"Insignificance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... majority. A single false step, an hour's weakness of purpose, nay, even a failure for which he was not himself accountable in home or foreign policy, might deprive him of his influence over the majority, and might reduce him to comparative insignificance. Therefore, the controlling power which a great minister acquired was held by virtue of the most constant watchfulness, the most unsparing labor, energy, and devotion, and also in a great measure by the favor ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... his assurances, another member of the family appeared at the door, little Geoff, in a little black dress, which showed his paleness, his meagre, small person, insignificance, and sickliness more than ever. He had been there, it would seem, looking on while his uncle spoke. At this moment he came down deliberately, one step at a time, till his head was on a level with the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... marshes, causeways, and strong walls, became the impregnable shelter of the later Emperors; and the earliest Teutonic Kings naturally fixt their royal seat in the city of their Imperial predecessors. When this immediate need had passed away, the city naturally fell into insignificance, and it plays hardly any part in the history of Medieval Italy. Hence it is that the city is crowded with the monuments of an age which has left ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... here, crossing three avenues,—the milkmen, the truck-drivers, the workman, even the occasional tramp,—wherever they may come from or go to, or what their real habitat may be,—are invariably Americans. I give it as an honest record, whatever its significance or insignificance may be, that during the last year, between the hours of six and eight A. M., in and about the locality I have mentioned, I have met with but two unmistakable foreigners, an Irishman and a German. Perhaps it may be necessary to add ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... yet had held in over high esteem; but of a sudden, in the presence of this harsh-featured dog of war, this grim, fierce-eyed ruffler, he seemed to fade, despite his comeliness of face and form, into a poor and puny insignificance. And when, presently, he unwisely related how, when in the boat he had fainted, the maiden laughed outright ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... and should be oftener borne in mind by frivolous objectors, who declare they do not understand this or do not admire that, as if their want of taste and understanding were rather creditable than otherwise, and were decisive proofs of an author's insignificance. But this reproof, which is telling against individuals, has no justice as against the public. For—and this is generally lost sight of—the public is composed of the class or classes directly addressed by any ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... themselves the privilege of criticising my actions, as they criticise each other's; who say loudly that this is right and that is wrong, and who will be gathered in due time to their insignificant fathers with their own insignificance thick upon them, as is meet and just. If that is the world I am not afraid of its judgments in the very improbable case of my falling in ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... that there should be heights above), I find my black top subjected to a process of shrinking. As I reach the top it ignominiously permits itself to be flattened out to a mere ridge without a head, a Lilliputian hill bemoaning its own insignificance. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... and other mad men, that is to say, he carefully and with a sort of anguish selected the best roots from the less excellent, praised some, disparaged others, made a subtle scale ranging from a thrilling worth and rarity to a degraded insignificance, and then bought them all. The man was just pushing off his barrow when he stopped and came close to ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... inside of a menagerie at feeding-time would be a paradise of tranquillity and repose. The rattle and rumble of carts and carriages, which drive the professors and possessors of milder music to the side-streets and suburbs, sink into insignificance when these cataracts of uproar begin to peal forth; and their owners would have no occasion to seek an appropriate spot for their volcanic eruptions, were it not that the police, watchful against accident, have warned them from the principal thoroughfares, where serious ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... on the Oakland side watching 'Frisco devoured. In a space of time so short that it all seems to me like a dream now the whole city, slumbering peacefully but a moment before, presented a perdition beside which Dante's inferno seems to pale into insignificance." ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... of which Mr. Wallace[1] says, "The amount of human labour and skill expended on the Great Pyramid of Egypt sinks into insignificance when compared with that required to complete this sculptured hill temple in the interior of Java," and which will be separately described with the other religious monuments, was probably erected in the eighth or ninth century. It marks the highest point in the ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... look, a tone of the voice, a pressure of the hand, are events to dream about and feast upon. In the presence of the beloved object all things else are either unheeded or dwindle into comparative insignificance. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... one small room, and when the three girls followed Mr. Ashby to the place, they were amazed at the insignificance of their exhibition. ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... talents and enterprise on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank and birth and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance, even there. This, however, we have no right to meddle with. It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition of our own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for the direction of their government, with a recurrence ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... terror in her heart. The knowledge that he was in the same town with her, watching the same lights, thinking the same thoughts, breathing the same fragrance of honeysuckle—this knowledge was a fact of such tremendous importance that it dwarfed to insignificance all the proud historic past of Dinwiddie. Her imagination, seizing upon this bit of actuality, spun around it the iridescent gossamer web of her fancy. She felt that it was sufficient happiness just to stand motionless for hours and let ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and breathing silence, the chaplain approached the devoted companions of Wilder. Their comparative insignificance had left them unobserved during most of the foregoing scene; and material changes had occurred, unheeded, in their situation. Fid was seated on the deck, his collar unbuttoned, his neck encircled with the fatal cord, sustaining the head of the nearly helpless black, which he had placed, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Its insignificance alone saved it from positive ugliness, but the minister gave it as he passed, a fond admiring glance. He knew every grey stone in its walls, and every pane of glass in its narrow windows. He had not built it with his own hands but his heart had been in the laying ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... associations, including that of the Bolshevists, were represented in Paris during the Conference. I met one of the Bolshevists, a bright youth, who was a veritable apostle. He occupied a post which, despite its apparent insignificance, put him occasionally in possession of useful information withheld from the public, which he was wont to communicate to his political friends. His knowledge of languages and his remarkable intelligence had probably attracted the notice of his superiors, who can have had no suspicion of his ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... but ultimately joined the latter confederacy. During the struggle of the Aetolians against Rome it stood a stubborn siege. After its capture and plunder by M. Fulvius Nobilior in 189, it fell into insignificance. The foundation by Augustus of Nicopolis (q.v.), into which the remaining inhabitants were drafted, left the site desolate. In Byzantine times a new settlement took its place under the name of Arta (q.v.). Some fragmentary walls of large, well-dressed blocks near this latter ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... second of time. Moist matter, in that terrific emptiness, would explode, and become stone; and—listen to this, Carmina—the explosion itself would be frozen, and produce no sound. Think of serious people looking up in that dreadful direction, and talking of going to Heaven. Oh, the insignificance of man, except—I am going to make a joke, Ovid—except when he pleases his old mother by going away for the benefit of his health! And where are you going? Has sensible Carmina advised you? I agree with her beforehand, whatever she ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... Hawkins. Mrs. Dudgeon, now an intruder in her own house, stands erect, crushed by the weight of the law on women, accepting it, as she has been trained to accept all monstrous calamities, as proofs of the greatness of the power that inflicts them, and of her own wormlike insignificance. For at this time, remember, Mary Wollstonecraft is as yet only a girl of eighteen, and her Vindication of the Rights of Women is still fourteen years off. Mrs. Dudgeon is rescued from her apathy by Essie, who comes back with the jug full of water. She is taking ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... if stupefied by this thought, staring at the landscape without seeing it. Then he smiled ironically, as if realizing his own insignificance. The object of his journey flashed across his mind, and he pitied himself. He, who had been dreaming of a grand, unselfish, extraordinary love, was on his way to sell himself, offering his hand and his name to a woman whom he had barely seen, to contract ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had held my mind so long was reduced to insignificance between the blackness of the hills and the greatness of the sky; a little trouble, it seemed of no importance under the Southern Cross. And I fell wondering, as I had not wondered for long, at the forces that had brought me to this occupation and the strangeness of this game of war which had ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... do not become illustrious from their mere physical proportions; as in both, renown has its moral sources; so, in examining the causes which conduced to the eminence of Greece, we cease to wonder at the insignificance of its territories or the splendour of its fame. Even in geographical circumstance Nature had endowed the country of the Hellenes with gifts which amply atoned the narrow girth of its confines. The most southern part of the continent of Europe, it contained within itself all ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... imagining that her large business would be a sufficient compulsory influence; but now Hawkeye was frightened; and before Col. Sellers knew what he was about, Hawkeye, in a panic, had rushed to the front and subscribed such a sum that Napoleon's attractions suddenly sank into insignificance and the railroad concluded to follow a comparatively straight coarse instead of going miles out of its way to build up a metropolis in the muddy desert ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... from the small finches, thrushes, and other denizens of the wooded hill. In one fir tree there was a pair of tiny gold-crested wrens, beautiful little birds, which seemed to consider that their insignificance was quite enough to keep them from harm. So tame were they that they could have been struck down by a stick, which would have been their fate but for the interposition of Philip, who seized his brother's arm as he was raising his hand to deal the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... setting us before him, harangued us briefly, like a general addressing soldiers about to charge. I don't know what he said, except that he recommended each to penetrate herself with a sense of her personal insignificance. God knows I thought this advice superfluous for some of us. A bell tinkled. I and two more were ushered on to the stage. The bell tinkled again. I had to speak the very ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... built after the European model, and originally possessed of both military strength and commercial consequence, has, through the carelessness of the Portuguese, and the exactions and insolence of their neighbours, dwindled into comparative insignificance. According to Sir George Staunton's account, the population does not now exceed 12000, and more than half is Chinese. In short, Macao is virtually a Chinese town, where the Portuguese are merely tolerated. The Chinese, it is certain, require almost any other treatment than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... in a wider sphere than that of Europe. Mistress of Northern America, the future mistress of India, claiming as her own the empire of the seas, Britain suddenly towered high above nations whose position in a single continent doomed them to comparative insignificance in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... rolled and pitched like a beer-barrel, the water in her washing from side to side. However, I reached the island called 'Inishail.' It was a striking scene. Around me were the tombs of many generations. In the far distance the dark ruin of Kilchurn was reduced almost to insignificance by its background of rugged ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... set off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is made great, and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic! I will give only the two following passages in illustration of these remarks. Can any thing be more elegant and graceful than the description of Belinda, in the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... termed the legitimate part of his contract, to enable him to live for a considerable period without further excitement. Closely associated with him in the present adventure is La Belle Chasseuse. Neither would endeavour to procure safety by flight to a foreign country. They will seek insignificance by living in a normal and commonplace manner. What more easy, for instance, for Mademoiselle than to return to the life of the circus, whilst her lover—granted that he wished to remain in her company—will obtain some suitable employment in the same circle. There is ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... mother. Their education, and the dogmas they had heard from the rector, had given them very high notions of the dignity of the clerical character; in the superior presence of which, temporal things, laymen, and civil magistracy itself, sunk into insignificance. The perusal of Fox's Book of Martyrs, of which I was so fond that I would sit with my aunt for hours, before I was eight years old, and read it to her, aided their efforts: and this childhood bias, as will be seen, greatly influenced my first pursuits in life. We are all the creatures of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the great dome that squatted above the moving threads of living figures. He was absurdly upset by this unfortunate interview. What could he have expected? Of what use was it that he should fling his insignificance against that kind of wall? Moreover he must try many times before his chance would be given him. It was absurd that he should mind that rebuff. But the hatchet-faced young man pursued him. He seemed to see now ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study, calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... prepared to utilize whatever opportunities we can to utilize the opportunity this gives you to develop Ireland industrially." After persistent effort, however, all that the all-Ireland committee was able to get was five small munition factories. The insignificance of these plants may be realized from the fact that at the time the armistice was declared there were only 2,250 ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... succession is to be settled—a road is opened to ambition more splendid than ambition ever dreamed of. You hear all this as you sit by the hob, under the shade of your hall-chimney. You then begin to think what hopes you have fallen from, and what insignificance you have embraced; and all that you might look babies in the eyes of your fair wife ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... came into my mind, and for the first time I thoroughly understood what it meant. Base, indeed, would be the man who could look upon that mighty snow-wreathed pile — that white old tombstone of the years — and not feel his own utter insignificance, and, by whatever name he calls Him, worship God in his heart. Such sights are like visions of the spirit; they throw wide the windows of the chamber of our small selfishness and let in a breath of that air that rushes round the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... were outsiders, and because 'Willy' was making such a fuss with them; for she was almost as easily jealous in her brother's case as in Marsworth's. But now Nelly's sad remoteness from ordinary life, her very social insignificance, and the lack of any links between her and the great Farrell kinship of relations and friends, made her company, and her soft, listening ways specially welcome and soothing ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feathers form only a small black spot nearly hidden amongst the rust-coloured feathers of the breast. Characters such as these, very conspicuous in some species, shading off in others through various gradations to insignificance, if not extinction, are known by naturalists to occur in numerous genera; and so far they have only been explained on the supposition of the descent of the different species from ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages vanished into insignificance before the convincing demonstration ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... towards civilization; but there is a period in the process, at which voluptuousness, more cruel than indifference, and often maddened by jealousy, subjects her to greater degradation than her original insignificance, and destroys all hope of her amelioration in the tyranny of her own licentiousness. It is only where the principle alluded to, is publicly recognised in the civil institutions of a country, and conscientiously reverenced by the piety of its citizens, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... great merit and beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.' Hill was then appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight books of a long and unfinished epic called Gideon, which I suppose no one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he wrote a poem on The Judgment Day, a theme attempted also, shortly before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... model. Peter the Great created such an army, and won the prize. After this the political disintegration of Poland proceeded rapidly, and when that unhappy country fell to pieces Russia naturally took for herself the lion's share of the spoil. Sweden, too, sank to political insignificance, and gradually lost all her trans-Baltic possessions. The last of them—the Grand Duchy of Finland, which stretches from the Gulf of Finland to the Polar Ocean—was ceded to Russia by the peace of Friederichshamm ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... without. And, O, Emma, we'll have room for a thirty-fourth girl, if she happens along. I never thought of that. In the face of all that a college education will mean to this girl our personal comfort rather pales into insignificance." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... point of honour, equally false and arrogant, which leads them to consider as an insult to the whole navy, the discovery of one guilty individual. This inadmissible principle, which is useful only to insignificance, to intrigue, to people the least worthy to call on the name of honour, has the most ruinous consequences for the State, and the public service. By this, incapacity and baseness are always covered with a guilty veil, which they dare to attempt to render sacred; by ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... a second way by which the variations which characterize different codes may come to be relegated to a position of relative insignificance. We may assume that our own code is the ultimate standard by which all others are to be judged, and we may set down deviations from it to the account of the ignorance or the perversity of our fellowmen. So regarded, they are aberrations from the normal, and only true code of conduct; ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... the French and Indian War were out of all proportion to the scale of its military operations. Contrasted with the campaigns which were then shaking all Europe, it sank into insignificance; and the world, its eyes strained to see the magnitude and the issue of those European wars, little surmised that they would dictate the course of history far less than yonder desultory campaigning in America. Yet here and there a political prophet foresaw some of these ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... by any insignificance of their personal estate. Familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds conceit. Those who dwell close to the hub of government, even though they build departmental fires, sweep departmental floors, and empty departmental waste baskets, from nearness of contact and a daily ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... her, and she went over to her davenport. But on lifting the lid her eyes fell upon the little sheaf of bills—and again the Kresneys faded into insignificance. She took up the detested slips of paper; laid them out one by one on the table; and, sitting down before them, contemplated them with knitted brows and a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... its concave and convex lenses, which magnify some things and minify others. The self-satisfied man sees every one's faults in giant proportions; and every one's virtues, but his own, dwarfed into insignificance. To the fretful man others seem fretful; to the envious man, envious; and so with the well-disposed, gentle, and generous; sunshine prevails over shadows. The world is different to different observers, largely because they have different ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... be said," thought he, "that Sa-go-ye-wat-ha, lived in insignificance, and died in disgrace. Am I not yet strong? Have I not yet power to withstand ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... ache in her fancy of all he described. Her insignificance in the presence of so much magnificence faintly affected her. She realised that hers was not to be a round of pleasure, and yet there was something promising in all the material prospect he set forth. There was something satisfactory in the attention ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... herself had a growing consciousness of insignificance that was as painful as it was novel. Adding to all the humiliations of this day here was a man, not so very much older than herself, trying to come down to her level, as he would accommodate his language to a child. No labored argument ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... with it some element of risk. There is nearly always something of surprise to us in the new forces that confront us in any society which we enter as strangers; and the first feeling that rises is sometimes a feeling of our own weakness or insignificance. ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... would be only the beginning of trouble. In any case what was sought was revolution, and those who preached it ought to contemplate all the possibilities of such a course. They might be the fathers and founders of a new nationality, but they might also be simply mischief-makers, whose insignificance and powerlessness were their sole protection, who were not important enough for "either a traitor's ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... been other and greater deaths, beside which the mortality of a whole society of noblemen sinks into insignificance. An empire is dead and another has arisen in the din of a vast war, begotten in bloodshed, brought forth in strife, baptized with fire. The France we knew is gone, and the French Republic writes "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality" in great red letters above the gate of its habitation, which within ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... used this picturesque term to me I knew that there was a storm brewing. He only used the expression when he wished to be particularly "cutting," and I received his reproof with, I hope, a correct realisation of my own insignificance. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... question of the tenure of land. Free trade did not cause the famine. On the contrary, the presage of the famine was one of the minor causes which induced Peel to take up Cobden's policy for the free importation of foodstuffs. The effect of that policy upon Ireland sinks into insignificance beside an agrarian system which had reduced the mass of the Irish peasants to serfs, kept them near the borders of destitution, and in a state of sporadic crime for a century and a half before, and for forty years after the repeal of the Corn Laws, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... diabolical revenge manifested as in India. These are true types and traits of Indian character, especially of the lower orders and those who have lost caste; the Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Roumanians, Hungarians, and Spaniards sink into insignificance when compared with the Afghans, Hindus, and other inhabitants of some of the worst parts of India. Any one observing the Gipsies closely, as I have been trying to do for some time, outside their mystery boxes, with their thin, flimsy ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... talk brilliantly. I couldn't impress people as your wife must. I am not even educated in any regular way. I've just grown up in my own fashion—in the shade as it were—and the strong sunlight would only emphasize my insignificance." ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... passable if he lowered himself and then climbed the opposite edge; but a full minute elapsed before he heard a dull, echoing roar, which continued for some time, and, after a pause, was continued again and again, giving terrible warning of the depth, and his own insignificance ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... distance in its vast expanse, glitters the Lake of Scutari. Round a small dim spur of land running into the lake, lies Scutari itself, which is, however, not visible. To the left a forbidding chain of magnificent mountains, dwarfing the intervening hills into insignificance, fascinate him by their repellent grandeur. Snow-clad, except in the height of summer, these mountains seem symbolical of the land they border, that savage and unknown Albania. A glimpse of a green valley below can just be caught, there lies Podgorica, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Clare, then, and I trust ever, my beloved friend. When we were both students, he sent it to me in my study, in consequence of a brief childish misunderstanding, the only one we ever had. I keep this note only to show him, and laugh with him at the remembrance of the insignificance of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... on land. The war between Japan and China, between America and Spain, between England and the Transvaal, and finally the Chinese Expedition, have largely demonstrated the methods of transporting troops over the sea. Whilst Moltke has shown the insignificance of the land forces for such operations, the military authorities must in the future reckon on the important problem of preparing for and conducting a war across ...
— Operations Upon the Sea - A Study • Franz Edelsheim
... live thus over again the life he had made so little of in the body; his punishment, to haunt the world and pace its streets, unable to influence by the turn of a hair the goings on of its life,—so to learn what a useless being he had been, and repent of his self-embraced insignificance. Now he was a prisoner, pining and longing for life and air and human companionship; that was the sun outside, whose rays shone thus feebly into his dungeon by repeated reflections. Now he was a prince in disguise, meditating how to appear ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... general charm and grace. This no one would attempt to deny; but, in another environment, how different might it not appear,—as for instance placed beside Amiens, where in one particular alone, the mere height of nave and choir, it immediately dwindles into insignificance. Under such conditions its graceful spire becomes dwarfed and attenuated. Need more be said?—The writer thinks not, since the present work does not deal with the comparative merits of any two cathedrals or of national types; but the suggestion should serve ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... charge. In a stupor of bewilderment we completed our work, and delivered up the mails; then, once more we confronted one another with pale faces, frightened out of our seven senses. All the scrapes we had ever been in (and we had had our usual share of errors and blunders) faded into utter insignificance compared with this. My eye fell upon Mr. Huntingdon's order lying among some scraps of waste paper on the floor, and I picked it up, and put it carefully, with its ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... hears—all most difficult and complicated operations, involving an unconscious knowledge of the facts concerning optics and acoustics, compared with which the conscious discoveries of Newton sink into utter insignificance? Shall we say that a baby can do all these things at once, doing them so well and so regularly, without being even able to direct its attention to them, and without mistake, and at the same time not know how to do them, and ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... dish), which children delight to spring open for a view of the four tiny seeds attached at the base when in fruit, one knows this to be a member of the skullcap tribe, a widely scattered genus of blue and violet two-lipped flowers, some small to the point of insignificance, like the present species, others showy enough for the garden, but all rich in nectar, and eagerly sought by their good friends, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... forgotten; the two English old maids had no existence; the Russian invalid got no more hot water for his tea; the plain but obstinately inquiring German family could get no more information; even the quiet young French couple—a honeymoon couple—sank into insignificance. The only protest came from an American, whose wife was ill and never appeared, and who staggered the landlord by asking what he would sell the whole place for on condition of vacating ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... great intriguers every little detail, every commonplace insignificance is used—and must be used by them alone—to further their dark causes. They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to faithful subordinates. They cannot say, "Here is the end; this is the work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!" They must "stoop to conquer." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... we are rapidly hurrying toward a social cataclysm, beside which the downfall of the Roman Empire, the destruction of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations, and the bloody days of the French Revolution will sink into utter insignificance. I believe, also, and think that I can demonstrate the truthfulness of my belief, that the inciting cause of this social revolution will not be found in those citizens of the United States of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic parentage, but that it will be observed among ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i. 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its brilliant literary relationships. There can be little doubt that Edgar, in his mad scene in King Lear, is alluding to our tale when he ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... standing in some remote spot which still tells forth the story of the world's youth, one's inmost nature thrills with a sense of unison with it all beyond human expression. All was so grand, inspiring one with an awe beyond one's comprehension, a peculiar, dread of one's own earthly insignificance. These pictures, graven in one's memory with the strong pencil of our common mother, are indelible, yet quite beyond expression. As in our own souls we cannot frame in words our deepest life emotions, so as we penetrate into the depths of that kindly ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... and St. Paul's; they are never spoken of but in terms of admiration, as the chief works of architecture, and among the noblest and most stupendous examples of what man can do when aided by science; and yet when compared with the dome of this Temple, they sink into comparative insignificance. Such is the surpassing ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... was the imputation of this other cynic, that in greeting friends upon the thronged avenue, the rector never failed to use some word or phrase that would identify him to those passing, giving the person addressed an unpleasant sense of being placed in a lime-light, yet reducing him to an insignificance just this side the line ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... upon a writer, few have ever better illustrated these traits than 'A COLORED BALTIMOREAN,' or deserved a nobler tribute of praise. He who would be ashamed to acknowledge such a man as his countryman and brother, has yet to learn his own insignificance and what constitutes the majesty of ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... against this system of carrying constant intelligence to headquarters, which she had long ago felt as an insurmountable obstacle to any free communication with her mother; but now, her father's means of acquiring knowledge faded into insignificance before the nature of the information he imparted. She stood quite still, grasping the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... could not help giving an involuntary shudder as she thought of the narrow escape they had had on that occasion. But in the light of the other and more serious menace which now hung over them like a storm cloud, the adventure with the wild beasts faded into insignificance. Human enemies, more deadly perhaps than any of the animal kingdom, threatened, and if signs counted for anything it would be no long time before they ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... out of the way of his ambitions and his purposes, yet could find no ready means to compass their destruction. But of late he had found a new enemy in the person of my friend Dante, and a formidable enemy for all his seeming insignificance; and if Simone sought to crush Dante, I cannot blame him for the attempt, however much I may rejoice ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... reproach to the Episcopalians that they were tardy in entering the field of home missions. When we remember that it is only since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements to be a highly honorable one. By a suicidal compact the guileless Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... without some reverses, on the sea. In the end the power of the master of legions, Philip, Louis, Napoleon, and shall we say William, crumbles and melts; his ambitions are too costly to endure, his people chafe under his lash, and his kingdom falls into insignificance or is ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... Blessington," returned the governor. "That mysterious being," he pursued, after a short pause, "would never have made this parade of his conquest, had it related merely to a few lives, which to him are of utter insignificance. The very substitution of yon black flag, in his insolent triumph, was the pledge of redemption of a threat breathed in my ear within this very fort: on what occasion I need not state, since the events connected ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the Highland chiefs should not be allowed to go farther south than Aberdeen. A strong-minded man, like Sir James Macdonald[454], may be improved by an English education; but in general, they will be tamed into insignificance.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... to reject it was to shake the foundations of public credit and to leave the kingdom defenceless. Thus one branch of the legislature was systematically put under duress by the other, and seemed likely to be reduced to utter insignificance. It was better that the government should be once pinched for money than that the House of Peers should cease to be part of the Constitution. So strong was this feeling that the Bill was carried only by sixty-five to forty-eight. It received the royal sanction on the fifth of July. The King then ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... they observed the condition of Achilles Tatius, it seemed such as rather to express doubt and consternation, than to give encouragement to the hopes they had entertained. Many of the lower classes, however, felt too secure in their own insignificance to fear the personal consequences of a tumult, and were desirous, therefore, to provoke the disturbance, which seemed hushing ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... risking the life of her baby. They should be shown how to prepare special articles of diet when they are needed. If every mother were educated to the extent as indicated in the above outline the appalling infant mortality would fall into insignificance. It is not a difficult task, nor would it take a long time to carry out; it is the work for willing women who have time and who perhaps spend that time in less desirable but more dramatic ways. It is education ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... so that when the latter comes to an end of her confidences, and has leisure and recollection enough to say, "And now, Edith, what have you been doing?" she hastily replies, "Oh, nothing particular," glad to be able to shield her insignificance in silence. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... Irving speaks of a "vinegar-faced woman," we feel inclined to laugh. There are, however, exceptions to this rule. Socrates says that to compare a man to everything excellent is to insult him. Sometimes also a dwarf is compared to a giant for the purpose of calling attention to his insignificance. This is often seen in irony. So also, we at times laugh at the sagacity shown by the lower animals, which seems not so much to raise them in our estimation as to lower them by occasioning a comparison with the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the building was a grand and overpowering sight, making man to dree the sense of his own insignificance, even in the midst of his own handiwork! First, we looked over our shoulders to the grand carved roofs, where the swallows swee-swee'd, as they darted through the open windows, and the yattering sparrows fed their gorbals in the far boles; and syne we looked shuddering down ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... hours of misery she now and then gave a harsh laugh, the result of thoughts not seriously entertained, but tempting the fancy to recklessness. What, she asked herself again, would be the end of it all? Ten years hence, would she have subdued her soul to a life of weary insignificance, if not of dishonour? For it was dishonour to live with a man she could not love, whether her heart cherished another image or was merely vacant. A dishonour to which innumerable women submitted, a dishonour glorified by social precept, enforced ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... but after a while her interest waned. Conscious of her mental inferiority, her insignificance, she devoted herself entirely to her baby, anxious to demonstrate to her husband that she yet had a value as a model mother. But her husband did not appreciate this value. He had married her for the sake of companionship, and he found in ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and ephemeral order to which the scholarly thoughts of Gervinus belong, and when they so obviously bear the stamp of puerility? But it almost seems as though the modest greatness of a Strauss and the vain insignificance of a Gervinus were only too well able to harmonise: then long live all those Blessed Ones! may we, the rejected, also live long, if this unchallenged judge of art continues any longer to teach his borrowed enthusiasm, and the gallop of that hired steed of which the honest Grillparzer ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... assembly seeks, With red importance blust'ring in his cheeks; But when, electric on th' astonish'd wight Burst the full floods of music and of light, While levell'd mirrors multiply the rows Of radiant beauties, and accomplish'd beaus, At once confounded into sober sense, He feels his pristine insignificance: And blinking, blund'ring, from the general quiz Retreats, "to ponder on the thing he is." By pride inflated, and by praise allured, Small Authors thus strut forth, and thus get cured; But, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... massacre during the Revolution and the Black Hawk and Seminole wars at a later period, pale into insignificance when compared to the great outrages committed by these demons during this terrible outbreak. In less than one week 1,000 people had been killed, several million dollars' worth of property destroyed and 30,000 people rendered homeless. The entire ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... Instead of there being before him the pale face of Eustacia, and a masculine shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by its seamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... he would abandon Lewis. When the imperial ambassador, in July 1677, complained of the No Popery cry, they replied that there was no question of religion, but of liberty. In the case of Oates and his comrades, the political motive faded into insignificance beside the religious. At first the evidence was unsubstantial. Oates was an ignorant man, and he obtained credit only by the excitement and distrust caused by the discovery of the premeditated coup d'etat. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... aware that I have so far let the reader hear not one word of Samuel Anderson's conversation. He has played a rather insignificant part in the story. Nothing could be more comme il faut. Insignificance was his characteristic. It was not so much that he was small. It is not so bad a thing to be a little man. But to be little and insignificant also is bad. There is only one thing worse, which is to be big and insignificant. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... moon could shine brilliantly at night, but how sombre it looked beside the sun! The great sunshine of her own personal joy was flooding Charlotte's heart to-day, and the griefs and delights of the most attractive heroine in the world must sink into insignificance beside it. She sat waiting for about a quarter of an hour, then threw down her pen in disgust. She pulled out her watch. Hinton could not be with her before the afternoon. The morning was glorious. What had Ward, her ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... with alarm. "How?" said he, "You!—the Viscountess Beauharnais, you—marry this little General Bonaparte, this general of the republic, which has already deposed him once, and may depose him again to-morrow, and throw him back into insignificance?" ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... subtle balancings and tensions of lines and curves, the delicate fretting and inlaying of flat surface pattern, having gained only, perhaps, in being drawn more clearly by dust and damp upon a softer colour of marble. I have mentioned these first, because their apparent insignificance—tiny flat facades, with very little decoration—makes it in a way easier to grasp the special delicate austerity of their beauty. But they are humble offshoots, naturally, of two great and complex masterpieces, and very modest sisters of a masterpiece only a degree less marvellous: ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... will, and stooped to the ignoble part assigned her in a profligate Court. She accepted, with gratitude, such an occasional show of kindness, as from time to time made the Court gossips surmise that a better understanding might come. For the rest she sank into insignificance amidst such childish amusements as were to fill ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... This alludes to a character printed in a former private edition ['P. on V. Occasions'] for the perusal of some friends, which, with many other pieces, is withheld from the present volume. To draw the attention of the public to insignificance would be deservedly reprobated; and another reason, though not of equal consequence, may be ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... livid and thin, and when they moved it was with difficulty, as though they had been glued to the teeth. Some grinned sadly in the sunlight, shaking with cold. Others were sad and still. Charley, subdued by the sudden disclosure of the insignificance of his youth, darted fearful glances. The two smooth-faced Norwegians resembled decrepit children, staring stupidly. To leeward, on the edge of the horizon, black seas leaped up towards the glowing sun. It sank slowly, round and blazing, and the crests ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... gauging space would fail miserably in the attempt to bring home to us the mighty gulf by which we are now faced. Let us therefore halt for a moment and look back upon the orders of distance with which we have been dealing. First of all we dealt with thousands of miles. Next we saw how they shrank into insignificance when we embarked upon millions. We found, indeed, that our sixty-mile-an-hour train, rushing along without ceasing, would consume nearly the whole of historical time in a journey from the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage |
