"Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... England, and hence able to exercise like personal interest in his two children and his considerable property left there? Such a suggestion points to a returning and competent officer of the ship. That "Master Williamson" was above the grade of "petty officer," and ranked at least with the mates or "pilots," is clear from the fact that he is invariably styled "Master" (equivalent to Mister), and we know with certainty that he was neither captain nor mate. That he was a man of address and courage follows the fact that ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... Europe from the seventh century, at which period they migrated from the Carpathians to the Danube, were in the twelfth century divided into petty states. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... happiness, which comes indeed from on high because he delights in what he has, and desires no greater pleasures than those which his home affords. Is he not right in allowing these to turn the scale against petty, ridiculous, and short-lived movements of his wretched body? on the day on which he becomes proof against pleasure he also becomes proof against pain. See, on the other hand, how evil and guilty a slavery a man is forced ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... than Springfield, Lincoln was often employed to act the part of advocate before the village squire, at that time Bowling Green. He realized that this experience was valuable, and never, so far as known, demanded or accepted a fee for his services in these petty cases. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... part of our present prison system is probably our county jails. It is supposed about 8,000 persons pass through our county jails each year. They are generally persons charged with crimes and awaiting trial. But lunatics and petty offenders in considerable numbers are also confined in these places. The young and the old, the innocent and the guilty, hardened offenders and beginners in crime, are commonly mingled together in the jails, under few restraints, without useful occupation and with abundant leisure ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... precise period Cinq-Mars—who, had he not been brought into close contact with a more matured and stronger mind than his own, would in all probability have frittered away his vengeance in petty and puerile annoyances which would rather have worried than alarmed the Cardinal—formed a fast friendship with Francois Auguste de Thou, who had long ceased to conceal his hatred of the minister. In the study of his father, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... which had long been a subject of inquiry on the part of political students. Chinese society, being essentially a society organized on a credit-co-operative system, so nicely adjusted that money, either coined or fiduciary, was not wanted save for the petty daily purchases of the people, any system which boldly clutched the financial establishments undertaking the movement of sycee (silver) from province to province for the settlement of trade-balances, was bound to be effective so long as those ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... knew that silently and persistently John Baronet was trailing him. And I knew the cause was a righteous one. I had lived too long in the Baronet family to think the head of it would take time to follow after a personal dislike, or pursue a petty purpose. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... very irritating to Saint-Gaudens when he fell a victim to that extraordinary official Puritanism which sometimes exercises a petty censorship over works of art in America. The medal that he made for the World's Fair was rejected at Washington because it had on it a beautiful little nude figure of a boy—holding an olive branch—emblematical of young America. I think a commonplace ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... its operation, that we have little conception how mighty a lever it may be made, or to what new exercise it may be directed; and yet we are all conscious of periods in our lives when, like a vast rock in ocean, it has suddenly loomed up firm and defiant amid our petty purposes and fretful indecisions, waxing grander and stronger under opposition, a something apart from, yet a conscious portion of ourselves,—a master, though a slave,—another revelation of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... morning of the 5th, the enemy commenced a petty war upon our pickets, and, as he was indulged, his presumption increased; by noon he showed himself on the left of our extensive line, and attacked one of our pickets as it was returning to camp. Captain Treat, who commanded it, retired disgracefully, leaving a wounded man on the ground. Captain ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... head might be included all that petty species of deceit used towards children, whether to mislead their apprehension, or to divert their attention. If any thing be improper for a child to know or do, better tell him so at once, than resort to an underhand expedient. If a reason can be given for requiring ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... you to confess that I shall have more than balanced it. A ball-room is an epitome of all that is most worthless and unamiable in the great sphere of human life. Every petty and malignant passion is called into play. Coquetry is perpetually on the alert to captivate, caprice to mortify, and vanity to take offence. One amiable female is rendered miserable for the evening by seeing another, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... distribution of large subscriptions. He regards himself as a being of great importance and capacity, and endowed with the power of acting as he likes, whilst the local wirepullers look upon him as a convenient mask, behind which they may the more effectively carry on their own petty ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... various species of crime into one view; assigning to each its plain description, with its punishment; and removing distinctions which had frequently given rise to subtile and embarrassing doubts. It abolished the distinction between grand and petty larceny; defined the true nature of burglary; and removed many subtilties regarding possession, and the conversion of possession in the law of embezzlement, as well as in the distinctions of larceny and fraud. It also mitigated the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... am describing, Kandurin was for some reason living in Cairo, and writing thence to his friend, the marshal of the district, "Notes of Travel," while she sat languishing behind lowered blinds, surrounded by idle parasites, and whiled away her dreary days in petty philanthropy. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of the departed statesman may fall; one who while we now write is doubtless pouring his tears over the bier of his brother and friend brother, friend, ever, yet in political sentiment as far apart as party could make them. Ah, it is at times like these that the petty distinctions of mere party disappear. We see only the great, the grand, the noble features of the departed statesman; and we do not even beg permission to bow at his feet and mingle our tears with those who have ever been his political adherents—we do [not] beg this permission, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Newman, unaided and ignored, struggled desperately, like a man in a bog, with the overmastering difficulties of his task. His mind, whose native haunt was among the far aerial boundaries of fancy and philosophy, was now clamped down under the fetters of petty detail and fed upon the mean diet of compromise and routine. He had to force himself to scrape together money, to write articles for the students' Gazette, to make plans for medical laboratories, to be ingratiating with the City Council; ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... is there to speak! How small, how cramped, how poor, how miserable in its petty meanness, is our best! How beneath the mark of attack and the level of contempt, that which ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... nasty mean temper to have. It isn't manly. It's like a spiteful boarding-school girl. Well, I'm not going down on my knees to him. I can get on without Distin if he can get on without me. But it is so petty and mean to go on about one liking to do a bit of mechanical work. One can read classics and stick to one's mathematics all the same, and if I can't write a better paper than he can it's ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... old man! Forgive him, however, for what he has done when truly the poet. He was noble then and didn't know it; now he is a sham noble and knows it. Punishment enough that he stands no more upon the mountain heights o'ertopping the petty ambitions of ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... British territories, were harboured; despatches were detained; and the Vakeels, or Rajah's representatives, were chosen for their insolence and incapacity. The conduct of the Dewan throughout was Indo-Chinese; assuming, insolent, aggressive, never perpetrating open violence, but by petty insults effectually preventing all good understanding. He was met by neglect or forbearance on the part of the Calcutta government; and by patience and passive resistance at Dorjiling. Our inaction and long-suffering were taken for weakness, and our concessions for timidity. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of opinion, that if the most fortunate generals of the Roman commonwealth were again placed at the head of the very armies they once commanded, instead of extending their conquests over all Europe and Asia, they would hardly be able to subdue, and retain under their dominion, all the petty republics that ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... artificial character of their institutions,—as artificial as those of ancient Sparta, and, though in a different way, quite as repugnant to the essential principles of our nature. The institutions of Lycurgus, however, were designed for a petty state, while those of Peru, although originally intended for such, seemed, like the magic tent in the Arabian tale, to have an indefinite power of expansion, and were as well suited to the most flourishing condition of the empire as to its infant fortunes. In ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Hereward's adventures as a youth will serve as illustration of the stories told of his prowess. On an enforced visit to Cornwall, he found that King Alef, a petty British chief, had betrothed his fair daughter to a terrible Pictish giant, breaking off, in order to do it, her troth-plight with Prince Sigtryg of Waterford, son of a Danish king in Ireland. Hereward, ever ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... to be always in company with these, with earth, and sun, and sea, and stars by night. The pettiness of house-life—chairs and tables—and the pettiness of observances, the petty necessity of useless labour, useless because productive of nothing, chafe me the year through. I want to be always in company with the sun, and sea, and earth. These, and the stars by night, are my natural companions.My heart looks back and sympathises with all the joy and life of ancient ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... American army to victory, not the securing of independence, but the establishment of this Republic. More than of any other man was this the work of Washington. He saw the feeble Confederation breaking to pieces, now that the stress of danger was removed; he beheld the warring interests and petty jealousies of statesmen who yet remained colonial; but he was determined that out of these thirteen jarring colonies should come a nation; and when the convention to form a constitution met at Philadelphia, he presided over it, and it was his commanding will which brought a constitution ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... like ours. It went hard with the poor then; for then it had not come to pass that peasants found their way up to lordly mansions, and that from these regiments coachmen and other servants became judges in the petty courts, which were invested with the power to condemn, for perhaps a trifling fault, the poor man to be deprived of all his goods and chattels, or to be flogged at the whipping-post. A few of these courts still remain; and in Jutland, far from "the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Dr. Knapp calls "the broken jargon" then current in England as gypsy. From a misshapen Welsh groom this queer lawyer's clerk learned Welsh pronunciation, and to the consternation of his employer, "turned Sir Edward from the door," and gladly admitted the petty versifier Parkerson who sold his sheets to the highest bidder in the streets; worse even than this was his audacity in contending against a wealthy archdeacon that Ab Gwilym was the superior of Ovid. This gentleman was probably the Rev. John Oldershaw, Archdeacon of ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... it would have told her that she had never been loved as she was at that moment. All that she had been in her loyalty, her nobility, was so much a part of this man's life. What, compared to that, were petty sins, or big ones? He saw the past as a drowning man sees the panorama of his existence. Yet he knew that everything he could say would ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... unfamiliar and wild is that which arouses our enthusiastic admiration. As we stand in the calm genial atmosphere of a summer day, surveying the land and sea-scape from a commanding height that seems to have raised us above the petty cares of life, the eye and mind pass like the lightning-flash from the contemplation of the purple heather and purple plants around—and from the home-feelings thereby engendered—to the grand, apparently illimitable ocean, and the imagination is set free to revel in the unfamiliar and romantic ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... In an instant his conversation with the Irishman flashed up before him with new force and meaning. A thousand petty incidents, which he had driven contemptuously from his mind, returned as triumphant evidences; and, with an impetuous determination, he ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... was of long standing there, but had for some generations been going down in the world. Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas Bunyan, as we learn from his still extant will, carried on the occupation of a "petty chapman," or small retail dealer, in his own freehold cottage, which he bequeathed, "with its appurtenances," to his second wife, Ann, to descend, after her death, to her stepson, his namesake, Thomas, and her own son Edward, in equal shares. This cottage, which was ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... interests us by suggesting a comparison between Medival Moslem superstitions and those of our xixth Century, which to our descendants will appear as wild, if not as picturesque, as those of The Nights. The "inspired British inch" and the building by Melchisedek (the Shaykh of some petty Syrian village) will compare not unaptly with the enchanted swords, flexible glass and guardian spirits. But the Pyramidennarren is a race which will not speedily die out: it is based on Nature, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... gradually gaining upon him and growing in force, and which was destined to hasten the course of the events which he had planned for himself. It is an extraordinary peculiarity in unbelievers that they are often more subject to petty superstitions than other men; and similarly, it often happens that the most cynical and coldly calculating of conspirators, who believe themselves proof against all outward influences, yield to some feeling of nervous dislike for an individual who has never harmed ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... of the commander's uncertainty, they knew that he hesitated before the unknown aim and destination. In spite of the energy of his character, his uncertainty was clearly to be seen by his uncertain orders, incomplete manoeuvres, his sudden outbursts, and a thousand petty details which could not escape the sharp eyes ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... water surged around us. We had our moments of laughter—rare, it is true, but hearty enough. Even when cracked lips and swollen mouths checked the outward and visible signs of amusement we could see a joke of the primitive kind. Man's sense of humour is always most easily stirred by the petty misfortunes of his neighbours, and I shall never forget Worsley's efforts on one occasion to place the hot aluminium stand on top of the Primus stove after it had fallen off in an extra heavy roll. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... quarters of the world. I frequented also the society of the learned Indians, and took delight to hear them converse; but withal, I took care to make my court regularly to the maharaja, and conversed with the governors and petty kings, his tributaries, that were about him. They put a thousand questions respecting my country; and I, being willing to inform myself as to their laws and customs, asked them concerning everything which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... human creature, old and young, dropped its obsequious curtsey as they passed, she could first have beaten them for so degrading her, and the next moment felt a feverish pleasure in thus parading her petty power before a man who in his doctrinaire pedantry had no sense of poetry, or of the dear old natural ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... law to keep a self-respect they had already lost, and have the insufficiency of things he could not eat. For he had as yet no knowledge of political economy. He evidently did not view his case in any petty, or in any party, spirit; he did not seem to look on himself as just a half-starved child that should have cried its eyes out till it was fed at least as well as the dogs that passed him; he seemed to ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... when the day is done, And the petty battles are lost or won, When the gold is made and the ink is dried, To quit the struggle and turn aside To spend an hour with your boy in play, And let him race all of your ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... boys, alas! who are made muffs by injudicious training, who would have grown up to be bold, manly fellows had they been otherwise treated. There are also many kinds of muffs. Some are good-hearted, amiable muffs; others are petty, sneaking muffs. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... secretly fretting himself and murmuring against others, for causes which, compared with any real evil in life, must weigh like dust in the balance. But such is the equal distribution of Providence. To those who lie out of the road of great afflictions, are assigned petty vexations, which answer all the purpose of disturbing their serenity; and every reader must have observed, that neither natural apathy nor acquired philosophy can render country gentlemen insensible to the grievances which occur ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... set off or chattel sold on execution, no legal meeting of the voters or freemen holden, without previous notice on the sign-post. It used to be known by another name, and marks the spot, where, whilom, petty thieves, shiftless vagrants, and other small offenders against the majesty of the law, were wont to suffer a shameful penalty for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... don't see how a man can wholly devote himself to a work he thinks so great, and yet have patience to struggle with the thousand petty cares of life. The shifts and turnings to which insufficient means must reduce one, cannot but vex and hurt such a nature, if it does not change it at last. But I see I fail to make myself understood by you; let me try again. I don't know ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... had it not been for the peculiar political weakness of most of the states with which he had to deal. There was no strong German empire in his day, no united Italy, no Belgium whose neutrality was guaranteed—as it now is—by the other powers of Europe. The French republic was surrounded by petty independent, or practically independent, principalities which were defenseless against an unscrupulous invader. Prussia, much smaller than it now is, offered, as we shall see, no efficient opposition to the extension of French control. Austria had been forced to capitulate, after ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... inconsiderate. Such cases are in the great majority. Many husbands who like or love their wives and who believe themselves secure in their love think it is quite proper for them to hunt for new conquests and to carry on petty love affairs with as many girls or women as they comfortably can. There is no question here about love—it is just flirtation or sexual relations. When this is the case the wife should have a frank and firm talk with her husband; she should tell him that she does not like his behavior and ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... job for us that our old coxswain had got wounded, and that Draper had taken his place just then temporarily while Hoskins was on the sick-list; for, though Draper was the oldest petty officer on board the ship—his promotion to a higher grade having been delayed, I believe, through his natural crustiness of temper, which he really could not help—there was no doubt that he knew the East Coast of Africa well, and the management of a boat the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... utterly insignificant seemed that petty disagreement now! Had she but known the bitter separation that must come, she would have let no trifling difference, such as this had been, rob her of a single ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of ornamentation, the building is ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... account—in good time!—thinking it a temporary illumination made to receive him with distinguished splendour. These anecdotes are very pretty now, if they are strictly true; because they shew the mind's petty but natural disposition, of reducing and attributing all to self: but if they are only inventions, to raise the reputation of London lamps, or Roman cascades, one scorns them;—I really do hope, and half believe, that ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... den it was! How cheap, bald, and petty the whole town seemed of a sudden. Lee Virginia halted and turned. There was only one thing to be done, and that was to make herself known. She retraced her steps, pulled open the broken screen door, and entered the cafe. It was a low, dingy dining-room filled ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... minutes after this when he again saw her, and then she was seated on a cane bench in the gallery, and an old woman was standing close to her, talking to her. It was Mrs Marsham cautioning her against some petty imprudence, and Lady Glencora was telling that lady that she needed no such advice, in words almost as curt as those I have used. Lord Hartletop had left her, feeling that, as far as that was concerned, he had done his ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... they had been accustomed to be crammed at home by their fond mothers. Besides eatables, everything necessary for a student was there sold, and articles used in the play-grounds, as bats, balls, &c.; and, in general, a petty trade with small profits was carried on in stationery and other matters, —in things innocent or suitable for the young customers, and in some things, perhaps, which were not. The Butler had a small salary, and was allowed the service of a Freshman in the Buttery, who was also employed ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... almost bored air rested upon the men's faces. The appalling experiences of the past thirteen days seemed to dwarf all other things in comparison. They had been in the presence of the Big Thing; all else seemed petty; they had been looking into death's cold eyes; after that other sights seemed trivial. Many of them carried sore hearts for their comrades with whom they had at other times foregathered in just such circumstances as these, but ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... in as many differing notions of heaven, but all and each appear agreed upon the point that up into the stars alone their hoped-for heaven is to be found; and if all do not, in this agree, still there are some aspiring minds high soaring above sublunary things, above the petty disputes of differing creeds, and the vague promises they hold out to their votaries, who behold, in the firmament above, mighty and mysterious objects ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... petty officer, replied, "I think we're going to need a sand hose, Sir. Most of the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of Croesus he fixed his residence at Sardis, and was employed by that monarch in various difficult and delicate affairs of state. In his discharge of these commissions he visited the different petty republics of Greece. At one time he is found in Corinth, and at another in Athens, endeavoring, by the narration of some of his wise fables, to reconcile the inhabitants of those cities to the administration of their respective rulers, Pariander and Pisistratus. ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... of the factory owners in the race for wealth, the railroad owners sprang at once into the lists of mighty wealth-possessers, armed with the most comprehensive and puissant powers and privileges, and vested with a sweep of properties beside which those of the petty industrial bosses were puny. Railroad owners, we say; the distinction is necessary between the builders of the railroads and the owners. The one might construct, but it often happened that by means of cunning, fraud and corruption, the builders were superseded by ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... interest. The lawyer, who had been introduced as Mr. Ashe, was one of those people who are more worth looking at than most people realize when they look. If Napoleon had been red-haired, and had bent all his powers with a curious contentment upon the petty lawsuits of a province, he might have looked much the same; the head with the red hair was heavy and powerful; the figure in its dark, quiet clothes was comparatively insignificant, as was Napoleon's. ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... Scott was, he had to economize time somewhere, and the hours saved from papers could be given to books. We do find one or two references to these men as political writers. Scott hoped Lockhart would learn, as editor of the Quarterly, to despise petty adversaries, for "to take notice of such men as Hazlitt and Hunt in the Quarterly would be to introduce them into a world which is scarce conscious of ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... on or near the sea-beach, but it is now about a mile and a half inland, the sand carried down by the river having silted up the ancient harbour, and formed a waste sandy tract between the sea and the town. It has now shrunk into a petty village, inhabited partly by Mahommedans and partly by Roman Catholic fishermen of the Parava caste, with a still smaller hamlet adjoining inhabited by Brahmans and Vellalars; but unlikely as the place may now seem to have been identical with 'the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... worry of citizens complaining of every petty delinquency of a soldier, and forcing themselves forward to discuss politics, made the position of a commanding general no sinecure. I continued to strengthen the two corps forward and their routes of supply; all the time expecting that Sidney Johnston, who was a real general, and who had as correct ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the most eminent champions of liberty had been shed upon the scaffold; and such as by a timely flight avoided that fate, were wandering in misery far from their native land, while the obsequious slaves of despotism enjoyed their patrimony. Still more insupportable than the oppression of these petty tyrants, was the restraint of conscience which was imposed without distinction on all the Protestants of that kingdom. No external danger, no opposition on the part of the nation, however steadfast, not even the fearful lessons of past experience, could check in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the pleasant position of being able to retain an historian of the eminence of Macaulay to write a large portion of his introduction, it would ill become him to alter and correct his statements wherever there was a petty inaccuracy; still it is necessary to say, once for all, that there are occasional errors in the passage,—as where Macaulay mentions that Chicksands is no longer the property of the Osbornes,—though happily not one of these errors is ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... suggested and practised by curiosity or idleness; but in all these I found no sensation equal to a long quiet contemplation of the mass entire, not as viewed from the balconies of the hotel, but from some rocky point or wooded shade, where house and fence and man and all his petty doings were shut out, and the eye left calmly to gaze upon the awful scene, and the rapt mind to raise its thoughts to Him who loosed this eternal flood and guides it harmless as ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... continued to have inexplicable longings and hopes. He kept surprising himself by the changing aspect of his own viewpoint of life. He found himself indulging in the most petty meannesses, and following these with flashes of a kind of loftiness of mind. Looking at a girl passing in the street, he had unbelievably mean thoughts; and the next day, passing the same girl, a line ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... would have had but little sleep that night. The first lieutenant related the circumstances to the other lieutenants; the second lieutenant, whose watch it was, told the gunner, who related it to the petty officers; the doctor told his mates, who retailed the story to the midshipmen; and so gradually it went over the whole ship, and officers and men agreed that it was one of the pluckiest and coolest ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... years painting saints and miracles was not because the Church so ordained, nor from any extraordinary devoutness of the artists, but because they still needed an outward assurance that what they did was not the petty triviality it seemed. There must always remain the sense of an ulterior, undeveloped meaning; when that is laid bare, Art has become superfluous, and makes haste to withdraw into obscure regions. For it is only as language that the picture or the statue avails anything, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... memorandum-book in his pocket, in which he notes every particular relative to appointments, addresses, and petty cash matters. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the place, and could only get out of them "good health and good conduct." I do not expect even his conduct makes much impression as to his innocence, for I saw it stated the other day that the worst prisoners are those that are always getting convicted for petty offences; those that have committed one great crime are not so depraved, and are much more amenable. However, he has only three months more at Pentonville, and then he will go ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... roughness go a long way in the assertion of authority. In the task of policing a big city, the rights of the individual must indubitably suffer to a certain extent if the rights of the multitude are to be properly protected. We can make too much of small injustices and petty incivilities. Police business is not gentle business. The officers are trying to prevent you and me from being knocked on the head some dark night or from being chloroformed in our beds. Ten thousand men are trying to do ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... Among dangerous occupations must also be included those in which there are numerous accidents, such as mining and railway occupations. The accidents in mines and on railways in the United States each year cause as many deaths and serious injuries as have often resulted in many a petty war. Thus, on the railways of the United States in 1904 there was a total of 10,046 persons killed and 84,155 injured, about three fourths of those injured being employees,—one employee being killed in every three hundred and fifty-seven and one injured in ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... corroboration see Whitgift's circular to his suffragans in May, 1601, and also his address to his bishops a few months later in Strype, Whitgift, ii, 447 ff. Among many other and grave abuses he refers to "the infinite number" of apparitors and "petty Sumners" hanging upon every court, "two or three of them at once most commonly seizing upon the subject for every trifling offence to make work to their courts." Cf. Canons of 1597, can. xi (Multitude of apparitors and their excesses) in Cardwell, ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... went against us at this time. The Wompatuck was sent by Captain Goodrich into the mouth of the harbor at Guantanamo to attempt to grapple the cable there. The tug and the St. Louis were both forced to retire, not by the weight of fire from the coast, but by a petty Spanish gunboat, aided by "a small gun on shore." Could this fact have been communicated to Commodore Schley when he decided to return to Key West on the 26th, on account of the difficulty of coaling, he might have seen the facility with which the place could be secured and utilized ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... afterward strengthened by the light hand of laws that conserved what they most desired; whose personal relations with their rulers were of such primitive character as to make the Government in every sense paternal; the petty tax on imports attending its ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... certain sacrifices which the Romans believed could only be offered by a king; after the abolition of royalty, a priest, named the petty sacrificing king, (rex sacrificulus,) was elected to perform ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... by no means a public reader; this was his offering to the general good. If those fellows, by reason of his mistakes, could be induced to climb, he was willing to offer his pride on the altar. No matter by what petty trials they were caught so that they ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... in expectation of preferment, I was not altogether without mortifications, which I not only suffered from the rude insults of the sailors and petty officers, among whom I was known by the name of Loblolly Boy, but also from the disposition of Morgan, who, though friendly in the main, was often very troublesome with his pride, which expected a good deal of submission from me, and delighted in recapitulating the favours ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Having accomplished that object with complete success, he decided to put an end to the Sung dynasty. The Chinese emperor, acting with strange fatuity, had given fresh cause of umbrage, and had provoked a war by many petty acts of discourtesy, culminating in the murder of the envoys of Kublai, sent to notify him of his proclamation as Great Khan of the Mongols. Probably the Sung ruler could not have averted war if he had shown the greatest forbearance and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Greek art, classical; Christian art is romantic, bringing into art entirely new sentiments of a knightly and a religious sort—love, loyalty and honor, grief and repentance—and understanding how by careful treatment to ennoble even the petty and contingent. The sublime belongs to symbolic art; the Roman satire is the dissolution of the classical, and humor the dissolution ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... or swim by itself. But unfortunately, in a minority of cases, by a wretched sort of "senatorial courtesy" which exists in the body, the appendix is given its ancestral or traditional rights and allowed to inflict its petty troubles upon the entire abdominal cavity, and include ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... admiring her son's learning, and so stubborn was her faith in him that she was convinced that he would this time secure a good position in the capital. Thus the father had been obliged to give way, and Antonin was now finally wrecking his life while filling some petty employment at a merchant's in the Rue du Mail. But, on the other hand, the quarrelling increased in the home, particularly whenever Lepailleur suspected his wife of robbing him in order to send money to that big lazybones, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... time my grandfather, along with his eight sons, formed the last relic in our province of that race of petty feudal tyrants by which France had been overrun and harassed for so many centuries. Civilization, already advancing rapidly towards the great convulsion of the Revolution, was gradually stamping out the systematic extortions of these ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... but he loved freedom. To be alone, to live with nature, to feel the elements, to labor and dream and idle and climb and sleep unhampered by duty, by worry, by restriction, by the petty interests of men—this had always been his ideal of living. Cowboys, riders, sheep-herders, farmers—these toiled on from one place and one job to another for the little money doled out to them. Nothing beautiful, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... And her dress, too, was subdued; brown, with little spots on it. She came up to me, asked me whether I knew her. She obviously felt no embarrassment, and not because she had lost a sense of shame or memory of the past, but simply because all petty self-consciousness ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... said that barbarous nations, both those engaged in intestine wars, and those in hostilities against us, all agreed to a cessation of arms, as if they had been mourning for some very near and common friend; that some petty kings shaved their beards and their wives' heads, in token of their extreme sorrow; and that the king of kings [383] forbore his exercise of hunting and feasting with his nobles, which, amongst the Parthians, is equivalent to a cessation ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... forgotten that he had once been so unfortunate as to offend a man who never forgave, and who, from being merely the prior of Coussay, had risen to a high rank in the church, and was now all-powerful, and able to take revenge for any petty injury long past, but carefully treasured, to be repaid with interest ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... was a small stone structure something like a sentry-box, only with an iron door and grated windows. In this negroes, petty criminals, vagrants, and drunkards were confined. It stood at the junction of the two most important streets ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was named Rocca, and he was happily asleep when we arrived. But not for long. The parade of uniforms and guns in the middle of the night had him frightened into a state where he could hardly walk. I imagine he was as full of petty larceny as Ferraro. No innocent man could have looked so terror stricken. Taking advantage of the situation, I latched my motorized lie detector onto him and began ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... we reach "the Father" through "the Son," and that He is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of the Divine glory with exceeding joy (Jude 24). The Gospel of "the Word made flesh" is not the meaningless cant of some petty sect nor yet the cunning device of priestcraft, though it has been distorted in both these directions; but it can give a reason for itself, and is founded upon the deepest laws of the threefold constitution of man, embracing ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... lips said gallantly to the banged door: "Well, there is my wurrk. I will forget my petty pairsonal troubles in my wurrk, just as men do!" And she typed away, squeezing out such drops of pride of craftsmanship as can be found in that mechanical exercise, making no mistakes, and ending the lines so that ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... him was that air of culture and refinement so conspicuously lacked by the men who had hitherto approached her. He had seemed to her the first gentleman who sought her favour. To countenance him, moreover, was to defy her mother's petty rule. But, no, she did not love him—did ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... knowledge, while other teachers with exactly the same task before them are daily inspired anew by the manifoldness of life in the classroom. We find physicians who complain that one case in their practice is like another, and judges who despair because they always have to deal with the same petty cases, while other judges and physicians feel clearly that every case offers something new and that the repetition as such is neither conspicuous nor disagreeable. We find actors who feel it a ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... most petty and most annoying experiences to which the traveler is subjected is the arbitrary tax of time and money put upon him by the small officials, of every rank, in the employment of the government. By this system of small taxes upon travelers, a considerable revenue is realized. Where this is known, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... jerked around instantly, and Jack's eyes followed his. The court crier was a Space Navy petty officer. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... the first word of the trade; and the other good fellow, full of business, who stops just long enough to whisper in your ear that "So-and-so, the famous critic, doesn't seem to be satisfied." Felicia listened to it all with the utmost tranquillity, being raised by her triumph above the petty slurs of envy, and glowed with pride when a renowned veteran, some old associate of her father's, tossed her a "Well done, little one!" which carried her back to the past, to the little corner that was always reserved for her in the paternal studio in the days when ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... a larger parchment register was provided, and every two years it appears to have been shown up to the magistrates at the Petty Sessions, and signed by two ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the Holy Scriptures. It was not from the Jews in exile and captivity, but from the Jews of Solomon's glory came the only dissatisfied, hopeless words in the Bible. Yes, indeed! it is the souls that have too much, who cry out vanity, vanity, all is vanity! For myself, I like not the petty prudencies of Solomon. There is better reading in Isaiah, and in the Psalms, and in ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... they only knew the law of God. So, right with them had no absolute or universal ground, but was reduced in their minds to the performance of certain acts commanded exclusively to them—a form of ethics which rapidly sank into the most petty and frivolous casuistry as to the outward performance of those acts. The sequel of those ethics is known to all the world, in the spectacle of the most unrivalled religiosity, and scrupulous respectability, combined with a more utter absence of moral sense, in ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... extraordinary and quite out of the common beaten track of life, was probably engendered in the following way. Not finding the sympathy he needed in his efforts after a better life, he turned in upon himself and began to despise the petty details of everyday existence; and several passages in his letters clearly go to show that his unhappiness and discontent were largely due to the fact of his overlooking the real enjoyment to be derived from the small ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Russia, Austria, Belgium, there was no central authority to which these questions could be referred for decision when the threads of mutual interest became tangled. Instead, secret and competitive statecraft made the tangle worse. The mass of conflicting jurisdictions and of petty jealousies that have grown up among the two score of independent and sovereign states of Europe ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... all respects the superior of the patroniser—may tickle your sense of humour for a while, but in the long run it is distinctly dispiriting. The philosopher, no doubt, is or should be able to disregard the petty annoyances arising from an ever-present consciousness of social limitation, but society is not entirely composed of philosophers, even in America; and the sense of freedom and space is unqualifiedly welcome to its members. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... It is hardly possible that the lord of a petty state on the coast of Sumatra should have so large a number of elephants, more perhaps than the Great Mogul in the height of the sovereignty of Hindustan. Probably Capt. Stevens may have mistaken the original, and we ought to read "With above ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Some of the petty officers and seamen, after the action, got liquor and were intoxicated; and what with the groans of the wounded, the noise and confusion of the enraged survivors of the ill-fated ship rendered the whole ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... said the Indian, looking his captive in the eye, and hesitating whether to practice his petty annoyances any further. At length they turned ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... often composed, like the largest ropes, of a multitude of strands. Take the cable thread by thread, take all the petty determining motives separately, and you can break them one after the other, and you say, "That is all there is of it!" Braid them, twist them together; the result is enormous: it is Attila hesitating between Marcian on the east and Valentinian on the west; it is Hannibal tarrying at Capua; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to one of the best men of the century, "wouldst not be saved alone." To enlighten the ignorant, to raise the weak, to pity the frail, to disregard the meanness, ingratitude, misapprehension, dulness, and petty malice of the lower orders of humanity—that is the wisdom of the wise; and that is accordant with the moral law of the universe, from the operation of which no man escapes. To study, in Shakespeare, the story of Coriolanus is to observe the violation of that law ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... distinguish between us, but utterly unlike in disposition, except that we both possessed a fiery temper and an indomitable will. He was the soul of honor, generous to a fault, loyal-hearted and brave, and he exacted honor and loyalty from others. He had no petty ambitions; he cared little for wealth for its own sake, still less for its votaries. I was ambitious; I loved wealth for the power which it bestowed; I would sacrifice anything for the attainment of that power, and even my boyish years were tainted with secret envy of my brother, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... more, however, Alain met his difficulties with prudence and vigour; he retrenched the establishment hitherto kept at the chateau, resigned such rural pleasures as he had been accustomed to indulge, and lived like one of his petty farmers. But the risks of the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now. The King of Spain, whose good fortune it is to bear sway over these provinces, has no right to govern them otherwise than the petty princes who formerly possessed them separately. Do you ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... were not striking sporadic blows now, as they had done at first, in petty "regulatings." They were looking to a time when there was to be one ride such as the mountains had never seen; a ride at whose end a leader living by the river bend, a judge, a Commonwealth's attorney living in town and the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Even in small societies you find, that some will naturally take the lead and assume domination. We commence the system at school, when we are first thrown into society, and there we are taught systems of petty tyranny. There are some few points in which we obtain equality in this world, and that equality can only be obtained under a well-regulated form of society, and consists in an equal administration of justice and of laws, to which we ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... charities; not that she may indemnify an early deprivation and clothe herself in a blaze of North Adams gauds; not that she may have nine breeds of pie for breakfast, as only the rich New-Englander can; not that she may indulge any petty material vanity or appetite that once was hers and prized and nursed, but that she may apply that Dollar to statelier uses, and place it where it may cast the metallic sheen of her glory farthest across the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the wise and the criminal audacity of the coward, had a train been laid for the destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom. All the petty pretexts for war, the affair of Lilybaeum, the Hunnish deserters, the sack of Gratiana, faded into insignificance before this new and most righteous cause of quarrel. If Hilderic's deposition had been avenged by the capture of Carthage, with far more justice might the death of the noble Amalasuentha ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... while the letter was read, and Lucas stood and fidgeted, with a sense that he was intrusive and petty and undesired. "Yes," said the owner of the spectacles, at length. "You vait. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... houses in "the village by the sea." But most of these men had left their happy homes under the inspiration of the highest and truest motives. They were going forth to fight the battles of their imperilled country, and this reflection filled them with a heroism which the petty trials and discomforts of the camp could ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... that we are savage,' cried Atlee. 'I contend for it that all our civilisation is higher, and that class for class we are in a more advanced culture than the English; that your chawbacon is not as intelligent a being as our bogtrotter; that your petty shopkeeper is inferior to ours; that throughout our middle classes there is not only a higher morality but a higher ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... aught to say, woman? Thou silly straw, thou feather, who didst think to float towards thy passion's petty ends, even against the great wind of my will! Tell me, for I fain would understand. Why ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard |
