"Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... higher enlightenment") with the Greeks ("in the case of the Greeks, even among the most educated inhabitants of Attica, the contrary often happens to an astonishing degree; and the people neglect as insignificant factors that which we, thanks to our love of order, are in the habit of looking upon as the foundations of mental ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... although I dare say that to many of you it may seem too listless and half-hearted to merit so good a name. But what matters it in the end whether we call such a state of mind religious or not? It is too insignificant for our instruction in any case; and its very possessor wrote it down in terms which he would not have used unless he had been thinking of more energetically religious moods in others, with which he found himself unable to compete. It is with these more energetic states that ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... dusky, eyes grey, and dark hair; her figure moderately tall, slender but shapely. She was always dressed well; a certain taste marked her in everything. Upon introduction no one would have thought anything of her; they would have said, "insignificant—plain;" in half an hour, "different to most girls;" in an hour, "extremely pleasant;" in a day, "a singularly attractive girl;" and so on, till her empire was established. It was not the features—it was the mouth, the curling lips, the vivacity ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... of deaths by snake-bite reported every year is very large, and looks absolutely appalling if you do not think of dividing it among three hundred millions. Treated in that way it shrivels up at once, and when compared with the results of other causes of death, looks quite insignificant. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... wade along the slippery, weed-grown shelf near the raging fall, to troll in the shadows above him. Had the old man taken one false step he would have entered on a struggle for life compared with which my own adventure after hooking the grilse would have been insignificant. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... to the final test of the dress rehearsal, to confess my true opinion. I realised that the scenery, chorus, ballet, and minor parts were on the whole excellent, but that the chief character, around whom in this particular opera everything centred, faded into an insignificant phantom. The reception which this opera met with at the hands of the public when it was produced in October was also due to him; but in consequence of the fairly good rendering of a few brilliant passages, and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... NE. and South by the Carpathians, contains wide tracts of forests, and is one-half under tillage or in pasture; yields large crops of grain and a variety of fruits, and has mines of gold, silver, copper, iron, &c., though the manufactures and trade are insignificant; the population consists of Roumanians, Hungarians, and Germans; it was united to Hungary ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... withstand him, had, without a struggle, submitted to his orders. Factions and sects, divided by mortal antipathies, had recognised him as their common head. Without carnage, without devastation, he had won a victory compared with which all the victories of Gustavus and Turenne were insignificant. In a few weeks he had changed the relative position of all the states in Europe, and had restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one power had destroyed. Foreign nations did ample justice to his great qualities. In every Continental country where Protestant ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... against so much marble-white wall space. Overhead, I am told, there was once a line of crystal chandeliers, which must have given a perfect finish to the room; but these have been improved away for rather insignificant modern lights, and all over the roof are these hideous whirling electric fans which spoil the whole effect of the classic Georgian style—the swinging punkah can at least be good to look at, and even tolerable, if it is ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... was but a small, insignificant church at Dornoch, dedicated to St. Finbar, an Irish saint of the sixth century {58} who laboured as a missionary in Scotland. The poverty of the diocese and the unsettled state of the times had prevented any extension of this. Gilbert therefore resolved to ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... his enjoyment of the conversation of an accomplished man of the world; and there was a subtle flattery in the sense that this man, scholar and gentleman as he was, had condescended to a liking for and an interest in his insignificant self, and was of his own ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... particular morning they said nothing that interested her; their talk was on insignificant matters. As soon as she had finished her meal she hurried to Rosalie, for she wanted to know how M. Vulfran had discovered that she had only slept one ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... comparatively little damage to the British Forces while the burghers who are captured by the British are sent out of the country, and that after the war has been raging for almost three years there remains only an insignificant portion of the fighting force with which we ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... yellow sash and the rapier with its large, flashing basket-hilt at his side; yet she said to herself: "Poor, handsome fellow! How many would be proud to lean on your arm! Why do you care for one who can never love you, and to whom you will appear insignificant ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is an abstract subject of impersonal interest compared with the Irish question at the present time; and the commotion which was caused by the misrepresentation of Evadne's remarks about the Reign of Terror was insignificant compared with what followed when her feeling for Ireland had been misinterpreted. She gave out the text which called forth the second series of imbecilities daring a dinner party at her own house one night, her old friend, Lord Groome, supplying ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... not come to the Carsons in the fulfilment of an aspiration. Mrs. R. Gordon Carson bored him. Her fussy conscious manners bespoke too plainly the insignificant suburban society in which she had played a minor part. He came because Dr. Lindsay had told him casually that Louise Hitchcock was in town again. He arrived late, when the lecture was nearly over, and lingered in the hall on the fringe of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... ii.:—" Before Sir Samuel Baker's expedition put a stop to it altogether, the slave trade that was carried on down the river was quite insignificant compared to the overland traffic." "For years there has been a public prohibition against bringing slaves down the White Nile into Khartoum, and ever and again stronger repressive measures have been introduced, which, however, have only had the effect of raising the land traffic ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Tolstoy was the only one who matches him in the accumulation of details, but for the Russian every detail modulates into another, notwithstanding their enormous number. The story marches, the little facts, insignificant at first, range themselves into definite illuminations of the theme, just as a traveller afoot on a hot, dusty road misses the saliency of the landscape, but realises its perspective when he ascends a hill. There is always perspective in ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... no more comparison between her and my son, than between anything in the world; however, if it is so, it is so, and I mean to say no more about it, and to be sure he's as contented to think so as if he was as mere an insignificant animal ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... was burnt down. I wish you had been with me yesterday in the library at breakfast. It was Leonore's birthday, and the family had occasioned her a surprise by a little gift which was exactly according to her taste—ornament combined with convenience. It was an insignificant gift—wherefore then did it give us all so much pleasure? wherefore were there sweet tears in her pious eyes, and in ours also? We were all so still, and yet we felt that we were very happy—happy because we mutually loved one another, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... of their tyrants? For two hundred years they had borne it silently, without a single attempt to emancipate themselves. Juan Santos Atahuallpa was the first who stirred up revolt against the Spaniards. The insurrection which he had headed, though deemed too insignificant to fix the attention of the short-sighted government of Lima, nevertheless, convinced the Indians that they were strong enough to make a stand against their oppressors. Several partial risings in Southern Peru were speedily put down; a leader was wanted to organize the disconnected plans and movements ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... XVI snuff-box, gone was the miniature of Karl Huth, gone the piece of Bow China, and gone the Faberge cigarette case. Only the Queen Anne toy-porringer was there, and in the absence of the others, it looked to him, as no doubt it had looked to the burglar, indescribably insignificant. ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... matters which have been totally misunderstood. To those who have grasped the significance of the exhaustive preceding account of the Republic in travail, this statement should not cause surprise; for China has been in no condition to play anything but an insignificant and unsatisfactory ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... the Constitution was adopted, three classes of persons were "held to service" in the country—apprentices, redemptioners, and slaves. The two first classes were by no means insignificant in 1789, and the redemptioners were rapidly increasing in numbers. In that day, it looked as if this speculative importation of laborers from Europe was to form a material part of the domestic policy of the Northern States. Now the negro is a human being, ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... insignificant themselves, want to make themselves of importance by the pennant they serve ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... which piece we first saw Otis Skinner. And we wondered precisely what George Moore means when he says that Stevenson is all right except when he tries to tell a story. According to Moore, a story is not a story if it keeps you up half the night; "it is only the insignificant book that cannot be laid ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Master of "Standard Oil" and his hosts were upon him, but not where the Philadelphian looked for them. While he awaited their attack in Brooklyn, N. Y., he received a series of hurry-up calls from his lieutenants in Boston. Rogers had bought the insignificant Brookline Gas Company, which supplied gas to one of the suburbs of Boston. It was only a $300,000 affair, but it possessed charter rights to come into any and all of the streets of Boston. This was a characteristic "Standard Oil" attack. It came ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... not prepared for the apprehension of a great purpose should fix the thoughts upon the faultless performance of their duty, no matter how insignificant their task may appear. Only in this way can the thoughts be gathered and focussed, and resolution and energy be developed, which being done, there is nothing ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... of Sherborne Church has been called unpicturesque, owing to its low central tower and insignificant pinnacles. It is, however, a huge building, and its interior is so richly decorated that it more resembles a cathedral than a parish church. It possesses the finest fan-vault in existence, covered with gilded bosses and heraldic arms. Contrasting ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... of the lane was marked by some insignificant though very abrupt depressions and elevations of the surface. Occasionally he of the floating apparel was lost to sight; then he would appear all glorious on some small height, while the mind was compelled to revert ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... I have chosen a trivial subject, and they will look for frivolous treatment of it. I can only hope that they will be disappointed. There is nothing that the progress of science has taught us more emphatically than this—that we must call nothing insignificant. Seemingly trivial pursuits have led to discoveries which have benefited all mankind, and priceless truths have been dug out of the most unpromising mines. I am not insinuating that anyone's nose is an unpromising mine, but I say ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... cease to be important by the progress of time, but the life of an individual is an adequate period usually for the formation of a judgment. I cannot assume that it will be my fortune to make a wise selection in all cases. Important events may be omitted, insignificant ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... the book clubs is marked by a like distinctness, both in date and circumstance. The institution did not spring in full maturity and equipment, like Pallas from the brain of Jove; it was started by a casual impulse, and remained long insignificant; but its origin and early progress are as distinctly and specifically its own, as the birth and infancy of any hero or statesman are his. It is to the garrulity of Dibdin writing before there was any prospect that this class of institutions would reach their subsequent importance and usefulness, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "Would you allow an insignificant thing like a foot-race to wreck a human life? Two human ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... standard legislative bodies have been wont to judge the exigency of this mighty question. More influential than woman, though unacknowledged as such by the average legislator of States and nations, even the insignificant lobster finds earnest champions where woman's claims fail of recognition; which assertion the following incident will substantiate: Being present in the Representatives Hall in Augusta when the "lobster ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... been formed in their particular occupation, wholly under the shelter, and therefore upon the responsibility of the law, she has retained duties in some cases as high as thirty per cent ad valorem, but yet has reduced them to rates insignificant in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... express more guardedly (see, for a more recent statement, Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. X). With this exception, and the deletion of two insignificant footnotes, no changes have been made. After the lapse of a quarter of a century I find nothing that I seriously wish to withdraw and much that I ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... fabula narratur. Perchance the mousey bantlings of my insignificant brain may nibble away the cords of prejudice and exclusiveness now encircling many highly respectable British lions. Be not angry with me therefore, if in the character of a damned but good-natured friend, I venture on occasions to "hint ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... is impressed during a mountain ramble, is humility. I found fault with the insignificance of the Swiss cottage, because "it was not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility." Now, had it not been seen to be pretending, it would not have been felt to be insignificant; for the feelings would have been gratified with its submission to, and retirement from, the majesty of the destructive influences which it rather seemed to rise up against in mockery. Such pretension is especially to be avoided in the mountain cottage: it ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... be covered by a king for which no space is ready, a dark queen will be buried under a succession of smaller cards, crowding along with apparent carelessness, but relentlessly. Now a space is opened for the king that covers the deuce, but the king has meantime been covered by an insignificant but unmanageable four-spot, and cannot be reached. The game is not so absurdly easy as it promised to be. Still it may be won by clever playing. There follow eight cards that prove to be immovable, and the issue is almost ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... height of their own ambition, and of course they must set you down lower than their opinion of themselves. They degrade by reducing you to their own standard of merit; for the qualifications they deny you, or the faults they object, are so very insignificant, that to prove yourself possessed of the one or free from the other is to make yourself doubly ridiculous. Littleness is their element, and they give a character of meanness to whatever they touch. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... At the close of Kieft's administration in 1647 the whole province of New Netherland could furnish not more than three hundred fighting-men and contained a population of not more than two thousand. Compared with the population of New England these figures seem insignificant enough, and render highly improbable the story popular with some New England historians that the Dutch were enlisted in a great scheme ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... away: there was no evading that. An insignificant boy thousands of miles away had sent out a cry for help, and she, the proud and blessed, who had always considered herself quite as spunky as another person, had bolted in a panic. And she had bolted too fast, it seemed, to consider even that, with ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... learn patience; he must acquire that serene confidence in the power of labor, which makes workers willing to wait. He must not, like a foolish child, rush forward to pluck the fruit before it is ripe, lest this be his epitaph: The promise of his early life was great, his performance insignificant. ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... character, unless amongst such buildings are to be included hotels, newspaper offices, and dry goods stores, some of which are really enormous piles. Generally speaking, New York may be described as a city consisting of comparatively insignificant parts greatly exaggerated, and almost infinitely multiplied. It may be want of taste; but on the whole, I was better pleased with Chicago. The season of my visit was doubtless unpropitious. Who could admire the beauties of the noble Central Park in the dead of winter? Perhaps, too, I was not in ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... &c., is the exclusive commendation which Claudian bestows, (del Bell. Get. 267,) without condescending to except the emperor. How insignificant must Honorius have ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... between what he had proposed and what he had accomplished. How insignificant circumstances had effected momentous results! He saw how, whenever failure and dishonor had filtered in, it was where weakness, self-indulgence, or untruthfulness, had left an opening. He saw how one wrong had been a sure and easy path to another, until in the end he had groveled ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... gun, to defend us from any attack behind—in the rear, I think you call it. And thus our whole company, being fourteen in number, travelled on till night overtook us, without seeing anything unless a few birds and some very insignificant animals. We rested all night under the covert of some trees, and indeed we very little wanted shelter at that season, the heat in the day being the only inclemency we had to combat with in this climate. I cannot help telling you my ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... usual; even my throat was as if it were choked; the articulation of the sounds was imperfect. It was evidently the same with the rest of the priests. Instead, then, of the noisy and cheerful conversation of the other meals, there were only a few insignificant words ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... David's party, they could see no signs whatever of volcanic action on Mount Bird, which is almost entirely covered with ice on which it was to be expected that some mark might be left. At 9000 feet Terror looked very imposing, but Mount Bird and Terra Nova were insignificant and uninteresting. The valley between the old crater and the slopes of the second crater greatly impressed them, and they found a fine little crevassed glacier in it. Both Priestley and Debenham are of opinion that it is possible to get to Terror by this ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... blast of the whirlwind might have swept him from off the slippery rocks on which he stood, and have precipitated him into the dreadful gulph beneath; whence all the power of man could not have extricated him. He here felt what an insignificant being man is in the creation; and his mind was forcibly impressed with an awful idea of the power of that mighty Existence, who commanded the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... island which I remembered was some three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, heavily timbered, and lay near the Kentucky shore—within two hundred yards of it, I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it with a spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificant little tuft, and this was no longer near the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against the opposite shore, a mile away. In war times the island had been an important place, for it commanded the situation; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Italians came from Room 365—two girls in white, a bareheaded mother who had been weeping, a fat and relieved-looking father, an insignificant youth who ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... for it does not often fall to the lot of mortal man to find in one little, insignificant figure, dwarfish alike in soul and body, such a compound of selfishness, duplicity, meanness, and vulgarity, as was centered in the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... about as high as they were while it raged? Then there is no roaring wind to dull the clamor of the tremendous sea as it lashes the long re-bellowing shore. Such was the sound of ten thousand cradles; yet the sound of each one was insignificant. Hence an observation and a reflection—the latter I dedicate to the lovers of antiquity—that multiplying sound, magnifies it in a way science has not yet accounted for; and that, though men are all dwarfs, Napoleon included, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring "El" between the rows of reeking sweatshops. Pallid, stooping, insignificant, squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body and mind, yet, as he swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome inhalations from his cigarette you perceive that he nurtures in his narrow ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... hospital, I sought profitable employment, and obtained it. In the course of a few months I had earned a sum—dearer, more valuable to me than all I have since acquired. It was insignificant in itself, but it purchased for my Sebastian his long wished-for treasure—the horse and water-cart. I took it to him; and when I approached him, I had not a word to say, for my grateful heart was in my throat strangling my utterance. He threw his arms about my neck, cried, laughed, thanked, scolded, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... to the turn of the Sacian nation to enter the course, a private man, of no apparent importance in respect to his rank or standing, came forward as the champion; though the man appeared insignificant, his horse was as fleet as the wind. He flew around the arena with astonishing speed, and came in at the goal while his competitor was still midway of the course. Every body was astonished at this performance. Cyrus asked the Sacian whether he ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... "but if you would read our chief's report for last year, you would see that we do our best to put out fires with the smallest possible amount of water. Why, we only used about eleven million gallons in the last twelve months—a most insignificant quantity that, for the amount of ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... her eyes on the daughter, she could almost have joined in Maria's astonishment at her being so thin and so small. There was neither in figure nor face any likeness between the ladies. Miss de Bourgh was pale and sickly; her features, though not plain, were insignificant; and she spoke very little, except in a low voice, to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance there was nothing remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening to what she said, and placing a screen in the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... rollicking cub. Here was a juicy feast. And to the great cat, inexperienced as he must have been in the ways of the creatures of the very far north into which he had wandered, the cumbersome mother seemed a rather insignificant barrier to keep him from his feast. One spring, a set of those vicious yellow teeth, a dash away, with the ponderous mother following at a snail's pace—that seemed easy. He carefully estimated the ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... her head a little. So even William—Uncle William—regarded this monstrous thing as an insignificant matter of everyday experience. Maybe he expected it to occur frequently—every night, or so. Doubtless he did expect it to occur every night, or so. Indeed! Very well. As if she were going to show now that she cared whether Bertram were there or ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... quandary I am in. Some of these applications are made with the most extraordinary persistency, I might even call it ferocity, and these invariably come from men who have held the office of mayor or deputy-mayor for ten years, often in the most insignificant places." ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... for a while. Far above him sounded the ecstatic music, the cry of trumpets and the shrilling of the flutes; but they were as insignificant street-noises to one who was falling asleep. He was within the veil of things now, beyond the barriers of sense and reflection, in that secret place to which he had learned the road by endless effort, in that strange region ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... called and came; and I could not help thinking how insignificant she looked with her pale face and plain dark frock, standing stiffly beside this shining lady in her ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Mushroom Corals, and other Madrepores abounding on Polynesian reefs, and the "Sea Anemones," which have lately become so familiar to us all, can be seen by comparing our comparatively insignificant C. Smithii with our commonest species of Actinia and Sagartia. The former is a beautiful object when the fleshy part and tentacles are wholly or partially expanded. Like Actinia, it has a membranous covering, a simple sac-like stomach, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... style of thinking which has a natural tendency to induce an atheistic frame of mind.[227] The profession of such sentiments is a symptom rather of incipient danger, than of confirmed disease. But that danger is far from being either doubtful or insignificant. For should the distinction between "truth and error" be obliterated or even feebly discerned, should it come to be regarded as a matter of comparative indifference whether our beliefs be true or false, should it, above all, become our prevailing habit ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... themselves, those German visitations seemed insignificant by comparison with the raids which were being carried out almost simultaneously on the other side of the sea by our own naval airmen. For while the German aeroplanist was helping to dig a cabbage garden at Dover, one of our Squadron-Commanders—R.B. Davies, R.N.—from a Maurice-Farman biplane ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... strange it is that at a time like this an insignificant detail should stand out in sharp relief against the background of her dulled sensibilities) an hysterical woman ran up to ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... most distant manner, to illustrate an obscure passage in the history of our country, cannot we presume, while it affords great pleasure and satisfaction to the student attentively employed in such researches, be deemed either insignificant or uninteresting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... child by back streets to the river, and thence down to the Temple stairs, accompanied by Tibble Steelman, and a maidservant on whose presence her grandmother had insisted. Dennet had hardly slept all night for excitement and perturbation, and she looked very white, small, and insignificant for her thirteen years, when Randall and Ambrose met her, and placed her carefully in the barge which was to take them to Richmond. It was somewhat fresh in the very early morning, and no one was surprised that Master Randall wore a large dark cloak as they rowed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ordinary difficulties which come to a nation, as when it became necessary in 1917 to pass a Conscription Act, the Province of Quebec threatened to secede. Quebec is a French territory, and it was a matter of world-wide comment that the volunteer enlistments for the Canadian army from the province were insignificant. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Ali, laughing quietly. "My ideas are pretty well-known; but I am too insignificant a fellow for what I say to be noticed. Now if ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... take a serious interest in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting of dull and insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will say, "Why do you not write a great book? paint a great picture?" If his guardian angel fail him, they may even persuade him to the attempt, and, ten to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... change in Gordon's life took place at Gravesend, and it was there he commenced to show that intense longing to do good to others which characterised him to the end. Nothing was beneath his notice, nobody too insignificant for him. The gutter children, and the inmates of the workhouse, might have been passed over by many in his position who had higher aims. It was not so with Gordon, and consequently he quickly cultivated ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... the world must jog along though you and I be damned. Elspeth was happily married, and there came the day when Tommy and Grizel must say good-bye. He was returning to London. His luggage was already in Corp's barrow, all but the insignificant part of it, which yet made a bulky package in its author's pocket, for it was his new manuscript, for which he would have fought a regiment, yes, and beaten them. Little cared Tommy what became of the rest of his luggage so long as that ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... the "Gardeners' Chronicle;" in my index there are only the few enclosed and quite insignificant references having any relation to the minds of animals. When I returned to my work, I found that I had nearly completed my statement of facts about worms plugging up their burrows with leaves (548/1. Chapter II., of "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms," 1881, contains ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... them—the loss of such men would, even so, have been a serious matter. But the evil did not end there. Although the Nonjurors, especially after the return of Nelson and others into the lay communion of the Established Church, were often spoken of with contempt as an insignificant body, an important Jacobite success might at any time have vastly swelled their number. A great many clergymen and leading country families had simply acquiesced in the rule of William as king de facto, and would have transferred their allegiance without ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... itself compelled to accord to the smallest. Such was Leopold's situation. He had refused war to the great interests of the monarchy, and the strong feelings of the family which asked it from him, and yet was about to grant it to the insignificant interests of certain princes of the empire, whose possessions were in Alsace and Lorraine, and whose personal rights were violated by the new French constitution. He had refused succour to his sister, and was about to ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in life this Campton boy learned that Pemigewassett valley, though so beautiful, was but an insignificant part of the world. Intuitively his expanding mind comprehended that the tides and currents of progress were flowing in other directions, and in April, 1823, before he had attained his majority, he bade ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... butterflies filled the air, so that the seamen cried out that it was snowing butterflies. The flight seemed to be voluntary. On another occasion many beetles were found alive and swimming, seventeen miles from the nearest land. But these instances were insignificant compared with the alighting of a large grasshopper on the Beagle, when to windward of the Cape de Verde Islands, and when the nearest land, in a direction not opposed to the prevailing trade wind, was 370 miles distant. Marvellous appearances of spiders far from land were also noted. ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... accomplish this difficult task or to die in the attempt. From my youth I had been inured to hardships and endurance in wild sports in tropical climates, and when I gazed upon the map of Africa I had a wild hope, mingled with humility, that, even as the insignificant worm bores through the hardest oak, I might by perseverance reach the heart ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... individuus, meaning "indivisible; not divisible." Does not this help you to gain a clearer idea of the Individuality that knows itself to be a Centre of Consciousness in the One Life, rather than a separate, puny, insignificant thing apart from all other centres or forms of Life, or the source of Life? We think it will help to clear your mind of some of the fog that has not as yet ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... afternoon watching the thick waters trickling by and wondering how such an insignificant and shallow stream could overturn a heavy wagon and two horses, when the man called Clifford, who had been mending a harness at a bench under a tree near by, came and sat down by him, bringing a part of his work from ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... like my idea of a West Indian could not be imagined. She was a small, frail creature, well over forty, I should say, with a pale, peaky face, and hair of a very light shade of chestnut. Her presence was insignificant and her manner retiring. In any group of ten women she would have been the last whom one would have picked out. Her eyes were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to say, her least pleasant, feature. They were gray in color,—gray with a shade of ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... large hall; then mark off at one end the tenth of an inch. This tenth of an inch will represent one hundred years, and the entire strip a million years. But let it be borne in mind, in relation to the subject of this work, what a hundred years implies, represented as it is by a measure utterly insignificant in a hall of the above dimensions. Several eminent breeders, during a single lifetime, have so largely modified some of the higher animals, which propagate their kind much more slowly than most of the lower animals, that they have formed what well deserves to be called a new sub-breed. ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... whether filled with lava or otherwise, would be of great breadth towards the focus, or central crater, and could not fail to make manifest beyond dispute their mechanical origin. But no fissures of the kind here referred to are, as a matter of fact, to be observed. Those which do exist are too insignificant and too irregular in direction to be ascribed to such an origin; so that the views of Von Buch and Davy must be dismissed, as being unsupported by observation, and as untenable on dynamical grounds. As a matter of fact, the "elevatory theory," or the "elevation-crater ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... neighbors, and in which no one will be stronger in the end when the whole world shall be subjugated. Their ten thousand regulars suffice, and they have their militia for extraordinary occasions. Lastly, their Federal debt is insignificant; and, if the private debts of a few States reach a high figure, they are nowhere of a nature to impose on the tax-payers a large ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... malignant sore. She smiled constantly—it was her role to be gracious to all these duchesses and ambassadresses—and that solitary tooth darted forward like a sentinel on a bridge in the War Zone. But I envied her. She was so happy. So important. I never met anybody who made me feel so insignificant. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... laid out in an insignificant North Sea scrap, but though the scrap was small the wounds were unpleasant and I was still rather glad to lie easy in a moveable summerhouse on the terrace. I was well on the mend but had walked a little too far that morning and ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... difficulties in the way of her marrying their brother. Their persuasion that the general would, upon this ground alone, independent of the objection that might be raised against her character, oppose the connection, turned her feelings moreover with some alarm towards herself. She was as insignificant, and perhaps as portionless, as Isabella; and if the heir of the Tilney property had not grandeur and wealth enough in himself, at what point of interest were the demands of his younger brother to rest? The very painful reflections to which this thought led could only be dispersed ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... followed, says Mr. Barham, that for libel on the Queen among the rest; but the grand attempt on the part of the Whigs to crush the paper was not made till the 6th of May, 1821. A short and insignificant paragraph, containing some observations upon the Hon. Henry Grey Bennett, a brother of Lord Tankerville's, was selected for attack, as involving a breach of privilege; in consequence of which the printer, Mr. H.F. Cooper, the editor, and Mr. Shackell were ordered ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sum to talk about, and with many, I am sorry to say, is looked upon as so insignificant as to be considered almost worthless; but I hope, before I have done, to show you something of the great value of even a penny, and of the effects and products we have been enabled to produce and dispose of with ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... states legislation has been passed authorizing the formation of local credit associations, which are really local cooperative banks, but the number of credit associations established in rural communities has been insignificant, thirty-three out of a total of thirty-six being in North Carolina.[32] The tremendous losses suffered by American farmers during 1921 and their inability to secure sufficient credit from their local banks has shown the necessity for better short-time credit ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... another, if the corresponding impressions have only once occurred together, or if the ideas have any degree of resemblance, or, finally, if only they stand in marked contrast with one another. Any accidental coincidence of events, such as meeting a person at a particular foreign resort, and any insignificant resemblance between objects, sounds, etc., may thus supply a path, so to speak, from fact ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... would encourage him. When God took no notice, he felt himself to be the most insignificant and impertinent of living creatures. He spoke again, lest the silence should ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... his uneasy pacing, but now with an irrational and supporting sense of duty done. He had dug his grave that morning; now he had carved his epitaph; the folds of the toga were composed, why should he delay the insignificant trifle that remained to do? He paused and looked long in the face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance. Could the thing continue? What bound him now? Had he no rights?—only ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... said, "She went!" but who shall describe how she went? It seemed as if the mighty cake had been suddenly struck from below and shattered. Then the turmoil that ensued was grand and terrible beyond conception. It was but an insignificant portion of God's waters at which we gazed, but how overwhelming it seemed to us! Mass rose upon mass of ice, the cold grey water bursting through and over all, hurling morsels as large as the side of a house violently on each other, till a mighty pile was raised which next moment ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... of seeing and hearing a remarkable proof of your uncle's hold upon the most insignificant verbiage that chance had poured into his ear. I was staying with him at Bowood, in the winter of 1852. Lord Elphinstone—who had been many years before Governor of Madras,—was telling one morning at breakfast of a certain native barber there, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... You may not know that he saved the lives of my three sisters in a fire at our mansion in the Savoy; he also performed the trifling service of saving Prince Rupert's ship and the lives of all on board, among whom was myself, from a Dutch fire-ship, in the battle of Lowestoft. These are insignificant affairs, that he would not think it worth while to allude to, even if you knew ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... the rivers to overflow, and thus block the roads, surprised us in a little Tartar village, when we consoled ourselves for our forced inaction by the thought that this insignificant war of skirmishers with robbers would soon come to ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... one imagine that such trials as these are small and insignificant? They are the very ones that make the heart burn, and the teeth close on the lips, and the eyes fill with angry tears. They take hope out of daily work, and sunshine out of daily life, and slay love as nothing else can slay it. There was an evil spirit in the house,—a small, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... affairs do not concern him. Moreover, among the observances he prescribes, many are inconvenient, tasteless or disagreeable—fasting, Lent, a passive part in a Latin mass, prolonged services, ceremonies of which the details are all insignificant, but of which the symbolic meaning is to-day of no account to people in attendance; add to all this the mechanical recitation of the Pater and of the Ave, genuflections and crossing one's self, and especially obligatory confession at specified dates. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and a few additional observations showed that it was progressing in the usual manner from west to east. For some time such a revelation had been expected; but the result did not answer to expectation in one particular; for the new body seemed to be too insignificant to be called a world. It appeared rather to be a great planetary boulder, as if our Mount Shasta had been wrenched from the earth and flung into space. Investigation showed that the new body was more than a ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... population, till all the shores of the St. Lawrence seemed one vast aboriginal encampment. These massed at the rendezvous about the puny settlement of Montreal in such numbers that, in comparison, the white population seemed insignificant. Then, had there been a Pontiac or a Tecumseh, had there been one leader of the tribes able to teach the strength of unity, the white settlements of upper America had indeed been utterly destroyed. Naught but ancient tribal jealousies held the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... reconnaissances of the Royal Flying Corps could be set out in detail only by quoting all the reports in full. That would be too cumbrous a method of writing history. The reports contain much that is comparatively insignificant. But the reader of this book may desire to know exactly what an air report is like, and his curiosity shall be gratified. Here is the report, of no special tactical significance, but full of incident, of a long air reconnaissance made by Lieutenant ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... successors, by their ignorance, brought reproach upon their calling, and, in the time of Socrates, the Sophists—so-called—had lost their influence and had fallen into contempt. "Before Plato had composed his later Dialogues," says MAHAFFY, "they had become too insignificant to merit refutation; and in the following generation they completely disappear as a class." This author thus proceeds to give the causes ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... mentioned in this chapter are the property of private individuals or companies. The number of baths provided in this country under Act of Parliament or by civic corporations is so small, and their size and design so insignificant, that it would be waste of space to describe them here. They are unworthy of the nation. One of the best is the pretty little bath provided on the first floor of the public bath-house recently erected by the Corporation ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... figure came, not insignificant (I mean), but looking very light and slender in the moving shadows, gently here and softly there, as if vague of purpose, with a gloss of tender movement, in and out the wealth of trees, and liberty of the meadow. Who was I to crouch, or doubt, or ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... hath persecuted him hitherto, in the business of dividing the fleete, saying vainly that the want of that letter to the Prince hath given him that, that he shall remember it by to his grave, meaning the loss of his arme; when, God knows! he is as idle and insignificant a fellow as ever come into the fleete. He tells me that in discourse on Saturday he did repeat Sir Rob. Howard's words about rowling out of counsellors, that for his part he neither cared who they rowled in, nor who they rowled out, by which the word is become a word of use in the House, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... on the inside surrounding a calm expanse of water, which from reflection, is of a bright but pale green colour. The naturalist will feel this astonishment more deeply after having examined the soft and almost gelatinous bodies of these apparently insignificant creatures, and when he knows that the solid reef increases only on the outer edge, which day and night is lashed by the breakers of an ocean never at rest. Well did Francois Pyrard de Laval, in the year 1605, exclaim, "C'est une merueille de voir chacun ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... said Heriot, "for your father's son I would do much; and yet truly, if I know myself, I would do as much and risk as much, for the sake of justice, in the case of a much more insignificant person, as I have ventured for yours. But as we shall not meet for some time, I must commit to your own wisdom the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... hickory nut was awarded to J. K. Triplett of Elkins, W. Va. The prize for black walnut was awarded to J. G. Rush of West Willow, Pa. Mr. Rush returned his prize to be used for the purposes of the Association. No prize for hazels was awarded as only one or two insignificant specimens were sent in. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Bride' (afterwards Mrs. Gwyn) — 'as he actually lived among us; nothing can exceed its truth' (Prior's 'Life', 1837, ii. 380). In other words, it delineates Goldsmith as his contemporaries saw him, with bulbous forehead, indecisive chin, and long protruding upper lip, — awkward, insignificant, ill at ease, — restlessly burning 'to get in and shine.' It enables us moreover to understand how people who knew nothing of his better and more lovable qualities, could speak of him as an 'inspired idiot,' as 'silly Dr. Goldsmith,' as 'talking like poor Poll.' It is, in short, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... to frequent inundations are always poor; and probably the reason may be because the worms are drowned. The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and have much more influence in the economy of Nature than the incurious are aware of, and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... how my name is great among the Sioux. There was a lifelong enmity between the Sioux and the Assinaboines. My father was wounded by the Assinaboines, and I made up my mind I was going to do something to that tribe. I have been in about forty battles altogether, rather insignificant some of them, but about ten great battles. When I was about eighteen, a band of Sioux, including myself, went down to the Black Rees. They greatly outnumbered us. We attacked them, but did not kill any of them. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... I was sent here onct before for priggin' a watch. I served out my time, and now I'm here agin, this time for stealin' a few insignificant clothes. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... that Lisconnel lies out of the way, on the route to no places of importance, and as its own ten or a dozen little houses are, I fear, collectively altogether insignificant, it has small reason to expect many visitors. The Widow M'Gurk said one day that you might as well be living at the bottom of the boghole for any company you got the chance of seeing; but this was an exaggeration. She was vexed when she made the remark, because Mrs. Dooley, old Dan ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians should forfeit all his rights therein." But now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, which are the State's best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... absence of direct and uncompromising pressure towards monetary results from a pupil's labour (which seems to be always the case when a professional man's pupil is also his son), Owen's progress in the art and science of architecture had been very insignificant indeed. Though anything but an idle young man, he had hardly reached the age at which industrious men who lack an external whip to send them on in the world, are induced by their own common sense to whip on themselves. Hence his knowledge of plans, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the triple purpose of school, church and Masons' Hall, the upper story being used for holding church service, and by the Masons for their meetings, and the lower for the school. The principal of this school was called the provost, a high-sounding title which must have made even the most insignificant of pedagogues feel proud and important. Among the teachers employed at this institution during the later years of its existence was Ezekiel Gilman, of Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard, who came to Currituck in 1840 ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... worth very little. They are prim and measured epistles, and they relate much more to spiritual matters than to temporal business. Mrs. Rebecca seems to have been so much concerned for the health of her soul that she had very little leisure to think of anything so insignificant as the bodies of other people. The letters are filled with discourses upon her own state of mind; and the tone of them reveals not a little of that pride whose character it is to simulate humility. Mrs. Rebecca is always casting ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... disestablished and disendowed during the years 1871-4—a step taken in consequence of the temporary ascendency of Shinto. At the present time a faint struggle is being carried on by the Buddhist priesthood against rivals in comparison with whom Shinto is insignificant: we mean the two great streams of European thought—Christianity and physical science. A few—a very few—men trained in European methods fight for the Buddhist cause. They do so, not as orthodox believers in any existing sect, but because they are convinced ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... or two to the tiny coverlet. She heard the flat door open and Zora's rich voice inquire for Mrs. Dix. Then Zora, splendid, deep bosomed, glowing with color, bringing with her a perfume of furs and violets, sailed into the room and took her into her arms. Emmy felt fluffy and insignificant. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... of excellent eulogy might also have been true of Quapaw creek and the bridge over it, which they reached in seasonable time. Quapaw creek was here a little bit of a river, and the bridge over it was an insignificant little bridge—'no count,' in Squire Deacon's language. But now, of all times in the year, the little bridge was already full of more than it could hold, literally, for it couldn't hold what was upon it. A heavy farm-wagon loaded with some sort of produce had got fairly upon the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... of his projected disgrace soon reached the ears of the bewildered favourite, who instantly resolved to redeem himself by some more successful achievement. He accordingly ordered the troops to march upon and besiege Monheur, an insignificant town on the Garonne, which was feebly garrisoned by two hundred and sixty men, and which was in consequence sure to fall into his hands. As he had foreseen, the place soon capitulated, but the late reverse had rendered Louis less accessible than ever ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... may be as compared with the whole, it must also be a complete whole on its own scale, if the greater whole is to be built up. On the same principle, our recognition that our personality is an infinitesimal fraction of an inconceivably greater Life, does not mean that it is at all insignificant in itself, or that our individuality becomes submerged in an indistinguishable mass; on the contrary, our own wholeness is an essential factor towards the building up of the greater whole; so that as long as we keep before us the building ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... of miles from this town," continued the astronomer, "and yet the insignificant sum of ten cents has enabled this progressive young man to learn for himself that the celestial beings enjoy themselves pretty much as we do in this world. I venture to say that there is not a man in this crowd who ever ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... she bent to say In her courteous Chinese way, "In my very contemptible garden, dear, your illustrious wish to play?" And when he nodded his head She knew that he would have said, "My insignificant feet are proud ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... myself, or rather with my own insignificant present history, and come to that of the Hare. It impressed me a good deal at the time, which is not long ago, so much indeed that I communicated the facts to Jorsen. He ordered me to publish them, and what Jorsen orders must be done. I don't know why this should be, but it is so. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... missed this sight for a thousand dollars; and I'd give ten thousand to get the skin and skeleton of the brute. If I could but secure them, I'd go straight back to New York at once, and leave Manoa for another time. Isn't there any way by which we could get across that insignificant strip of water?" ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... insignificant individual, I was put into a waterman's boat with my chest and bed, and was sent on board. On reporting myself, I was told by the commanding officer not to bother him, but to go to my mess, where I should be taken care of. On descending a ladder to the lower ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... section about two hundred yards in front of the centre square, and sat down. They were standing in perfect order and steadiness, and I knew they would not disturb that steadiness to pick a quarrel with an insignificant section. I alternately looked at them, at the regiment, and up the hill to my right (rear), to see who was coming to ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... of paper isn't altogether an unmixed misfortune, as far as one's correspondence is concerned. Letters that don't matter, letters from the insignificant and the boresome, simply aren't answered. For small spur-of-the-moment notes to one's intimes who're not too far off, there's quite a little feeling for using slates. One writes what one's to say on one's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various |
