"Shallow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weight.*3* Some lances and bows and arrows which they had appeared to him more formidable. Most of them carried banners with the painted figure of a saint, under whose aegis they deemed themselves secure from cannon-balls. Their trenches were but shallow ditches, with a few deeper holes to shelter in, but which, as Cardiel observes, served many of them for graves, as they were open to artillery, having been constructed without 'an ounce of military art'. The officer adds that no sooner had the Indians ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Pluto. But while they did not waste energy in furnishing the Lower World with the fittings of fancy, they did keep a careful guard over the door of egress. This door they called the mundus, and represented it crudely by a trench or shallow pit, at the bottom of which there lay a stone. On certain days of the year this stone was removed, and then the spirits came back to earth again, where they were received and entertained by the living members of their family. There were a number of these days in the year, three ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... the coast of New Jersey, on July 18. The "weather was thick.... By nine p. m. there was a gale, by midnight a hurricane," and at four o'clock on the morning of July 19, the vessel grounded on the shallow sands of Fire Island. The captain had died of smallpox on the voyage; his widow, the mate in command of the vessel, and four seamen reached the shore; Mr. Sumner and the Ossolis perished. The cruel part of the tragedy is that it seems probable every soul on board might have been saved. ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... every description, which with the contents of the innumerable boxes had an established reputation of being "all of the best quality," not figuratively but literally. The famous oak staircase, with the broad shallow steps and the twisted balustrade, which would not have disgraced a manor house, ran up right in the centre and terminated in a gallery—like a musician's gallery—hung with Turkey carpets, Moorish rugs, and "muslin from the Indies," and from ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... served Caponsacchi in his spiritual crisis. He thinks interesting thoughts, because he has an original mind. It is possible to be a great poet without possessing much intellectual wealth; just as it is possible to be a great singer, and yet be both shallow and dull. The divine gift of poetry seems sometimes as accidental as the formation of the throat. I do not believe that Tennyson was either shallow or dull; but I do not think he had so rich a mind as Thomas Hardy's, a mind so quaint, so humorous, so sharp. Yet Tennyson ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... on his hat the shallow meanness of his brow was hid, and nothing was seen to impair his dark, strong gravity of face. He was a man you would have turned to look at as he marched in silence by the side of Templandmuir. Though taller than the laird, he looked shorter because of his enormous breadth. He had ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... was a rumbling of an electric bell somewhere that set David's heart beating like a drum. The hall light streamed on a policeman in uniform and an inspector in a dark overcoat and a hard felt hat. On the pavement was a long shallow tray, which David recognised mechanically ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... of lumber-yard, to all appearance, with the addition of a sort of rough shipyard. Chips and shavings and fragments of boards lay all about. Here and there on trestles stood the gaunt frames of what appeared to be rough flatboats, long, wide, and shallow, constructed with no great art or care. There was no keel to any one of these boats, and the ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... interval, and then she came back bearing dishes to set on the table. Back and forth she went several times, and very likely had found more things to take up Rollo's attention; for he came not until she had her board all ready and summoned him. It was a well spread board when all was done. Shallow dishes of porridge, piles of fladbrod, bowls of cream, peaches, and coffee. And when Gyda with due care had made a cup for Wych Hazel and brought it to her hand, the little lady was obliged to confess that it was better than even Chickaree ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... her pace as she found herself alone under the leafless boughs of the dreary pollards,—a desolate spot, made melancholy by dull swamps, half overgrown with rank verdure, through which forced its clogged way the shallow brook that now gives its name (though its waves are seen no more) to one of the main streets in the most polished quarters of the metropolis. Upon a mound formed by the gnarled roots of the dwarfed and gnome-like ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wish to appear deep which is at the bottom of most forms of fatuity; he was perfectly willing to pass for decently superficial; he only aspired to be decently continuous. When you were not suitably shallow this presented difficulties; but he would have assented to the proposition that you must be as subtle as you can and that a high use of subtlety is in consuming the smoke of your inner fire. The fire was the great thing, not the chimney. He had no ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... a thorough-paced naturalist can reconstruct a whole animal from one specimen bone. In like manner, we imagine that, from these few words of dialogue, our expert readers can reconstruct Mr. and Mrs. Follingsbee: he, vulgar, shallow, sharp, keen at a bargain, and utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good nature that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard Baxter said of a better man, "always in that state of hilarity that another would be in when he hath taken ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... KATIE.—To preserve seaweed, gather specimens that are growing to rocks in preference to those floating on the water, and lay them in a shallow pan filled with clean salt water. Insert a piece of writing-paper under the seaweed and lift it out of the bath; spread out the plant with a camel's-hair pencil in a natural form, and slant the paper to allow the water to run off; then press between two pieces of board, lay ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... a few days after, in his civilized finery, among the copper-cheeked belles of the woods. By the time they had rowed twenty miles further, Washington was satisfied, that, owing to the rocks and rapids, a passage down this river in the shallow canoes of the Indians ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... fair. The dimpling half-check'd smile, and mutt'ring lip Betray the secret workings of her fancy, And flattering thoughts of the complacent mind. There little vagrant bands of truant boys Amongst the bushes try their harmless tricks; Whilst some a sporting in the shallow stream Toss up the lashing water round their heads, Or strive with wily art to catch the trout, Or 'twixt their fingers grasp the slipp'ry eel. The shepherd-boy sits singing on the bank, To pass away the weary lonely hours, Weaving ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... had the sympathies of the crowd that remained strongly with him. 'These shallow-brained fellows and some older ones that wear stars, that havn't head enough to cut loose from the Red-tape prejudice against us Volunteers, are a curse to the Army of the Potomac. Is it any wonder that this Grand Army, burdened with squirts of that stripe, is a burlesque and a disgrace to the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... which the writer saw in 1871. The reflection of the micrometer wires and of a star very near the zenith (but not quite in the zenith) can be observed together. His mercury trough was a circular plane surface with a shallow edge to retain the mercury. The surface quickly came to rest after disturbance by ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... side of a rocky hill; towards the west, by the broad half-dry channel of a tidal river; towards the north, by trees, hills, and upland valleys; and towards the south, by an old bridge and some houses near it, with lights in their windows faintly reflected in shallow water. In plainer words, the southern boundary of the prospect around them represents a place called Looe—a fishing-town on the south coast of Cornwall, which is their destination for ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... me, we'd be in more trouble if you lost one of your pretty fingers than you would have been in if they had taken and killed us over there in Missouri." He added, "If you were another woman, and had not the power to do more than just have a little shallow caring for one and another, where would be ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... charm of smiles and sugared words, Lulled on sleep the virtue of their senses, Reason shall aid gainst those assaults affords, Wisdom no warrant from those sweet offences; Cupid's deep rivers have their shallow fords, His griefs, bring joys; his losses, recompenses; He breeds the sore, and cures us of the pain: Achilles' lance that ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... herself to her feet, and, turning towards the stairs, began slowly to mount the shallow steps. Her knees were shaking under her, her whole body was trembling with horror at the awesome crisis she had ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... another, and not the least of the many reverses which my ambition was doomed to meet with. You knew the man who opposed me; you know that a more shallow and insignificant fop and fool never yet dared to thrust his head into a deliberative assembly. But, he was rich, and I poor. He a potato, the growth of the soil; I, though generally admitted a plant of more promise and pretension—I was an exotic! He was a patrician—one of the small nobility—a ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... were very steep, and we had yet not met with any place where we could land; however, my sons persisted in thinking the savages could have taken no other route, as they had lost sight of their canoe round the promontory. As the strait was narrow and shallow, I consented that Fritz should throw off the clothes he had on, and swim to reconnoitre a place which seemed to be an opening in the rocks or hills that obstructed our passage, and we soon had the pleasure ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... breath Lips close and heart subsides; and closing, shone Sunlike with many a Nereid's hair, and moved Round many a trembling mouth of doubtful gods, Risen out of sunless and sonorous gulfs Through waning water and into shallow light, That watched us; and when flying the dove was snared As with men's hands, but we shot after and sped Clear through the irremeable Symplegades; And chiefliest when hoar beach and herbless cliff Stood out ahead from Colchis, and we heard Clefts hoarse ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the apologue, the moral essay, and the religious meditation,—all first-rate in quality, and all suggesting the idea that his resources are boundless, and that the half has not been told. His criticisms have been ridiculed as shallow; but while his lucubrations on Milton were useful in their day as plain finger-posts, quietly pointing up to the stupendous sublimities of the theme, his essays on Wit are subtle, and his papers on the "Pleasures of Imagination" throw ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... does look a pet! He was (and still is to-day) in miner's dress, and it is corduroy trousers tucked into high-laced boots and a grey flannel shirt with a shallow turn down collar which has been turned up again, looking like a Lord Palmerton, or someone of that date; a loose tie and a corduroy Norfolk jacket, all a sort of earth colour except the tie, which ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... drawing-room of their house, one on each side of the fireplace. They had it all to themselves, except for the cats, Tito and Timmy, who crouched on the hearthrug at their feet. Frances's forehead and her upper lip were marked delicately with shallow, tender lines; Anthony's eyes had crow's-feet at their corners, pointing to grey hairs at his temples. To each other their faces were as they had been fifteen years ago. The flight of time was measured for ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... of the little pebbles grouped together under the shallow water? and what made the pretty curved marks in the sandy bottom and the little sand-banks? Where do you find the fish-eating birds? Have the inlet and the outlet of a lake anything ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... everywhere, and at all times. You meet whole regiments of youngsters, from six to eight years of age, with black beaver hats, tail-coats, and canes, each with a cigar, nearly his own size, in his mouth. You feel like putting the miniature dandies into the water of the next fountain basin, which shallow as it is, would fully, suffice to drown the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... last stopping place, a shallow drift, or river, in a valley under the western slopes of the great hills, it was decided to make camp here beside the drift, as a sort of headquarters. They had met scattered parties of Kikuyu men, and had passed one or two of the native villages, so after a day's rest a number of the Masai were ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... Victoria at Newnham saw them oftenest. Its interior is fascinating, with a low hall and fine old oak stairway, broad and shallow; a bit of quaint French glass let into the staircase window bears an illustrated version of La Fourmi et la Cigale. Lady Dilke found there a remnant of fine tapestry—a battle scene with a bold picture of horses and their riders. She traced and located this as belonging ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Raphael! Well, I am his inveterate admirer: and say, with as little affectation as I can, that his worst scrap fills my head more than all Rubens and Paul Veronese together—"the mind, the mind, Master Shallow!" You think this cant, I dare say: but I say it truly, indeed. Raphael's are the only pictures that cannot be described: no one can get words to describe their perfection. Next to him, I retreat to the Gothic imagination, and love the mysteries of old chairs, Sir Rogers, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... of quassia, one pint; brown sugar, four ounces; ground pepper, two ounces. To be well mixed together, and put in small, shallow dishes when required. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... of the gruesome spectacles incidental to this style of warfare. Such sights as the withered hand of a Turk sticking out from the parapet of a communication trench, or the boots of a hastily buried soldier projecting from his shallow grave, produce on one's first experience of them an emotion of inexpressible horror. It was still more trying to look on the unburied dead lying in groups in front of the parapet; and further away, near the Turkish lines, the bodies ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... sound foundation. Why have all former republics vanished out of existence? Simply because they were built upon the sand. In the erection of a building, in proportion to the height of the walls must be the depth and soundness of the foundation. If the foundation is shallow or unsound, the higher you raise your superstructure the surer its downfall. That is the reason a republic has not existed as long as a monarchy, because it embraced principles of human rights in its superstructure which it denied ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... terminate a mile away, at Jessum, the local station of the Thames Railway Line. An iron railing, embedded in moldering stone work, divided the narrow front garden from the road, and on either side of the door—which could be reached by five shallow steps—grew two small yew trees, smartly clipped and trimmed into cones of dull green. These yews possessed some magical significance, which Professor Braddock would occasionally explain to chance visitors interested ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... these altered laws were, they turned out to be shallow delusions. Under English rule, the gifts of vast estates in New York were even greater than under Dutch rule and beyond doubt were granted corruptly or by favoritism. Miles upon miles of land in New York ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so I showed them off as I might. "I hope then it was to more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday," I pursued, "will have given him so scant an advantage—for it contained only the bare ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... of the river, among the stumps and flags, was stretched a woman's body. Her long, dishevelled locks lay among the water-shrubs; her dress—of gray silk—was soiled with mire and blood. All the upper part of the body lay in shallow water, and her face had sunk ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... one-third cup butter; two eggs; two teaspoonfuls ginger. Put butter and molasses in sauce pan and heat until boiling point is reached. Remove from fire, add soda and beat vigorously. Then add milk, egg well beaten, and remaining ingredients mixed and sifted. Bake twenty-five minutes in buttered, shallow pan ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... cloud appears on the horizon of Canada's national destiny. Like a ship launched roughly from her stays to tempests in shallow water, she seems to have left tempests and shallow water behind and to have sailed proudly out to the great deeps. In '37 she settled whether she would be ruled by special interests, by a plutocracy, by an oligarchy. In '67 she settled ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... it often happens, to their mortification, that as their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by reading better books, and by conversation with men of judgment), they soon forsake them; and when the torrent from the mountains falls no more, the swelling writer is reduced into his shallow bed, like the Mancanares at Madrid, with scarce water to moisten his own pebbles. There are a middle sort of readers (as we held there is a middle state of souls), such as have a farther insight than the former, yet have not the ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... of large growth; the soil is not good. In returning to the river we came upon the creek which terminated Mr. Evans's journey, down which we travelled until we came to the river, about half a mile from which is a large shallow lagoon, full of ducks, bustards, black swans and red-hills. At twelve o'clock the horses arrived at the mouth of the creek, and the boats half an hour afterwards. The banks of the creek were very steep, and it was three o'clock before all the provisions were got over. The creek ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... Mons salient, actually the point on which the torrent of war first broke and for a brief moment spent itself. On that still night it seemed to hang suspended as a great wave does before falling. As the battalion lay in the shallow trench the pregnant silence was at last broken by the high, clear call of a bugle, one single long note, indescribably eerie and menacing, and then the listening men heard the rustling tread of ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... a sardonic grin breaking the straight, thin, cruel line of his lips. He opened his table's one shallow drawer, and took out a pad and a pencil. He wrote a few words on the lowest part of the top sheet, folded it, tore off the part he had scribbled on, returned the pad and pencil to the drawer, handed the scrap of paper to me. "I will do it," he said. "Give this to Mr. Farquhar, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... length we approached the sanctuary, a difficult business because of the retaining walls that had to be built to keep the sand from flowing down as fast as it was removed, and the great quantities of stuff that must be carried off by the tramway. In so doing we came upon a shallow grave which appeared to have been hastily filled in and roughly covered over with paving stones like the rest of the court, as though to conceal its existence. In this grave lay the skeleton of a large man, together with the rusted blade of an iron ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... down and bound with time. But presently there is a steeper dip, and at the bottom, in a narrow valley, a streamlet flows out from the wheat into the park. A spring rises at the foot of the down a mile away, and the channel it has formed winds across the plain. It is narrow and shallow; nothing but a larger furrow, filled in winter by the rains rushing off the fields, and in summer a rill scarce half an inch deep. The wheat hides the channel completely, and as the wind blows, the tall ears bend over it. At the edge of the bank pink convolvulus twines round the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... building is keen. Later, if considerable enthusiasm has been aroused for weaving, individual looms may be made for home use. For the school with scant funds a very satisfactory loom may be improvised by driving nails one fourth inch apart in the ends of a shallow box of convenient size and stretching the warp threads ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... attributes of a naval base, in that it has no means for receiving and protecting a large fleet, it cannot be approached by large ships except at high tide, and it could not receive a seriously injured battleship at any time, because the channel leading to it is too shallow. ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... there; and he would snub and contradict a chancellor just as soon as he would a serf. Whatever form his pride may have taken when a youth, in his maturity it impelled him to ignore differences of rank not substantially justified, and he seemed to take a delight in exposing the ignorance of shallow titled persons, to whom contradiction and exposure were most ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... lead, poured by the plumber from the opposite end of a groove, sometimes meet and press together, so as to make a close, polished joint, without running into one piece. The little angular opening forms the lower termination of the line, which, hollowing inwards, recedes near the bottom into a shallow cave, roughened with tufts of fern and bunches of long silky grass, here and there enlivened by the delicate flowers of the lesser rock-geranium. A shower of drops patters from above among the weeds and rushes of the little ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... endurance which is necessary to ensure their killing their game, and are much fleeter than their diminutive size would indicate. Formerly, considerable fancy and even judgment used to be exercised in the breeding of these dogs. They were curiously distinguished by the names of "deep-flewed," or "shallow-flewed," in proportion as they had the depending upper lip of the southern, or the sharper muzzle and more contracted lip of the northern dogs. The shallow-flewed were the swiftest, and the deep-flewed the stoutest and the surest, and their music the most pleasant. The wire-haired beagle ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... of the statue is the cathedral St. Apollinaire, built in 1095, and restored in 1604 and 1730. The west portal and tower were rebuilt in 1880. The other parts of the exterior have a venerable appearance. The buttresses are shallow, and do not reach the eaves. Adelicate dentil cornice runs round the building, bending over the round-headed windows and across the buttresses. Within, the church by restoration looks as if it were modern. Tall piers, with attached Corinthian ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... mass of land rising from a submarine platform that attaches it to the Continent of Europe. The shallowness of its waters—shallow relatively to the profundity of ocean deeps—is most pronounced off the eastern and south-eastern coasts; but it extends westward as far as the isles of Scilly, which are isolated mountain-peaks of the submerged plateau. The seas that wash the long Cornish peninsula, therefore, though they are ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... moral of it all is that there are two sorts of people who will never do any good on this planet. One is the class which makes formulas and shallow little ideals its gods and has no glimpse of human needs and the plain issues of life. The other is the egotist whose eye is always filled with his own figure, who investigates his motives, and hesitates and finicks, till ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... rarely, from a neighbor who churns all his milk for the accommodation of those who send all theirs to the city. Our notions of the way to make butter were decidedly overturned on going to such a dairy. No setting of the milk in shallow pans for cream to rise; no skimming and putting away in jars until "churning day," when the thick cream was agitated by a strong arm until the butter came, then worked and salted. Instead, there is a daily pouring ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... 