"Sober" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power; and at worst a rubbing, rasping, squeaking, woollen, noisy nuisance that it sets teeth on edge to think of. I shudder at the mere memory of the reluctant bow dragging its slow length across the whining strings. And here I am, in my sober senses, come to ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... clear night we sailed along the coast of Epi. The bright weather had changed to a dull, rainy day, and the aspect of the landscape was entirely altered. The smiling islands had become sober, lonely, even threatening. When the charm of a country consists so entirely in its colouring, any modification of the atmosphere and light cause such a change in its character that the same view may look either ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... existence, and His mercies visit us in every bright ray and glad thought, and call for gratitude and content; the silence of that early dawn, the hushed silence, as it were, of expectation; the holy eventide, its cooling breeze, its lengthening shadows, its falling shades, its still and sober hour; the sultry noontide and the stern and solemn midnight; and Spring-time, and chastening Autumn; and Summer, that unbars our gates, and carries us forth amidst the ever-renewed wonders of the world; and Winter, that gathers us around the evening hearth:—all ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... is (he wrote) that our labourers are for the most part in the position of persons who live habitually within their incomes. They are generally sober and frugal, and accustomed to a low standard of living. Their gardens supply them in great measure with the necessaries of life. The chief part, therefore, of what they receive in money, whether as wages or as the price of the surplus produce of their ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... endeavour to reclaim them from that State, by the severity of Precepts, is attempting to put a Bridle on an unruly Horse in the middle of his carrier, in the mean while, there is no Medium, they run into the most criminal excess, unless you afford them regular and sober Pleasures. 'Tis a great Happiness that their remaining Reason inclines them to love Diversions, where there is Order, and Shows, where Truth is to be found, and I am perswaded, that Charity obliges us, to take advantage of ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... The sober fact is that here is the imminent battle-ground in the endless contest for the rights of the people. Nothing that can be said or done will suffice to postpone longer the active phases of this fight; and that is why I attach so great importance to the attitude of administrative officers ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... the year when day gives place to night so suddenly, that the sober calm of twilight even appears denied to us. The streams rushed by, turbid and swollen from the heavy autumnal rains. A rude wind had robbed most of the trees of their foliage; the sere and withered leaves, indeed, yet remained ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... Accordingly he set forth, and arrived at the haunted spot. The spectre stood in his path, and, raising his stick, he struck it with all his strength, but it made no impression, nor did the goblin move. The stick fell as upon a blanket—so the man described it—and he instantly became sober, while a cold tremor ran through every nerve ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... impressed me most was the dim light of the English day, the soft, undefined shadows, compared with our brilliant sunshine and sharply defined shade—then the coloring of the houses, the streets, the ground, of every thing; no bright colors, all sober, some very dark,—the idea of age, gravity, and stability. Nobody seems in a hurry. Our country seems so young and vehement; this ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... advantage: she therefore finding she should want nothing, but as much of Octavio's conversation as she desired, she begged he would give her leave to write a note to her page, who was a faithful, sober youth, to bring her jewels and what things she had of value to her, which he did, and received those and her servants together; but Antonet had like to have lost her place, but that Octavio pleaded for her, and she herself confessing it was love to the false ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... who, in all our experiences with De Berquin and his henchmen, had not while sober come within hearing of Barbemouche's voice, or within close sight of him, stepped up and ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... will not be many jests to equal this!" he gasped. "That a titmouse should ruffle its feathers and upbraid me! Here is merriment!" He lay there laughing after the others had joined in with him; and his face was not entirely sober the next time he turned it toward her. "Good Berserker, give me leave to live some while longer in order that ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... temperance, the sentiments of the convention were voiced by one of the speakers in these words: "The best thing for the Negro is industry, temperance, virtue, economy, union and courage. Get land, get money, get education; be sober and be virtuous. We have drunk enough whiskey since the war to build a railroad from Atlanta to Savannah. The Negro race cannot be great except as individuals rise towards greatness." They are rising. A little more yeast, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... nobly as it had begun. The facts had been slowly, quietly gathered, one by one, like pebbles from the empty channel of a brook. The style was fluent, impetuous, abundant, impatient, as it were, at times, and leaping the sober boundaries prescribed to it, like the torrent which rushes through the same channel when the rains have filled it. Thus there was matter for criticism in his use of language. He was not always ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... regretted, as no other man of the time regretted, his father's land: Anjou and the fields of home. He may be said, with some exaggeration, to have died in the misfortune of his separation from the security and sober tradition of his own walls. That great early experience of his, which I have already written down—his meeting with Ronsard—had come to him not far from his own hill, south of the great river. His name, unlike Ronsard's, recalled the gentry of that countryside up to and beyond the beginning ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... words; but she had heard enough. The sheet went on crookedly. Polly did not know it, her eyes were so blurred with tears. She kept the sorry news to herself, and all day long the children wondered what made Polly so sober. ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... ideas from one man's head to another. On the north side of the room is another platform and desk, where a guardian sits and addresses the candidate, who is supposed to lose his way and to be set right by this guardian, and even if the candidate is thoroughly sober he may be excused for losing his way, for it is a matter of much doubt whether he was ever in such a labarynth of words as he has just heard from the Ancient Brother, who, having given the man some pretty strong obligations, to endorse and support the policy ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... of the school, and the most trying scapegrace that ever lived. As full of mischief as a monkey, yet so good-hearted that one could not help forgiving his tricks; so scatter-brained that words went by him like the wind, yet so penitent for every misdeed, that it was impossible to keep sober when he vowed tremendous vows of reformation, or proposed all sorts of queer punishments to be inflicted upon himself. Mr. and Mrs. Bhaer lived in a state of preparation for any mishap, from the breaking of ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... political sentiment and action. Why not? Why should such a claim on behalf of religion be accounted extravagant, or meet with any other than a unanimous assent? Is not religion the supreme law; so acknowledged by the people of this land, at least by the thoughtful and sober part of the people? We but repeat one of the common-places of the pulpit, which however disregarded no one thinks of denying, when we say that the influence of religion should be paramount in every department of life. ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... differ. Dr. Neale's enthusiasm carried him so far that he was persuaded and sought to persuade others of the existence of liturgical quotations in the writings of St. Paul. This hypothesis is at the present time generally rejected by sober-minded scholars. Perhaps "the personal equation" enters equally into the conclusions of those who assign a very late origin to the liturgies, pushing them along as far as the sixth or seventh century. If one happens to have a rooted dislike for prescribed ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... and assuring her that he was not so awkward in handling the enemies of his country in battle as in handling friends he esteemed in a dance, he gave no quarter to an old maid aunt, whom, in the violence of his gesticulation, he knocked down with his elbow and laid sprawling on the ground. He was sober when these ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... The Friar, half-drunk, half-sober, had huddled a friar's frock over his green cassock, and now summoning together whatever scraps of learning he had acquired by rote in former days, "Holy father," said he, "'Deus faciat salvam benignitatem vestram'—You ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... he was saying, and her face responded with a little smile that lit up its sober corners and hard lines. Suddenly it grew rigid and white, and her eyes stared beyond the doctor into the gloom of the room. Sommers turned to follow her gaze. The door moved a little. There was some one outside, peering ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... continued my mother, 'in sober seriousness you have been most fortunate in engaging the affections of a nobleman such as Lord Glenfallen, young and wealthy, with first-rate—yes, acknowledged FIRST-RATE abilities, and of a family whose influence is not exceeded ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... were extremely agreeable. I thought nothing could be more delightful than to live at one of those picturesque and lovely spots. If the romance of that first feeling be now faded from my heart, it is not because I have discovered that all which I then saw was an illusion, but because a more sober state of mind — that state into which the mind settles as the excitement of sudden change and unwonted novelty subsides — teaches that happiness is not local, and that it is no more likely to be found in the finest country residence ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... prepared to go over to the French on the day of battle. Of the malecontent officers, who, as James believed, were impatient to desert, the great majority had probably given no pledge of their attachment to him except an idle word hiccoughed out when they were drunk, and forgotten when they were sober. One those from whom he expected support, Rear Admiral Carter, had indeed heard and perfectly understood what the Jacobite agents had to say, had given them fair words, and had reported the whole to the Queen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nine seniors, their faces very set and sober, were ranged in chairs round Carson's severely Philistine study. Tulke was not popular among them, and a few who had had experience of Stalky and Company doubted that he might, perhaps, have made an ass of himself. But the dignity of the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... religion—after death. But as the embryonic and infant life of which we were unconscious was the most potent factor in our after life of consciousness, so the effect which we may unconsciously produce in others after death, and it may be even before it on those who have never seen us, is in all sober seriousness our truer and more abiding life, and the one which those who would make the best of their sojourn here will take most into ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... pinnace called the Moon, all well furnished with 140 able bodied men, and with ordnance and victuals fitting for the voyage. They were commanded by two captains; one of whom was a foreigner named Antonio Anes Pinteado, a native of Oporto in Portugal, a wise, discreet, and sober man, who, for his skill in navigation both as an experienced pilot and prudent commander, was at one time in such favour with the king of Portugal, that the coasts of Brazil and Guinea were committed to his care against the French, to whom he was a terror ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... home made me extremely desirous again to be there . . . . I shall once more return to sober life, satisfied with having secured three months of sunshine in this valley of shadows and darkness. In this space of time I have seen considerable of the world, but I am sadly afraid I have not grown wiser ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... (or better) known in my childish days as now: Cinderella and dear Beauty and Riquet with the tuft. There was one brown shell with a little hump on its back which did splendidly for Riquet. Then for a change to more sober life I dramatised The Fairchild Family and Jemima Placid, taking for my model a little book of plays for children, whose name, if I mistake ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Baxter and Flapp were much disturbed by the condition of affairs on board the houseboat. Both Loring and Gouch had been drinking more or less all night and were in far from a sober condition. ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... remarkable on our journey, but an Indian woman seated on the ground, her Indian husband standing beside her. Both had probably been refreshing themselves with pulque—perhaps even with its homoeopathic extract mezcal; but the Indian was sober and sad, and stood with his arms folded, and the most patient and pitying face, while his wife, quite overcome with the strength of the potation, and unable to go any further, looked up at him with the most imploring air, saying repeatedly—"Matame, Miguel, matame" (Kill me, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... was the character of the Shetland people with regard to sobriety?-I should say that, on the whole, they are very sober and steady; and I may give an illustration of that. It is well known that the Shetlanders as seamen are very highly prized at ports in the south, such as Liverpool and Shields; and very often a shipmaster, when ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of laughter announces that some one has been successfully hit by a strong argumentum ad hominem, or biting personal remark. In any case there is no danger of the disputants coming to blows. No class of men in the world are more good-natured and pacific than the Russian peasantry. When sober they never fight, and even when under the influence of alcohol they are more likely to be violently affectionate than disagreeably quarrelsome. If two of them take to drinking together, the probability is that in a few minutes, though they may never have seen each other ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... person was shuffling in our direction. He was a man about fifty years of age, largely made about the shoulders and chest, but stooping a good deal, and limping heavily in one leg. He walked slowly, leaning upon a silver-headed stick, and his sober suit of black, with silk stockings of the same hue, looked strangely staid among the brilliant uniforms which surrounded him. But in spite of his plain dress there was an expression of great authority upon his shrewd ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... something brewing," said Harry. "Lee has lately foregathered with certain sober-faced individuals from Ontario, and they've been plotting mysteriously. Well, I suppose there will be trouble over it; ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... copied, and every copy a fresh mistake, is, what I expected it to be, deep yet brilliant; indescribable in its hues, yet simple beyond example in its execution and its colouring. Its flesh (O how our friends at home would stare!) is a simple, sober, mixed-up tint, and apparently, like your skies, completed while wet. No scratchings, no hatchings, no scumbling nor multiplicity of repetitions—no ultramarine lakes nor vermilions—not even a mark of the brush visible; all seemed melted in the fat and glowing mass, solid ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... and could look far across the valley. We could see the silvery gold of the willows, the russet and bronze of the currants, and patches of cheerful green showed where the pines were. The splendor was relieved by a background of sober gray-green hills, but even on them gay streaks and patches of yellow showed where rabbit-brush grew. We washed our faces at the spring,—the grasses that grew around the edge and dipped into the water were loaded with ice,—our rabbit was done to a turn, so I made some delicious ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... sergeant was now within three feet of the officer. The latter was gray as putty, and sober. It did not take the inclosing circle, the heavy breathing, the wild, staring eyes and tight-drawn lips to tell him his danger. He felt the Presence. The air was pregnant with it. He took a step backward and moved his stiff lips as though ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... sparrow with his recitative "Oleet, oleet, oleet," followed by the well-known cadenza, dispels the fancies and calls our attention to himself as he sits on a hop hornbeam and sings at half-minute intervals. The wind ruffles his sober coat of brown and gray and he looks like a careless artist, thrilling with ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... steam-plow; and the effect of the steam-plow, I find by a recent article in the Cornhill Magazine, is that an English laborer must not any more have a nest, nor bantlings, neither; but may only expect to get on prosperously in life, if he be perfectly skillful, sober, and honest, and dispenses, at least until he is forty-five, with ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... only topic suggestive of anxiety. Already, however, the revival of commercial hopefulness at home, with the opening of new markets in South America, was paving the way for the most ruinous mania of speculation known in England since the south sea bubble. It was well that sound and sober-minded economists now guided the action of the government, and that Liverpool proved himself a worthy successor of Sir Robert Walpole during the great financial crisis ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... all you can eat of whatever the markets afford," he said, "and understand right here that I'll indulge you to any extent in anything relating to your food or wine, as long as you keep sober. Similarly you can have anything you ask for in the way of extra clothing or bedding or furnishings for your quarters. If you don't like the slave detailed to wait on you I'll have another put in his place and keep on changing till you get ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... without feeling better for the sight of it. Such a mellow, bright, sweet old wall; what a charming picture it would make, with the lichen creeping here, and the moss growing there, a shy young vine peeping over the top at this spot, to see what is going on upon the busy river, and the sober old ivy clustering a little farther down! There are fifty shades and tints and hues in every ten yards of that old wall. If I could only draw, and knew how to paint, I could make a lovely sketch of that ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... to conceal from the unknown guest the fact that I suspected its presence; but at last the point was reached where, to protect my own reason, it must be settled whether it was all a series of illusions or a sober truth. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... gone to the rum cask for consolation. As time went on the sounds increased, and I listened to them with a trembling fear for the unfortunate woman who was still aboard. Black of heart as those men undoubtedly were in their sober moments, and under the influence of the lust of gold, what would they be when inflamed by spirits and in ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... of this nature ought not to he translated, must arraign the versions of Juvenal Suetonius, etc., but what Suetonius thought excusable in History, any sober man will think much more allowable in Satyr: Nor can this be offensive to good-manners, since the gross part here is the displaying of vices of that dye, that there's an abhorrence even in nature from 'em; nor is it possible that ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... suggestion and what mystery in their contrast! What sober, eternal beauty in the dark line which unites them, now sharply, yet softly, defined against the night, which is purple as the one garment of the fellah! That line leads the soul irresistibly from ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... and Technical Education.—Again, we are by no means justified in leaping to the conclusion that if we could induce workers to become more sober, more industrious, or more skilful, their industrial condition would of necessity be improved to a corresponding extent. If we can induce an odd farm-labourer here and there to give up his "beer," he and his family are no doubt better off to the extent of this saving, and can employ the money ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... investigations, however lively this interest was and is to-day, and has stirred up the minds of all most thoroughly, not only in their scientific but also in their religious and ethical depths, some in {19} acknowledgment and admiration, others in aversion and repugnance, and only a few in sober and unprejudiced judgment. While some see in Darwinism the flambeau which now lights mankind to entirely new paths of truth, and also to spiritual and moral perfection, others see in it only an unproved hypothesis, threatening ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... terms him "a rambling teacher, who has made great commotions in this province." Mr. Bailey was a tory of the olden time, and strongly deprecated anything that chanced to be at variance with the sober ways of the Church of England, which were then in vogue. In an old paper written about 1783, still preserved by his descendants in Nova Scotia, we find the following from Mr. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... thoughtless person that now walks the globe could only have a clear perception of that kind of knowledge which is awaiting him upon the other side of the tomb, he would become the most thoughtful and the most anxious of men. It would sober him like death itself. And if any unpardoned man should from this moment onward be haunted with the thought, "When I die I shall enter into the light of God's countenance, and obtain a knowledge of my own character and obligations that will be as accurate and unvarying as that of God himself ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Chinese lady, whose beauty I trust will not disturb your repose, for in spite of your sanctity, I know you can be as gallant as the rest of us, and possibly this beautiful mandarin may prove to be more lovely in your eyes, than in those of the husband for whom she is destined; but, in sober earnestness, I would wish you to be convinced that my intention is not to attempt payment for the services rendered me, but simply to evince my sense of their value. There is one beside me at this moment who has given me a kiss to transmit to you—You ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... long. When she heard of me she came running out, the wind blowing her fluffy hair about her face, and the sun shining on it. Fluffed out by the wind, and changing colour in the light and shade, the hair down her back is not entirely unlike the feathers of my own, though less sober perhaps in its tints. Like mine it makes a small head look large, and as she had big wise eyes, I have seen creatures less like an owl than Little Miss. Her voice is not so hoarse as mine. It is clear and soft, as I heard ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... from fainting by finishing the B. and S., I sat for some minutes gasping for breath. Then I rubbed my eyes and reread that awful epistle. Yes—it was so—in solemn, sober black ink! Beauty's twin had got four fine kittens! Great Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over those confounded kittens! It was too late to murder them. And my aunt—but stop! Let me read her letter; it might suggest something—some ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... in dead sober earnest. You hold on to the notion, and you'll come round to it. It's a bit steep at first to the eye. But you hang on to it like ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... the fashionable Fops, that are always in Mutiny against Marriage, who never think themselves very witty, but when they rail against Heaven and a Wife— But, Frank, I have found better Principles in thee, and thou hast the Reputation of a sober young Gentleman; thou art, besides, a Man of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... vests, knee breeches and silken hose, brilliant buckles at knee and on slippers, their long hair worn ringleted and curled, or tied in queues. In stately measure the graceful minuet would open the ball. Then the gayer strains of the old Virginia reel would cause even the dignified dame or sober squire to relax; and in laughter and merry-making the hours would speed, till the gradual paling of the stars and a flush in the east would warn the merry dancers that "the night was far spent, and the day was ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... their counsel. When General Grant was elevating himself by his string of solid victories in the West, it was object of caviling, by the adherents of the generals eclipsed and foreseeing his becoming lieutenant-general, and the slander circulated that "Philip sober" got the credit of "Philip drunk," perpetrating his plans with the dram-bottle at ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... a sober, blue-eyed Breton, who lived from one year's end to the other without being able to afford a single bit of meat ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... best, however, to separate Ezekiel from other writers, since he belongs to what may be called a great mythological revival. Probably his cherubim are a modification of older ones, which may well have been of a more sober type. His own accounts, as we have seen, vary. Probably the cherub has passed through several phases. There was a mythic bird-cherub, and then perhaps a winged animal-form, analogous to the winged figures of bulls and lions with human faces ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... prayer totally inconsistent with the plain sentiments of Origen on the very subject of angelic invocation. Even had Origen not left us his deliberate opinions in works of undoubted genuineness, such a {162} strange, incoherent, and childish rhapsody could never be relied upon by sober and upright men as a precedent sanctioning a Christian's prayer to angels; no one would rely upon such evidence in points of far less moment, even were it uncontradicted by ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... hours, and heating it with the Sun beams cast through a Burning-glass, it again reviv'd, seeming, as it were, to have been all the intermediate time, but dead drunk, and after certain hours to grow fresh again and sober. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... awakes like brooding dove, With outspread wings of gray; Her feathery clouds close in above, And roof a sober day. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... comparison of such views with his words and deeds, with the evidence obtainable from Saint Domingo, and with the temper of his times in France, I have arrived at the conclusion that his character was, in sober truth, such as I have endeavoured to represent ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... either negatived or withdrawn; and by the 9th of May the report was brought up. Sir G. Burrell moved that the report should be received that day six months; but after a long discussion, which was more distinguished for personal attacks than for sober argument, the amendment was withdrawn, and the bill was ordered to be printed, and to be read a third time on the 12th. The third reading was on that day moved by Sir James Graham, and the final struggle in the house of commons ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pomatumed moustache, who talked of steeple chases, all the while, and wanted to have "a healthy dash" of some kind. A class of Irish exquisites, they appeared to be,—good for a fight, a card-party, or a hurdle jumping,—but entirely too Quixotic for the sober requirements of Yankee warfare. When anything absurd, forlorn, or desperate was to be attempted, the Irish brigade was called upon. But, ordinarily, they were regarded, as a party of mad fellows, more ornamental than ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... says, "'T is to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of the town and to men occupying the highest position in the State. Harley went more than once into the queen's presence in a half-intoxicated condition; Carteret when Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said to have been a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... sound of a pistol-shot, blew the downpour in sheets into exposed doorways, and drenched to the skin the few wayfarers who were abroad. Here and there a stray dog, bent over a bone, slunk away at the approach of a roisterer's footstep; more rarely a passenger, whose sober or stealthy gait whispered of business rather than pleasure, moved cowering from street to street, under such shelter as came ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... blades of the Royal James and soon they were banging away with their pistols or betting their gold-pieces on the steel-gaffed birds, singing the louder as the bottle was passed. Captain Stede Bonnet stayed prudently sober, ready for any emergency, his demeanor cool and watchful while he chatted ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... size of Blake and his lady—I don't," replied the cowman. "Just the same, I want you to go along with Chuckie. There's not a puncher in this section would harm her, drunk or sober; but the fellows that come in and go out on the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... unrestricted growth. He ought to have staid with his steers. Cattle and corn were the only things in which he could take an interest sufficiently keen to keep him from drink. These habits of his were enacting the old story of the lop-eared rabbits in Australia—overrunning the country. Bill had been as sober a citizen as one could desire, as long as his house-building occupied his time; and he and Josie had worked together as companionably as they used to do in the hay and wheat. But now he was drifting away from her. Her father should ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... slow in forming and was lacking in the means of definite expression. For many years after the war there was widespread fear that the installation of a Democratic president would result in the wholesale debauch of the offices, and sober northerners believed, or thought they believed, that "rebels" would again be in power if a Democrat were elected. Under such conditions and because the offices were already filled with Republicans, the Republican North was willing to leave things ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... commerce, then beginning to assume importance; and from these consequences they were saved only by the revolution, which two years later drove James II from his throne. It is difficult to credit these sober facts of history, and still more to fully realize their destructive import; but they should always be borne in mind; for if any one reflecting on the causes assigned by the leaders of the great Revolution, as justifying the violent partition of an empire, is led for a moment to question their ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... hear a good deal of sober sense, then; at least on one side: but I shall not ask her: for Mr. Thurnall and I have ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... laying a scheme for meeting Geraldine at once by sheer accident, Henry was coldly remarking to himself: 'Let me see exactly where I am. Let me survey the position.' He liked Geraldine, but now it was with a sober liking, a liking which is not too excited to listen to Reason. And Reason said, after the position had been duly surveyed: 'I have nothing against this charming lady, and much in her favour. Nevertheless, there need be no hurry.' Geraldine wrote to thank Henry for the most ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... affairs. The proceedings of my footman, while I had been away from home, left me no alternative but to dismiss him on my return. With this exertion of authority my interference as chief of the household came to an end. I left it to my excellent housekeeper, Mrs. Mozeen, to find a sober successor to the drunken vagabond who had been sent away. She discovered a respectable young man—tall, plump, and rosy—whose name was Joseph, and whose character was beyond reproach. I have but one excuse ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... is very erroneous reasoning: suicide is, no doubt a heinous crime: but Brutus appears to have been governed by his apprehension of danger, instead of being convinced by the sober dictates of his judgment. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... building to be erected, the matter must be discussed in Parliament, or perhaps some sturdy cobbler holds out, and refuses to part with his stall, and the whole plan is disconcerted. Long may such impediments exist! But then we should conform to circumstances, and assume in our public works a certain sober simplicity of character, which should point out that they were dictated by utility rather than show. The affectation of an expensive style only places us at a disadvantageous contrast with other nations, and our substitute of brick and plaster for freestone resembles the mean ambition which displays ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and neither would the rest of their talk, which was chiefly a going over of old times, and a laying of many a wondrous scheme for the future. Suffice it to say, on this last evening the two boys unbosomed themselves to one another, and if Tom Drift went off to bed in a sober and serious frame of mind, it was because he and Charlie both had thought and felt a great deal more than they had spoken during the interview. The packing went on at the same time as the talk, and then the two friends separated, only to ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... was in sad, sober, and solemn array, contrasting with the motley concourse in the court. Little Arthur, dressed in black, stood by the side of his uncle, to receive the greetings of his yeoman vassals, as they came in, one by one, with clownish courtesy, but hearty respect and affection, and great ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though continually outraged in his dignity, and foiled in his plans by turbulent and worthless men, he restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and brought himself to forbear and reason, and even to supplicate. His piety was genuine and fervent, and diffused a sober dignity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... interruptions of the electric state in the generator, and that such waves travel through the ether with the rapidity of light. Since then the electro-magnetic theory of light has been enthusiastically referred to as the greatest generalization of the century; but the sober thinker must see that it is really only what Hertz himself called it—one pier beneath the great arch of conservation. It is an interesting detail of the architecture, but the part cannot equal the size ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the city of Bristol had no manner of doubt about that. As soon as the foolish, dishevelled, excited company reached the city they were all clapped into gaol, which was perhaps the best place to sober their excited spirits. The officers of the law were thoroughly well pleased. They had said from the first that George Fox was a most dangerous man, and that the Quakers were a misguided people to follow him. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... a member has dared to suggest that certain of his opponents had come into the House not wholly sober. Who does not remember the epigrams which were based on Pitt's addiction, real or supposed, to intoxicating liquors? Porson is said to have composed one hundred such 'paper pellets' in ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... propaganda of Hellenism, in which the long-drawn effort of Greece to educate a corrupt and barbaric world seemed only to lead to the corruption or barbarization of the very ideals which it sought to spread. This sense of failure, this progressive loss of hope in the world, in sober calculation, and in organized human effort, threw the later Greek back upon his own soul, upon the pursuit of personal holiness, upon emotions, mysteries and revelations, upon the comparative neglect of this transitory and imperfect world for the sake of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... "Francis Junius," "two centuries and a half ago,"—a professor "at Heidelberg (Leyden?), testified that he was, in fact, converted from atheism by the Christian Trinity;" also "the mild and sober Howe;" "Jeremy Taylor;" also "the Marquis de Rentz;" "Edwards," and "Lady Maxwell." ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life They kept the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... with us in the Holy Communion. You will pass the day in sober joy among the brethren, not one of whom but shares your gladness and desires your welfare. And at sunrise on the day after, you will go forth from our gates. Whether to return, I know not; be that with the Ruler of All. If again you climb this mount, I shall not be here to bid you welcome. ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... that an endeavour to conjure up the scene of her sitting beside the death-bed of Matthew Weyburn's mother, failed to sober and smooth it, holy though that time was. The false heart she had put into the pride of her name was powerfuller than the heart in her bosom. But to what end had the true heart counselled her of late? It ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his glass, Mariam,' says she to me. 'He's fonder of me in his cups, and better-natured every way, than when he's sober. As long as my man doesn't beat me and pull the house about our heads, I'll never ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the rye and wheat heads begin to nod; the motionless stalks have a reflective, meditative air. A little while ago, when their heads were empty or filled only with chaff and sap, how straight up they held them! Now that the grain is forming, they have a sober, thoughtful look. It is one of the most pleasing spectacles of June, a field of rye gently shaken by the wind. How the breezes are defined upon its surface—a surface as sensitive as that of water; how they trip along, little breezes and big breezes together! Just as this glaucous ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... brain to sleep at night was justice; the single prayer that put in whispered words the might and meaning of his soul was justice; the single impulse that lingered in a heart already wrung by a nation's grief was justice; in every word that fell from him in touching speech there was the sad and sober spirit of justice. He sat upon the storm when the nation shook with passion. Treason, wrong, injustice, crime, graft, a thousand wrongs in system and in single added to the burden of this melancholy spirit. Silently, as the soul of the just ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... vast polyglot nation, has restored financial stability and pursued sober fiscal policies since the Asian financial crisis, but many economic development problems remain, including high unemployment, a fragile banking sector, endemic corruption, inadequate infrastructure, a poor investment climate, and unequal resource distribution among ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... regarded as ridiculous pretension. In respect of the theatre, they lay great stress on the infancy of the art; and because these poets lived two thousand years before us, they conclude that we must have made great progress since. In this way poor Aeschylus especially is got rid of. But in sober truth, if this was the infancy of dramatic art, it was the infancy of a Hercules, who ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... unto God, be sober as the combatant of God. The crown proposed to thee is immortality, and eternal life: concerning which thou art also fully persuaded. I will be thy surety in all things, by my bonds, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... in the Mill with Adam Ward and Peter Martin, the Interpreter naturally saw much of the two families that, in those days, lived such close neighbors. Sober, hard working, modest in his needs, he acquired, during his first year in the Mill, that little plot of ground on the edge of the cliff, and built the tiny hut with its zigzag stairway. But often on a Sunday or a holiday, or for an hour of the long evenings after work, this man who ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... are the sober, industrious men and women who were denizens of the neighbourhood in the years gone by—Mademoiselle Berthe and her little sisters, fabricating roses and violets out of muslin and wax in their attic ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer first designed "Robert" for the Opra Comique, but remodeled it for the Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, amid the ruins of the cloister, appeared to have been stinted by the undertaker in the matter of ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... killed any one. The duel was a fake. You were—not exactly sober. That was entirely our fault, and we had to invent some plan to induce you to come into hiding peacefully. Voila tout! It ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... changed; sober and sad he was ever after. He is now a gray haired old man, with one sorrow over his one act of disobedience, one wrong word embittering all his life—with those words ever ringing in his ears, "Mother, I don't ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... already fared no better. A base Parliament, usually known as the Drunken Parliament, in consequence of its principal members being seldom sober, had been got together to make laws against the Covenanters, and to force all men to be of one mind in religious matters. The MARQUIS OF ARGYLE, relying on the King's honour, had given himself up to him; but, he was wealthy, and his enemies wanted his wealth. He was tried ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... had got upon his hobby, and could have talked all night about the rail and its prospects in Canada. 'The progress of the Province outstrips all sober calculation,' said he. 'Population has increased twelve hundred per cent. within the last forty years; wherever the rail touches the ground, an agricultural peasantry springs up. Push it through the very wilderness, say I; there is no surer means of filling our waste places with industrial life; ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... surviving fellow pupils; nor can we, of course, in the face of their direct counter evidence, treat statements made in a fictitious or half-fictitious narrative as if made in what professed to be a sober autobiography. Dickens, I repeat, seems to have acquired a very scant amount of classic lore while under the instruction of Mr. Jones, and not too much lore of any kind. But if he learned little, he observed much. He thoroughly ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... among men faithfully, are forgetting meanwhile the law of love which bids every follower of Christ go about doing good as the Master did. To be a Christian is far more than to be honest, truthful, sober, industrious, and decorous; it is also to be a cross-bearer after Jesus; to love men, and to serve them. Ofttimes it is to leave your fine room, your favorite work, your delightful companionship, your pet self-indulgence, and to go out among the needy, the suffering, the sinning, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... bad even for the time of year, and all this day, and all the next alas! the voyage, in and out of the fiords, with sundry stoppages in bays where the patient farmer makes patches of green on a stubborn soil, and the hardy, sober-sided fishermen toil for scant living, is done at disadvantage for those who would fain have the masses of rocky borderings clear against the sky. The mountains are shrouded in mist and capped with clouds, and during Tuesday night the gale howls, and the storms ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... answered Cyrus; "your father, you would have me think, has been changed in this one day from a fool into a wise and sober-minded man?" ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenlies" (R.V.). Another injunction to believers is contained in I Pet. 5:8, 9: "Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom withstand steadfast ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of the several members of their families to build the evening campfire with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you—yam? Men, as a general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line, sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... labor—to construct artificial ruins in Rome, the native soil of ruin! But even these sportive imitations, wrought by man in emulation of what time has done to temples and palaces, are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning as illusions, have grown to be venerable in sober earnest. The result of all is a scene, pensive, lovely, dreamlike, enjoyable and sad, such as is to be found nowhere save in these princely villa-residences in the neighborhood of Rome; a scene that must have required generations and ages, during which growth, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... abroad, say I, House and Home, but turn thine eye Inward, and observe thy breast; There alone dwells solid Rest. Say not that this House is small, Girt up in a narrow wall: In a cleanly sober mind Heaven itself full room doth find. Here content make thine abode With thyself and with thy God. Here in this sweet privacy May'st thou with thyself agree, And keep House in peace, tho' all Th' Universe's ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... And with this hopeful reflection his mind was eased, and, being now at the entrance of the banqueting hall, he thanked his conductor, and ran hastily with joyful eyes to Margaret. He came in sight of the table—she was gone. Peter was gone too. Nobody was at the table at all; only a citizen in sober garments had just tumbled under it dead drunk, and several persons were raising him to carry him away. Gerard never guessed how important this solemn drunkard was to him: he was looking for "Beauty," and let the "Beast" lie. He ran wildly round the hall, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the door tossing a kiss from the tips of her fingers, to the astonishment of Sober Harry who had just entered, and who wished, from the bottom of his heart, that the flying salutation had been ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... women of our territory, who are opposed to being left in the State organization with no more authority in the government than paupers, lunatics and idiots. We are willing to do one-half of the manual labor in this country, and will promptly pay our portion of the taxes. As sober and peaceful citizens, we compare favorably with the other sex. I have the honor to present to you a petition signed by hundreds of Day county voters, praying your honorable body not to allow the word "male" to be incorporated within our State ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which Nash laughed at it, are among the best known things in the gossiping history of English Letters. But the coxcombry of Harvey and the felicitous impertinence of Nash have sometimes diverted attention from the actual state of the case. William Webbe (a very sober-minded person with taste enough to admire the "new poet," as he calls Spenser) makes elaborate attempts not merely at hexameters, which, though only a curiosity, are a possible curiosity in English, but at Sapphics which could never (except ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... utter the soft notes which they seem to keep for the rainy season; but, before settling down to the sober delights of the winter, some individuals become almost as lively and vociferous as they were in the nesting season. Likewise some pairs of "blue jays" behave, in September and October, as though they were about to recommence ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... from what he was told of the new splendors of Longueval, that the luxury of the great houses of the present day must surpass to a singular degree the sober and severe luxury of the great ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... language; the noise, excitement, and display which always accompany their work; the silly affectation of constantly using a quasi-military phraseology, and some other features of the movement, do not commend it to sober-minded Christians; while the unauthorised celebration of the (so-called) Sacrament of the Lord's Supper condemns it in the ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous |
