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Lesser   /lˈɛsər/   Listen
Lesser

adjective
1.
Of less size or importance.  "The lesser of two evils"
2.
Smaller in size or amount or value.  "The lesser anteater"



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"Lesser" Quotes from Famous Books



... a semi-circle in convexity, and consists of two very different concentric portions; the inner and lesser portion, or ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... descriptions of the disaster which had overwhelmed that city. It was so sudden, so appalling, so tragic in its nature, that for the time being it quite overshadowed the havoc and misery wrought in a number of other California towns of lesser note. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... was very rugged; but yet had green herbs. The sixth mountain was full of clefts, some lesser, and some greater; and in these clefts grew grass, not flourishing, but which seemed ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... the flower of the festival, and since her beauty was being saved for the grand climax of the whole affair, she had no idea of sacrificing it. Proteus, Momus, the Mistick Krewe of Comus, and the other lesser societies celebrated their distinctive nights with torch and float and tableau; the city was transformed by day with bunting and flags, by night it was garlanded with fire; merrymakers thronged the streets, their carnival spirit entered into every breast. It was a glad, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... pigment produced by the mastication of the same. He needs no food, but he goes out to drink water thirty-five times a day, and, when he returns refreshed, a certain acrid odour penetrates every crevice of the house, almost dislodging the rats and exterminating the lesser vermin. To liken it to the smell of tobacco would give civilized mankind a claim against me for ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... uttermost parts of the earth. Many of the English passengers were army officers returning to India from furloughs or going out for service, and officers' families who had been spending the hot months in England. We had lots of lords and sirs and lady dowagers, generals, colonels and officers of lesser rank, and the usual number of brides and bridegrooms, on their wedding tours; others were officials of the government in India, who had been home to be married. And we had several young women who were going out to be married. Their lovers were not ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... ideal a spiritual or an earthly bond in Marriage, the seeking in it of a spiritual unity, or the regarding it as merely a physical union. The one is the religious idea of Marriage as a Sacrament; the other the materialistic idea of it as an ordinary terminable contract. The student of the Lesser Mysteries must ever see ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... newly-risen clouds, and blazed forth with beauty, and resembled the very abode of the great Indra. And that illustrious hero entered the court, arm-in-arm with Vidura and Satyaki on either side, and overshadowing with his own the splendour of all the Kurus, like the sun overshadowing the radiance of lesser lights in the firmament. And before Vasudeva sat Karna and Duryodhana, while behind him were seated the Vrishnis with Kritavarman. And Bhishma and Drona, and others with Dhritarashtra were on the point of rising up from their seats ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... I never saw men more lazy and rosy than these reverend fathers, kneeling in their comfortable matted church, or sitting in easy devotion. Pictures, images, gilding, tinsel, wax candles, twinkle all over the place; and ten thousand ostrichs' eggs (or any lesser number you may allot) dangle from the vaulted ceiling. There were great numbers of people at worship in this gorgeous church: they went on their knees, kissing the walls with much fervour, and paying reverence to the most precious relic ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rare evening song. Direction is gauged from where the Tribal Agong hangs—I will show you that after supper. It is a queer superstition, Major: they think that a song in the west means greatest harm—death by famine or disease or intra-tribal wars, from the north the omen is ill but to a lesser degree, south is good, but a song from the east augurs ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... thing could induce the owners to part with them. The few they had at this time, among them, seemed to be at the disposal of the kings. For while we lay at Oaitipiha Bay, in the kingdom of Tiarrabou, or lesser peninsula, every hog or fowl we saw we were told belonged to Waheatoua; and all we saw in the kingdom of Opoureonu, or the greater peninsula, belonged to Otoo. During the seventeen days we were at this island, we got but twenty-four hogs, the half of which came from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... to Cairo is astonished at the great number and beauty of its mosques, nearly every street having one or more. Altogether there are some 500 or more in Cairo, as well as a great number of lesser shrines where the people worship. I will tell you how this comes about. We have often read in the "Arabian Nights" in what a high-handed and frequently unjust manner the property of some poor unfortunate would be seized and given to another. This ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... however, in building two huts with pimento-trees, which he covered with long grass, and lined with the skins of goats he had killed with his gun. He had, however, but a pound of powder, and when that was nearly expended he produced fire by rubbing two sticks of pimento-tree on his knee. The lesser hut served him as kitchen, and in the larger he slept and employed himself in reading, singing psalms, and praying; so that, as he remarked, he was a better Christian while in this solitude than he had ever ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... had proved his courage both abroad and at home. He had fought a duel with one of the lesser chiefs, by whom he was attacked. He killed his opponent with an arrow, but himself received upon his head a blow from a battle-axe which brought him senseless to the ground. He was left for dead, but fortunately revived just as ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... and delible present. Most of us have to pass through such ordeals before character and conviction receive their final bias; before human nature has its wild trouble, and then settles into "cold rock and quiet world;" which any lesser after-shocks may modify, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of the Bible, as that of Milton and Shakespeare in a lesser degree—lesser in proportion as they have been less read—has fed in the English race an aptitude, an instinct, for action on a large imperial scale. It is not easy to explain the effect of great literature; but without doubt it molds the race. Now the ethic ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... are not over partial to strangers," he observed, "and you'm been away so long I reckon there's not many as'd recollect you. And as for carpentering jobs, there's Tom Lake over at Lesser Blakeney and his brother down at Brancaster, besides me on the spot, as you might say. It's a poor sort of opening there'd be, if you ask my opinion, especially for one like ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... told her once, when she talked of the increase in his income. "He works in the dark, and he is in luck if he happens to do any good. In waging his battle with mysterious nature, he only unfits himself by seeking gain. In the same way, to a lesser degree, the law and the ministry should not be gainful professions. When the question of personal gain and advancement comes in, the frail human being succumbs to selfishness, and then to error. Like the artist, the doctor, the lawyer, the clergyman, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... fortunes, divisions, and junctions of the lesser Rhine principalities would be a work requiring a world of patience on the part of the reader as well as an amount of space which would speedily surpass the limits even of such an ample volume as the present. The constant changes of boundary of these tiny lordships, the hazy character of the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... pour'd down his far-fetch'd floods; There, well-fed Irwine stately thuds: Auld hermit Ayr staw thro' his woods, On to the shore; And many a lesser torrent scuds, With ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... abundant in New England, though also found in lesser quantities elsewhere in this country. The first granite quarries that were extensively developed were those at Quincy, Mass., and work began at that point early in the present century. The fame of the stone became widespread, and it was sent to distant markets—even ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... beams are so indissolubly mingled that it is vain to attempt any division of them that shall assign to each his rightful share." Theirs was not that dramatic collaboration all too common among the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, at a time when managers, eager to satisfy a restless public incessantly clamoring for novelty, parceled out single acts or even scenes of a play among two or three playwrights, to put together a more or less congruous piece of work. Beaumont ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and our primary wants, we should not be left in unnecessary dependence on external supplies. And whilst foreign governments adhere to the existing discriminations in their ports against our navigation, and an equality or lesser discrimination is enjoyed by their navigation in our ports, the effect can not be mistaken, because it has been seriously felt by our shipping interests; and in proportion as this takes place the advantages of an independent conveyance of our products to foreign markets and of a growing ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... you." Scotty seemed terribly far away. Then Rick saw his friend's silhouette, as a dark shape against the lesser darkness of the sky. At a guess Scotty was fifty ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... had been strong enough to fight this cruel battle out with herself as Rachel would have done, and win as Rachel would have won, she might have been able to choose differently. She might then, strong in her own strength, marry a man of lesser personality, a younger man, and they two could have adjusted their lives to each other gradually. Now it must be Louise who would be adjusted, and Norris Whitehouse was just the man to know the curious fact that the more fiery and impetuous a woman is, the more easily, if she is in love, will ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... the adjoining kingdom of Cirta.] stood in the most friendly relation to our family. When I came to him, the old man embraced me with tears, and shortly afterward looked up to heaven and said: "I thank thee, sovereign Sun, [Footnote: The Numidians worshipped the heavenly bodies.] and all of you lesser lights of heaven, that before I pass away from this life I behold in my kingdom and beneath this roof Publius Cornelius Scipio, whose very name renews my strength, so utterly inseparable from my thought is the memory of that best ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... looking down through the eddying water at the fish, which seemed to have taken the swift vessel for some mighty companion of their own nature, in whose wake they could swim along in peace without fear of lesser enemies. ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... I hope, for anything," said Fleda, gently; "but I have been apt to think that, after a crushing sorrow, the mind may rise up again, but that a long-continued though much lesser pressure ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... whom I take as a true type of the tribes of Southern Guinea generally, and of Southern Central Africa, believe in a supreme Creator, and in a host of lesser divinities. These last they represent by images; each has its temple, its priests, and its days of sacrifice, as among the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... Lomax's duty to come down with us at bathing times, and, with his walking cane under his arm, he used to stride to and fro along the bank, barking out orders to the lesser boys, who were constantly breaking the rules, and getting toward the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... Powhatan for her English friends at Jamestown, the Colony would have perished from starvation or by the arrows of the hostile Indians. And the importance of this Colony to the future United States was so great that we owe to Pocahontas somewhat the same gratitude, though in a lesser degree, that France owes ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... Court of Inquiry, appointed by Congress to investigate complaints that I had made of my treatment, reported in favor of a trial by court-martial of General Gillmore's son, General Dyer's son, the nephew of the Secretary of War, and some other lesser lights of America's aristocracy, the secretary decided that a reprimand was sufficient for the offence; yet 'he did for me what had never been done for a white boy in like circumstances.' Now, sir, by consulting ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... based on intentional assaults. The appeal de pace et plagis laid an intentional assault, described the nature of the arms used, and the length and depth of the wound. The appellor also had [4] to show that he immediately raised the hue and cry. So when Bracton speaks of the lesser offences, which were not sued by way of appeal, he instances only intentional wrongs, such as blows with the fist, flogging, wounding, insults, and so forth. /1/ The cause of action in the cases of trespass reported in the earlier Year Books and in the Abbreviatio Plaeitorum is always ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... one Of countless men who take the priceless boon Of woman's love and kill it at the start, Not wantonly but blindly. Woman's passion Is such a subtle thing—woof of her heart, Web of her spirit; and the body's part Is to play ever but the lesser role To her white soul. Seized in brute fashion, It fades like down on wings of butterflies; Then dies. So my love died. Next, on base Mammon's cross you nailed my pride, Making me ask for what was mine by right: Until, in my own sight, I seemed a helpless ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... however, long since been abandoned for others more profitable. About eleven, we arrived at the village of Ora Branca, so called from the light colour of the gold procured here, the gravel or sand of every stream, henceforward, produces a greater or lesser proportion of gold. ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... of all ease and simplicity, those essential ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary meetings, have been long unfortunately notorious. No nation is so careful of the great, or so indifferent to the lesser, moralities of life as the English; and in no country is society, indebted, perhaps, to polished idleness for its greatest charms, more completely misunderstood. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... that looked out over the light-spangled city, the Hudson and the Palisades, was occupied by a magnificent Mercator's Projection of the world. This projection was heavily annotated with scores of comments penciled by a firm, virile hand. Lesser spaces were occupied by maps of the campaigns in Mesopotamia and the Holy Land. One map, larger than any save the Mercator, showed the Arabian Peninsula. A bold question-mark had been impatiently flung into the great, blank stretch of the interior; a question-mark ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... completing the subjugation of the adherents of the pretender. The boundaries of Pontus at his accession cannot be strictly defined. On the east it stretched towards the Caucasus and the sources of the Euphrates, Lesser Armenia being dependent on it. On the south and south-west its frontiers were Cappadocia and Galatia. On the west nominally Paphlagonia was the frontier, for the grandfather of Mithridates had been ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... children may receive religious instruction: all this is good, and to be received with sincere thankfulness; but, with a knowledge revealed to us of a still more excellent power in Christ's church, and with the abundant promises of prophecy in our hands, can we rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good, which strikes thrice and stays? But, if the zeal of the lay members of our Church be directed by the principles of Mr. Newman, then the result will be, not merely a lesser good, but one fearfully mixed with evil—Christian ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... almost forgotten the supremest spectacle in life is when man becomes the Creator of Circumstance. We forget that man can rise to be master of his destiny, fighting, unmaking, re-creating, not only his own environment, but the environment of multitudinous lesser men. There is something titanic in such lives. They are the hero myths of every nation's legends. We {4} somehow feel that the man who flings off the handicaps of birth and station lifts the whole human race to a higher plane and has a bit of the God in him, though the hero may have feet of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... combination, to medieval musicians the fifth, while to us, the third, which was once a forbidden chord, is perhaps most delightful. Yet we should never doubt that the octave is the most consonant, the fifth and the third the lesser consonant of combinations. We see, thus, that consonance, whatever its nature, is independent of history; and we must seek for its explanation in the nature of ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... are northern constellations. Cynosura is what we call the Lesser Bear; Helice, the Greater Bear; in Latin, Ursa Minor ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... lesser degree this is also true of Prague. As we have already seen, its geographical position marks it out as a centre where meet roads coming from all directions. This fact was not discovered at such an early ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... were has already been partly described in the course of this narrative. But there is one passage in the literature of the period which is too graphic to omit. It relates to the adventures of two of the lesser characters among the missionaries, and it illustrates both the hardships which they sometimes underwent and also the nature of the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... Morane—his own machine being in the hands of the mechanics—and Tam climbed into the seat. In five minutes he was pushing up at the steep angle which represented the extreme angle at which a man can fly. Tam never employed a lesser one. ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... especially at this period, when he was entering manhood and eager to get at the works of contemporary composers. In those times only a small amount of the music that was written, was published. Many of the lesser works were composed merely to grace some social function, with but little thought given them as to their ultimate fate. It was customary to play from manuscript, copies of which were not readily attainable. In a city like Vienna new music was constantly being produced, occasionally at public concerts, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... of this class are evils: but it would be weakness and criminal prudery—a prudery as criminal as vice itself—not to say that such a book as the one in question is not only a far lesser evil than the one that it combats, but in one sense a book which it is a mercy to issue and courage ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... cannon. Behind and away almost as far as we could see, stretched the tents and lines of armed men, the whole just beginning to stir with the first movements of the day. In the midst rose a splendid pavilion, adorned by flags, before the door of which stood a train of horses and attendants, while lesser tents were pitched all round it, each one displaying the ensign of some great officer. Crowds of men could be seen pushing to and fro, catching up their weapons and falling into some sort of military order, while others brought ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... statement made through several mediums, and it is only natural to suppose that such should be the case. The spirit gradually returns to a normal mental condition; but when any attempt is made to return to the 'earth plane,' and especially to communicate, these conditions return with greater or lesser force—varying with and depending upon the length of time such a person had been dead, and other considerations. On any theory, the consciousness must undergo some sort of temporary disintegration, while communicating, and ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... and in medicine the Jews were for a long period pre-eminent. Their marked taste and turn for music may appear more surprising. It is universally recognised and is sufficiently evident to anyone who will look at the faces of the chief orchestras of Europe. Besides a crowd of lesser names they have produced among composers Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Halevy, and among contemporary performers Rubinstein, Joachim, Hermann Levy, and Lucca. A Jewess is the most popular tragic actress on the contemporary stage, and another Jewess was probably the greatest tragic actress of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... summed up in himself the whole life of range and trail. Haley's book, packed with realities of incident and character, paints him against a mighty background. George W. Littlefield, Texan, University of Oklahoma Presss Norman, Okla., 1943, is a lesser biography of ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... the city of Radom, in the province of Poland, in the month of Nisan in the year 636, according to the lesser computation (i.e. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... Meril, with its miniature icebergs, they reached the glacier of the Aletsch and its snow-fields, where the real difficulties and dangers of the ascent were to begin. In this great semicircular space, inclosed by the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the lesser peaks of this mountain group, lies the Aletsch reservoir of snow or neve. As this spot presented a natural pause between the laborious ascent already accomplished and the immense declivities which lay before them yet to be climbed, they named it Le Repos, and halted there ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... had used the phrase in answer to the chairman's tentative suggestion that the tracing of the line could, perhaps, be altered in deference to the prejudices of the Sulaco landowners. The chief engineer believed that the obstinacy of men was the lesser obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had the great influence of Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under Higuerota would have been ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... the situation between Fix and Passepartout. Meanwhile Phileas Fogg moved about above them in the most majestic and unconscious indifference. He was passing methodically in his orbit around the world, regardless of the lesser stars which gravitated around him. Yet there was near by what the astronomers would call a disturbing star, which might have produced an agitation in this gentleman's heart. But no! the charms of Aouda failed to act, to Passepartout's great surprise; and the disturbances, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne

... small apertures revealed the undimmed heaven behind. Immense, rounded projections reared themselves from the main body, and flying, ragged fragments, apparently at a lower level, fled beside and before them. These fragments of lesser density showed innumerable tints of bluish grey from the darkest up to one which differed but little from the pure sky-blue surrounding them. Just after the sun set a rosy flush of light spread almost instantaneously up ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... in deliberation, it was resolved to break up the lesser raft,—that which had hitherto carried the sailor and little William. The planks composing it could be transferred to the larger and better structure which Snowball had got together; and this was furthermore to be reconstructed ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... Grange and the lesser ones at Carrowkeel show that the art of building was well developed, and that the religious ideals of the people had attained a certain fixed form. What the actual dwellings occupied by the people were we cannot say; but it is probable that many of the promontory-forts and some at least ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey

... wrote his epistle De Excidio Britanniae, between the years 564 and 570, that of his death, hints that Veralam was then fallen into the hands of the Saxons: which is certain of London, &c. The other princes reprehended by Gildas were lesser toparchs, as Aurelius Canon, Vortipor, Cuneglas, and Constantine. These were chieftains, Vortipor in Pembrokeshire, the rest in some quarter or other of Britain, all living when Gildas wrote. Constantine, whom ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... many another of the lesser poets, was unfortunate in having Dr. Johnson for his biographer. It is hard to conceive of a man who would show less of tenderness for an elaborate parterre of flowers, or for a poet who affectedly parted his gray locks on one side of his head, wore a crimson waistcoat, and warbled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... (also known as epizootic abortion, enzootic abortion, and slinking of calves) is a disease affecting chiefly cattle and to a lesser degree other domestic animals, and characterized by an inflammatory condition of the female reproductive organs, which results in the expulsion of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... theory of an "enlightened press." The Reviews, by the conditions of publication, came into action more slowly and during 1860 there appeared but one article, in the Edinburgh Review, giving any adequate idea of what was really taking place in America[48]. The lesser British papers generally followed the tone of the leading journals, but without either great interest or much acumen. In truth the depth of British newspaper ignorance, considering their positiveness of utterance, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... mountain in Europe. Several mountains in Asia and America are higher; but of what use would it be to attempt them, if, in the absolute impossibility of reaching their summit, you must be content to remain at a lesser height? ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... and a Whitman. But we have had more hindrance than help from our heritage of English music, in which there has never been a master of the first rank, Purcell and the rest being, after all, brilliants of the lesser magnitude (with the permission of that electric Englishman, Mr. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... hovels it is hard to understand, but they do. We saw one man who had no less than thirty-three different tiny spools to work from in a piece not more than a yard wide. All of these he had in turn to introduce in the web, and pass through a greater or lesser number of threads, the one starting in where the other left the woof, before one single thread was complete from end to end of the warp and could be driven into the pattern. The people of Benares also excel ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... the lesser ever does give way before the greater, so now did the anger that had sustained Ombreval go down and vanish before the overwhelming passion of La Boulaye. He grew pale to the lips at the Deputy's threat, and his eyes cravenly avoided the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... exchanging a word for days, was experience which changed my entire being. If any invisible barrier rose in the path of my concentration, I would meditate at the guru's feet. There the most tenuous states came easily within my grasp. Such perceptions eluded me in the presence of lesser teachers. The master was a living temple of God whose secret doors were open to ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... by any individual depends upon his own subjective scale of values. The pacifist is convinced that for him to commit violence upon another is itself the greatest possible evil. The non-pacifist says that some other evils may be greater, and that the use of this lesser evil to oppose them is entirely justified. John Lewis bases his entire Case Against Pacifism upon this latter assumption, and says that in such a conflict of values, pacifists "continue to be pacifists either because there is no serious threat, ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... Schopenhauer, pay their tribute to the prejudice in favor of intellectualism. The fact that the modern period can show no one philosophic writer of the literary rank of Plato, even though it includes such masters of style as Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Lotze, not to speak of lesser names, is an external proof of how noticeably the aesthetic impulse has given ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... historic as being the birthplace of the carbon transmitter, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp, and the spot where Edison also worked out his systems of electrical distribution, his commercial dynamo, his electric railway, his megaphone, his tasimeter, and many other inventions of greater or lesser degree. Here he continued, moreover, his earlier work on the quadruplex, sextuplex, multiplex, and automatic telegraphs, and did his notable pioneer work in wireless telegraphy. As the reader knows, it had been ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... servant placed, chairs for the people from the theatre. His Excellency checkmated his antagonist, and, leaning back in his great chair, looked at Darden's Audrey, but addressed his conversation to Mr. Charles Stagg. The great man was condescendingly affable, the lesser one obsequious; while they talked the gentleman in the shadow arose and drew his chair to Audrey's side. 'Twas Colonel Byrd, and he spoke to the girl kindly and courteously; asking after her welfare, giving her her meed of praise, dwelling half humorously upon the astonishment and delight ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... Pope or an Emperor and one which was founded by a King or a City Republic, and which was known as a Studium Generale respectu regni. The distinction was founded upon the power of the Emperor or the Pope to grant the jus ubique docendi. This privilege, which could be conferred by no lesser potentate, gave a master in one Studium Generale the right of teaching in any other; it was more valuable in theory than in practice, but it was held in such esteem that in 1292 Bologna and Paris accepted the privilege from Pope Nicholas IV. Some of the Studia which we have mentioned as existing ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... but from a sense of duty on the part of the old man. If he could keep the old man firm to that idea, Llanfeare would be his own; but should he be excluded from that inheritance, there would be no lesser prize by which he might reconcile himself to the loss. His uncle would not leave him anything from love. All this he understood thoroughly, and was therefore not unnaturally nervous as to his own conduct at ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... storm. Imagine, therefore, my disgust when, on returning from our trip on shore at Corfu, I found twilight pervading our delightful state-room, caused by an awning being stretched from the edge of the deck overhead to the side of the ship, and under this tent, encamped beneath my window, the lesser wives, children and slaves of an old Turk who was returning to Constantinople with his extensive family! His two principal wives were in state-rooms down below, and invisible. Well, if I had lost the view ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... silence, too deeply charged with feeling, for words. The Bishop himself felt that he could speak on no lesser subject, and his small audience were lost in wonder at the vast panorama of centuries, day by day, century after century, through all of which God had remembered that He had promised He would provide the Great and Final Sacrifice for mankind's justification. Then Aries ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... matters, but Piers' interest remained keen. It seemed that all his vitality had reawakened at the coming of this slow-speaking man who had looked so long upon the wide spaces of the earth that his vision seemed scarcely adaptable to lesser things. There was that in his personality that caught Piers' fancy irresistibly. Perhaps it was his utter calmness, his unvarying, rock-like strength. Perhaps it was just the good fellowship that looked out of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... master it. From lip to ear the truth has been handed down among the few. There have always been a few Initiates in each generation, in the various lands of the earth, who kept alive the sacred flame of the Hermetic Teachings, and such have always been willing to use their lamps to re-light the lesser lamps of the outside world, when the light of truth grew dim, and clouded by reason of neglect, and when the wicks became clogged with foreign matter. There were always a few to tend faithfully the altar of the Truth, upon which was kept alight the Perpetual Lamp of ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... lesser people, who write verses merely as vents for the overflowings of a personal experience, which in every life of any value craves occasionally the accompaniment of the lyre, it seems to me that all the value of this utterance is destroyed by a hasty ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... circle I descended thus Down to the second, which, a lesser space Embracing, so much more of grief contains Provoking bitter moans. There, Minos stands Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all Who enter, strict examining the crimes, Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath, According ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... a sharp eye to discern a man, but at length they are seen scrambling up the ravines and gullies and breasting the sharp pitches, until at last the first man arrives thoroughly used up and a string of fellows of lesser wind come in, ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... woodland torrent will leave in some remote hollow a disturbed and ungraceful chaos of inextricable logs, branches, rock, and soil that will rival the unsavory details of some wrecked or abandoned settlement. Of lesser magnitude and importance, there are certain natural dust-heaps, sinks, and cesspools, where the elements have collected the cast-off, broken, and frayed disjecta of wood and field—the sweepings of the sylvan household. It was remarkable that Nature, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... some OLD-FASHIONED POEMS in story-form, as "The Night before Christmas," "The Wonderful World," and "Little Orphant Annie." All who love pets and animals have always liked FABLES, so here are the noted parables of AEsop, and the lesser-known but even more jolly tales from ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... characteristics that responsibility demands. Put the square peg in the square hole, the round peg in the round hole; show the man you have confidence in him, teach him to act on his own initiative in all the lesser matters that concern his job, coming only to the master in those larger considerations to which the latter are subordinate, and my experience is that your confidence will not be betrayed, and that he will save you an immense ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... kindred fragments, from twelve different individuals; of the Hsiao-ching, embracing also the R Ya, and some other portions of the ancient literature, 59 collections, from eleven different individuals; and finally of the lesser Learning, being works on the form of the characters, 45 collections, from eleven different individuals. The works of Mencius were included in the second division [1], among the writings of what were deemed orthodox scholars ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge

... as she glanced at its comfortable aspect, remembering how long it had formed the secret object of her mother's little ambition (for the dame had a touch of pride in her composition beyond her ever-contented mate) to occupy that little hall. It seemed so appropriate that the lesser squire—the great squire's friend—should also have his "hall," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... of the ancients: also called Fucus Natans, and by the Spaniards Mar de Sargasso. A curious marine meadow nearly seven times larger than France, in extent, lying between 19 deg. and 34 deg. north latitude. There is a lesser Fucus bank between the Bahamas and the Bermudas. Consult Aristotle, Meteor, ii., I, 14; De mirabilibus auscutationibus, p. 100; Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum, iv., 7; Arienus, Ora Maritima, v., 408; Humboldt, Cosmos, tom. ii.; Gaffarel, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... course during which it struck into salients that followed up lesser and tributary streams. It had enclosed perhaps five hundred square miles of Canadian territory when it reached ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... poetry has given him his position among men. (9-46.) I. No poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. (10-19.) II. In his lesser works he shows his great power. (20-31.) III. There is but one modern poem that can be compared with "Paradise Lost;" Dante's "Divine Comedy" has great power, is upon a kindred subject, but in style of treatment widely different. (32-46.) Transition. (47-49.) ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... was considered one of the lesser opponents, every man in the brigade speculated with great interest, that night, on the probable outcome of ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... is the source from which spring all civil laws and the laws of nations. If God grants man the power of life and death, he certainly also grants power in matters of lesser importance—power over property, family, wife, children, servants and fields. God wills that these things shall be under the control of certain men, who are to punish ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... light of a vivid orange sunset had made transcendently green, he glanced to the west with foreboding that this was the last time he should look upon the kingly peak at sunset time. A flaming helmet of cloud shone upon the chief, and all the lesser heights were a deep, purple bank out of which each serrate summit rose without perspective, sharply set against the other like a ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... rather, it is as if one supposed that Juggernaut and the Argonauts had something to do etymologically with one another. And no doubt the same weak likeness, or analogy, runs between all the "social" sins and the real spiritual sins, and in some cases, perhaps, the lesser may be "schoolmasters" to lead one on to the greater—from the shadow to the reality. If you are anything of a Theologian, you will see the importance of ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... that he hath winter and summer together in his dominions; so large an extent east and west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and justice together. He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; He can bring thy summer out of winter though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or of understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... is the Star of Truth to which the face is set, and while that shines all lesser lights may go. It was the long months of suffering through which I had been passing, with the seemingly purposeless torturing of my little one as a climax, that struck the first stunning blow at my belief in ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... can scarcely see your hand in front of you, to read that behind you stretches the beautiful vista of the Langdale Valley, with Wansfell in the distance, and an exquisite glimpse of the waters of Windermere sparkling in the sun; to your right Helvellyn towers amidst its lesser brethren, while to the left the gloomy dome of Coniston lends a serious grandeur to the scene. Sounds all very fine, but it's a pity they don't put in the view on a day like this ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... well earned, asked her in English: "What did Ammal give you this morning?" Chellalu caught at the one familiar word in this sentence (for the babies learn the names of the flowers in the garden before they are troubled with lesser matters), and she answered brightly: "Morning-glory!" So Morning-glory has become to us an alias ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... inspired his sonnets, nothing more than a not too seriously intended trick to add the excitement of a transcript of real emotion to what was really an academic exercise. If that were indeed so, then Elizabethan poetry is a very much lesser and meaner thing than later ages have thought it. But is it so? Let us look into the matter a little more closely. The unit of all ordinary kinds of writing is the word, and one is not commonly quarrelled with for using words that have belonged to other people. But the unit of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... by some of the old pictures in Florence. It contains perhaps the most complete and particular statement of Browning's artistic principles that we have anywhere in his work, as well as a very noble and energetic outburst of indignant enthusiasm on behalf of the "early masters," the lesser older men whom the world slurs over or forgets. The principles which Browning imputes to the early painters may be applied to poetry as well as to art. Very characteristic and significant is the insistence on the deeper value of life, of soul, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... again travel abroad without a man, even if I have to hire one from a feeble-minded asylum. We work like galley-slaves, Aunt Celia and I, finding out about trains and things. Neither of us can understand Bradshaw, and I can't even grapple with the lesser intricacies of the A B C Railway Guide. The trains, so far as I can see, always arrive before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes, one that barely escapes idiocy, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... spot where Luigi and his mother are talking, as so often before. He is bound this night for Vienna, there to kill the hated Emperor of Austria, who holds his Italy in thrall; for Luigi is a Carbonarist, and has been chosen for this "lesser task" by his leaders. His mother is urging him not to go. First she had tried the direct appeal, but this had failed; then argument, but this failed too; and as she stood at end of her own resources, the one hope that remained was her son's delight ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... into two distinct parts,—organic nature, and inorganic nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does all animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or less perfect,—or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which gives more or less sensibility,—is, undoubtedly, the more important part of our earth. Now, analysis has reduced all the products of this nature to four simple substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... did not relax his vigilance, and two or three times, when he had dropped to a lesser elevation for Juba's sake, he baffled a dash of the enemy. At last we noticed a movement in the crowd which betokened something of importance, and in a moment we saw what it was. A splendid air ship, by far the most beautiful that we had yet seen, was ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... was not so purely callous and cynical as was supposed. Like most things in this world, it had its different component parts. There was the cynical arrogance of the Prussian Court upon the one side; but upon the other side there was the ominous disaffection of the lesser German States, and the rampant, angry Socialism of the lower and middle classes throughout the Empire, which had become steadily more and more virulent from the time of the reactionary elections of the early part of 1907, in which the Socialists felt that they had been tricked by the Court party. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... the perfect right to impose the lesser penalties of flogging, fines, and exile. "For he (the prince) beareth not the sword in vain," says the Apostle. "For he is God's minister; an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil."[1] It is not true to claim that St. Paul here meant merely the spiritual sword of ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... this part of the spine we must remember that we are about to deal with the many divisions of the nerves of the cauda equina. The great question before us, comes after this form. What would wound or bruise any division of nerves that would lead by the way of the great or lesser sciatic, to a bone in the front and under side of the foot? Jars, strains, twists, and dislocations, must be carefully searched for. A partial dislocation of one side of the spine would produce a twist which would throw one muscle on to another and another, ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... I am king! All lesser fry Must cringe, and crawl, and cry to me, And none have any rights but I,— Except the right to ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... FORMS OF MOUTHS.—Every mouth differs from every other, and indicates a coincident character. Large mouths express a corresponding quantity of mentality, while small ones indicate a lesser amount. A coarsely-formed mouth indicates power, while one finely-formed indicates exquisite susceptibilities. Hence small, delicately formed mouths indicate only common minds, with very fine feelings and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... Canada and most of the Rockies are his. He is at home wherever there are pine forests and a cool climate; and he covers so many ranges of diverse conditions that, responding to the new environments in lesser matters of makeup, we have a score of different Squirrel races from this parent stock. In size, in tail, in kind or depth of coat they differ to the expert eye, but so far as I can see they are exactly alike in all their ways, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Every bone and sinew in him ached for rest. His head was sunk over a table in his flat. Lyne's diaries stood in two piles on the table, the bigger pile that which he had read, the lesser being those which Tarling ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... reason, there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest crater. There it was, indeed, that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but, for that reason, there also it was that the divine had been swallowed up by the abyss; the lesser star could not rise before the greater should submit to eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death, not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also as a phenomenon brought into intricate relations with death by scriptual ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... shall have lived in the islands in actual military service and duty, always giving the preference to those who merit it with most cause. You shall take into consideration their length of residence, the quality of their services, and all other circumstances of their services, greater and lesser, in the country. These men must not be sons, brothers, relatives, servants, of friends of yours, or of the auditors or other officials of the Audiencia; for you are warned not to grant encomiendas of Indians to such men, or appoint them to offices—and to this end a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... then was, that Lord Auckland was right, that the delay of a single day might very probably have separated the two peoples for ever. The terms submission and fear are galling terms when applied from the lesser nation to the greater; but it is the plain historical truth, it is the natural consequence of injustice, it is the predicament in which every country places itself which leaves such a mass of hatred and discontent by its side. No empire is powerful enough ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... carriers by sea, and they made many treaties with different powers, stipulating that goods carried in their ships, not being contraband, should be free. In 1778 France, in order to injure England, declared its adoption of the principle that neutral ships made neutral goods. The lesser Baltic nations, which largely exported naval material, were anxious to protect their commerce from England, specially as she was rigorous in her view with regard to contraband goods; and they looked to Russia to help them. Frederick of Prussia, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... of elephants and lesser game bagged by Mr. Gordon Cumming after this touching meditation ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... made with regard to castration (under anaesthetics, of course) that it was found impossible to extirpate the testes completely. When the bird was killed some months after the operation, a greater or lesser amount of regenerated testicular tissue was found either on the original site of the organs or engrafted upon neighbouring organs. This experience, it will be noted, agrees with my own in the case of fowls. There were, however, reasons for believing that the results observed within the first ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... week, ran for the greater part of the year, and died in November. Its great author did not see that month twice again. In the spring of 1753 he grew worse; and after a year's struggle with ill health, hard work, and hard weather, lesser measures being pronounced useless, was persuaded to try the "Portugal Voyage," of which he has left so charming a record in the Journey to Lisbon. He left Fordhook on June 26, 1754, reached Lisbon in August, and, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... Marian, and to no one else. He had no desire that his son should ever profit by the labours and deprivations of all those joyless years in which his fortune had been scraped together. It was only as the choice of the lesser evil that he would consent to Percival's inheriting the property from his daughter, rather than it should fall into the hands of Mr. Holbrook. The lawyer had hard work before he could bring his client to this point; but he did at last ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... could trust no one with their secrets. Their conclusions were conveyed by the president—Prince Cabano—to one man, who at once communicated what was needful to their greater agents, and these in turn to the lesser agents; and so the streams of authority flowed, with lightninglike speed, to the remotest parts of the so-called Republic; and many a man was struck down, ruined, crushed, destroyed, who had little suspicion ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... her be patient awhile, and we talked quietly a bit until Chisholm called me down to look at the boxes. There were four of them—stout, new-made wooden cases, clamped with iron at the corners, and securely screwed down; and when the policemen invited me to feel the weight, I was put in mind, in a lesser degree, of Gilverthwaite's oak-chest. ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... the border between New York and Canada: where the winters were long and piercingly cold, where hunger frequently stalked, where travel was by canoe on the noble St. Lawrence, the swift Ottawa, the Richelieu, the lesser streams and lakes, and by snowshoe or moccasin through the heavy forests; where the Indians rarely failed to torture their captives in manner too horrid to relate; and where the only white people were 300 French soldiers, fur-traders, ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... with Socrates that the lesser man never comprehends the latent strength in his reason or imagination until he witnesses its skill in the greatest. He implies that the eloquence, art, and skill that crown the children of genius ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... a flower, the Lesser Celandine, That shrinks like many more from cold and rain, And the first moment that the sun may shine, Bright as the sun ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Nature will not give you a second life wherein to atone for the omissions of this. Pray then, dear and very dear Sir, do not think of deserting us, but view the sacrifices which seem to stand in your way, as the lesser duties, and such as ought to be postponed to this, the greatest of all. Continue with us in these holy labors, until, having seen their accomplishment, we may say with old Simeon, 'Nunc dimittas, Domine. Under ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... and heroic subjects, there were lesser, more intimate, and frequently sentimental, romances, especially enjoyed and widely circulated by the ladies. The baron, riding forth, left his young wife at home, shut up in her bower and surrounded by spies; sometimes even physically branded ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... lesser type of the early Irish churches, or, in other words, of the humble and rude oratories to which Dr. Petrie refers in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, were of a similar form, but of a much smaller size than the larger or abbey churches.[80] ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... man," replied the attendant in the paternal tone of those in lesser official positions. "Able to walk, or shall ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... our sea right and royal limits, and wisely to finde our selues as able to recouer and enioy the same as he was, who could not chuse, but with the passing and yeerely sayling about this British Albion, with all the lesser Isles next adiacent round about it, he could not chuse I say, but by such ful and peaceable possession, find himselfe (according to right, and his hearts desire) the true and soueraigne Monarch of all the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... celebrate Sayang make errors. The spirit Kadaklan and his wife instruct them to go and watch the Sayang at Sayau. They do as bidden and after learning all the details return home and perform the ceremony. The chief spirits are pleased and cause the lesser spirits to attend the ceremony when summoned by the medium. ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... Browne and Cruikshank were pre-eminently caricaturists, and caricaturists of an old school. The latter had no idea of beauty. His art, very great art in its way, was that of grotesqueness and exaggeration. He never drew a lady or gentleman in his life. And though Browne, in my view much the lesser artist, was superior in these respects to Cruikshank, yet he too drew the most hideous Pecksniffs, and Tom Pinches, and Joey B.'s, and a whole host of characters quite unreal and absurd. The mischief ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... dangerous by the guide who wished to accompany us, we determined to run the risk of being enveloped in a cloud on the summit, and so set out alone, the path appearing plain before us. We had no difficulty in following it up the lesser heights, around the base. It wound on, over rock and bog, among the heather and broom with which the mountain is covered, sometimes running up a steep acclivity, and then winding zigzag round a rocky ascent. The rains two days before, had made the bogs damp and muddy, but with this ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... flattering, although generally unintelligible; and Lord Cumnor, good-natured, good- tempered, kind, and liberal, was full of gratitude to her for her kindness in coming to see Lady Cumnor, and his gratitude took the tangible shape of a haunch of venison, to say nothing of lesser game. When she looked back upon her visit as she drove home in the solitary grandeur of the Towers' carriage, there had been but one great enduring rub—Lady Cumnor's crossness—and she chose to consider Cynthia as the cause ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... is: 'Take the leaves of the Daura, which prevent those who use it from dying for a hundred and twenty years. In the same way the flower of the secta croa brings a hundred years to those who use it, whether they be of lesser or of longer age.' I've been on the 'unt for the 'Daura' iver since I was twenty, an' I've arskt ivery 'yerber I've ivir met for the 'Secta Croa,' an' all I've 'ad sed to me is 'Go 'long wi' ye for a loony jackass! There aint no sich thing.' But jackass ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... are not far to seek, it is worth while for the preacher to dwell on them for a moment. In strongly centered souls like a Morley or an Erasmus, humanism produces a stoical endurance and a sublime self-confidence. But it tends, in lesser spirits, to a restless arrogance. Hence, both those lower elements in human nature, the nature and extent of whose force it either cloaks or minimizes, and those imponderable and supersensuous values which it tends to ignore and which are not ordinarily included ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... hours the last shrub had been left behind, and every one drew his breath hard and set his teeth, in the determination not to be baffled by the lesser troubles likely to hinder their way; but all the same, sighs once more rose for the beauty of the scenes and the refreshing breath of the mountains, which was already rapidly giving place to the hot reek of ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... larger cavern, this certainly appeared to disadvantage; though in truth it is in its dimensions only that the one can be pronounced inferior to the other. The spar is equally clear and proportionably as abundant in both: the pillars are quite as regularly formed, and the lesser has an advantage over its rival in two or three broken columns, which give to it the semblance of a temple in ruins. There is also in this cave a strange propinquity of salt and fresh water pools, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... out into the brightening morning, drawing the door closed behind him. His eyes, like the cook's though to a lesser degree, showed indications of a wild night in town. Steve guessed that he hadn't undressed all night; that he was not entirely sober just now though he carried himself steadily and spoke ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... with the form of epilepsy known as petit mal, Sir Henry? I thought in that lesser form of the disease the victim merely suffered from slight seizures of transient unconsciousness, without convulsions, regaining control of himself after losing himself, to speak broadly, for a few ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... the case. I have an object to accomplish so dear to my heart that it swallows up lesser considerations, and will not allow me to neglect any honest means by which it may be promoted. Wealth to me is indispensible; wealth that shall place me on a level with a rich and proud family with which I have to contend. I have an impulse such perhaps as you have never felt. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... into a moral symbol of sin and its concealment. It permeates the book, it is borne openly upon the breast of one sufferer, it is written terribly in the flesh of another, it flames at last in the very sky. All the lesser images and symbols of the romance are mastered by it, subordinated to it; it becomes the dominant note in the composition. The romance of The Scarlet Letter is, as we say of any great poem or drama, an "ideal ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... should be like Caesar—you would wonder how Caesar and I should be like one another in anything—and choose rather to be the first man of the village than second at Rome. Our Country is called Great Britain, in regard only of a lesser of the same name; it would be but a ridiculous epithet for it when we consider it together with the kingdom of China. That, too, is but a pitiful rood of ground in comparison of the whole earth besides; and this whole globe of earth, which we account so immense a body, is but ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley



Words linked to "Lesser" :   small, little, greater



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