1811. From that time till now this species has been in favour as a garden plant, though it is, at the present time, much less common in English gardens than it deserves to be. The branches are broad, triangular when young, flat when old, about 1 ft. long by 2 in. wide, with shallow incisions, the serrations rather sharply angled. The height of the plant is from 2 ft. to 3 ft. The flowers are produced on the margins of the young branches, and are composed of a short, thick tube, not more than 2 in. in ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... to a shallow wady, down which, turning to the right hand, the guide led them. The bed of the cut was somewhat soft from recent rains, and quite bold in its descent. Momentarily, however, it widened; and erelong the sides became bluffs ribbed with rocks ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the swearing party, who is struck by lightning-a very shallow and unprofitable device. He should open his face to swear, dislocate his jaw, be unable to get closed up, and the rats should get in at night, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... that the dogs would pass singly across fissures, so that the danger of falling through was considerably reduced. The exertion of pulling is also less trying with Alaska harness than with the Greenland kind, as the Alaska harness has a shallow, padded collar, which is slipped over the animal's head and makes the weight of the pull come on his shoulders, whereas the Greenland harness presses on his chest. Raw places, which occur rather frequently with the Greenland harness, are almost ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... France, prostrate with reverence and awe (as in the very presence of a god), did loyal homage to the greatest monarch this world has ever seen—while we sat by, on the very steps of his throne, as he solemnly gave out his royal command! and laughed aloud under his very nose—the shallow, silly, pompous little snob—and longed to pull it! and tried to disinfect his greasy, civet-scented, full-bottomed wig with wholesome whiffs ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson's words seemed like a revelation that shocked him as profoundly as it might have shocked a nobler nature. The simple vanity and selfishness that made him unable to conceive any higher reason for his wife's loyalty than his own personal popularity and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... was hideously twisting all the things she had thought were good and right, worth hoping and striving for. All the priceless things that had stood for more than the soft, idle and pointlessly shallow existence to which she'd ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... saved him from disaster, however, and on the 2d of August he undertook the perilous and awkward labor of floating his larger vessels over the shallow bar of the harbor at Erie. Barclay's blockading force had vanished. For Perry it was then or never. At any moment the enemy's topsails might reappear, and the American ships would be caught in a situation wholly ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... more genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns. In case I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. How poorly - compares! He is all smart journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper - a good one, S'ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they had never before tasted anything so sweet as this. They went aboard their ship again and sailed into a certain sound, which lay between the island and a cape, which jutted out from the land on the north, and they stood in westering past the cape. At ebb-tide there were broad reaches of shallow water there, and they ran their ship aground there, and it was a long distance from the ship to the ocean; yet were they so anxious to go ashore that they could not wait until the tide should rise under their ship, but hastened to the land, where a certain river flows out from ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... following upon frosty weather, had converted the fenny country in many directions into a shallow lake. The little river which flowed by the village had risen above its almost level banks, and could with difficulty be traversed at any point, while there was no permanent bridge, such as there was at Ravels. The retreating Spaniards had made their way through ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Genevieve, the very tangled grasses and larches and gentians that hang to the crags, drawn as no Italian ever drew them; the quiet, sentimental little landscapes of castles on fir-clad hills, of manor-houses, gabled and chimneyed, among the reeds and willows of shallow ponds. These feelings, Teutonic doubtless, but less mediaeval than we might think, for the Middle Ages of the Minnesingers were terribly conventional, seem to well up at the voice of Luther; and it is this which make the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... was dismissed with a jocular reproof, and an invitation to breakfast. Now, if Mr Skeffington had had the sense to have kept his own and his friend's counsel, this might have been all very well. But being a somewhat shallow-pated youth, and a freshman to boot, he thought it a very fine thing to talk about at his next wine-party, and boast that he could cut lecture and chapel when he pleased—the dean and he understood each other. Brown happened to be present; (for though not good company enough for the dean, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... play round The matter, and at ease evolve The problem, shallow or profound, Which our poor wits ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... look Dinah's revelation burst upon her. In that moment she saw her own soul as never before had she seen it; and all the little things, the shallow things, the earthly things, faded quite away. With a deep, deep breath she opened her eyes upon ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... moment the water grew more polluted: and yet every moment fresh myriads came up to the lake and rushed in, not able to resist their frantic thirst, and swallowing large draughts of water, visibly contaminated with the blood of their slaughtered compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough to allow of men raising their heads above the water, there for scores of acres were to be seen all forms of ghastly fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of convulsion, of mortal conflict, death, and the fear of death—revenge, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... something horribly humiliating in the terms (however veiled in plausible language) which Henry was evidently prescribing to me as the price of his protection. I was never a self-deceiver, and I saw clearly through the shallow pretence of better hopes for the future—of kindness to Alice—of help to pursue the better course—his unswerving determination never to give up those habits of intimacy, which would give full scope for the exercise of his secret power. I did not charge him with ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... standing beside the oil lamp, putting strands of dried moss into the oil. This lamp was their only stove and their only light. It didn't look much like our stoves. It was just a piece of soapstone, shaped something like a clamshell. It was hollowed out so it would hold the oil. All along the shallow side of the pan there were little tendrils of dried moss, like ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the bill they are called harbors, they are not connected with foreign commerce, nor are they places of refuge or shelter for our Navy or commercial marine on the ocean or lake shores. To call the mouth of a creek or a shallow inlet on our coast a harbor can not confer the authority to expend the public money in its improvement. Congress have exercised the power coeval with the Constitution of establishing light-houses, beacons, buoys, and piers on our ocean and lake shores for the purpose of rendering navigation safe ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... brother's keeper. His question answered itself. If Abel was his brother, then he was bound to look after him. His self- condemning excuse is but a specimen of the shallow pleas by which the forgetfulness of duties we owe to all mankind, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... same ease it bolted houses and pavements. Into Griffith Park it swaggered, mumbling the planetarium, Mount Hollywood and Fern Dell in successive mouthfuls and swarmed down to the concretelined bed of the Los Angeles River. Here ineffectual shallow pools had preserved illusion and given tourists something at which to laugh in the dry season; the weed licked them up like a thirsty cow at a wallow. Up and down and over the river it ran, each day ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... island's foot, from the beds of seaweed and the groves of coral, from the sandy bottom of the ocean fathoms deep below, the fish came swimming in great shoals about Gudwall's island. And each one bore in his mouth a grain of sand. They swam into the shallow water just outside the cave where Gudwall had lived, and one by one they placed their burdens on the sandy bottom. One by one they paused to see that it was well done, then swiftly swam away, to return as soon as might be with another grain of sand. All day long a procession ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... domestic servants. Let a man endeavour to realize it to himself, let him think of its narrow sphere, of its unvarying nature, and he will be careful not to throw in, unnecessarily, the trouble even of a single harsh word, which may make so large a disturbance in the shallow current of a domestic's hopes and joys. How often, on the contrary, do you find that masters seem to have no apprehension of the feelings of those under them, no idea of any duties on their side beyond "cash payment," whereas the good, old, patriarchal feeling towards your household ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... heard, and read too in books, that man was naturally a swimming animal, and that any one who was thrown into water would swim if only he was not afraid, so I said inwardly, "It is true that I never did swim, but that is probably because I have only bathed in shallow water; I have courage enough, and if they pitch me into the river Don, most probably I shall swim, as man is naturally a swimming animal and fear is the only impediment." One day at dinner Mr. Cape asked all the subscribers, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... if she had eyes and thoughts for little else save the picture coming to life under her hand. Perhaps it needs an artist, one who has felt the Divine breath stir a spark into a flame, rightly to understand and make allowance for such spiritual intoxication. Michael,—shallow-hearted egoist though he might be,—would have understood: because he was an artist. But Lenox, being simply a man and a soldier, found it difficult to distinguish between her absorption in the picture and in the subject of the picture; difficult ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... scant. A half dozen big candlesticks, ecclesiastical in character, were placed at proper intervals, and at each end of the table there was a shallow, alabaster dish containing pansies. The serving plates were of silver. Especially beautiful were the long- stemmed water goblets and the graceful champagne glasses. They were blue and white and of a design and quality no longer obtainable except at great ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... iron hook in the window frame dangled the elastic home-exerciser with which it was his unfailing habit to perform a certain number of matutinal contortions, to keep his body wholesome and efficient. Beneath the bed was visible the rim of a shallow English tub that made possible ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... pouring the spoonful of milk through the bars of the cage into a little shallow basin, which she kept for the purpose within, that she ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?), Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Beep versed in books and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... heave-offering and cleanness in purification. Every reason for suspense in the heave-offering causes pouring away of the water in purification. If acts requiring legal cleanness be afterward performed, they are in suspense. Shallow water(755) is clean for holy things, and the heave-offering and purification. R. Eleazar said, "trickling water(756) is unclean ...
— Hebrew Literature
... not mention this cudgeling part of the story with a design to engage the secular arm in matters of this nature; but certainly, if it ever exerts itself in affairs of opinion and speculation, it ought to do it on such shallow and despicable pretenders to knowledge, who endeavour to give man dark and uncomfortable prospects of his being, and destroy those principles which are the support, happiness, and glory of all public societies, as well as ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the birth the father constructs a shallow bamboo framework (baitken), [56] which he fills with ashes, and places in the room close to the mother. On this a fire is kept burning constantly for twenty-nine days [57] For this fire he must carefully prepare each stick of wood, for should it have rough places on it, ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... splashed through the shallow curl of the waves on the beach, and clambered over the high bow of the dory. Amos baited their lines, and with a word of advice as to the best place to sit, he again turned to his own fishing and soon pulled in a big, ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... part of its course; but it slumbers along between broad meadows, or kisses the tangled grass of mowing-fields and pastures, or bathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and other water-loving plants. Flags and rushes grow along its shallow margin. The yellow water-lily spreads its broad, flat leaves upon its surface; and the fragrant white pond-lily occurs in many favored spots,—generally selecting a situation just so far from the river's brink, that it cannot be grasped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... girl, this, of much slighter build; with a frisky gait, a jaunty pose of the head; pretty, but thin-featured, and shallow-eyed; a long neck, no chin to speak of, a low forehead with the hair of washed-out flaxen fluffed all over it. Her dress was showy, and in a taste that set the teeth on edge. Fanny French, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... be frank!" Kathleen cried, with a little catch in her voice. "Why, it isn't in you to be frank, Felix Kennaston! Your life is nothing but a succession of poses—shallow, foolish poses meant to hoodwink the world and at times yourself. For you do hoodwink yourself, don't you, Felix?" she asked, eagerly, and gave him no time to answer. She feared, you see, lest his answer might dilapidate the one fortress she ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... instinct of a professional tuft-hunter. It is as common a mistake to suppose that all tuft-hunters are necessarily of lowly birth and of inferior social position, as it is to believe them all to be offensive in manner and shallow in artifice. The coarse but honest Snob still perhaps exists, and here and there he thrusts and pushes in the old familiar way; but more often than not the upstart who has won his way to wealth and consideration finds himself to his own surprise courted and fawned upon by those ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... doorway, with her hands in the pockets of her bicycle skirt. She had no hat on, and the mild breeze blew her hair about; it was light brown, with a brightness in it; her eyes also were light brown, with gleams in them like the shallow places in a Connemara trout stream. At this moment they were scanning with approval, tempered by anxiety, the muddy legs of a lean and lengthy grey filly, who was fearfully returning her gaze from between the strands of a touzled forelock. The owner ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... sank axle deep in it. The horses floundered through it in the darkness, and every now and then the lamps were reflected in a big pool of shallow water. The wind blew keen and cold, but the coach was full inside and out, and so, though it was pitch dark, I kept my seat by ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... not worthy, which had driven thousands of those honest, diligent and godfearing yeomen and artisans, who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Yellow River from P'ing-yang, found (Land of the Lamas, p. 17) that "the river was between 500 and 600 yards wide, a sluggish, muddy stream, then covered with floating ice about a foot thick.... The Yellow River here is shallow, in the main channel only is it four or five feet deep." The Rev. C. Holcombe, who crossed in October, says (p. 65): that "it was nowhere more than 6 feet deep, and on returning, three of the boatmen sprang into the water in midstream and waded ashore, carrying a line from the ferry-boat ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was somewhat forbidding. A flight of shallow granite steps, flanked by balustrades of the same austere substance, terminating in huge, rough-hewn pillars, led up to an enormous door of ancient oak, studded with nails—destined, it would seem, to resist the onslaught of an armed multitude. The sternness of its ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... friend's legs disappear. He ran to the spot in considerable alarm, supposing that the boy might have taken a fit, and not knowing whether he could swim. He was relieved, however, to find that Olly, on reappearing, struck out manfully with one hand for a shallow place at the lower end of the pool, while with the other he pressed some object tightly to ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... downstream. Away goes Tom, reeling in, and away goes the fish in hopes of a slack—away, for twenty or thirty yards—the fish coming to the top lazily, and again, and holding on to get his second wind. Now a cart track crosses the stream, no weeds, and shallow water at the side. "Here we must have it out," thinks Tom, and turns fish's nose up stream again. The big fish gets sulky, twice drifts towards the shallow, and twice plunges away at the sight of his enemy into the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... might get some insight into the Mussulman mind.... But I confess to you I have broken sheer down in the attempt, ... the book makes no impression on my mind. I cannot find where I left off when I recur to it. That so tedious and shallow a work can meet such praises gives me a lower and lower idea of the power of mind in these nations. I now think that the Arabs are captivated by the tinkle and epigrammatic point of an old and sacred dialect, while Turks and Persians take its literary beauty as a religious fact to be believed, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... disembarked its army late in December after the most laborious difficulties because of the many miles of shallow bayou and toilsome marsh which delayed the advance. A week was required to carry seven thousand men in small boats from the ships to the Isle aux Poix on Lake Borgne chosen as a landing base. Thence a brigade passed in boats up the bayou and on the 23d of December disembarked at a point some three ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... circus. The dapples on his gray flanks were as distinct as the under markings on old velours, while his tail had the crisp whiteness of a polished steel bit on a frosty morning. Unless you had seen how shallow were his molar cups or noted the length of his bridle teeth, would you have guessed ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... can be like that. Were it death, we could worship still. Death would be preferable. But may you be spared to know a situation in which the comparison with your inferior is forced on you to your disadvantage and your loss because of your generously giving up your whole heart to the custody of some shallow, light-minded, self—! . . . We will not deal in epithets. If I were to find as many bad names for the serpent as there are spots on his body, it would be serpent still, neither better nor worse. The loneliness! And the darkness! Our luminary is extinguished. Self-respect ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... That thro' my waters play, If, in their random, wanton spouts, They near the margin stray; If, hapless chance! they linger lang, I'm scorching up so shallow, They're left the whitening stanes amang, In gasping death ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... windows, and cultivated those aerial gardens that police regulations forbid, though their vegetable products purify the atmosphere. The house, which backed up against another fronting on the rue de Seine, was necessarily shallow, and the staircase wound round upon itself. The third floor was the last. Three windows to three rooms, namely, a dining-room, a small salon, and a chamber on one side of the landing; on the other, a little kitchen, and two single ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the fence this time but threw himself into the shallow depths of a dry ravine. He remained keenly alert. His eyes were constantly on the road, which lay like a brown ribbon a full ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... Trigger ordered a boat lowered and manned by a picked crew in charge of the Second Engineer. The Doraine was about five miles off shore at the time, and was drifting with a noticeably increased speed directly toward the rock-bound coast. He had hoped she would go aground in the shallow waters off the sandy beach, but there was now no chance that such a piece of good fortune was in store for her. She was going straight for the huge ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... small room which, rightly or wrongly, has been called the 'Holy of Holies,' the idea being that it formed a kind of inner sanctuary to the chamber. It contains a rough shelf cut in the wall, and in the centre of this a shallow circular pit. It has been suggested that this pit was made to hold the base of the cult-object, whether it was a baetyl or an idol. This, however, is a mere conjecture. In the passage just outside the door of this room are two small circular pits about 6 inches in diameter and the same distance ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... saw to what the steward alluded, and was impressed by it, though he said nothing. Hundreds of little bubbles rose to the surface of the water, much as one sees them rising in springs. These bubbles are often met with in lakes and other comparatively shallow waters, but they are rarely seen in those of the ocean. The mate understood, at a glance, that those he now beheld were produced by the air which escaped from the hold of the wreck; in small quantities at a time, it was true, but by a constant and increasing ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... year and was no longer satisfied to dwell in Succoth. An indescribable longing, and not for you only, had taken possession of my soul. What had formerly afforded me pleasure now seemed shallow, and the monotony of life here in the remote frontier city amid shepherds and flocks, appeared ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the royal troops and some of the former soldiers of Pompeius went off in a boat to his vessel; and invited him to come to the king and, as the water was shallow, to enter their barge. As he was stepping ashore, the military tribune Lucius Septimius stabbed him from behind, under the eyes of his wife and son who were compelled to be spectators of the murder from the deck of their vessel, without being able to rescue or revenge ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... an ill-assorted and unattractive couple. The man, a compound of coarse brutality and shrewd cunning, was at heart lazy and selfish, the woman a spoilt child, in whom a real want of feeling was supplied by a shallow sentimentalism. Vain of the superior refinement conferred on her by a good middle-class education, she despised and soon came to loathe her coarse husband, and lapsed into a condition of disappointment and discontent that was only relieved ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... the boy. "Oh, we ought to do that easy. You see, it will be only paddle at first, and then wade till you get up to your chest, and then swim. Perhaps we sha'n't have to swim at all. Rough rivers like this are always shallow. When you are ready I am. We sha'n't have to take off our shoes and stockings; and if we get very wet, well, we can wring our clothes, and they will soon dry in the sun. Look sharp and give the word. I am ready for anything with the British ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... down and was carried across to Arlingham. He asked many questions concerning the tides and the sands. The water ran like a mill-race round the Nab, and the stranger crossed himself when he entered the boat, and again when the ferryman took him on his back to carry him through the shallow water and the mud. He paid the penny for the passage, and then vanished quickly into the trees that shut in the village of Arlingham from the river. The boatman watched him curiously and fearfully; ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... by thee, the son of genius, whose ill-starred ambition plants him at the tables of the fashionable and polite, must see in suffering silence, his remark neglected, and his person despised, while shallow greatness in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with countenance and applause. Nor is it only the family of worth that have reason to complain of thee: the children of folly and vice, though in common with thee the offspring of evil, smart equally under thy rod. Owing to thee, the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... herself of a passionate regret, the lonely woman turned away and took a path that led across the marshes. But her heart sank, for she seemed to recognise the flats, the shallow dykes, the coastguard station, which she had known all her life. Sheep were grazing here and there, and two horses, put out to grass, looked at her listlessly as she passed. A cow heavily whisked its tail. To the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... from the midst of the verdure, and emptied its waters into a shallow pool, the bottom of which was composed of ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous |
