"Stepping-stone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sharp, or dull, heavy pain, or a prickly, distressing sensation, accompanied with more or less cough and expectoration—are evidences that the bronchial tubes have become affected, and they should admonish the sufferer that he is now standing on the stepping-stone to CONSUMPTION, over which thousands annually tread, in their slow journey to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... brother Henry was rejoicing his father's heart by his career at the University. He soon distinguished himself at the examinations, and obtained a scholarship in 1743. This is a collegiate distinction which serves as a stepping-stone in any of the learned professions, and which leads to advancement in the University should the individual choose to remain there. His father now trusted that he would push forward for that comfortable provision, a fellowship, and thence to higher dignities and emoluments. Henry, however, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... particular shells, but he cherished an ambitious desire which he pursued with a craft so profound as to be worthy of Sixtus the Fifth: he wanted to marry a certain rich old maid, with the intention, no doubt, of making her a stepping-stone by which to reach the more elevated regions of the court. There, then, lay the secret of his royal bearing and of his ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... struggle who have no foothold, no work, no place in society would not come from the caprice or forgetfulness of his employer, but from his own peculiar temptations and weaknesses. If he could patiently do his duty in his present humble position, he justly believed that it would be the stepping-stone to something better. But, having learned to know himself, he was afraid of himself; and he had seen with an infinite dread what cold, dark depths yawn about one whom society shakes off as a vile and venomous thing, and who must eventually take ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... is emphatic in asserting that the huge balloon was never intended by him to be an "end," but a mere stepping-stone to an end—which end was the construction of an aeromotive—a machine which was to be driven by means of a screw, and which he intended should supersede balloons altogether, so that his own "Giant" was meant to be the last ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... mathematician will apply his truths improperly; the man of detail, the mere empiric, will deal skilfully with particulars, while to all general truths he is insensible. The wise man, the philosopher in action, will use the one as a stepping-stone to the other, and acquire a vantage-ground from whence he will command the realms ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Captain's place was in the antechamber, where he could almost hear the conversations between her and her counsellors. To share them he had but to be beckoned within. Naturally the command seemed to be a stepping-stone to a Vice-Chamberlainship at least, if not to the Keepership of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... self-destruction. As heretofore shown, its progress is suspended, and even defeated, by the very genius which it is supposed to develop; the Bible invites us to enter fields of inexhaustible opportunity wherein each achievement can be made a stepping-stone to ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... ruins of cherished hopes stronger and "greater" through experience. Happiness and true success depend upon how the troubles and difficulties of life are met. Adversity comes to all, but if it is met in the right manner even failure can be made the stepping-stone to success. Trouble comes to all, but, while it makes some people stronger and better in every way, it submerges others so that they never rise again. The trouble is the same, it is how it is met that makes the difference. ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... as so many oases in a desert, and is as indistinct as a camel's track between Mourzouk and Darfour. It is a comment on the flow and freshet of modern books. The reader leaps from sentence to sentence, as from one stepping-stone to another, while the stream of the story rushes past unregarded. The Bhagvat-Geeta is less sententious and poetic, perhaps, but still more wonderfully sustained and developed. Its sanity and sublimity have impressed the minds even of soldiers and merchants. It ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... this that causes the universal force of opposition—the Enemy or demon—to become evil only when ignorance or the human will make use of it to oppose evolution: apart from such cases, it is only the second pillar necessary for the support of the Temple, the stepping-stone of ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... nineteenth century, it is easy to select two instances of this enrichment of the fundamental idea, as the direct consequence of an unexpected obstacle which the artist refused to consider a stumbling-block, preferring to make it a stepping-stone to a loftier achievement. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... continually advances, what is today a phrase of inner harmony becomes tomorrow one of outer harmony. It is clear, therefore, that the inner spirit of art only uses the outer form of any particular period as a stepping-stone to further expression. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... is somehow a stepping-stone to all our good. Heroism, piety, tenderness, have been born out of pain. The expectation of a hereafter gives hope that no individual moral germ is lost. And we see that the crowning victory of life is the persistence ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... camp, as Masons fought Masons in the American Civil War and in the wars of Europe. In peace they were epicures. They consorted together only for pleasure and comfort in their reunions. The Arioi made their order no stepping-stone to power or office, but in it swam in sensuous luxury, each giving his talents to please his fellows and to add luster ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... intellectual kindred was with such as Pascal, far more than with such as Voltaire. Vauvenargues is, however, a writer for the few, instead of for the many. His fame is high, but it is not wide. Historically, he forms a stepping-stone of transition to a somewhat similar nineteenth-century name, that of Joubert. A very few sentences of his will suffice to indicate to our readers the quality of Vauvenargues. Self-evidently, the following antithesis drawn by him between Corneille and Racine is subtly ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... from the king, dispensing with his presence. Fisher alone offered opposition. He caused the royal supremacy to be accepted with the proviso, "so far as the divine law permits." And as this proved only a stepping-stone to the unconditional headship of the Church, he regarded it as his own fault. He refused submission, and put himself in communication with the Imperialists with a view to effective intervention. Sir Thomas More, the most modern and original mind among the men of his time, showed ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the Palais Royal. The agitations of the hour were such that, without waiting for an announcement, they broke into the presence of the duke with the entreaty that he would accept from them the lieutenant-generalcy of the kingdom, which was merely the stepping-stone to the throne. The duke was still very undecided, or, to save appearances, feigned to be so. The deputies assured him that the crisis was so imperious, that not only the destinies of France, but also his own life, were probably dependent ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... turned with vague hopes of conquest, so that the youths in the gymnasia, and the older men in their places of business or of recreation, did nothing but sketch the outline of the island of Sicily and of the adjacent seas and continents. They regarded Sicily not so much as a prize to be won, but as a stepping-stone to greater conquests, meaning from it to attack Carthage, and make themselves masters of the Mediterranean sea as far as the Columns of Herakles. Public opinion being thus biassed, Nikias could find few to help him in opposing the scheme. The rich ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... topographical characteristics change entirely, following the banks of the little river Avon. Bristol was a great seaport in days gone by, but today only coasters and colliers make use of its wharves. The town is charmingly situated, but it is unlovely, and, for the tourist, is only a stepping-stone to somewhere else. The Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland directs one to the suburb of Clifton, or rather to Clifton Down, for hotel accommodation, but you can do much better than that by stopping at the Half Moon Hotel in the main street, a frankly commercial ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... have made this promotion without embroiling himself with the latter; but coming as it would from M. de Noailles, he had nothing to fear. M. de Vendome, once general of an army, could no longer serve in any other quality; and would act as a stepping-stone ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Connection. — N. vinculum, link; connective, connection; junction &c. 43; bond of union, copula, hyphen, intermedium[obs3]; bracket; bridge, stepping-stone, isthmus. bond, tendon, tendril; fiber; cord, cordage; riband, ribbon, rope, guy, cable, line, halser|, hawser, painter, moorings, wire, chain; string &c. (filament) 205. fastener, fastening, tie; ligament, ligature; strap; tackle, rigging; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a time favourable beyond every other to sudden changes of fortune; a time in which any fearless audacity might easily become the stepping-stone to a supreme authority; and yet Machiavelli, whom the world still holds as its ablest statesman—in principle—never in practice rose above the level of a servant of civil and papal tyrannies, and, when his end came, died in obscurity and almost ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... thus rewarded, and it consequently initiated a custom which became most frequent especially in the time of the empire. Upon the conquest of Italy which followed the expedition of Pyrrhus, the Romans found themselves led into a long series of foreign wars; Sicily furnished the stepping-stone to Africa; Africa to Spain; all these countries becoming Roman provinces. As soon as the second Punic war closed, Hannibal formed an alliance with the king of Macedonia. A war-cloud rose[18] in the east. The AEtolians ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... draw the web closer. He'll stay a few days, 'anging around 'er like a vulture, paying no attention to 'er rebukes, and then he'll go off to return another day. He's wrecked Tom Braddock, just as a stepping-stone. Some day he'll be through with Tom for good and all, and you'll ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... time, it will be seen that the lapse into these sins was very easy. Some compromised with the heathen by joining in their idolatrous feasts, maintaining that the meat was not affected one way or the other, and this proved but a stepping-stone to the licentious principles and the corrupt practises of those ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... him all the time? Had he need to fear them more at one time than at another? The secret of his different behavior was his attitude toward them. When he feared them, they were stumbling-stones to him. When he feared them not, their enmity became the stepping-stone by which he was raised to the ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... master of all France, except the marshes down by the ocean, where Charette defied every foe, and succeeded in imposing his own terms on the Republic. But the danger had come that disturbed the slumber of Robespierre, and the man was found who was to make the Revolution a stepping-stone to the power ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... this occurred again and again in Salem, until Abe began to be looked upon as the general stop-gap, as they called him. But he was not to occupy that post always; it was only the stepping-stone to something else, for by-and-bye some of the local preachers would take him out with them to their appointments, and let him talk to the people as well as he was able. Wherever he went they said he must be sure and come again; he was so quaint, droll, plain, yet withal so fervent, ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... advocate: "ask his mother; yes, sir, ask his dam. Oh, Monsieur Veuillot, is there not deep damnation in thus having an idiot for one's child? Here is your purgatory:—purgatory? no: for purgatory is a kind of half-way house to heaven, but this son of mine is to me a slippery stepping-stone to perdition. Sir, a child should be a cherub to lift its parents' spirit to the skies; but mine, oh!"—and a spasm of agony passed over the old man's visage, succeeded by a forced expression of ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... their support. It is pitiful to see them die of hunger, and if they are not paid no soldiers will care to come here, to be in captivity; and we are dying off very fast. Your Majesty should not permit such a thing; for, although this land is of much cost and no profit, it is a foothold and stepping-stone by which to enter the realms of Great China. For this it is very important to learn that language, and for some religious of the orders of St. Augustine and St. Dominic to teach the Chinese in that tongue, since in that wise they will become ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... every time, until they reached England; the captains of Prince Henry of Portugal feeling their way from voyage to voyage down the coast of Africa—there are no bold flights into the incredible here, but patient and business-like progress from one stepping-stone to another. Dangers and hardships there were, and brave followings of the faint will-o'-the-wisp of faith in what lay beyond; but there were no great launchings into space. They but followed a line that was the continuance or projection of the line they had hitherto followed; ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... proceeded. Primitive communism, chattel slavery, serf slavery, and wage slavery were necessary stepping-stones in the evolution of society. But it were ridiculous to assert that the Iron Heel was a necessary stepping-stone. Rather, to-day, is it adjudged a step aside, or a step backward, to the social tyrannies that made the early world a hell, but that were as necessary as the Iron ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... this chain of hills that I now looked forward as the stepping-stone to the interior. In its continuation were centered all my hopes of success, because in its recesses alone could I hope to obtain water and grass for my party. The desert region I had seen around its base, gave no hope of either, and though the basin ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... still in use. The discoveries of the man of science are made use of by his successor, and the discoverer perhaps loses part of his reward when his writings are passed by, after they have served us as a stepping-stone to mount by. If he wishes his works to live with those of the poet and orator, he must, like them, cultivate those beauties of style which are fitted to his matter. Euclid did so; and his Elements have been for more than two thousand years the model for all writers on geometry. He begins at the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... indisputably his chief motives. As Governor of New York, however, he could not disguise from himself the fact that that position might prove again, as it had proved in the case of Cleveland, the stepping-stone to the Presidency. On finding, however, that Platt and the Bosses, exasperated by him as Governor, wished to get rid of him by making him Vice-President, and knowing that in the normal course of events a Vice-President never became President, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... parish, in or about 1740. This does not in the least detract from Jenner's merit, but shows that to his genius for observation, analogy, and experiment, we are indebted for this application of a simple fact, only incidentally remarked by others, but by Jenner rendered the stepping-stone to his great discovery—or, in other words, extending its benefits from a single parish in Gloucestershire to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the bane of the diggings. Many—perhaps nine-tenths—of the diggers are honest industrious men, desirous of getting a little there as a stepping-stone to independence elsewhere; but the other tenth is composed of outcasts and transports—the refuse of Van Diemen's Land—men of the most depraved and abandoned characters, who have sought and gained the lowest abyss of crime, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... earlier condition in which hecastotheism prevailed, that is, that the form of philosophy known as animism was generally accepted, and that psychic life, with feeling, thought, and will, was attributed to inanimate things. But more than this, zootheism is not a permanent state of philosophy, but only a stepping-stone to something higher. That something higher may be denominated physitheism, or the worship of the powers and more obtrusive phenomena of nature. In this higher state the sun, the planets, the stars, the winds, the storms, the rainbow, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... bred looks fairly out upon this planet. The astronomer who instructs him is often of just the sort for the labor, a being also climbing, one not to be a high-school principal forever, but using this occupation merely as a stepping-stone upon his ascending journey. If he be conscientious, he instils, together with his information that all Gaul is divided and that a parasang is not something to eat, also the belief that the game sought is worth the candle, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... event of the day. Although almost engaged to the leaders of the Fronde he had not gone so far but that retreat was possible should the court offer him the advantages for which he was ambitious and to which the coadjutorship was but a stepping-stone. Monsieur de Retz wished to become archbishop in his uncle's place, and cardinal, like Mazarin; and the popular party could with difficulty accord him favors so entirely royal. He therefore hastened to the palace to congratulate the queen on the battle of Lens, determined beforehand ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... propose to make any fuss. His motive, as has already been stated, was a political one. He wished to ingratiate himself with Irish voters and obtain an election as representative; not that he cared so much for this office, except as a stepping-stone ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... seven and eight acres, rented at twenty pounds a year), the products being shared between owner and tenant. This modified system of mtayage or half profits is common here, and certainly affords a stepping-stone to better things. By dint of uncompromising economy, the metayer may ultimately become a small owner. The farmhouse was substantially built and occupied by both landlord and tenant, the latter with his family living on the ground floor. This arrangement probably ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and it does not prove to be exactly what you want, if you feel that you are capable of filling a better one, then the moment you enter upon it take the attitude of mind that this situation is the stepping-stone that will lead you to one that will be still better. Hold this thought steadily, affirm it, believe it, expect it, and all the time be faithful, absolutely faithful to the situation in which you are at present placed. If you are not faithful to it then the chances are ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... all that. Then, with the schools, I guess, the straight gospel. The Mexicans won't get converted all at once, and they won't become like us, ever. But I'm about ready to say that whether missions are needed anywhere else or not, they surely are needed in Mexico. And Mexico is the first stepping-stone to South America; which is next on my list of the places that ought to have the whole scheme of Christian ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... and adventurous, prone to make the most of the bright side, and as little as possible of the dark; his was the nature that sticks at no crime if there is anything to be gained by it, and laughs at the vice which serves as a stepping-stone. Just now these tendencies of ambition were held in check, partly by the fair illusions of youth, partly by the enthusiasm which led him to prefer the nobler methods, which every man in love with glory tries first of all. Lucien was struggling as yet with himself ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... necessity of fate, which no one regrets more keenly than the laboratory workers themselves, the guinea-pig has had to be used as a stepping-stone for every inch of this progress. Upon it were conducted every one of the experiments whose results widened our knowledge, until we found that this bacillus and no other would cause diphtheria; that instead of getting, like many other disease-germs, into the blood, it chiefly limited ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... imagination and enthusiastic spirit. He therefore joyfully accepted the post, which was kindly and delicately offered as a means of employment and support to himself and of pecuniary relief to his parents, as a stepping-stone to fortune; while the romance with which his disposition was tinged, served to picture to his prophetic vision, scenes of official gradation and pre-eminence. How often do young men of similar temperament ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... glad you have heard it. I was wondering how best to tell you. I thought Garafield's might be a stepping-stone, these hard times, but it may prove ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... aspect and species, took advantage of it to turn the conversation. One of the eternally repeated trifles of the day—a so-called piece of news that must be repeated to the prince—was skilfully used as a stepping-stone; and in ten minutes, the whole table was alive with a dispute between the spokesman and another person who had contradicted him on a most important point—what "aurora" signified in the slang of the Roman coffeehouses, whether a mixture of chocolate with coffee or not. Niebuhr was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... them. When property becomes so fluctuating, and the love of property so restless and so ardent, I cannot but fear that men may arrive at such a state as to regard every new theory as a peril, every innovation as an irksome toil, every social improvement as a stepping-stone to revolution, and so refuse to move altogether for fear of being moved too far. I dread, and I confess it, lest they should at last so entirely give way to a cowardly love of present enjoyment, as to lose sight of the interests of their future selves and of those of their descendants; and ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... 'being a Court of Judicature, the House of Commons, in deciding matters of election, was bound to judge according to the law of the land, and the known and established law of Parliament, which was part thereof.'" It was understood that this resolution, if carried, was intended as a stepping-stone to others which should condemn the decision of the previous session; yet it seemed such a truism that even the ministers could not venture to deny it; but they proposed to defeat the object of its framers by adding ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... had a member of the firm in Parliament would have been glorious even to old Moggs, though he hardly knew in what the glory would have consisted. But as soon as he found that his hopes were vain, that the Cheshire Cheese had been no stepping-stone to such honour, and that his money had been spent for nothing, his mind reverted to its old form. Strikes became to him the work of the devil, and unions were once ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... to render vicious things in process of time innocent, so that the very remnants of idolatry may be made subservient to our moral improvement. "If, as I observed in the first volume, we were to find an alter which had been sacred to Moloch, but which had been turned into a stepping-stone to help the aged and infirm upon their horses, why should we destroy it? Might it not be made useful to our morality, as for as it could be made to excite sorrow for the past and gratitude for the present?" And in the same manner the retention of the Heathen mythology might be made serviceable. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... you please, when you break my news to her, and tell her that my creative ability simply had to have an outlet of some kind, and that this will be a stepping-stone to my career as artist. Maybe that will help to ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... these were set up high in the tower so that men could see them against the blue sky. "And as for me," he said, "let my body be buried, with my face downward, outside the great church, in front of the middle entrance, that men may trample on my vainglory and that I may serve them as a stepping-stone to the house of God; and the little child shall look on me when ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... very scientific arrangement. The sketches are purely of a popular character, even the scientific nomenclature being avoided. It is hoped, however, that they may prove of service to the zoological tyro, and form as it were his first stepping-stone to a higher ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... not only an additional security for the past, not only a pillar more for the maintenance of the Ghent Pacification, but also a sure precursor of a closer union in the future. The Union of Brussels became, in fact, the stepping-stone to the "Union of Utrecht," itself the foundation-stone of a republic destined to endure more than two centuries. On the other hand, this early union held the seed, of its own destruction within itself. It was not surprising, however, that a strong declaration in favor of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... But it is said of the Greeks that their honesty begins at what is the hanging point with us, and that since the old Furies went to sleep, your Christian Greek is of so easy a conscience that he would make a stepping-stone of his father's corpse." ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... applied, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion. If Ireland has really been denied something which has proved the secret of Colonial loyalty and prosperity, what Englishman would be so short-sighted as to wish to deprive her of it for the mere sake of domination? If Home Rule were really a stepping-stone towards Imperial Federation, how insincere our professions of "thinking Imperially," if we are not prepared to sacrifice a merely local sentiment of union ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... an instrumental composer in his twentieth year, but before he had reached his thirtieth he was engrossed with operatic composition. His first two works were unsuccessful; but the third, "La Bergere Chatelaine," proved the stepping-stone to a career of remarkable popularity, during which he produced a large number of dramatic works, which not only secured for him the enthusiastic admiration of the Parisians, with whom he was always a favorite, but also carried his name and fame throughout the world, and obtained ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... his mouth a large quantity of the article in question, coolly stretched forth his hand, into which the dollars fell with a most agreeable sound: but not satisfied with the transient music of their fall, the peddler gave each piece in succession a ring on the stepping-stone of the piazza, before he consigned it to the safekeeping of a huge deerskin purse, which vanished from the sight of the spectators so dexterously, that not one of them could have told about what part of his person ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... twofold need which this volume meets is the necessity for a presentation of Esperanto, not as a thing apart, but in that form which will make it most serviceable as an introduction to national tongues. A stepping-stone to both ancient and modern languages, Esperanto may render invaluable aid, and pave the way for surmounting the many difficulties confronting both student and teacher. Through Esperanto, the labor in the acquirement of these ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... some time past that man, who used to make himself so small and humble, has been taking airs of authority in the house which are quite intolerable; he behaves openly as the son-in-law; and you know very well, in that affair of Thuillier's election he jockeyed us all, and made us the stepping-stone for ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... associations II. That all minds are not open to reason III. That a false opinion, considered in relation to the general mental attitude, may be less hurtful than its premature demolition IV. That mere negative truth is not a guide V. That error has been a stepping-stone to truth We cannot tell how much truth has been missed ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... colonization of the Blacks to Liberia. Neither was Hersila Allen aware that the pink calico in which I first saw her was remotely owing to West India Rum. Nor did Charlotte Alden, the proudest girl in school, know that her grandfather's, Squire Alden's, stepping-stone to fortune was the loss of the brig Capricorn, which was wrecked in the vicinity of a comfortable port, on her passage out to the whaling-ground. An auger had been added to the meager outfit, and long after the sea had leaked through the hole bored through her bottom, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... ambitious," said Gregory, smiling. "One man's ambition is for high position, another's an illustrious alliance: the former will owe everything to himself, the latter will make a stepping-stone of his wife, then they raise their eyes ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... ignorance of the nature of the cause they were espousing, together with an inconceivable degree of short-sightedness as to the most obvious consequences of it, or of infamous hypocrisy in making the restoration of Shah Soojah only the pretext and stepping-stone to the conquest of Affghanistan, in the most criminal and reckless spirit of imaginary aggrandizement and extension of territory that ever has actuated the rules of India. Will they pretend that it was really designed, and necessarily ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... is undefined. In the first place, there is no class who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in. It is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher; your best servants always have some thing else in view as soon as they have laid by a little money; some form of independence which shall give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to the buying of landed ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in the formal kind. But better far, in all the essentialities of it, there had not been hitherto, nor was henceforth, the least flaw. This Salzburg Pilgrimage has found for itself, and will find, regulation, guidance, ever a stepping-stone at the needful place; a paved road, so far as human regularity and punctuality could pave one. That is his Majesty's shining merit. "Next Sunday, after sermon, they [this first lot of Salzburgers] were publicly catechised in church; and all the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was taken down in a search for imaginary treasure. It was set up again in 1822 on Weybridge Green as a memorial to the Duchess of York, who died 1820. The dial was not replaced, and was used as a stepping-stone at the Ship Inn at Weybridge; it still lies on one side of the Green. The streets of Seven Dials attained a very unenviable reputation, and were the haunt of all that was vicious and bad. Terrible accounts of the overcrowding ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... the samurai, drawing his long sword;—"I am now going to cut off your head. Directly in front of you there is a stepping-stone. After your head has been cut off, try to bite the stepping-stone. If your angry ghost can help you to do that, some of us may be frightened... Will you try ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... day in his company. She had latterly begun to experience an odd kind of remorse for her treatment of the inscrutably reserved baronet. His earlier intentions she had not forgotten, but she had long ago forgiven them, and now she often felt sorry for this man whom she had deliberately used as a stepping-stone to fortune. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... pleased the two others, and forthwith they started on their travels. Soon they came to a little brook, and as there was no stepping-stone, and no bridge, they could not tell how they were to get to the other side. The straw was struck with a ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... the other public-schools. Its name had disappeared from the pass list of the University and Civil Service candidates. Scarcely a human being knew the name of its head- master; and no assistant-master was ever known to make Bolsover a stepping-stone to pedagogic promotion. The athletic world knew nothing of a Bolsover Eleven or Fifteen; and, worse still, no Bolsover boy was ever found who was proud either of his school or ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... good should be wrested in the end. For months afterwards, whenever that bitter cry rose to her lips again, she stilled it with the remembrance of those words. Sometime, somehow, even this terrible calamity should be made the stepping-stone to better things. How such a thing could come to pass Mary could not understand, but Madam's faith that such would be so, comforted her. It was as if one little glimmering star struggled out through the blackness of the ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a good advance from my present situation, and would doubtless prove a stepping-stone to other and better appointments; but I had a mother living at Fazeley, bedridden and paralytic, who had no pleasure in existence except having me to dwell under the same roof with her. My head was growing more and ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... on surveying in a boys' camp have been especially prepared by H. M. Allen. Surveying is an important subject for study and practice, as it is both interesting and useful and may serve as a stepping-stone in the later education ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... her foot on the first stepping-stone, and rejected all Humphrey's offers of help with a merry laugh, they were joined by Humphrey's brother, who was coming down the hill ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... course by some little rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn! On a wild road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first time; and I was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition of which, in my case, became the stepping-stone to other languages. I had previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly; but neither Latin nor Lilly made me a philologist. I had frequently heard French and other languages, but had felt little desire to become acquainted with them; and what, it may be asked, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that even when I know you to be Count Eglamore I must still care for you. You plan to marry me, so as to placate Tebaldeo's kinsmen, so as to bind them to your interests. It was a fine bold stroke of policy, I know, to use me as a stepping-stone to safety—but was it fair to me?" Her voice rose now a little. She seemed to plead with him. "Look you, Count Eglamore, I was a child only yesterday. I have never loved any man. But you have loved ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... country. Even in the midst of a revolution they never accepted nor practiced a revolutionary policy; they never placed themselves in that fatal situation in which a man first uses anarchical violence as a stepping-stone to power, and then despotic violence as a necessity entailed upon him by its possession. They were naturally placed, or they placed themselves, in the regular ways and under the permanent conditions of government. William was an ambitious prince. It is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... hardly allow scope for great abilities. The office is only a stepping-stone. There was little opportunity to engage in the debates which agitated the country. The duties of judicially presiding over the Senate are not congenial to a man of the hot temper and ambition of Adams; and when party lines were drawn between the Federalists and Republicans he earnestly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... young physician, I shall have to struggle on in this city for years before I can rise to any degree of distinction, unless aided by some fortunate circumstance, that shall be as a stepping-stone upon which to elevate me, and enable me to gain the public eye. I am conscious that I have mastered thoroughly the principles of my profession—and that, in regard to surgery, particularly, I possess a skill not surpassed by many who have handled the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... extensive uses, and as a station of vantage for introducing him to the public favor. From the inheritance of the Julian estates and family honors, he would have been trained to mount, as from a stepping-stone, to the inheritance of the Julian power and political station; and the Roman people would have been familiarized to regard him in that character. But, luckily for himself, the finishing, or ceremonial ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Volition, but no causal nexus, no direct connection of any kind is immediately apparent between the two, and Schopenhauer in developing his theory did nothing to supply the want. The doctrine cannot therefore be regarded as more than a helpful stepping-stone to the ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... horses, which was a simple proposition. On my return, while we were adjusting the garlands about the necks of our mounts, I again urged her for an answer, but in vain. We stood for a moment between the two horses, and as I lowered my hand on my knee to afford her a stepping-stone in mounting, I thought she did not offer to mount with the same alacrity as she had done before. Something flashed through my addled mind, and, withdrawing the hand proffered as a mounting block, I clasped the demure maiden closely in my arms. What transpired ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... opponents of the existing corn-laws, to speak of them as "doomed" by a sort of universal tacit consent; to familiarise the public with the notion that the recent remodeling of the system is to be regarded as constituting it into nothing more than a sort of transition-measure—a stepping-stone towards a great fundamental change, by the adoption of "a fixed duty," some say—"a total repeal," say the Anti-corn-law League. But those who think thus, must be shallow and short-sighted indeed, and have paid very little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the stepping-stone socially between the farmers, traders, and small planters, and the highest and most important class in Virginian society. The great planters were the men who owned, ruled, and guided Virginia. Their vast estates were scattered along the rivers from the seacoast to the mountains. Each plantation ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... year I shall send you the score of my "Kunstler" chorus, which I have had autographed here. Devote a quarter of an hour to it, and tell me plainly your opinion of the composition, which of course I look upon only as a stepping-stone to other things. If you find it bad, bombastic, mistaken, tell me so without hesitation. You may be convinced that I am not in the least vain of my works; and if I do not produce anything good and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... grumblers may say; I maintain, with my father, that this is a very glorious world to live in, with all its faults; and still more should we be grateful that we are placed in it, when we remember that it is the stepping-stone to eternity." ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... immeasurably better than Evelyn Redd's counted not at all. How mean she felt! And yet she must go on with it. She would not allow anything to stand in the way of her success. This was the first firm stepping-stone in her climb to fame. Once this was taken, she would be independent of Bulling and his hateful associates. She would go on this yacht trip. She need not have anything to do with Dr. Bulling, nor would she, for Barney would ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... circumstance, and to the dexterity of the man who turned these to most account. God was the sole source of duty; duty the sole law of life. Mazzini did not denounce Catholicism or any other religion as false. He saw in it a stepping-stone to purer comprehension, which would be reached when man's intellect was sufficiently developed for him to be able ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... to be a good teacher than to be an original investigator. Whatever operates to strengthen and elevate the teacher's position, therefore, must be a gain. The highest incentive would be the consciousness that his school is not a mere stepping-stone to another school of larger growth, but the place where he must in truth prepare the youthful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... she insisted. "The woman in your life should be the most beautiful part of it. You chose to make her the stepping-stone to your ambition. Consequently you go through life hungry, you wait till you almost starve, and then suddenly the greatest things in the world which lie to your hand seem ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... One of those sensuous self-seekers who would use her as a stepping-stone, and, having obtained supreme power through her dainty hands, would cast her aside as a useless tool and break her heart ere she realised even that ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... advent of the Socialist Millennium, and strengthen the domination of the bourgeoisie without really improving the condition of the masses. Now, however, when the need of allies was felt, it seemed that constitutional government might be used as a stepping-stone for reaching the Socialist ideal, because it must grant a certain liberty of the Press and of association, and it would necessarily abolish the existing autocratic system of arresting, imprisoning and exiling, on mere suspicion, without ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... man who had made up his mind to get on socially. Such figures are rarer in America than in the old world. Yet Charlie Conroy with his petty ambitions does not stand entirely alone. He seriously regarded marriage as a stepping-stone to a circle which should include "the best people." That this term did not indicate the noblest or most selfless, need hardly be explained. It meant only that bit of froth which in each community rides high on the top of the cup, and which, in Watauga, was augmented by the mill ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... of rivered blue, that sunset dyes With glaucous flame, deep in the west the Day Stands Midas-like; or, wading on his way, Touches with splendor all the twilight skies. Each cloud that, like a stepping-stone, he tries With rosy foot, transforms its sober gray To burning gold; while, ray on crystal ray, Within his wake the stars like bubbles rise. So should the artist in his work accord All things with beauty, and communicate His soul's high magic and ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... that no woman, however rich or beautiful, should share it with me; therefore, now that my hair is grey do you think that I should be likely to break the oath I have so long kept? Although a wife, such as I propose for you, may ofttimes be a stepping-stone to ambition, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... but a dull time of it, and was precluded by the routine of his office from parliamentary ambition and the joys of government. Alaric was already beginning to think that this Weights and Measures should only be a stepping-stone to him; and that when Sir Gregory, with his stern dogma of devotion to the service, had been of sufficient use to him, he also might with advantage be thrown over. In the meantime an income of L600 a year brought with it to the young bachelor some very comfortable ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... in keeping in place, but in teaching younger aspirants that serving the country is a very good way to the attainment of luxury and the consideration that money brings. But having chosen the law as a stepping-stone to the lobby, to speculation, and the manipulation of chances, he had a poor opinion of politics and of politicians. His success thus far, though considerable, had not been sufficient to create for him powerful enemies, so that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... let Ann go as far as the gate, she'll only make it a stepping-stone to something else to-morrow." Taking no interest in public affairs, her inherited craving for command had resorted for expression to a meticulous ordering of household matters. It was indeed a cult with her, a passion—as though she felt herself a sort of figurehead to national ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... automatic pistol was in his pocket, questioned the dull sounds of the riverside for a moment, looking about him anxiously, and then, using the leaning post as a stepping-stone, he succeeded in wedging his foot into a crevice in the wall. By the exercise of some agility he scrambled up to the top, and presently found himself lying upon ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Luray. I galloped up to the hotel where we had left our horses that morning and without dismounting called out to the loafers on the veranda to ask if anyone had seen Colonel Gaylord. Two or three of them, glad of a diversion, got up and sauntered out to the stepping-stone where I ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... study of religion precisely as in other things. His questions should never be ignored, nor suppressed, nor treated as something unworthy and sinful. The doubts, even, which are somewhat characteristic of a stage of adolescent reconstruction, may be made the stepping-stone to higher reaches of ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... the decadence of mediaevalism and its mysticism and piety, seized with avidity the revelation of the classical world which the scholars and their manuscripts brought. Human life, which the mediaeval Church had taught them to regard but as a threshold and stepping-stone to eternity, acquired suddenly a new momentousness and value; the promises of the Church paled like its lamps at sunrise; and a new paganism, which had Plato for its high priest, and Demosthenes and Pericles ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... its vices, would render the English an impracticable government.. This government they wished to have established here, and only accepted and held fast, at first, to the present constitution, as a stepping-stone to the final establishment of their favorite model. This party has therefore always clung to England, as their prototype, and great auxiliary in promoting and effecting this change. A weighty minority, however, of these ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Orleans; but this, I believe, is the only cloud that has darkened his horizon, or disturbed the tranquil current of his life. His consecration, with its attendant fatigues, must have been to him a wearisome overture to a pleasant drama, a hard stepping-stone to glory. As to the rest, he is very unostentatious, and his conversation is far from austere. On the contrary, he is one of the best-tempered and most cheerful old men in society that it is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... scenes, that glide so quickly by. And when the poet holds it truth that men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things, he is simply talking when he ought to be sleeping it off in seclusion. I understand how a man may rise on the stepping-stone of his defunct superior officer to higher things; but his dead self—it won't do, Alfred; it won't do. But hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more, as if the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... back, staring over King's shoulder. "There's a mugger's head between us and the next stepping-stone!" ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... the bill that he could not meet, of the list of his liabilities which he had been so loath to give her, and she told herself that he had desired nothing but her wealth and the position that she could give him. To attain his own ends he had made a stepping-stone of her. He was welcome to do so. She would make it easy for him to use her money, so that he need never know the humiliation of applying to her for it. Now that she understood what he wanted, she would never again make the mistake of supposing that he cared ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... resources of the Greeks, Ibrahim's troops should pass over the narrow sea between Crete and the Morea, and complete their work by the reduction of the mainland, thus left destitute of all chance of succour from without. Crete, like Sicily, is a natural stepping-stone between Europe and Africa; and when once the assistance of Egypt was invoked by the Sultan, it was obvious that Crete became the position which above all others it was necessary for the Greeks to watch and to defend. But the wretched Government ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... that of others, to distinguish the knowledge which consists of assumption, by which I mean theory and hypothesis, from that which is the knowledge of facts and laws.' Faraday himself, in fact, was always 'guessing by hypothesis,' and making theoretic divination the stepping-stone to his experimental results. ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... something to abandon a vocation to which I had looked for years as the stepping-stone to success in life; and as my health and spirits returned, I began to doubt whether I was acting wisely; but having embarked in a new pursuit, I determined to go ahead, and to this determination I unflinchingly adhered, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... to society serves as a stepping-stone to the yet more vague and general ascription of such existence to the Cosmos. At first, indeed, or during the earliest stages of culture, the ascription of ejective existence to the external world is neither vague nor general: on the contrary, it is most distinct ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... sense of honour, such an attitude of mind is scarcely realisable, but Lars Larssen was no normal man. In him the Napoleonic madness—or genius—burned fiercely. He had ambitions colossal in scale—he regarded his present wealth and power as a mere stepping-stone to the realisation of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... is perhaps the subject nearest to the heart of every bibliophile. But since the collection of 'books about books' must of necessity be the stepping-stone by which the book-lover attains his knowledge of the extrinsic attributes of his hobby, I have dealt with this subject at some length in the chapter wherein are treated the ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... were only an obscure faction they might be ignored, but when, towards the close of the reign of the second Charles, it appeared to be absolutely certain that a Catholic dynasty was about to fill the throne, and that Catholicism was to be the court religion and the stepping-stone to preferment, it was felt that a day of vengeance might be at hand for those who had trampled upon it when it was defenceless. There was alarm and uneasiness amongst all classes. The Church of England, which depends upon the monarch as an arch depends upon the keystone; the nobility, whose estates ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is unable to teach effectively the lessons previously outlined in the "Care of the Home" and "Sewing". Now that a grant in aid is provided by the Department of Education any rural school may procure one of the sets of equipment for cooking suggested or some modification thereof. As a stepping-stone to the provision of that equipment and as a means of educating the people of the district in regard to the advantages of teaching this branch of Household Science, it may be advisable or even necessary, in some cases, to attempt practical work, even where no equipment ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... lovingly before you: what if there should be something in yourselves to turn our healthful food to poison? On marches THE CONTINENTAL with its light and heavy freight of winged words and thoughts, striding from monthly stepping-stone to stepping-stone on the long route of Time. Stepping-stones in Time are they now truly, but as we gaze they seem to grow into Eternity, and the buds which twine their glow around them ripen slowly into ever-living ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... or the cloak business as a career never entered my dreams at that time. I regarded the trade merely as a stepping-stone to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... repelled me, and denied what I dared not request. Had you but given me the kind attention which a master gives to a dog, I would have followed you like a dog to the world's end, and died for you—like a dog, too," he added, in an under-tone. "But you have used me as a stepping-stone; thinking that, like such, I could be spurned aside when you were done with me. You have not thought that I am not a stone or a block, but a man, with a man's heart within me. And it is now as a man that I speak to you, because you force me to it. I tell you ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and became to him objects of interest or diversion; the dreary present, once made familiar, glided away from him, not less than if it had been all happiness; his mind dwelt not on the dull intervals, but the stepping-stone it had created and placed at each; and, by that moral dreaming which for ever goes on within man's secret heart, he lived as little in the immediate world before him, as in the most sanguine period of his youth, or the most scheming ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small offices. Of the men employed who are stenographers, the majority are of two kinds: (1) those who use stenography incidentally with their other and more important work as clerks, and (2) those for whom stenography is but a stepping-stone to another kind of position. The only firms which make a practice of offering ordinary stenographic positions for boys are those which restrict themselves to male employees for ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... centre of a planetary system in which every distinguished public man of genuine worth then revolved. Carlyle was naturally the chief among them, and he was perhaps at one time ambitious of himself taking some part in public affairs, and saw the advantage of this stepping-stone to enable him to do something more for the world, as Byron said, than write books for it. But the idea of entering Parliament, which seems to have once suggested itself to him in 1849, was too vague and transient to have ever influenced his conduct. It is more correct to say that ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... service," said Mr Johnson. "Perhaps I have been dreaming, when living on in hopes that some change might be made whereby I might benefit myself, that is, rise in the service, which has ever been my ambition. Why should not a warrant be a stepping-stone to a commission through extraordinary good conduct in the navy, just as a sergeant may hope to rise in the army? I don't mean, sir, that I wish to see the present class of boatswains obtain commissions, but with that reward in view, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... his name, and so was lost sight of, until he had accumulated the fortune that now fell to his son. Lancy wondered if Hugh's better prospects would have any influence on Dexie; he knew well that Hugh would use his money as a stepping-stone to Dexie's favor. Perhaps Dexie surmised what was going on in his mind, for she passed him her letter with permission to read it. After they retired from the breakfast room, they discussed the news together. Lancy felt ashamed to think he could not feel ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... grades and is chiefly preparatory to the real study of history in the higher grades. The need for this stage lies in the fact that the child's "ideas are of the pictorial rather than of the abstract order"; yet his spontaneous interest in these things must be made to serve "as a stepping-stone to the acquired interests of civilized life." The definite objects at this ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... a marshy place, which at first they refused to cross. Then, before anything could be done to prevent it, his elephant seized the driver with his trunk and, placing him in the mud, used the poor native's body as a "stepping-stone." The driver was, of course, crushed to death, and my friend only escaped a similar fate by scrambling off his elephant by the tail. Generally elephants are docile enough, but are not always fond of Europeans and very much dislike a rider to approach too closely; ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... of course, that every flaw in human nature is always the starting-point of new growth, every failure a stepping-stone to greater knowledge, but the possibility is there. It is for men to see that they ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the Swarthy Peril. I told T.-T. that the Ethiopians ate their young, and warned him that, unless he was careful, they would soon be over here devouring his own spectacled progeny. I told him about the Ethiopic secret plans for the invasion of Mexico as a stepping-stone to the subjugation of Mittel-Amerika. I hinted that Abyssinian spies were everywhere—that even one of the club waiters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... praise and censure as equal ingredients in sketching the character of the former. If he was "very religious," after Brantome's idea of religion, he was also esteemed a "great hypocrite," with whom religion served as a stepping-stone to greatness. If he was a "holy" man, he was "not too conscientious." If gracious and affable at times, it was only when something had gone wrong with him; for in prosperity no one was ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... were proceeding to dilate with all the buoyancy of untried hope on the bright prospects before them, when Mr Ralph Nickleby suggested, that if they lost time, some more fortunate candidate might deprive Nicholas of the stepping-stone to fortune which the advertisement pointed out, and so undermine all their air-built castles. This timely reminder effectually stopped the conversation. Nicholas, having carefully copied the address of Mr Squeers, the uncle and nephew issued forth together ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... four, two for his nob, and one for his heels." The old lady of "The Choughs" liked nothing so much as her game of cribbage in the evenings, and the board lay ready on the little table by her elbow in the cozy bar, a sure stepping-stone to her good graces. Tom somehow became an enthusiast in cribbage, and would always loiter behind his companions for his quiet game; chatting pleasantly while the old lady cut and shuffled the dirty pack, striving keenly for the nightly stake of sixpence, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... must not, however, plume ourselves too much upon our superior knowledge, for inklings of the truth, more or less dim, have been had through all ages, and we are now stepping into the inheritance of times gone by, using the long and painful experience of our predecessors as the stepping-stone to our more accurate knowledge of the present time. In this, as in many other things, we are to some extent in the position of a dwarf on the shoulders of a giant; the dwarf may, indeed, see further than the giant; but he remains a dwarf, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... she is, and rich as I shall make her, what husband will be worthy of Micheline? But if she believes me when it is time to choose one, she will prefer a man remarkable for his intelligence, and will give him her fortune as a stepping-stone to raise him as high as she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission to railroad influences serves as a stepping-stone to a high position in the employ of railroad combinations, with a salary of three or four times that of an Interstate Commerce Commissioner, so long will it be unsafe to permit such powers to be vested ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... that Soul is in the body causes mortals to regard death as a friend, as a stepping-stone 39:12 out of mortality into immortality and bliss. The Bible calls death an enemy, and Jesus overcame death and the grave instead of yielding to them. 39:15 He was "the way." To him, therefore, death was not the threshold over which he ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... and necessity of growth in knowledge, we must as clearly recognize that the intellect is not the centre and essence of man's being. Knowledge, while the surest form of wealth of which no one can rob us, and the best as the stepping-stone to the highest well-being, is like wealth in one respect: it is not character and can be used for good or evil. If my neighbor uses his greater knowledge as a means of overreaching us all, it injures us and ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... among the piers—all which seemed to me just suited to my cousin's woodland nature. I could not picture him nailed to a desk in a counting-room. The salary was not bewildering, but the sum was to be elastic, if ability were shown. Here was an excellent chance, a stepping-stone, at all events; perhaps the large opportunity itself, artfully disguised as fifteen dollars a week. I spoke of Flagg to Mr. Nelson, and arranged a meeting between them ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Browning. The idea is often a very simple one when you get at it; it's only obscure because it is conveyed by hints and jerks and nudges. In Pickwick, for instance, one does not read Jingle's remarks for the underlying thought—only for the pleasure of seeing how he leaps from stepping-stone to stepping-stone. You mustn't confuse the pleasure of unravelling thought with the pleasure of thought. If you can make yourself so attractive to your readers that they love your explosions and collisions, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Angel had persevered he might have gone to Cambridge like his brothers. But the Vicar's view of that seat of learning as a stepping-stone to Orders alone was quite a family tradition; and so rooted was the idea in his mind that perseverance began to appear to the sensitive son akin to an intent to misappropriate a trust, and wrong the pious heads of the household, who had been and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... had been a student in a small theological seminary, working for his board on his uncle's farm, and engaged to the teacher of the district school, who helped him with his Greek at night. He gave up the ministry for the law, used his law practice as a stepping-stone into state politics, climbed gradually into national politics, built up a fortune somehow—these were the days of big graft—married for money and got an assured position in Washington society thrown in, and soon after his marriage chose Green River as a basis of operations, spending a winter ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... boots, a bear suddenly made his appearance, and was stealing towards me round the corner of a rock. After throwing away my slippers, I attempted to step across to an island, by means of a rock, projecting from the waves in the intermediate space, that served as a stepping-stone. I reached the rock safely with one foot, but instantly fell into the sea with the other, one of my slippers having inadvertently remained on. The cold was intense; and I escaped this imminent peril at the risk of my life. On coming ashore, I hastened ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... her victory. She knew that Maximilian rated the Mexican throne as a stepping-stone to another in Europe. She knew of a certain family pact among the Hapsburgs and how it rankled in Maximilian's breast. Therein he had, on accepting the Mexican throne, solemnly renounced all right of inheritance to that of Austro-Hungary. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... pivot of my assault must be something that a boy can afford to be able to comprehend for eighty pounds a year and a clerk's desk in a Government office. Now, Mr. Hawes has, for many months past, furnished false reports to the justices and to the Home-Office. Here is the true stepping-stone to an inquiry, here is the fact to tell on the official mind; for the man's cruelty and felonious practices are only offenses against God and the law; but a false report is an offense against the office. And ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... thus rendered scarce, and polyandry would not have been practised; for hardly any other cause, except the scarcity of women seems sufficient to break down the natural and widely prevalent feeling of jealousy, and the desire of each male to possess a female for himself. Polyandry would be a natural stepping-stone to communal marriages or almost promiscuous intercourse; though the best authorities believe that this latter habit preceded polyandry. During primordial times there would be no early betrothals, for this implies foresight. Nor would women be valued merely as useful slaves ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... these, in their turn, sublet to peasants who give their labour and with whom they divide the profits. Now, the half-profit system does certainly answer elsewhere; in the Indre, for example, it has proved a stepping-stone to the position of small capitalist. Here I learned, with regret, that such is not the case. Land, even in the highly-favoured Allier, cannot afford a triple revenue. In the Indre, on the contrary, there is no intermediary between land-owners and metayers, the ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to dance music. As Strauss' mother enabled him secretly to work out his own salvation, so did Sousa's mother help him. Sousa's father was a political exile from Spain, and earned a precarious livelihood by playing a trombone in the very band at Washington which later became his son's stepping-stone to fame. Sousa was born at Washington in 1859. His mother is German, and Sousa's music shows the effect of Spanish yeast in sturdy German rye bread. Sousa's teachers were John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. The latter Mr. Sousa considers one of the most complete musicians this ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... to do something in the world," he said to his irate uncle. "The Bar is always a stepping-stone. I confess I don't look to practice very much; my real bent is for politics. But the law interests me, and it is ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... has been made, however, to color the narrative with human interest, and to give it consecutiveness, though this has sometimes been very hard to do. But, even at the best, this is only a first book in the study of American art and letters, and is designed to serve only as a stepping-stone to more elaborate and ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... another because he has been well trained into habits of work, and has a notion of educating the mind; a third because he has set his heart on a fellowship; a fourth, because he is intensely ambitious, and looks on a good degree as the stepping-stone to literary or political honours. The fewest perhaps pursue learning for her own sake, and study out of a simple eagerness to know what may be known, as the best means of cultivating their intellectual powers for the attainment ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... sarcastically referred to as "the social stepping-stone." It is a fact that the newly made rich and the vulgar often choose a church attended by the people of fashion whose acquaintance they most desire, rent a high-priced pew, and become prominent through their benefactions and their services in church work. They are "taken up," after a time, in a fashion, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... measure." In this he was not mistaken. His defeat for reelection to Congress ultimately made him President of the United States; for the following year the Republicans of his State elected him Governor, which was a stepping-stone to the Presidency. All that was needed was an opportunity for the merits of his bill to be thoroughly tested. Shortly after its passage, but before it could be enforced or even explained, the people were led to believe that it was a harsh, cruel, and unjust ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... beginners, we shall, for the present, I think, do well to desire these enigmatical teachers to put up their pipes and be gone; and betaking ourselves in the humblest manner to intelligible business, at least set down some definite matter for decision, to be made a first stepping-stone at the shore of this ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
