"Nay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... talking together as of old," he said. "We had thought that there must be some quarrel between you, for you had given up rating him, Nellie. Give her a kiss, Cyril; she is a good lass, though she has been a foolish one. Nay, Nellie, do not offer him your cheek—it is the fashion to do that to every idle acquaintance. Kiss him heartily, as if you loved him. That is right, lass. Now let us to breakfast. Where is your mother? She ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... a cup. To whatever he chose to say, and in whatever fashion, whether strokingly (as to a beloved child), or gruffly (in sport) as one speaks to a pet dog, she replied in very meek manner, eyeing him intently, "Yea, Richard," or "Nay, Richard," agreeing with him always. This he observed. "They call me Yea-and-Nay, dear girl," he said, "and thou hast learned it of them. But I warn thee, Jehane, ma mie, I am in a mood of Yea this night. Therefore ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... are inflicting on yourselves the torments of the poor dog, who is kept at the Grotto del Cane, near Naples, to be stupified, for the amusement of visitors, by the carbonic acid gas of the Grotto, and brought to life again by being dragged into the fresh air; nay, you are inflicting upon yourselves the torments of the famous Black Hole of Calcutta; and, if there was no chimney in the room, by which some fresh air could enter, the candles would soon burn blue—as they ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... peal out, 'Tis Christmas Day; The world is better then by half, For joy, for joy; In a little while you will see it laugh— For a song's to sing and a glass to quaff, My boy, my boy. So here's to the man who never says nay!— Sing, ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... 'Nay, nay,' said Mr. Tadpole with a chuckle, 'I don't think we shall find the Church attacked again in a hurry. I only wish they would try! A good Church cry before a registration,' he continued, rubbing his hands; 'eh, my Lord, I think ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... a heart, a soul, I protest! You knew him better that I did, Miss Portman. Nay, you are not gone yet, my lord! You ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... here I had the misfortune to make my donkey over to Bombay, to save his foot, which had been galled by too constant walking; for though unable to ride, he was too proud to say nay, and was therefore placed upon it, carrying the gun consigned to his charge, Captain Burton's smooth elephant. Now Bombay rode much after the fashion of a sailor, trusting more to balance and good-luck than skill in sticking ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the Republic; but they were impracticable. The ablest of them, Vergniaud, complained before the Tribunal, that he was being tried for what he thought, not for what he had done. This the government denied, but it was true. Nay, more; he was tried not for positive but for negative opinions, and he was convicted and executed, and his friends were convicted and executed with him, because, had they remained in the Convention, the Dictatorship, through their opposition, would ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... by a good mirror, blazing like a star of the first magnitude; and though examined by a potent microscope, clear and definite as the distinctest of these our nearest orbs, when beheld through an atmosphere not disturbed. Nay, through distances of an order I shall scarcely name, I have seen a mass of orbs compressed and brilliant, so that each touched on each other, like the separate grains of a handful of sand, and yet there seemed no melting or fusion of any one of the points ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... but yesterday you arrived—you are ignorant of the ways and means here. 'Tis a wretched place. I know at your age one loves to be snug and quiet. What if you move your lodgings? Come, be my visitor. (BUTLER makes a low bow.) Nay, without compliment! For a friend like you I have still ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... any other delicacy: indeed I had not the means of keeping life and soul together for many days longer. Deeply did we regret that we were not favoured for a few days with the company of Mr. Cooper, that he might in our present difficulties fully initiate us into the mysterious, nay, almost miraculous means by which his travellers, even in the most dreary wilds, always contrived to draw forth from their stock of provender such dainties that the bare recollection of them made our mouths water; but ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... to reform Stanley. Nay, nay, Natalia. I may go through some foolish motions now and then, but regulatin' the neighbors ain't one of my secret vices. We allows the Rawsons to map out their own program, which seems to consist in stickin' close to their own fireside, with Marge on one ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the old school-ma'am could reply. "Didn't our Prudence tell you when she wrote? He's the man she's going to marry. I must say he's not the man I should have set on for her; but she's got her own ploughing to seed, and I'm not the one to say her 'nay' when she chooses ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... best knew how matters stood; but it was impossible to be angry with Monsieur Alphonse. She was well aware that he cared no more for her than for twenty others; that she had lost him— nay, that he had never really been hers. And yet her eyes besought a friendly look, and when he left the cafe without sending her a confidential greeting, it seemed as though she suddenly faded, and the waiters said to each other: "Look at madame; she ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... Chief} I am the War Chief. In war I command. Nor the Shaman nor Red Cloud may say me nay when in war I command. Let the Sun Man come back. I am not afraid. If the foxes snared him with ropes, then can I slay him with spear- thrust and war-club. I am the War Chief. ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... shall read it to ye." And he drew some sheets of foolscap from his pocket. He opened the sheets, and frowned at them, and coughed. "Nay!" said he. "There's nothing else for ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... outlaws. It is much more remarkable, however, that, still retaining his faith in king and nobles, Church and State, he should have pushed his appreciation of such men to the degree of marvellously comprehending—nay, enjoying—certain types of skepticism which sprang up in fiercest opposition to authority; urged into existence by its abuses, as germs of plants have been thought to be electrified into life by sharp blows. And it is most remarkable of all, that he did this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fall into absurd and ridiculous Opinions, Habits, Forms, Figures and Grimaces; there will be those who will laugh, nay, cannot help laughing at them. Hence most Parties laugh at one another, without the least Scruple, and with great Applause of their own Parties; and the Leaders of the same Party laugh with one another, when they ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... that deeds are not to follow upon words, may I state that I take up my ministry in this church afresh today with the conviction that I am committed to a program, and you committed to its decent and friendly consideration. Nay more, I am persuaded that we are ready for unanimous action on some points. At the regular annual meeting of this Society, on Monday, January 13, I hope, and have every reason to expect that a resolution will be introduced, providing for the abolition of ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... the first time during my earliest stay in Paris, and at a period when I had renounced the hope, nay, even the wish of a Paris reputation, and, indeed, was in a state of internal revolt against the artistic life I found there. At our meeting Liszt appeared. to me the most perfect contrast to my own being and situation. In this world, to which it had ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the towne gathered together to see this virgin in great triumph sitting upon an Asse. Then I (willing to shew as much joy as I might, as present occasion served) I set and pricked up my long eares, ratled my nosethrils, and cryed stoutly, nay rather I made the towne to ring againe with my shrilling sound: when wee were come to her fathers house, shee was received in a chamber honourably: as for me, Lepolemus (accompanied with a great number of ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... echo-shapes, No lovely thing but echoes some of thee, Vainly some touch of thy perfection apes, Sighing as fair as thou thyself to be; Therefore, be not disquieted that I On other forms turn oft my wandering gaze, Nor deem it anywise disloyalty: Nay! 'tis the pious fervour of my eye, That seeks thy face in every other face. As in the mirrored salon of a queen, Flashes from glass to glass, as she walks by, In sweet reiteration still—the queen! So is the world for thee to walk in, sweet; But to see thee is all ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... "Nay," said Gabriel, with great self-importance, "the knave's jaws will score no ciphers. I had as lief interpret pot-hooks ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... They think, on important occasions, they should be willing to make great sacrifices for those they love; but do not reflect how rarely such occasions present themselves; whereas, opportunities are daily, nay, hourly occurring, for the discharge of mutual kind offices, which powerfully tend to cement the affectionate ties of friendship. Edward, did you not commit to memory the passage upon politeness, we read in Xenophon's ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... "Nay, father," she said, "draw not the lad away from my side with these wild words. I need him to help me with my labours, to ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Sibyl I understood. What grace in that beautiful oval! what apprehensiveness in the eye! Such is female Genius; it alone understands the God. The Muses only sang the praises of Apollo; the Sibyls interpreted his will. Nay, she to whom it was offered, refused the divine union, and preferred remaining a satellite to being absorbed into the sun. You read in the eye of this one, and the observation is confirmed by the low ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... on Shagpat awoke in Shibli Bagarag fierce desire to shear him, and it was scarce in his power to restrain himself from flying at the clothier, he saying, 'What obstacle now? what protecteth him? Nay, why not trust to the old woman? Said she not I should first essay on Shagpat? and 'twas my folly in appealing to the King that brought on me that thwacking. 'Tis well! I'll trust to her words. Wullahy! will it not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Nay, Anne," reproved Mrs. Stoddard, but she was not ill-pleased at the child's spirit. "Then you would be as bad as they. It does not matter what they may say; that is neither here nor there. If ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... widely different. He asserted that each passage in Scripture admits of various, nay, contrary meanings; but that we could never be certain of any particular one till we knew that the passage, as we interpreted it, contained nothing contrary or repugnant to reason. If the literal meaning clashes with reason, though ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... counter-thought to this that brought with it a momentary balm. She would send Sally to him to beg, beseech, implore him not to repeat his headstrong error of the old years, to swear to him that if only he could know all he would forgive—nay, more, that if he could know quite all—the very whole of the sad story—not only would he forgive, but rather seek forgiveness for himself for the too harsh judgment ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Minnes, of whom my Lord hath a very slight opinion, and that at first he did come to my Lord very displeased and sullen, and had studied and turned over all his books to see whether it had ever been that two flags should ride together in the main-top, but could not find it, nay, he did call his captains on board to consult them. So when he came by my Lord's side, he took down his flag, and all the day did not hoist it again, but next day my Lord did tell him that it was not so fit to ride without a flag, and therefore told him ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... off from the pilgrim's brow, as a small and meagre book, Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding robe he took! "Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove as such to thee Nay, keep thy gold—I ask it not, for the word of God ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "this gentleman is a friend of mine, a lawyer, who has come down from Paris with the marchioness to defend Jacques. You need not mistrust him, nay, more than that, you must tell him all ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... "Nay, hostess," said Gerard, "my purse is not yet quite void, and it would add to my trouble an if true folk should lose their due ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Christian armies the officers are exempted from the lash, but they use it freely upon all under them; and it would be exceedingly difficult to convince the greater part of these officers that the free use of the lash is not indispensably necessary, nay, that the men do not themselves like to be flogged, as eels like to be skinned, when they once get used to it. Ask the slave-holders of the southern states of America whether any society can be well constituted unless the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... he presses it into the service of expression and illustration. At least a third of his myriad metaphors are derived from it. It would indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of which are not colored by it. Much of his law may have been acquired from three books easily accessible to him—namely, Tottell's PRECEDENTS (1572), Pulton's STATUTES (1578), and Fraunce's LAWIER'S LOGIKE (1588), works with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it is so.... But there are other feelings strange to me.... I seem to shiver both with heat and frost.... No, no, I hate him, I am sure, Zelima— Hate him for making me a laughing-stock Before the whole Divan—nay, the whole world! How they will laugh at me! Help me, Zelima! Come to my help! How did his riddle run: "Who is that Prince and of what stock is he, Who was a beggar, porter, menial, Yet in good fortune more unfortunate?" So much is clear that he himself is meant. But how ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... a city, Mr. Renault," she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together, we explored the damaged city from our bird's perch above it—the city that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the birth-spot which all cherish. I ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... his wife, then; nay, for wifehood itself, that he wrote? And so, was it quite fair for unmarried Penfield Evans, burning at his breakfast table a cynical cigarette over the printed philippic, to murmur, "Gee! old ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... we to "boss" the party if we were as ignorant as the mules? We had guaranteed to lead them through to California [!] and had brought them into this "almighty fix" to slave like niggers and to starve.' There was just truth enough in the Jeremiad to make it sting. It would not have been prudent, nay, not very safe, to return curse for curse. But the breaking point was reached at last. That night I, for one, had not much sleep. I was soaked from head to foot, and had not a dry rag for a change. Alternate fits of fever and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... as to give your attentions strong savor of presumption. But let any fortune bring Bonaventure in any guise—sorriest horseman of all, youngest, slenderest, and stranger to all the ways that youth loves—and at once she is visible; nay, more, accessible; and he, welcome. So accessible she, so welcome he, that more than once she has to waft aside her mother's criticisms by pleading Bonaventure's foster-brotherhood and her ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... heart," sang he, "I must go, yet pipe and play; Soon I'll come and ask of thee For an answer yea or nay;" And I waited till the flocks Panted in yon waters stilly, And the corn stood in the shocks: O love ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... The chief, nay the idol of an army of 100,000 well-trained and acclimated troops ready to march or sail where he wist, Toussaint refrained from raising the standard of liberty in any one of the neighboring island, at a time when, had he been fired ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... with the very essence of romance; it was he that clove asunder the Sultan's kitchen-wall for me, and took me to the pan, and bade me ask a certain question of the fish that fried therein, and made them answer me in terms mysterious and tremendous yet. Nay, that animating and delectable feeling I cherish ever for such enchanted commodities as gold-dust and sandal-wood and sesame and cloth of gold and black slaves with scimitars—to whom do I owe it but this rare and delightful artist? 'O mes chers Mille et une Nuits!' ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... superiors, above all, such things were inconceivable: he might perhaps be a very great genius, but was certainly a dangerous servant for his Highness the Grand Duke of Wuertemberg. Officious people mingled themselves in the affair: nay, the graziers of the Alps were brought to bear upon it. The Grisons magistrates, it appeared, had seen the book: and were mortally huffed at being there spoken of, according to a Swabian adage, as common highwaymen.[8] They complained in ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... during the night, and the quarantine was lifted. When day broke, every twig and blade of grass glistened in silver sheen, and the horses on picket stood humped and shivering. The sun arose upon the herds moving, with no excuse to say them nay, and orders were issued to the guards to break camp and disperse to their homes. As we rode into Glendive that morning, sullen and defeated by a power beyond our control, in speaking of the peculiarity of the intervention, Sponsilier said: "Well, if it rains on the just and the unjust alike, why ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... "Nay, nay, things ain't so easily changed as all that. He's the father of my child, he's got money, and he'll leave his money to his child if he's made Jackie's father in ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... is all-powerful, rainfall abundant, and vegetation prolific, the type will not only be more rapidly developed, but that it will be pronounced in bodily form, in tongue, and in temperament. One of the reasons compelling towards such conclusion is the decided desire—nay, the ambition—on the part of native-born Australians to do glad and seemly ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... see. Not Carmagnoles, rude 'whirlblasts of rags,' as Mercier called them 'precursors of storm and destruction:' no, soft Ionic motions; fit for the light sandal, and antique Grecian tunic! Efflorescence of Luxury has come out: for men have wealth; nay new-got wealth; and under the Terror you durst not dance except in rags. Among the innumerable kinds of Balls, let the hasty reader mark only this single one: the kind they call Victim Balls, Bals a Victime. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was not ready she thought herself so, and was at all events willing. Nay, she was so eager that she shouted when she should have held her tongue. And who shall say what the schemer of the Tuileries thought of it all behind that pleasant smile, those dull and sphinx-like eyes? He had always believed in his star, had always known that he was destined to be great; ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... "Nay, nay, I can forgive any expression of feeling on your part, my young man, when that dreadful and disgraceful deed is brought to your memory. It was a stain that can never be effaced—a deed most diabolical, and what we thought would call down the vengeance of heaven. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... were Jogging on, the Wolf spy'd a Bare Place about the Dog's Neck where the Hair was worn off. Brother (says he) how comes this I prethee? Oh, That's Nothing, says the Dog, but the Fretting of my Collar a little. Nay, says T'other, if there be a Collar in the Case, I know Better Things than to sell ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... Exclusion, he made the King and the heir presumptive his enemies, and that, if he opposed it, he made himself an object of hatred to the unscrupulous and turbulent Shaftesbury. He neither supported nor opposed it. He quietly absented himself from the House. Nay, he took care, he tells us, never to discuss the question in any society whatever. Lawrence Hyde, afterwards Earl of Rochester, asked him why he did not attend in his place. Temple replied that he acted according to Solomon's ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him to be hang'd out of the Way immediately.... He has committed Pyracy upon the High Seas, and we shall prove, an't please your Lordship, that this Fellow, this sad Dog before you, has escaped a thousand Storms, nay, has got safe ashore when the Ship has been cast away, which was a certain Sign he was not born to be drown'd; yet not having the Fear of hanging before his Eyes, he went on robbing and ravishing Man, Woman and Child, plundering Ships Cargoes fore and aft, burning and sinking Ship, Bark and Boat, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... "Nay, that were impossible. A jerk from the tow-rope of a steamer at full speed would tear us asunder. Have you observed these two strong ropes running all round our gunwale, and the bridles across with ring-bolts ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... the inflicting of that punishment is not on the opinion of an equal and public judge, but is referred to the arbitrary discretion of a private, nay, interested, and irritated, individual. He, who formally is, and substantially ought to be, the judge, is in reality no more than ministerial, a mere executive instrument of a private man, who is at once judge and party. Every idea of judicial order is subverted by this procedure. If the insolvency ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to be vicious, it is easy to go on. Where single women are licentious, you rarely find faithful married women.' BOSWELL. 'And yet we are told that in some nations in India, the distinction is strictly observed.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, don't give us India. That puts me in mind of Montesquieu, who is really a fellow of genius too in many respects; whenever he wants to support a strange opinion, he quotes you the practice of Japan or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... that the stepmother would make the girl's home very uncomfortable for her. Though he knew well all the young farmer's qualifications as a husband,— namely that he was well to do in the world and bore a good character for honesty and general conduct,—still he thoroughly, nay heartily approved of Mary's rejection of the man's hand. It seemed to him to be sacrilege that such a one should have given to him such a woman. There was, to his thinking, something about Mary Masters that made ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... little Separatist settlement at Plymouth, still in the first decade of its feeble existence, the founding, within a day's journey, of this powerful colony, on ecclesiastical principles distinctly antagonistic to their own, was a momentous, even a formidable fact. Critical, nay, vital questions emerged at once, which the subtlest churchcraft might have despaired of answering. They were answered, solved, harmonized, by ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... recovered my presence of mind, and reseated myself: "Pray forgive me, Lady Harriett," said I; "but I think, nay, I am sure, I see a person I once met under very particular circumstances. Do you observe that dark man in deep mourning, who has just entered the room, and is now ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writers, like the generality of Paul Lorrain's[2] saints, seem to place a peculiar vanity in dying hard. But you, Sir, to show a good example to your brethren, have not only confessed, but of your own accord mended the indictment. Nay, you have been so good-natured as to discover beauties in it, which, I will assure you, he that drew it never dreamed of: And to make your civility the more accomplished, you have honoured him with the title of your kinsman,[3] which, though derived by the left hand, he is not a little ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... the elder and knew most; plainly intimating thereby that the empire of the former was more august and honourable than that of his brother, as by means of his age he was his superior, and more advanced in wisdom and science. Nay, 'tis my opinion, I own, that even the blessedness of that eternity which is the portion of the Deity himself consists in that universal knowledge of all nature which accompanies it; for setting this aside, eternity might be more properly styled an endless duration than ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... "Nay, if he knew it, he would give up his purposes of distinction for you; and we might live here, or ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... is sufficient to produce the cleavage. Expanding our field of view, we find the self-same law, whose footsteps we trace amid the crags of Wales and Cumberland, extending into the domain of the pastrycook and ironfounder; nay, a wheel cannot roll over the half-dried mud of our streets without revealing to us more or less of the features of this law. Let me say, in conclusion, that the spirit in which this problem has been attacked by geologists, indicates the dawning of a new day for their science. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... sacrifice time and tastes, alas! sometimes even principles, to gain the favour and applause of those whose society ought to be a weariness to you. Nothing, besides, is more injurious to the mind than a studied sympathy with mediocrity: nay, without any "study," any conscious effort to bring yourself down to their level, your mind must insensibly become weakened and tainted by a surrounding atmosphere of ignorance and stupidity, so that you would gradually become unfitted ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... "vital" themes awake our prejudices at the cost of a minimum—if not always, as when Miss Corelli guides us, with a positively negligible—tasking of our mental faculties. For such exemption we average-novel-readers cannot but be properly grateful. Nay, more than this: provided the novelist contrive to rouse our prejudices, it matters with us not at all whether afterward they be soothed or harrowed. To implicate our prejudices somehow, to raise in us a partizanship ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... EXETER. Nay, but the man that was his bed-fellow, Whom he hath dull'd and cloy'd with gracious favours, That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell His sovereign's ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... swords are made of chalices: The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart: His cross and thorns are spears and shields; and short Must be the time ere even his patience cease. Nay let Him come no more to raise the fees Of fraud and sacrilege beyond report! For Rome still slays and sells Him at the court, Where paths are closed to ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... "Nay, then," he said, "I have been busy. I have been attending to that labor I had in mind for Judea, of which we spoke in the ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... and words of the little boy. The answering words were too low-spoken for her to hear. She could see how tenderly the child's caresses were returned,—not the mother whose care Johnny had never known, could have given the little head gentler rest. Nay, not so good,—unless she could have given the little heart such comfort. For Johnny was in the arms of one who knew well that road to the unseen land—who had studied it; and now as the child went on before him, could still ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... themselves; to feed the remaining half of the population, and to give to England many millions' worth yearly; which supports the aristocracy of Ireland, and pays the taxes to the nation. Humanity and justice, then, are not the only claims upon us; self-interest, nay, self-preservation demand, that they who yield us food and comfort, should have ample food and comfort themselves—that they who aid to clothe us should have at least sufficient covering to protect them ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... more, I wish you a good appetite.'—'Farewell!' Replied the other; 'though it grieves me sore; When we next meet we 'll have a tale to tell: We needs must follow when Fate puts from shore. Keep your good name; though Eve herself once fell.' 'Nay,' quoth the maid, 'the Sultan's self shan't carry me, Unless his highness ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... unlimited confidence of the person giving it. "I have directed," said Washington, "that you should have the inspection of my letter of the 22nd of July, agreeable to your request; and you are at full liberty to publish, without reserve, any and every private and confidential letter I ever wrote you; nay, more—every word I ever uttered to or in your presence from whence you can derive any advantage in ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... we shall meet no more in this life. Nay, do not smile; this strange intelligence of sorrow, this sudden trembling in a soul at rest, is not all a delusion. We shall part to-morrow, Colin. Oh, darling brother, ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... than a dead man's, but "your life is hid with Christ in God." It is not even always manifest to you. It is hid and so wrapped up and enfolded in Him that only as you abide in Him does it appear and abide. Nay, "Christ who is your life," must Himself ever maintain it, and be made unto you of God all you need. Therefore, Christian life is not to come to Christ to save you, and then go on and work out your sanctification yourself, but "as ye have ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... dared to leave hell and present ourselves before you in paradise, unless we had carried out the vengeance which you began. Every day that we waited seemed as three autumns to us. Verily, we have trodden the snow for one day, nay, for two days, and have tasted food but once. The old and decrepit, the sick and ailing, have come forth gladly to lay down their lives. Men might laugh at us, as at grasshoppers trusting in the strength of their arms, and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... pipe, the cigar, or deeply imbued clothing, or worse than alligator breath, is absolutely insupportable to many, who do not use it, causing depression of strength, dizziness, headache, sickness at the stomach, and sometimes vomiting. By what rule of politeness, nay, on what principle of common justice may I poison the atmosphere my neighbor is compelled to breathe, or so load it with an unhealthy and loathsome material as to make him uncomfortable or wretched so long as I am in his company? What would be said of the physician, who, having acquired a ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... that the happiest portions of existence are the most difficult to chronicle. We may—nay, we must, impart our miseries and annoyances to our many "dear friends," whose forte is sympathy or consolation—and all men are eloquent on the subject of their woes; not so with their joys: some have a miser-like pleasure in hoarding ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... seemed to him, had he seen such stars as these, so close, so large, so wonderfully clean and bright. And, indeed, glory of the heavens so supreme as that is possible only far away from man, and all the works and habitations of man, and all his feeble efforts at the mitigation of the darkness. Nay, for fullest perception, it may be that it is necessary for a man to be not only alone in the profundity of Nature's night, but to be lifted somewhat out of himself and his natural darkness by extremity of joy, or still more ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... it, and say yes? Well; I will. There is one in yonder ship who has very much interested me. Nay, more; I admire—ay, love him! You see I'm not ashamed to confess what the world affects to consider a weakness. We of the Celtic race don't keep secrets as you of the further South; half Moors, as you are. For all, sobrina, you haven't kept yours; though you ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Water-carrier earns about sixpence per day, the moiety of which serves to procure him his bread, his fried sardinha from a cook's stall, and a little light wine perhaps, on holidays,—water being his general beverage, nay, one might almost say, his element. A mat in a large upper room, shared with several others, serves him in winter as a place of repose for the night; but during the summer he frequently sleeps out in the open air, making ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... But Love said Nay to Watch and Pray When the birds were singing, And taught my heart a roundelay Like the bells a-ringing; And so blindfast I ran and cast My treasure on the gale— Would the storm-blast had snapt the mast Before I fared ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... greater part of the Russian Jews, seized things as they came. Nay, the more dangerous the delicacy, the more the relish with which it was devoured. And these delicacies were gorged at such a rate as to cause constitutional disorder. They who were a little wiser somehow shook off the objectionable ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... "Nay, nay, friend; there is no need of bein' overcautious with us. We are two of the three messengers who left camp at Oriskany to go to Fort Schuyler, and ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... can be no doubt in which he would chuse to exert them. Ambition, without which no one can be a great man, will immediately instruct him, in your own phrase, to prefer a hill in Paradise to a dunghill; nay, even fear, a passion the most repugnant to greatness, will shew him how much more safely he may indulge himself in the free and full exertion of his mighty abilities in the higher than in the lower rank; since experience teaches him that there is a crowd ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... boy! This is but rash and insane folly. Another year or two, nay, perhaps a few months more, and in the common course of Nature I had ceased to be; but you, with youth, with fortune, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... wines he was quite a sceptic, although he had dined at the best tables, and spoke most warmly of his entertainers. He protested against the wines of England being at all comparable to those of America; nay, I remember he was heretic enough to deny us the supremacy of a rump-steak, and raised his voice against the majesty ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... with it nothing to be done—hardly anything to be thought—merely room for most shadowy, most unfounded conjecture—nay, not conjecture—nothing but the vaguest of castle building! In merry mood, he would henceforth be the son of some mighty man, with a boundless future of sunshine opening before him; in sad mood, the son of some ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... forms lightly and gaily dressed, with a pleasant smile on their lips and an encyclopedia of language beaming from the orbs above, would arrest the attention of the most inveterate old bachelor that ever lived; nay, it might possibly give birth to a deep penitential sigh and a host of good and sensible resolutions. Ordinary Volantes are the same style of thing, only not so gay, and the usual pace is from three to five and a half miles an hour, always allowing five minutes for turning at the corner of every ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... good; you will, through them, have numerous opportunities for impressing on the minds of your hearers the inestimable value of the Holy Scriptures, when properly received, and made available by the enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit, and the worthlessness—nay, the danger—of resting satisfied with a mere knowledge of their words. The words of our Lord were "spirit and life" to those who would receive them as such; yet how many who heard them were to be judged by them at the that day, ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... shook his head. "Nay, my son," he said, " I am old and stricken in years, and no more able to endure the hardships ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... Carlyle, in the plain, straightforward manner that carried its own truth. "To make an assertion that could be disproved when the earl's affairs come to be investigated, would be simply foolish. I give you my word of honor as a gentleman—nay, as a fellow-man—that this estate, with the house and all it contains, passed months ago, from the hands of Lord Mount Severn; and, during his recent sojourn here, he was a visitor in it. Go and ask his men ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... bound to us by antique and indestructible bonds of fellowship in faith, in sympathy, in aspiration, in humane effort, all coincident with the beginnings of English civilization in North America, nay with the beginnings of civilization itself in that fast-anchored isle beyond the sea, which is the beloved mother of us all. If between your ancestors and ours, on opposite sides of the old Revolutionary dispute a century and a quarter ago, there were many ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Nay, dear friends, do not look sad, for what can be happier than a life completed in honour and made beautiful with friendship and love? And yet it is solemn also when a man approaches the end of the long road and sees the turning which leads him into the unknown. But the Emperor ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "it's not right that you-should recklessly broach the subject of living or dying at this early morn! If you say yea, it's yea; and nay, it's nay; what use is there ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Nay, father; let him do so," said Rebecca. "He has known me long enough to scold me if he thinks that I deserve it. You are gentle to me and spoil me, and it is only well that one among my old friends should be sincere enough to ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... capacity for taking any amount of everything without being in the least the worse for it, and, secondly, the capacity of perpetual wakefulness and clear-headedness, without the extraneous and artificial application of wet towels round the head. Men with such special gifts are, indeed, rare; nay, they are demi-gods. But, if such men are to be found, no matter at what cost, we sincerely wish they (the originators of this scheme) may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... the marquise, "that you should understand me thus! Nay, may God grant them long prosperity in this world and infinite glory in the next! Dictate a new letter, and I will ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... HIEROCLES. Nay, nay! if only the Nymphs had not fooled Bacis, and Bacis mortal men; and if the Nymphs had not tricked ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... in like measure from anxiety and overwhelming labor, went at once to buy earthen vessels in order to replace the pewter I had cast away. Then we dined together joyfully; nay, I can not remember a day in my whole life when I dined with greater ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... "I dare not—nay, I cannot," and she flung herself away from the trap, and lay at full length on the floor, with the moon and the furnace light reflecting a mad swirl of color over her upturned, staring face. For some moments she lay there, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... panic-stricken Parliament, measures can now be triumphantly passed for spreading or increasing the use of physical torture, and for applying it to the newest and vaguest categories of crime. Thirty or forty years ago, nay, twenty years ago, when Mr. F. Hugh O'Donnell and others forced a Liberal Government to drop the cat-o-nine-tails like a scorpion, we could have counted on a mass of honest hatred of such things. We cannot count on ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... "Nay, nay, not so fast," said the miller. "Stand forth and let me see if you are a true man. Many thieves wear ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... made Philip Grosvenor the Consort of the Queen, but it also put into his hands the actual government of the nation; it made him, in fact, the King, an absolute monarch, with power to shape and control the destinies of the nation as seemed to him good; with nobody to say him nay, whatever the nature of the decrees he might promulgate, and to whom even the Queen herself became subject. Then, with regard to Dick Maitland, it will be remembered that he, as well as Grosvenor, had been compelled to take an oath that he would never seek to leave the country without the royal ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... The thieves!" cried the woman angrily. "Nay, then I will indeed help you to escape. Climb in here, boy, among my youngsters. We have still an hour's ride down the road, and you shall go ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Nay then (saith Mistris Lookabout) those two sisters need not twit one another in the teeth with it; for the t'other kept such a sweet compliance and converse with the Spanish Fruiterer, yonder at the corner-house, where she did eat so many China ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... Almighty power. He that made man and all heaven and earth, cannot he show himself to man, if he shall so please? To say that God will not appear to man because man is so insignificant, and this earth such a paltry little speck in the heavens, is to limit God's goodness; nay, it is to show that a man knows not what goodness means. What grace, what virtue is there higher than condescension? Then if God be, as he is, perfectly good, must he not be perfectly condescending—ready and willing to ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... my love for my baby. I feared lest it should make me—nay, was making me—neglect my husband. The fear first arose in me one morning as I sat with her half dressed on my knees. I was dawdling over her in my fondness, as I used to dawdle over the dressing of my doll, when suddenly ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the reverse: set him to write poetry, he is limited, artificial, and impotent; set him to write prose, he is free, natural, and effective. The power of French literature is in its prose writers, the power of English literature is in its poets. Nay, many of the celebrated French poets depend wholly for their fame upon the qualities of intelligence which they exhibit,—qualities which are the distinctive support of prose; many of the celebrated English prose writers depend wholly for their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly, one foretold a heavy judgment, slow, but severe, terrible, and frightful, as the plague was; but the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery, like the conflagration. Nay, so particular some people were that, as they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion with the eye, but they even heard it; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... opinion of the writer hereof, be the very highest. He is not afraid to challenge the whole record of human achievements by great and good men (always save and except that which is credited to the Saviour of mankind) for exhibitions of heroism superior to theirs. Nay, when it is remembered that mainly through their efforts and sacrifices was accomplished a revolution by which four million human beings (but for the Abolitionists the number to-day in bondage would be eight millions) were lifted from the condition in which ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... day; " Hyperion to a satyr"[ Hamlet]; quite the contrary, quite the reverse ;no such thing, just the other way, tout au contraire[Fr]. Adv. contrarily &c. adj.; contra, contrariwise, per contra, on the contrary, nay rather; vice versa; on the other hand &c. (in compensation) 30. Phr. " all concord's born of contraries " [B. Jonson]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... high, and tossed her head proudly. "How shrewd you gentlemen are!" she said. "Much you know of a lady's heart. Now the truth is, I don't know what might not happen were I to do what you bid me. Nay, I'm wiser than you would have me; and I'll pity Mr. Gaunt at a safe distance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... down. It was indeed a sorry breaking up. The long tables which had so often, to use a hackneyed phrase, "groaned" beneath the weight of civic fare—the cosy high-backed stuffed chairs which had held many a portly citizen—nay, the very soup-kettles and venison dishes—all were to be submitted to the noisy ordeal of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... of their fair election, the great men in many places haveing the Country in their debte and consequently in their aw. Secondly how meanly we are provided of men of Learning, ability and courage, nay indeed of honesty, to stand up in the people's behalf and oppose ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Vasava, as thou listest? I, however, shall have to die, as also the members of my family and the servants whom I have engaged in my house. That will, I think, gratify thee, O Vasava! Indeed, O slayer of Vala and Vritra, I deserve all this, nay more, since being the lord of the three worlds in might, I yet consented to become the servant of another. O monarch of the three worlds, Vishnu, however, is not the only cause of my inferiority, for though, O Vasava, I am quite thy equal, yet the sovereignty of the three worlds resteth on ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to his employers, the Bible Society, he had made a narrative to be compared with the fictitious life and adventures of that gentle Spanish rogue, Gil Blas of Santillana. No wonder that he saw himself a public figure to be treated reverently, nay! heroically. And so when he comes to consider somebody's suggestion that the Gypsies are of Jewish origin, he relates a "little adventure" of his own, bringing in Mr. Petulengro and the Jewish servant whom he had brought back with him after his last visit to Spain. He mounts the heroic ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... groaned in anguish over his misuse of that wretched word "Individual." A distinguished man of letters {400a} has written:- "I would as lief read a chapter of The Bible in Spain as I would Gil Blas; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio." Another critic, and a severe one, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... you—nay, I bid you do so by all means, and I should think you had better be gone ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... soon humbled by misfortune; and their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent victim. Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected the niece of Theodosius, the aunt, nay, even the adoptive mother, of the reigning emperor: but they abhorred the widow of Stilicho; and they listened with credulous passion to the tale of calumny, which accused her of maintaining a secret and criminal correspondence with the Gothic invader. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... there is darkness. For though all nature teems with the essence and the outward mold of beauty, to the unkindled mind beauty is no more present then was Banquo's ghost to the guests of Macbeth. Macbeth's individual conscience made him see the ghost; nay, by a creative potency summoned it: and so is beauty created there where, without what I may call the aesthetic conscience, it no more exists than do the glories of Titian and Claude to the affectionate spaniel who follows his master into a picture-gallery. To the quadruped, by the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... "Nay, if there had been a big family, she would varry likely hev been at her loom today"—then there were a few softly spoken words, and John walked forward, but he could not forget how singularly the empty loom had appealed to him on that last morning he had walked through the mill ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr |
