"Proverbially" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things to be considered upon this occasion; the immediate business, is to teach him to read. A new era in his life now commences. The age of learning begins, and begins in sorrow. The consequences of a bad beginning, are proverbially ominous; but no omens can avert his fate, no omens can deter his tutor from the undertaking; the appointed moment is come; the boy is four years old, and he must learn to read. Some people, struck with a panic fear, lest their children should never learn to read and ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... such a mass of concurrent testimony became irresistible, and we were driven to the conclusion that the things described had really happened. The question then arose, how they could have happened. Not from mere military license, for the discipline of the German Army is proverbially stringent, and its obedience implicit. Not from any special ferocity of the troops, for whoever has traveled among the German peasantry knows that they are as kindly and good-natured as any people in Europe, and those who can recall the war of 1870 will remember that no charges ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Now this matter, proverbially, is not for discussion, and repetition. Enough that we said nothing more than, "Oh, John, how glad I am!" and "Lorna, Lorna Lorna!" for about five minutes. Then my darling drew back proudly, with blushing cheeks, and tear-bright eyes, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... its credulity. What the former says about doubting on account of inaccuracy in the detail of the phthisical symptoms, is a mere fetch, as the Cockneys have it, in order to make a very few little children believe that it, the Post, is not quite so stupid as a post proverbially is. It knows nearly as much about pathology as it does about English grammar—and I really hope it will not feel called upon to blush at the compliment. I represented the symptoms of M. Valdemar as "severe," to be sure. I put an extreme case; for it was necessary that I should leave on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Proverbially careful and judicious in the expenditure of money, as may be supposed, in the purchase of his supplies on this occasion Doctor Hanchett quite outshone himself. Besides the indispensable pans and shovels and picks with which every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... on several of these occasions, to make a few statements in reply to some of the orators, and which might possibly have let a little light upon minds willing to know the truth; but I doubted whether even the proverbially good-natured and courteous Palmyrenes might not take umbrage at it. As I turned from one of these little knots of politicians, I encountered Otho, a nobleman of Palmyra and one of the Queen's council. 'I was just asking ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... said was repeated as witty; every thing that her ladyship wore was imitated as fashionable. Female wit sometimes depends on the beauty of its possessor for its reputation; and the reign of beauty is proverbially short, and fashion often capriciously deserts her favourites, even before nature withers their charms. Lady Delacour seemed to be a fortunate exception to these general rules: long after she had lost the bloom of youth, she continued to be admired as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... to be early spring, but the weather is really colder and more disagreeable than any which winter brought us; and, proverbially fickle as spring sunshine and showers are in England, ours is a far more capricious and trying season. Twice during this month have I been a victim to these sudden changes of climate; on the first occasion it was most fortunate that we had reached the shelter of a friendly and hospitable ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... Dashwood, and a Potter, must temper their judgment by remembering the affection that Wilkes was able to inspire in the heart of Churchill. While the scoundrels of Medmenham were ready to betray their old associate, and, with no touch of the honor proverbially attributed to thieves, to drive him into disgrace, to exile, and if possible to death, the loyal friendship of the poet was given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a man of irreproachable character, of unimpeachable morality, or of unswerving austerity. But he was as different from the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... continually about the Indian villages. The most proverbially suspicious of all birds is here familiar and confiding. The Indian exercises superstitious care over them, but whether from love or fear we could never discover. It is very difficult to find out ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... throughout its course, it must not be forgotten that a certain supply exists at the fountain head, within practicable distance, which might be stored and led from the mountains to the lower lands for the purposes of irrigation. When we reflect that in the proverbially wet climate of England there is a considerable difficulty in assuring a supply of wholesome water, and that the various water companies have made enormous profits, it is not surprising that in a neglected island like Cyprus there should be distress in the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... 'Circumstantial evidence is proverbially uncertain, Mr Thompson. That is principally the reason why I was so bent on making him confess if he had anything to confess. I can't expel a boy and ruin his whole career on mere suspicion. The matter must be proved, doubly proved, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... problem of "hereditary disease" that my system will eventually come into its own and will ere long be recognized as the most rational and effectual therapy ever applied since the beginning of the art of healing. It may be years before it is accorded the proverbially tardy acknowledgment of the "orthodox" schools, but that it will, nay must be eventually adopted is virtually a foregone conclusion—that is, if it be indeed the function or policy of the physician of the future to adequately seek to succour the suffering and ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... moment glanced his eyes after the flying cattle, with the longings of a Western Indian. The struggle between thirst for vengeance and cupidity was severe but short. The latter quickly predominated in the bosom of one whose passions were proverbially grovelling; and scarcely a moment intervened between the flight of the animals and the swift pursuit of the guards. The trapper had continued calmly facing his foe, during the instant of suspense ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... giants, robbers, dragons, are proverbially stupid, and a clever hero with more wits than brawn has no difficulty in thoroughly frightening them. Grimm's story of "The Brave Little Tailor" (No. 20), with its incidents of "cheese-squeezing," "bird-throwing," "pretended carrying of the oak-tree," "springing over the cherry-tree," ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... returning thanks at the dinner for the medal. (38/1. The Royal medal was given to Sir Joseph in 1854.) I heard that it was decidedly the best speech of the evening, given "with perfect fluency, distinctness, and command of language," and that you showed great self-possession: was the latter the proverbially desperate courage of a coward? But you are a pretty fellow to be so desperately afraid and then to make the crack speech. Many such an ordeal may you have to go through! I do not know whether Sir William [Hooker] would be ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... looking bright but vague, turned three or four things over in her mind. She remembered that the sister of her interlocutress was the proverbially rich Mrs. Bray, a bankeress or a breweress or a builderess, who had so big a house that she couldn't fill it unless she opened her doors, or her mouth, very wide. Rose had learnt more about London society during these lonely months with her mother than she had ever picked up in Hill Street. ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... and not shrinking from any act of cruelty to extort it, moderate taxes, much lower than those imposed by the feudatory princes; arbitrary rule replaced by even-handed justice; the tribunals, once proverbially corrupt, by upright judges whose example is already beginning to make its influence felt on native morality and notions of right; no more Pindarris, no more armed bands of thieves; perfect security in the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... is proverbially a dog's berth. He is neither officer nor man. The men do not respect him as an officer, and he is obliged to go aloft to reef and furl the topsails, and to put his hands into the tar and slush, with the rest. The crew call him the "sailor's waiter," as he ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... last. Henri did not pause, but with a flying dash he sprang like a spread eagle, arms and legs extended, right into the bear's bosom. At the same moment he sent his long hunting-knife down into its heart. But Bruin is proverbially hard to kill, and although mortally wounded, he had strength enough to open his jaws and close them ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... that in this line his attempts were few and far between, and not always successful. He had seen, however, that the professor, though not exactly poking fun at him, had nevertheless intended a sly touch of irony upon his proverbially prosing character. He therefore determined to "be up to him," as the fancy have it; and having somewhere found the copy of an obsolete satirical epic which an enamored snuff-taker had once addressed to a mistress, who could ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... 'political or military vaticination' is proverbially unsafe, and therefore to be carefully avoided by all judicious inquirers, and especially by practical statesmen, it must at the same time be admitted that some of the general laws controlling such events ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the small change of life, may separately appear of little intrinsic value, but they acquire their importance from repetition and accumulation. They are like the spare minutes, or the groat a day, which proverbially produce such momentous results in the course of a twelvemonth, or ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... but more steady and, therefore, in the end accomplished as much. In some kinds of labor the older men did better than the younger because usually more patient of detail and less restive in monotonous toil. In the larger enterprises older men are proverbially less speculative, more conservative, less venturesome than the young. American business would, perhaps, not suffer if a larger admixture of these qualities were found in all the walks ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... "in the isle that is called Patmos:"—but he does not say who sent him there. Historians tell us that he was banished by Domitian, the Roman emperor; others say, by Nero; but the former is more probable. This island is proverbially barren. It is situated among a number of islands in the Aegean sea, a point of the Mediterranean running northward between Europe and Asia, and not very remote from most ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... father's return to sanity and his office, he felt that he could never regard his position as wholly satisfactory; on the other hand, though a sick lion may possibly be compared with a live dog, a defunct lion is proverbially out of the running. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... If all this be a truthful picture, and really we see no reason for doubt, it does but add another to the many proofs of the springing elasticity of that element of light-hearted short-sightedness which is so proverbially characteristic of the French. But we will say no more, for our paper has already exceeded the limits we had assigned to it; and the things that are must ever prevail in our pages over ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,—through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor thus describes the trip ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... odes written after the War, was Lowell more completely the poet. For it is well known that his was a divided nature, so variously endowed that complete integration was difficult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented that steady concentration of powers which poetry demands. She is proverbially the most jealous of mistresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance. At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as primarily a poet: but in the next fifteen years he had become a professor, had devoted long periods to study in Europe, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... his schoolfellow Adrian IV. had become Pope; what a different tale there might have been to tell! Who will presume to point out the necessity by which these things were thus and not otherwise? "Regrets for what 'might have been' are proverbially idle," cries the historian from whom I have chiefly quoted. I do not recollect the proverb, unless he refers to "It is no use crying over spilt milk;" but in any case such regrets are far from being necessarily idle. "What ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... without the trouble of knocking from house to house, and the pain of being observed by the whole street, while the footman is examining him from the area. Some few may be seen in England about the inns of court, where the locality is favorable (where, however, the owners of the chambers are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the harvest must be poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,—fat, smooth-tongued, and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who would be insulted almost by the offer of silver, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long-legged bondholder of a devil come up with the honest Dutchman? It serves him right: why did he put his name to stamped paper? And yet we should not wonder if some lucky chance should turn up in the burgomaster's favor, and his infernal creditor lose his labor; for one so proverbially cunning as yonder tall individual with the saucer eyes, it must be confessed that he has ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... schooner and bring her to action before nightfall; for, with bad weather threatening, unless we could succeed in doing this, there was every likelihood of her giving us the slip during the hours of darkness. A stern-chase is proverbially a long chase, and a chase to windward is apt to be even longer, while a start of some ten miles, under such circumstances, must necessarily prove a heavy handicap to the pursuing vessel; nevertheless I was not without hope that, difficult as our task threatened to be, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Kaisarieh, about ten miles west of the latter city. A long caravan of camels was moving majestically up the road, headed by a little donkey, which the devedejee (camel-driver) was riding with his feet dangling almost to the ground. That proverbially stubborn creature moved not a muscle until we came alongside, when all at once he gave one of his characteristic side lurches, and precipitated the rider to the ground. The first camel, with a protesting grunt, began to sidle off, and the broadside movement continued down the line till the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... friend Frank Kennedy," said he to himself (at least we presume so, for there was no one else within earshot to whom he could have said it, except the door-post, which every one knows is proverbially a deaf subject). "No man in the settlement drives so furiously. I shouldn't wonder if he ran against the corner of the new fence now. Ha! just so—there ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Fate cannot be done by a reed which is proverbially weak or by a stick which is cut cross-grained and hence will split easily. She does not take her arrow at random from all the poor and weak weapons which life offers, but ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... the post were cleared away and uprooted respectively by that evening. Late summer weather is proverbially treacherous, and during dinner-time Mrs Collins sent up to ask for a little brandy, because her husband had took a nasty chill and she was afraid he would not be able to do much ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... affording a definite chronology, of course such calculations as these are of no value; but they have much use in fixing one's attention upon a possible minimum. A man may be puzzled if he is asked how long Rome took a-building; but he is proverbially safe if he affirms it not to have been built in a day; and our geological calculations are all, at present, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... London are sober, trustworthy, and courageous men, but as a body they are sadly wanting in intelligence. Knowing this, the authorities took into consideration a scheme, which looked plausible enough on paper, for availing themselves of the services of that proverbially sharp class of men, the experienced clerks in attorney's offices. Among the persons whose advice was sought on this point, I was the only one who dissented from the arrangement proposed. I felt certain that the really experienced clerks intrusted with conducting private investigations ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... proverbially cautious," she answered carelessly, but Foster thought he saw a gleam of interest in her eyes. "I suppose somebody has been ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... understand why it lasted so long. Mr. Hutchinson concludes that all the evidence tends to show that the disease had probably been communicated from the blood of an infected person through the bite of the insect. It thus appears that even the proverbially trivial fleabite may at times ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... kind of liquid enamel for the decoration of cheap furniture?[13] Or let us turn to an impulse closely allied to the artistic—namely, the desire for speculative truth, as manifested in the lives of scientific and philosophic thinkers. These men—such as Kant and Hegel, for example—have been proverbially, and often ludicrously, indifferent to the material details of their existence. Who can suppose that the disinterested passion for truth, which had the effect of making these men forget their dinners, will stimulate others to ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... me for my pains, my boy, but youth is proverbially ungrateful. You will think better of my efforts a few years hence; meanwhile I can afford to wait for the verdict of your riper judgment, Jacker—I can ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... memorandum book he kept, pen-portraits of the people he met. 'Dr Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and application can do. Natural parts like his are frequently to be met with; his vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance.' The Lord Advocate he pictured in ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... desired to know who John Hobb was, and the Doctor was forced to acknowledge him a quite mythical character, whose name in that part of the world stood proverbially for incompetence. After that when any of the four made a mistake he or she was promptly dubbed John Hobb. For once the unwritten law was unobserved, and it was long past ten when the party broke up, Eve and the Doctor having captured the best of a series ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... under pretence of wishing to be reconciled, invited them to a banquet, at the conclusion of which he called for the fruit, a signal for the assassins to rush in and dispatch those whom he had marked for destruction. Hence, adds Landino, it is said proverbially of one who has been stabbed, that he has had some of the friar Alberigo's fruit. Thus Pulci, Morg. Magg. c. xxv. Le ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... to have counted them himself with the point of a dagger. But this punishment he believed to be still too lenient. A general massacre of the men was commanded, and no less than 20,000 women and children were made into slaves. To this day the proverbially easy morals of the Kerman women are attributed to the Afghan invasion, when the women became the concubines of soldiers and lost all respect for themselves; and so is the importation of the dreadful disease which in its most virulent form is pitifully common in a ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... or not, these signs were a canonical part of the story by the time Euripides wrote. Every one who knew the story of Orestes' return at all, knew of the hair and the footprint. Aristophanes in the Clouds (534 ff.) uses them proverbially, when he speaks of his comedy "recognising its brother's tress." It would have been frivolous to invent new ones. As a matter of fact, it seems probable that the signs are older than Aeschylus; neither they nor the word [Greek: homopteros] particularly suit Aeschylus' ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... have no admiration for the Northmen," Rudolph Musgrave declared, stiffly. "They were a rude and barbarous nation, proverbially addicted ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Antinous, known as Jonas Prescott, had wandered from his father's forge in Lancaster down the Bay Path to Sudbury. Mary and he had met, and the lingering of their parting boded ill for any predestination not stamped with their joint seal of consent. With that lack of astuteness proverbially exhibited by parents disappointed in match-making designs upon their children, the vexed father and mother began a course of vigorous repression, and thereby riveted more firmly than ever the chains which the errant young blacksmith and his apprentice Cupid had forged. In due time, they ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... speaking on missionary work, almost invariably dwell on its material and civilizing rather than its spiritual aspects. They do not, as officials, feel that the salvation of men from sin and the command of Christ to evangelize all nations are within their sphere. Moreover, diplomacy is proverbially and necessarily cautious. Its business is to avoid risks, and, of course, to advise others to avoid them. The political situation, too, was undeniably uncertain and delicate. The future was big with possibility of peril. In such circumstances, we should ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... of No. 13 Primrose Terrace a little man, wearing a gray felt hat and a red neck-tie, stood admiring himself in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Such a state of things anywhere else would have had no significance whatever; but circumstances proverbially alter cases. At 13 Primrose Terrace it approached the dimensions of ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... muse) to set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range or, boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan. So long did the artist waver between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion, he had finally conceived and completed both designs. With the proverbially tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifice either of these offsprings of his art; and decided to expose them on alternate days. 'In this way,' he thought, 'I shall address myself indifferently to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... fact, however, it has played a comparatively small part in the world's annals. Almost all the great campaigns have been fought out in the lowlands. It is Belgium, for instance, and not Switzerland, that has been proverbially the battle-ground of Europe. Napoleon and Suwaroff marched armies through the Alps, but only as a means of striking unexpectedly at the enemy who occupied the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... raised on fish and Johnny-cake, amid the stunted pine swamps and sand-hills of that Lord-forsaken country—Lev never increased it. Lev had an uncle, an old bachelor, without "chick or child," and was reported to be pretty well off. Old man Gunter was proverbially mean, and as usual, heartily despised by one half of the people who knew him. He had a small estate, had lived long, and by his close-fisted manner of life, it was believed that Gunter had laid by a pretty considerable pile of the root of all evil, for something or somebody; ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... rest and ease disturbed and broken, whereof the first feeling and stinging smart admonisheth that he must patiently endure great pain and trouble, and thereunto provide some remedy; as when we say proverbially, to incense hornets, to move a stinking puddle, and to awake a sleeping lion, instead of these more usual expressions, and of a more familiar and plain meaning, to provoke angry persons, to make a thing the worse by meddling with it, and to irritate a testy choleric man when ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... he now entered roused all the slumbering passions of his soul, which lay there, perhaps unconsciously to himself; cruelty, avarice, revenge. He found ample exercise for them in the war with his countrymen; for civil war is proverbially the most sanguinary and ferocious of all. The atrocities recorded of Carbajal, in his new career, and the number of his victims, are scarcely credible. For the honor of humanity, we may trust the accounts are greatly exaggerated; but that he should have given rise to them at all is sufficient ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Resolutions are proverbially frail; and they are so, because they rest not on a mind consolidated by principles, and a heart glowing like a furnace with corresponding feelings. When resting on such a mind and heart, resolutions are not frail; but invincible ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... tormenting squibs were exploded in my eyes. I felt like a rustic pony, who comes in his simple way into town on the Fourth of July, and has Chinese crackers and fiery serpents cast under his heels. One evening, in particular, they asked me to play the game of Comparisons (a proverbially odious game, that could exist only in an effete and degenerate civilization), in which the entire company tried to see how Funny they could be; and because I made stupid answers, I was laughed at ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... my own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is proverbially elaborate," I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, "but in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the really excessively select ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... is proverbially a sad day. It was so with us, but not sadder than the day before. A few shells were sent out among the Boers to ascertain how they got Christmas over them; and they by way of reply made some good practice on the Premier Mine. A water-pipe was mutilated, and a man standing near had the pipe knocked ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... for himself." His sex is popularly coupled with the sense of strength. The illusion conceals his feebleness, and deprives him of help, often of sympathy. It is thus even with regard to the child. Proverbially weak and needing support, the child, nevertheless, is not everywhere a victim in the existing social order. Only in remote sense does the child of the ruling class suffer. The invocation of the "Rights of the Child" leaves substantially untouched the children of the rich. It is otherwise with woman. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... doing by the Republicans who have gone south, and am especially proud of the acknowledged honorable conduct of those from Ohio. The Democrats make a mistake in sending so many ex-Republicans. New converts are proverbially bitter and unfair towards those they have ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... early on the morning of November 29th, in the same steamship, the Nugata Maru, which had brought us from Kobe, being now bound for Hong Kong, through the Yellow and China Seas, a distance of eleven hundred miles. These are proverbially rough waters, and they fully sustained their reputation for the first two days of the voyage. The marvel seemed rather to be that more ships were not lost here, than that so many were. It is really little ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... in a marked improvement With a mighty clout Lawson knocked a home run, and, as there was a man on third, that two. From then on the Cardinals seemed to find themselves. They began coming back in earnest, and everyone "got the habit." Even Joe, proverbially poor hitters as pitchers are supposed to be, did his share, and, by placing a neat little drive, that eluded the shortstop, he brought in ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... passage, may have been employed proverbially in the time of Sophocles. See l. 632. et seq. of the Antigone (ed. Johnson. Londini. 1758. 8vo.); on which passage ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... Essays. But to the philosophical student by far the most important of Treitschke's writings are his two volumes on the Science of Politics, which are, without exception, the most fascinating and the most suggestive political treatise published in this generation. Political treatises are proverbially dull and out of touch with reality. Treitschke's treatise is a solitary exception. To him politics are not, like mathematics, an abstract or a deductive science. We cannot build an ideal political ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... shipboard are proverbially fish out of water. We could not be called by the good old nickname of "lobsters" by the crew. Our gray jackets saved the sobriquet. But we floundered about the crowded vessel like boiling victims in a pot. At last we found our places, and laid ourselves about the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the rise and culmination of the season as keenly as the most active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a looker-on, she enjoyed opportunities of comparison and generalization such as those who take part must proverbially forego. No one could have kept a more accurate record of social fluctuations, or have put a more unerring finger on the distinguishing features of each season: its dulness, its extravagance, its lack of balls or excess of divorces. She had a special ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... decoction instead of an infusion. The consequence of this prolonged action of the hot water on the tea is that it brings out the bitter extractive material of the plant, and it is this which proves so particularly pernicious. Tea at sea is proverbially unpalatable, and invariably disagrees, owing chiefly to the fact that it is a boiled decoction of tea leaves ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... unscrupulous cheat, it was the hypocritical prostitution of the sacred name and character of religion to his own fraudulent impositions upon the poor and the distressed. Outwardly, and to the eye of men, he was proverbially strict and scrupulous in the observation of its sanctions, but outrageously severe and unsparing upon all who appeared to be influenced either by a negligent or worldly spirit, or who omitted the least ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... mental composition—largely given to inventions of low cunning, schemes of mischief and deception, and false and mysterious pretensions. In his moral phrenology the professor might have marked the organ of secretiveness as very large, and that of conscientiousness omitted. He was, however, proverbially good natured, very rarely, if ever, indulging in any combative spirit toward any one, whatever might be the provocation, and yet was never known to laugh. Albeit, he seemed to be the pride of his indulgent father, who has been heard to boast of him ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... advantages of birth, in his secret heart he well knew and fully appreciated the distinction his ancient, if not high lineage conferred on him in a mushroom-place like X——, concerning whose inhabitants it was proverbially said, that not one in a thousand knew his own grandfather. Moreover the Hunsdens, once rich, were still independent; and report affirmed that Yorke bade fair, by his success in business, to restore to ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... counts and marquises were thronging to our shores: not starving and miserable, as one saw them a few years afterwards, but unmolested as yet, and bringing with them some token of their national splendour. I was walking with Lady Lyndon, who, proverbially jealous and always anxious to annoy me, spied out a foreign lady who was evidently remarking me, and of course asked who was the hideous fat Dutchwoman who was leering at me so? I knew her not in the least. I felt I had seen the lady's face somewhere (it was now, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that the subtle intellect of the Greek could be made use of as an instrument of dominion over the other subject nations, the Bulgarian felt the hardship of the state of things in which, as it was proverbially said, his body was in bondage to the Turk and his soul in bondage to the Greek. But we may suspect that this neatly turned proverb dates only from the awakening of a distinctly national Bulgarian feeling ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... in his daily acts the early education of his home. The impressions there made upon him in his young and growing life are proverbially deep and abiding. The circumstances which develop the character of the good farmer in one town, are the circumstances which develop the good farmer wheresoever he may be; but the circumstances which make so many of our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... afraid he wouldn't honor me with his attention. Or perhaps you would prefer alarming Miss Neelie by telling her in plain words that we both think her in danger? Or, suppose you send me to Miss Gwilt, with instructions to inform her that she has done her pupil a cruel injustice? Women are so proverbially ready to listen to reason; and they are so universally disposed to alter their opinions of each other on application—especially when one woman thinks that another woman has destroyed her prospect of making a good marriage. Don't mind me, Mr. Armadale; I'm only a lawyer, and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... wind;' the violence of Laertes and the insurgent Danes is paralleled to an irruption of the sea, 'overpeering of his list;' in the well-known soliloquy is the expression, 'a sea of troubles,' which, in spite of Pope's suggested and tasteless emendation, commentators have shewn to have been used proverbially by the Greeks, and more than once by AEschylus and Menander. Still, Shakspeare, again like Horace, was not insensible to the merits of sea-air in a sanitary point of view. Dionyza, meditating Marina's murder, bids her take what the Brighton doctor's call 'a constitutional' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... consternatis equis excussus Romae periit, qui equi feruntur non ante constitisse quam pervenirent in Capitolium.' The same story is related by Pliny, from whom and other authors, it appears that the word Ratumena was then as proverbially applied to jockies as Jehu in our own days. From the circumstance of the Rotten Row Port (of Glasgow) having stood at the west end of this street, and the Stable Green Port near the east end, which also led to the Archbishop's castle, it is probably not only ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... fisheries in the north of Scotland:—"You are aware that it has been asserted by some of our wisest doctors, that salmon spawn in the sea and in lochs, as well as in rivers. However, as doctors are proverbially allowed to differ, I have this winter been trying to test the fact in the following manner: At the same time that I deposited the spawn from which I made my other experiments, I also placed a basket of the same spawn, with equal care, in a pool ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... I will call him," said the domino, "for so, were he ten devils, I must think him, since I owe to him the honour of conversing with you. And, after all, to give him his due, to which, you know, he is even proverbially entitled, he has shewn such abilities in the performance of his part, so much skill in the display of malice, and so much perseverance in the art of tormenting, that I cannot but respect his ingenuity and capacity. And, indeed, if instead of an ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to choose the trade of arms. A soldier's garb was a rare spectacle, and every child ran to the window to gaze at the passing glitter. Whence should come our fighting men if the bugle should blow? You must have men before you have soldiers. Our institutions raised men. Proverbially the Yankee can turn his hand to anything. He likes to do well what he undertakes. He has a pride in showing himself equal to his position. Above all, he has force of personal character. When a Northern regiment makes a charge, it is not merely the weight of so much physical humanity; there goes ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... variety of answers given to your first query, Miss Hazel. People that want to marry each other are proverbially subject to hindrances—from the days of fairy tales down to ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... haven't kept up with current literature. Take it home and read it! Ned. That is if you're through telling me about my affairs," for Ned, who had formerly worked in the Shopton bank, had recently been made general financial manager of the interests of Tom and his father. The two were inventors and proverbially poor business men, though ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... sustained her reputation for perspicacity. Her conclusions were seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the case of a book, what one read was not always intelligible, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... SPECTACLES are proverbially fit for old eyes. Probably that is the reason why the spectacle of the Twelve Temptations is so dear to the aged eyes of the gray-haired old gentlemen who occupy the front seats at the Grand Opera House. It is certainly a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... backwoodsman and I were thus left free to interchange with our respective "sweethearts" those phrases of delirious endearment—those glances of exquisite sweetness, that only pass between eyes illumined by the light of a mutual love. Proverbially sweet is the month after marriage; but the honeymoon, with all its joys, could not have exceeded in bliss those ante-nuptial hours spent by us in recrossing the prairies. Clear as the sky over our heads was the horoscope of ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... our dignity, in respect of very mean creatures, who are physicians to themselves. The hart that is pursued and wounded, they say, knows an herb, which being eaten throws off the arrow: a strange kind of vomit. The dog that pursues it, though he be subject to sickness, even proverbially, knows his grass that recovers him. And it may be true, that the drugger is as near to man as to other creatures; it may be that obvious and present simples, easy to be had, would cure him; but the apothecary is not so near him, nor the physician ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... The Indians are proverbially famous for the facility with which they attract animals towards them. Bates and Wallace also mention having seen, on several occasions, jaguars perfectly tame, roaming in and out of the huts, as their smaller feline ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... met a party of natives engaged in burning the bush, which they do in sections every year. The dexterity with which they manage so proverbially a dangerous agent as fire is indeed astonishing. Those to whom this duty is especially entrusted, and who guide or stop the running flame, are armed with large green boughs, with which, if it moves in a wrong direction, they beat it out. Their only object in these periodical conflagrations ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... beyond all question. So saying, he made a signal, and forthwith a beautiful young horse, of a brown color, was led, prancing and snorting, to the place. Captain Bonneville was suitably affected by this mark of friendship; but his experience in what is proverbially called "Indian giving," made him aware that a parting pledge was necessary on his own part, to prove that his friendship was reciprocated. He accordingly placed a handsome rifle in the hands of the venerable chief, whose ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... were proverbially infamous as informers, are represented by Juvenal as dreading a still more dangerous ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... of Ellwood's, entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among the proverbially sober ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... name of Rossae Mariance (the dikes of Marius), is filled up nowadays; but at its southern extremity the village of Foz still preserves a remembrance of it. Trained in this severe school, the soldiers acquired such a reputation for sobriety and laborious assiduity, that they were proverbially called Marius's mules. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... about not liking it. Of course some people won't like it. Some people never like any new way of doing things. Food habits are proverbially hard to change. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... add, has been well served by its Curates. "Comparisons are (proverbially) odious," we will not therefore refer to any of these in recent years; but we may take three typical cases of men whose memory is still green ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... considerable delay, The Lady of the Lake appeared in June, 1810; and its success was certainly so extraordinary as to induce me for the moment to conclude that I had at last fixed a nail in the proverbially inconstant wheel of Fortune, whose stability in behalf of an individual who had so boldly courted her favours for three successive times had not as yet been shaken. I had attained, perhaps, that degree of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... what I didn't find out with that screen I just put out. It didn't reach them, and it went so far that the distance is absolutely meaningless, even expressed in parsecs. Well, a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, and I guess this one isn't going to ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... more than an adequate security. Count Timascheff, a Russian nobleman, was evidently rich; to him perhaps, for a proper consideration, a loan might be made: Captain Servadac was a Gascon, and Gascons are proverbially poor; it would never do to lend any money to him; but here was a professor, a mere man of science, with circumscribed means; did he expect to borrow? Certainly Isaac would as soon think of flying, as of lending money to him. Such were the thoughts that made him ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... of the Blue Goose, Hartwell acted on an erroneous concept of the foibles of humanity. The greatness of others is of small importance in comparison with one's own. The one who ignores this truth is continually pulling a cat by the tail, and this is proverbially a hard task. Hartwell's plan was first to create an impression of his own importance in order that it might excite awe, and then, by gracious condescension, to arouse a loyal and respectful devotion. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... the period in which it rises. The Italians proverbially observe that one half of fame depends on that cause. In dark periods, when talents appear they shine like the sun through a small hole in the window-shutter. The strong beam dazzles amid the surrounding gloom. Open the shutter, and the general diffusion of light ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... have always peculiar characteristical destinations, and the ancient tragedians felt so little the want of communications between a hero and his confidant, to make us acquainted with the hero's state of mind and views, that they even introduce as a mute personage so important and proverbially famous a friend as a Pylades. But whatever ridicule was cast on the confidants, and however great the reproach of being reduced to make use of them, no attempt was ever made till the time of Alfieri to get rid ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... at first did not seem to have understood the character of the frigate. Her people were not keeping so good a look-out as were Lord Claymore's crew; when they did, all sail was crowded in flight. Away she went before the wind. A stern chase is proverbially a long one; a tub can sail ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... so epidemic, as in October. It is a time when, in default of being conventionally cold, every one becomes intensely cool. A general chill pervades the domestic virtues: hospitality is aguish, and charity becomes more than proverbially numb. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... at the same time so mixed with kindness, with thoughtful consideration for him, that the wonder was he did not succumb. "I must find out," she said to herself, "whether he does really care for me." How to do so she did not quite know—but woman's wits are proverbially keen. ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... seen them lining the road on a pouring wet night, outside a town already full to overflowing with like unhappy sufferers; the while Belgian soldiers, with fixed bayonets, have prohibited any further entrance to that which promised a lodging place. Soldiers are not proverbially given to overmuch sensitiveness where human suffering is concerned, for a daily intercourse with terrible scenes cannot fail to harden a man, but I declare that I have seen strong men burst into tears as they have gazed at ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... can, for example, improve his muscles by athletics, and his brain by education. The use of organs enlarges and strengthens them; the disuse of parts or faculties weakens them. And so great is the power of habit that it is proverbially spoken of as "second nature." It is thus certain that we can modify the individual. We can strengthen (or weaken) his body; we can improve (or deteriorate) his intellect, his habits, his morals. But there remains the ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... can be inspected. The handwriting of the scrivener in the body of the instrument is quite distinct and legible, considering its antiquity. The signature of Shakespeare appears at the bottom of each sheet. The chirography of men of genius is proverbially bad, generally from its fluent facility, but the autographs of Shakespeare are clumsy, uncouth, and awkward, their disconnected and sprawling letters seeming to have been formed with difficulty ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Mrs. Washington was proverbially kind to her slaves, though not more so than her husband. They constituted a part of her family, for whom she had to provide both in health and sickness. This fact explains several entries in his journal concerning the quantity of provisions used. For example, one entry is, "Although we keep ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... all the events of life are proverbially very uncertain; and it may happen that you may be obliged to do without me; in which case, would it not be well for you to be ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... some account of my daily baths, and on reading over what I have written, I feel quite ashamed of the coldness of the recital of all my delight, the recollection of which makes my mouth water. The reader will observe that I am a Scotchman (proverbially a matter-of-fact race), an old fellow, my enemy would say a slow coach. I might enlarge on my ecstatic delight in my baths, my healthy glow, my light-heartedness, my feelings of elasticity, which made me fancy I could trip along the sward like a patent Vestris. I might ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... man feels most deeply his utterances are the most commonplace, and an Englishman is proverbially incapable of expressing his feelings. In the supreme moments of their lives, it is true, a few men, and those not always the most sincere, may speak eloquently; but for the most part a proposal of marriage from an Englishman is—as it should be—a clumsy thing. Peter Ogilvie could ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan |
