is incapable of resorting to any bait for popularity at the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... brought him within a few feet of them, but they continued to lounge indifferently on the musket box upon which they had been sitting, giving a mere nod as recognition of his presence, and showing no ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... an increased rate of speed has to be maintained, which is, of course, tantamount to a further reduction of the payment. In fact, their position upon the Red Sea line is now this, that they would be better without the mails than with them, as the mere expense of the increased quantity of fuel necessary to realize the increased speed which they have undertaken to maintain, will swallow up the whole of the Government subvention. To increase the speed of a vessel from 8 ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... in September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the down-sized Yugoslavia, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... crimes, Lucy moved along, leaning on the arm of the gallant earl, and languidly smiling, with her heart far away, at his endeavours to amuse her. There was something interesting in the mere contrast of the pair; so touching seemed the beauty of the young girl, with her delicate cheek, maiden form, drooping eyelid, and quiet simplicity of air, in comparison to the worldly countenance and artificial grace of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... struck the lad was the sound of the waterfall which he had heard so distinctly when stretched upon the earth. It was somewhere near him—so close, even, that he fancied he could feel the dampness from it, but the soft, rippling character showed that it did not amount to much. It was a mere cascade, the water of which entered and passed out the cavern by some means which the boy ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... even some to whom he had been mis-represented, upon the account of his education, were convinced of his worth and knowledge in sacred things, as perceiving him to be a man of round judgment, delivering himself plainly and powerfully; insomuch that many, who came mere spectators for novelty sake rather than to edify and be improved, went away well satisfied with what they heard, and wondered, as the Jews did at the Apostles, viz.: Whence this man should have these things; perhaps not considering that God more immediately assists those ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... impossibility, and like every other maiden, thou canst not experience the future till it comes. Hast thou, then, no faith in me at all? Out, out, upon the love that cannot trust! O Aranyani, surely thy love is very small, and a mere imitation and counterfeit of love: for as a rule, true love is tested by its power of putting faith in what it loves. See, then, thou unbeliever, I will try to bring the future before thy very eyes, and as I did before, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... the faculties of the mind there is none so little fatiguing to exercise as mere wonder; and, for my own sake, I try always to wonder at things without the least critical reservation. I therefore, in the sense of deglutition, bolted this prison at once, though subsequent experiences led me to look with grave indigestion upon ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... fiction, who, without extraneous advantage, and by mere virtue of caste-consciousness, and caste-eminence, and caste-exclusiveness, doth bestride this ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the far-off consequences come back upon you. And you say to yourself, 'Oh, Heaven, if I had fifty lives this crime would reappear, as Pelion upon Ossa!' So was it with my affection. Left to natural peace, I might have conquered it: Verschmerzeon. To charm it down by the mere suffering of grief, to hush it by endurance, that was the natural policy—that was the natural process. But behold! A new form of sorrow arises, and the two multiply together. And the worm which was beginning to fall asleep is ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... who always tried to cheat, and who clutched her tiny winnings with precisely the same greediness shown by the Monte Carlo female gamblers. Or the hour brought a stroll with the French danseuse and her poodle, and a conversation about the mere trivialities of life, which a year or two, or even a few months ago, Bernardine would have condemned as beneath contempt, but, which were now taking their rightful place in her new standard of importances. ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... by aspiring to my cousin's hand," answered Harry. "Were he a man of family I should say nothing, of course; but he is, sir, a mere adventurer. His father is a common boatswain—a warrant officer—not a gentleman even by courtesy, and his mother, for what I know to the contrary, might have been a bum-boat woman, and his relations, if he had any, are probably ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... rose at six, and was called to the queen soon after seven. Only Mrs. Schwellenberg was with her, and again she made me a mere looker-on; and the obligation I felt to her sent me somewhat lighter hearted ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... humility, in order to confuse him whom he addresses with the very height of his isolated elevation. He exaggerates the awkwardness of his manner and the rudeness of his speech, as a means of covering his real thoughts under the appearance of mere uncouthness; yet, despite all his self-command, there is something in his air, certain fierce expressions which betray him to the close observer, who discerns in his sardonic smile, and in the marked emphasis with which he leans on his long staff, the hopes that ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... an entirely different matter. This young Cinq-Mars, my friend, will be a mere puppet. He will think of nothing but his ruff and his shoulder-knots; his handsome figure assures me of this. I know that he is gentle and weak; it was for this reason I preferred him to his elder brother. He will do ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... have observed that the mere knowing that other people have been tried as we have been tried is a consolation to us, and that we are relieved by the assurance that our sufferings are not special and peculiar, but common to us with many others. Death has always been a terror ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... a mere boy when he began to write, turning from the first to the metrical form of expression and remaining faithful to it in most of his subsequent efforts. His poems and essays have been printed in almost all the leading magazines. So far he has published five volumes ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... apostolic Father, he here edits and annotates letters which have long since been discredited by scholars of all classes, and which he himself confesses to be apocryphal. The Acts of Martyrdom of Ignatius—which he also acknowledges to be a mere bundle of fables—he treats with the same tender regard. Nor is this all. He gives these acts, or large portions of them, in Latin and Greek, as well as in Coptic and Syriac; and annotates them in addition. He supplies, likewise, English translations. It may be argued, that the publication ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... unworthy lord! Whom mere despite of heart could so far please And love of havoc (for with such disease Fame taxes him) that he could send ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... well up in the firing trench. Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... rather mercenary: perhaps that is too strong a word; but, in short, a mere man of the world. Might it not be that Grace Carden would wish him to learn your attachment either from your lips or from her own, and not detect it in an impetuous young man's conduct on the platform of a railway, at the tender ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... tableau! The murdered Alice Webster, with gory temple, long, damp tresses clinging to her form, in striking pose, advancing and receding, mutely gesticulating such fearful prophetic menace, was too real for chimerical conjecture or mere coincidence. How came that door closed just after the tableau? That declamation! Such pertinent lines and ghostly utterances, so exactly imitating ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... suitable for composition purposes, and this material is of the best because the ideas are sure to be your own. The first requisite of successful composition is to have thoughts of your own. The expressing of ideas that are not your own is mere copy work, and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... there is," said Lady Binks, in a tone which implied something more than mere assent to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the fruitless hammering with mere fists subsided. In that time Hank Butts had raced forward, and now was back again with a prize that he had caught up from a locker near the motors. This was nothing more nor less than the hitching weight that Hank had once made very nearly famous, as described in the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle toward him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood; but when be tried to grasp at it it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... IV left no heir, his brother William, a man of sixty-five, now came to the throne. He had passed most of his life on shipboard, having been placed in the navy when a mere lad. He was somewhat rough in his manner, and cared nothing for the ceremony and etiquette that were so dear to both George III and George IV. His faults, however, were on the surface. He was frank, hearty, and a friend to the people, to whom he was familiarly ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Carew, who was produced and swore that he had never before seen the boy, that he was not among the gang of burglars who had robbed Blenkins's store and dwelling-house, and that he had had no part in helping to conceal the plunder. In opposition to this, the mere finding of a scrap of Barney's coat close to the Conscripts' Hollow seemed now of slight consequence, although it could ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... which had served in the East, the men were not acclimated to the Mississippi valley, and in the bayous and marshes about Vicksburg had suffered greatly. Malarial fevers ate out their vitality, and even those who reported for duty dragged themselves about, the mere shadows of what they had been. General Parke reported their arrival and was then obliged to go upon sick-leave himself. General Welsh, who had distinguished himself at Antietam, reported that his division must recuperate for a few weeks before ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... jackanapes who wouldn't come when you called "Grub!" and wouldn't wait a second till you'd felt about in the dimness for your gun. Hideous to lie so close to a man who snored, and who'd deprived you of your 44 Marlin. Although it meant life, the Boy grudged the mere animal heat that he gave and that he took. Full of grudging, he dropped asleep. But the waking spirit followed him into his dreams. An ugly picture painted itself upon the dark, and struggling against the vision, he half awoke. With the first returning consciousness came the oppression ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... mere contact of these people contaminates. He was trying to make me his tout to the Corydon, me, the once future Prime Minister of England, the child of many prayers! You may say, how were the mighty fallen! Indeed, I was ashamed. ...
— Aliens • William McFee |
