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More "Devoid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a man devoid of honour, I shall not hesitate, for the Manor Cartier has been the home of domestic peace, and madame, who came to us a stranger, deserves well of the people of that ancient abode of chivalry- the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... float In a painted boat On a shimmering morning sea, Or to flirt with a maid In the afternoon shade Seems good enough sport to be; But the evening hour, With its subtle power, Is sweeter and better far, If joined to the joy, Devoid of alloy, That lurks in ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... This was the moment that Marcos had always anticipated. Sarrion wondered why he should have to meet it and not Marcos. Juanita sat motionless with steady eyes fixed on the distant mountains. He looked at her lips and saw there a faint smile not devoid of pity—as if she knew something of which he was ignorant. He pulled himself together; for he was a bold man who faced his fences with ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... is this Mr. Clapp?" asked Mrs. Stanley. "His manners and appearance, whenever I have accidentally seen him with the Hubbards, struck me as very unpleasant: but is it possible he can be so utterly devoid of all principle, as wilfully to countenance ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... always felt in the welfare of the very humblest of his brethren of the lyre, is highly creditable to him. But the extent to which he sacrificed his own interests to serve them, was often any thing but prudent. He was devoid of every sordid and avaricious feeling, and indeed carried his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... nature, is concrete, and has, in spite of universality, nevertheless, a particular and subjective character. By saying, for example, that God is simply One, the Supreme Being as such, we express thereby nothing but a lifeless abstraction of an understanding devoid of reason. Such a God, as indeed he is not conceived in his concrete truth, can furnish no content for art, least of all for plastic art. Thus the Jews and the Turks have not been able to represent their God, who is still more abstract, in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... besides the general crisis, France experiences her own national crises, which, how-ever, are determined by and conditioned upon the general state of the world's market much more than by local French influences. It will not be devoid of interest to contrast the prejudgment of the French bourgeois with the judgment of the English bourgeois. One of the largest Liverpool firms writes in its yearly report of trade for 1851: "Few years ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... signify the Abode of Vacancy or the Abode of the Unsymmetrical. It is an Abode of Fancy inasmuch as it is an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse. It is an Abode of Vacancy inasmuch as it is devoid of ornamentation except for what may be placed in it to satisfy some aesthetic need of the moment. It is an Abode of the Unsymmetrical inasmuch as it is consecrated to the worship of the Imperfect, purposely leaving some ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... impossibility of making any one believe that the American colonies could ever be separated from this country. It was always considered as an idle dream of discontented politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of a speech, but which no practical man, devoid of the spirit of party, considered to be within the limits of possibility. There was a period when the slightest concession would have satisfied the Americans; but all the world was in heroics; one set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, and another ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... are first, its unfaithfulness to its own announced and excellent plan, by subjecting to criticism works neither indecent nor immoral, yet of such trifling importance even in point of size and, according to the critic's own verdict, so devoid of all merit, as must excite in the most candid mind the suspicion, either that dislike or vindictive feelings were at work; or that there was a cold prudential pre-determination to increase the sale of the review by flattering the malignant passions of human nature. That I may not myself ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Administration "Serpent, bite a file!" As to your Eulogium on Lincoln I have not much to say. If he pleases you, well enough, you're easily satisfied. I take it that he is a disgrace to the Chair he occupies; and to judge from his conversations, he is devoid of all sense of refinement & etiquette; to look at his executive powers as displayed thus far, he had better be a Bey than helmsman of the "Old Ship"; and what of his efforts at speeches? In the language of Logan, "I appeal to any white man" ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... Espana. The latter was his only associate in that exile. A long illness preceded his death, although during it he continued to work as if he were healthy and alone. He died after a long life of glorious labor in the islands of the Moros, so devoid of human consolations, but so full of the consolations of heaven—as our blessed Father Francisco Javier certified, who was the first to sow there the seed of the gospel. His death caused great sorrow, because that field of Christendom remained without ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... opinions as a whole, I must own that the Erewhonians are superstitious, on account of the views which they hold of their professed gods, and their entirely anomalous and inexplicable worship of Ydgrun, a worship at once the most powerful, yet most devoid of formalism, that I ever met with; but in practice things worked better than might have been expected, and the conflicting claims of Ydgrun and the gods were arranged by unwritten compromises (for the most part in Ydgrun's favour), which in ninety-nine cases ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... fortunes, good or ill, the contests and exciting experiences interest his readers even partly as much as they did the boys who shared in the actual occurrences. I have tried to write a story filled with action, but devoid of sensationalism and false representations. If my boy friends enjoy the company of the Go Ahead boys I shall ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... conspiracy of silence," he declared. "This man could not have committed suicide. The pistol found on the desk was fully loaded. The clothing is devoid of powder stains. Moreover, a most careful search has failed to reveal any other weapon. Now, someone entered this room and fired the shot. Yet all those clerks maintain that no one has been in here and that they heard no shot, although the door stood open ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... something which, most of all, the young lady had hoped from this temporary acquaintance, viz., religious instruction, she found him indeed as learned on that as on other topics, but cold and devoid of unction. So much so, that one day she said to him, "I can hardly believe you have ever been a missionary." But at that he seemed so distressed that she was sorry for him, and said, sweetly, "Excuse me, Mr. Hazel, my remark was in rather ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... century, and (in Dr. Wright's words) "one of the most learned and versatile men that Syria ever produced." Perhaps no more industrious compiler of knowledge ever lived. Simple and uncritical in his modes of thought, and apparently devoid of any striking originality, he collected in his numerous and elaborate treatises the results of such research in theology, philosophy, science and history as was in his time possible in Syria. Most of his works were written ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... were simply put to death, without any additional torture. Others were imprisoned, scourged, and then put to death; while others again were tortured for days, weeks, and even months, with the most frightful torments. Again, some came to their martyrdom totally devoid of any previous virtue; some even loaded with sin, and unbaptized: but they received a baptism of blood—which made them pure, and deserved for them the high honors of heaven. Nevertheless, the glory that surrounds such is far inferior to that which surrounds those who, like St. John ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... also the Duchess protest against his turning to see her down. Mrs. Brookenham, listening to them, hoped Edward would accept the protest and think it sufficient to leave her with the footman. Their common consciousness that she was a kind of cousin, a consciousness not devoid of satisfaction, was quite consistent with a view, early arrived at, of the absurdity ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... excelled by none in lively, graphic fidelity of touch: whatever was present to his eye and manifest to his ear, he could paint with a life and a humour which Burns seems alone to excel."[41] In private life, Wilson was a model of benevolence and of the social virtues; he was devoid of selfishness, active in beneficence, and incapable of resentment. Before his departure for America, he waited on every one whom he conceived he had offended by his juvenile escapades, and begged their forgiveness; and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, also with woodcuts of a somewhat terrifying aspect, yet not devoid of lively ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... you call them, your suspicions as I call them, are cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of foundation in fact. I can declare no more; except that I have not acted for my own profit or my own pleasure. I have not in this proceeding considered myself. Once again, I think my heart is broken. ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... Vandenesse, by satisfying every need, had suppressed desire, that king of creation, which fills an enormous place in the moral forces. Extreme heat, extreme sorrow, complete happiness, are all despotic principles that reign over spaces devoid of production; they insist on being solitary; they stifle all that is not themselves. Vandenesse was not a woman, and none but women know the art of varying happiness; hence their coquetry, refusals, fears, quarrels, and the all-wise clever foolery with which ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... the merry sunshine, and sang loud. Victory was very near. Nevertheless, after a while the path grew steeper. He needed all his breath for climbing, and the singing died away. On the right and left rose huge rocks, devoid of lichen or moss, and in the lava-like earth chasms yawned. Here and there he saw a sheen of white bones. Now too the path began to grow less and less marked; then it became a mere trace, with a footmark here ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... a beautiful story. He had been taught to realize his need of her. It was a part of his constitution. The same is true now wherever woman is appreciated. The felt want is the recognition of the fact. A wife chosen by one's parents, not by himself, is devoid of all of those special characteristics which distinguish her where processes of love begin, go on, deepen and tighten, until the bond is woven ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... the women in this region are very pretty and characteristic, and many of the females are themselves not devoid of beauty, as beauty goes among the Mongols. Particularly do I notice one to-day, whose tiny, doll-like extremities are neatly bound with red, blue, and green ribbon; her face is a picture of refinement, her head-dress ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... revival of Belgian Arts and Letters which followed shortly after the 1830 Revolution is one of the most striking examples of the influence exercised by political events on intellectual activity. For over a century the nation had been devoid of self-expression, and during the fifteen years of Union with Holland scarcely any notable works were produced. No doubt this time, being one of economic recovery, was not favourable to the efflorescence of Art and Letters, but the intense activity of the period of independence ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... Hours, or Contes Tartares, have as little of the Tartar as those above mentioned of the Chinese, but if somewhat verbose, they are not wholly devoid of literary quality. The substance is, as in nearly all these cases, Arabian Nights rehashed; but the hashing is not seldom done secundum artem, and they have, with the Les Sultanes de Gujerate and Nouveaux Contes Orientaux, which follow ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... England was devoid of food, Men bade me breed the coney and I bought Timber and wire-entanglements and hewed Fair roomy palaces of pine-wood wrought, Wherein our first-bought sedulously gnawed And every night escaped and ran abroad; Yet she was lovely and we named her Maud, And if she ate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... man not devoid of wisdom. Fine clothes sometimes went with a long purse, and a long purge might do wonders to help the comfort of any prisoner in London, as well as the comfort of his keeper. Truly his eyes opened wide as he saw the contents of the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... conversational reserve arose, not from his having to deal with an unfamiliar language,—for he had picked up a picturesque and varied vocabulary with ease,—but from his natural temperament. He was devoid of curiosity, and utterly unimpressed by anything but the purely business concerns of those he served. Domestic secrets were safe with him; his indifference to your thoughts, actions, and feelings had all the contempt which ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the design is not so ill-conceived; I note some progress; but your drawing's bad— Yes, bad, sir. Mark you how this leg hangs limp, As though devoid of life; these hands seem clenched, Not loosely clasped, as you intended them. [He takes his pencil and makes a few strokes. Thus should it stand—a single line will mend. And here, what's this? Why, 't is a sloven's work. You dance too many nights away, young gallant. You shirk close labor ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... and Tesreau for the Giants. Wood pitched for one inning and was hammered in every direction by the New York players, who ran riot on the field. They simply overwhelmed Boston and this contest, more than any other in the series, was so "one sided" as to be devoid of interest, except to the New York fans, who were eager to see the Giants win the championship. Devore, the first batter, hit safely to left field. Doyle rapped a single to center. Devore and Doyle made a double steal and that began the fireworks. Snodgrass ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... apology for the practices into which Defoe, gradually, we may reasonably believe, allowed himself to fall. The substance of the apology has been crystallized into an aphorism by the author of Becky Sharp, but it has been, no doubt, the consoling philosophy of dishonest persons not altogether devoid of ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... by small and slow increments, had grown at length to two hundred and fifty a year. Himself a small and slow person, he had every reason to be satisfied with this progress, and hoped for no further advance. He was of eminently sober mind, profoundly conscientious, and quite devoid of social ambition,—points of character which explained the long intimacy between him and Stephen Lord. Yet one habit he possessed which foreshadowed the intellectual composition of his son,—he loved to write letters to the newspapers. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Bible characterizes the fool as a man "without a heart," and it is probably in the same sense that modern Arabs describe the brute creation as devoid of hearts. The fox in the narrative just given knew better. Not so, however, the lady who brought a curious question for her Rabbi to solve. The case to which I refer may be found in the Responsa Zebi Hirsch. Hirsch's credulous questioner asserted that she had purchased a live cock, but ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... a young lady who prided herself on her aristocratic appearance and position, that she played like a kitchen maid; or he would even write to her mother and say that he gave it up, that it would kill him if he went on long bothering about a girl so devoid of talent. All of which did not improve his position. His few pupils left him; he could not keep any of them more than a few months. His mother argued with him; he would argue with himself. Louisa made him promise that at least he would not break ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that evolution may have developed a being who can withstand the rigors of the Martian climate, or that the race—if it ever did exist—has perished. In other words, the existence of intelligent life on Mars, where the rare atmosphere is nearly devoid of oxygen and water and where the nights are much colder than our Arctic winters, is not impossible but is completely unproven. The possibility of intelligent life also existing on the planet Venus ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... restrain his body by asceticism and the observance of vows. And, O king, free from guile and with a cheerful spirit, one should, according to his power, bestow gifts, after going down to the recipient and paying him homage. A truth-telling person attaineth a life devoid of trouble. A person void of anger attaineth sincerity, and one free from malice acquireth supreme contentment. A person who hath subdued his senses and his inner faculties, never knoweth tribulation; nor is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of some dark street, and rush upon the first man that comes along, demanding, "Your money or your life," is but a poor business, devoid of all prestige, and long since given ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... and on each side four others, all arched and open. The structure is of a very ordinary kind, both in workmanship and material; the pavement within is similar to that used for streets in this country; and the walls are entirely devoid of sculpture or any other architectural ornament. But it derives no small interest from the popular belief that it is the very house which Peter inhabited at the time of his being called from his boat to follow the Messias. It is manifest, notwithstanding, that it must have ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... these truths for a clear understanding of the truths themselves! If the preceding disquisition, with all its subtlety and all its obscurity, should answer no other purpose, it will still have been neither purposeless, nor devoid of utility, should it only lead us to sympathize with the strivings of the human intellect, awakened to the infinite importance of the inward oracle [Greek: gnothi seauton]—and almost instinctively shaping its course of search in conformity with the Platonic intimation:—[Greek: ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... of comparison, arise, does insanity make its appearance. The untutored savage, living in a state of communism, is untroubled by the jealousies and heart-burnings of his civilized congener. He lives in the to-day and allows the to-morrow to take care of itself. Devoid of ambition, a mere animal, sensual and indolent, he cares only for the gratification of his physical desires. The mental attributes of a civilized ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... in its school matches has this peculiarity. However badly it may seem to stand, there is always something up its sleeve. In this case it was a professional, a man indecently devoid of anything in the shape of nerves. He played the bowling with a stolid confidence, amounting almost to contempt, which struck a chill to the hearts of the School bowlers. It did worse. It induced them to bowl with the sole object of getting ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... them to be not only the brave, self reliant, proud people who have from time to time withstood our nation's armies in defense of their rights, but also a people amiable, affectionate, truthful, and communicative. Nor are they devoid of a sense of humor. With only few exceptions, I found them genial. Indeed, the old chief, Tus-te-nug-ge, a man whose warwhoop and deadly hand, during the last half century, have often been heard and felt among the Florida swamps ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... be as devoid of brains as the empty cap you pelted, Philip, or you never would have engaged ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... was Greek or Roman: but a very splendid Polish Missal, in 8vo. which belonged to Sigismund, King of Poland, in the sixteenth century, seemed worthy of especial notice. The letters are graceful and elegant; but the style of art is heavy, although not devoid of effect. The binding is crimson velvet, with brass knobs, and a central metallic ornament—apparently more ancient than the book itself. This latter may have been ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... any hypothesis put forward must satisfactorily account for the phenomena sought to be explained and accounted for. The Aether was conceived in order to explain the phenomena of light, and one of the properties it was conceived to possess was elasticity, yet that very conception was devoid of the most fundamental property of matter, without which there is no elasticity, that is, that it ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... and that if he and the other head men announced that I had parted with her for a hundred dollars, the entire population of Utiroa would arise as one man and curse them as mean creatures; also they (the people) would refuse to use the boat, and he, Kaibuka, would be regarded as a hog—a man devoid of gratitude to the white man who had been kind to ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... interesting problem whether he was absolutely devoid of sense, or miserably wanting in spirit. Did he know his lady's ways and condone them, or was he a mere blind, doting fool? It was a point to be discussed over the teacups in snug little drawing-rooms, or with the aid ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... former step, too, will conduce to this, and be its natural consequence. I do not mean alone that loose and vagrant sentiment which commonly passes for patriotism, which is aroused at some particular occasion and slumbers the rest of the time; which is spasmodic, temporary, impulsive, and devoid of principle; but that love of country founded on knowledge and conviction; a living faith of the heart based upon duty and principle; and which is, therefore, all-pervading, abiding, intelligent, governing thought and action, and conforming the life to the inner spirit. That sort of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... devoid of interest. We arrived in Chicago without accident or delay, and apartments were secured for us at the Tremont House, where we remained one week. At the expiration of this time Mrs. Lincoln decided that living at the hotel was attended with ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... action, we shall find the mark of inferiority upon every thing which has sprung from ennui. In philosophy, it might produce the follies of Cynic oddity, but not the sublime lessons of Pythagoras or Socrates. In poetry, it may produce effusions from persons of quality, devoid of wit, but it never could have pointed the satire of Pope. In the mechanic arts it may contrive a balloon, but never could invent a steam-boat. In religion, it stumbles at a thousand knotty points in metaphysical theology, but it never led the soul to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... full of trouble and apprehension. It was the full-length cabinet likeness of a plainly dressed young woman with a pretty, slack face. And the face's weakness was half redeemed by a stamp of settled sadness that was not devoid of a certain dignity. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... House of Commons,—that chaste assembly, where the never-failing subject of reproach against Mr. Pitt was the not being of an amorous temperament; but they had not hitherto prevailed against the stout earl's celibacy. It is true that if he was devoid of a wife, he had secured to himself plenty of substitutes; his profession was that of a man of gallantry; and though he avoided the daughters, it was only to make love to the mothers. But his lordship had now attained a certain age, and it was at last ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his court to M. d'Orleans, by telling him that the prisoner had uttered nothing which concerned him, and by representing the services he did M. d'Orleans with the King. Like a sagacious man, D'Argenson saw the madness of popular anger devoid of all foundation, and which could not hinder M. d'Orleans from being a very considerable person in France, during a minority that—the age of the King showed to be pretty near. He took care, therefore, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... hygiene and sanitary science. However true this may be in regard to civic and rural life it certainly does not apply to prison and military existence. We were occupying the quarters normally assigned to recruits. Yet Sennelager was absolutely devoid of the most primitive features of a safe sanitary system. There was an open cesspool within a stone's throw of the barracks, the stench from which, during the heat of the summer, may be better imagined than described. No disinfectants whatever were used, and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... 1830, to mingle in thought with those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that were so old that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... and honest and pure in conduct and possessed of ascetic merit. They should be waited upon whose triple possessions, viz., knowledge (of the Vedas), origin and acts, are all pure, and association with them is even superior to (the study of the) scriptures. Devoid of the religious acts as we are, we shall yet reap religious merit by association with the righteous, as we should come by sin by waiting upon the sinful. The very sight and touch of the dishonest, and converse and ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... King! Infinite, Eternal Love—alone of all beings devoid of self-love! Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... to the enemy; some actually betrayed their trust; some even were found who undertook the trade of piracy themselves. It was in this condition, that Edric, Duke of Mercia, a man of some ability, but light, inconstant, and utterly devoid of all principle, proposed to buy a peace from the Danes. The general weakness and consternation disposed the king and people to take this pernicious advice. At first 10,000l. was given to the Danes, who retired with this money and the rest of their plunder. The English were now, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... trick of looking straight into any other eyes they met, not boldly, but with a kind of virginal fearlessness and enterprise that people often found embarrassing. Indeed she was extremely virginal and devoid of the usual fringe of feminine airs and graces, a nymph of the woods and waters, who although she was three and twenty, as yet recked little of men save as companions whom she liked or disliked according to her instincts. For the rest she was sweetly ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... range, thus defined, separates the valley of the Nerbudda from the valleys of the Tapti flowing west, and the Mahanadi flowing east. The Vindhyan sandstones certainly are a formation of immense antiquity, perhaps pre-Silurian. They are azoic, or devoid of fossils; and it is consequently impossible to determine exactly their geological age, or 'horizon' (ibid. p. xxiii). The cappings of basalt, in some cases with laterite superimposed, suggest many difficult problems, which will be ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... was the writer, and the merchant told me, in answer to my inquiry that it was a man covered with a red cloak, whom he had taken for a Frenchman. I knew enough to convince me that the Unknown was not entirely devoid of generous feeling. In my new house I found all arranged in the best style; a shop, moreover, full of wares, finer than any I had ever had. Ten years have elapsed since then; more in compliance with ancient custom, than because it is necessary, ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... the moment of incidence, would probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man, and force him, in sheer self-respect, to renounce kissing as he has renounced leap-frog and walking on stilts. Only a woman (for women are quite devoid of aesthetic feeling) could survive so damning ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... with courtly grace stretched out his hand to the conquered youth, saying, "Thank the noble lady of Montfaucon for your life and liberty. But if you are so totally devoid of all goodness as to wish to resume the combat, here am I; let it be ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Harold's face, and he saw the man start. He had not forgotten the name. Just for an instant his face was stark pale and devoid of expression. "Virginia!" he cried. "My God, what do ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... may be as devoid of reality as words, and most minds require something external to quicken thought and fill up the emptiness of their silences. So we have symbols, whose doctrine is here most eloquently expounded. Man is not ruled ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... years: but at fifty, alas! or still later, where would he be? From the great Sabbath where thronged the people of far villages, he would be bringing home a strange woman for his youthful mistress, a woman hard, heartless, devoid of ruth, who would rob her of her son, her seat by the fire, her bed, of the very house which she herself ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... instinctive effort of the poet's inspiration to soar above the limitations of time and to liberate itself from the transient accretions of a living, and therefore constantly changing, mode of speech. He strove after an enfranchisement of utterance, devoid of stratifying peculiarities, assignable to no age or epoch, and understood of all. A soul-shaking thought, prevalent throughout Christendom, was felt imaginatively by a highly endowed poet, and, like impetuous volcanic fires that fling heavenward mighty fragments and ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... that if any proof can be produced of the crimes which calumny has imputed to them, they are worthy of the most severe punishment. They provoke the punishment, and they challenge the proof. At the same time they urge, with equal truth and propriety, that the charge is not less devoid of probability, than it is destitute of evidence; they ask, whether any one can seriously believe that the pure and holy precepts of the gospel, which so frequently restrain the use of the most lawful enjoyments, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... must see him," she said, as the door closed, "and, not being entirely devoid of curiosity, I can't help feeling awfully glad to think that now ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... at bottom. But he 's English, and he lives in the country. So, a true English country gentleman, he has perhaps an exaggerated passion for the pleasures of the chase—and when questions touching them arise, seems simply to be devoid of the ethical sense. He 's not a whit worse than his human neighbours—and he 's a hundred times handsomer ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... clearing, there was no doubt about that; soon it would be quite gone, but it would be a very dark night, the stars would hardly show, and the moon was now long down. He was not at all sure of being able to find his way across this undulating country, so entirely devoid of prominent features, in a very dark night. Rather he was nearly sure that he could not do it; and though he had a by no means low opinion of Julia's abilities, he did not think that she could either. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... no task before us but to follow General Lee into private life, and present a few details of his latter years, and his death. These notices will be brief, but will not, we hope, be devoid of interest. The soldier who had so long led the Confederate armies was to enter in his latter days upon a new field of labor; and, if in this field he won no new glories, he at least displayed the loftiest virtues, and exhibited that rare combination of greatness and gentleness which makes up ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Jupiter slew Caecius, and the cows are recovered. The language of the myth is so significant, that the Hindu commentators of the Veda have themselves given explanations of it similar to those proposed by modern philologists. To them the legend never became devoid of sense, as the myth of Geryon appeared to Greek scholars like ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... continued my course straight for Perth, travelling in a south by east direction. The next two and a half miles led us to the top of a low range. The whole tract of country between this point and the river was arid and barren in the extreme, being devoid of all vegetation but a stunted prickly scrub, and on it we saw no signs either of animal life or water. We here for the first time since quitting Moresby's Flat-topped Range saw that the one to the east of us became well wooded, the interval ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... the kitten cuddled between them, they rapidly made each other's acquaintance, and soon became good friends. They were not at all alike, for Stella Martin was a thin, pale child with a long braid of straight, light hair, and light blue eyes. She was timid, too, and absolutely devoid of Marjorie's impetuosity and daring. But they were both pleased at the discovery that they were to be near neighbors throughout the summer. Stella's home was next-door to Grandma Sherwood's, although, as both country places were ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... his funds in the new town. He was a prudent man, and when the proposal was made him by the two proprietors to join them in the enterprise, he was disinclined to do so. They were irreligious men, stirring, energetic workers, but devoid of interest in "things unseen," and therefore could not be expected to care for the present and future moral condition of the settlement. Yet we should do them the justice to say that they were not indifferent to the religious welfare of their village, only that, not being ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... for their use. The reader must bear in mind, however, that it is upon the tasteful use of phrases and cadences, that is, upon the tasteful employment of variation in radical pitch, that the melody of uttered language depends; and that if it be devoid of this melody, it is both wearisome and unimpressive to ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... said Lingard, without looking at him, "when I come to see Lakamba, or any of Lakamba's servants, I am never hungry and never thirsty. Tau! Savee! Never! Do you think I am devoid of reason? ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... our dear governor; upon no special mental train did he go careering through life. Eminently he preferred the parliamentary pace: and I am bound to say the life-journey so performed was beautiful exceedingly, with waits not devoid of interest at little stations utterly outside his profession, with kindly talk to little children, and timid women, and feeble men; with a pleasant smile for most with whom he came in contact, and time for words of kindly advice which did not fall perpetually ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... graceful young woman. Her face, of a fine oval shape, was devoid of ruddy hues; yet it was more white than pale; the clear dark grey eyes shining with health, and the mouth being red and beautiful. The hair was dark, abundant, and devoid of gloss, and she had the advantage of a graceful and cordial manner, and a ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... at Newport, and not be able to afford the wife a fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the servants enough food to keep them from constantly deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen, the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort, where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole time, are witnesses to what such families consider economy. Economy in the view of some is undisguised slipshod slovenliness in the home circle for the sake of fine clothes to be shown abroad; ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and, as he watched him replacing the chain, he saw that he wore a peculiar black gown like a priest's cassock reaching to the feet. It was altogether a lugubrious figure of a man, sinister and funereal, yet it seemed in perfect harmony with the general character of its surroundings. The hall was devoid of furniture of any kind, and against the dingy walls stood rows of old picture frames, empty and disordered, and odd-looking bits of wood-work that appeared doubly fantastic as their shadows danced queerly over the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... there was a general stir and a cessation of chatter, I remember throwing a scornful glance at him, as also that he began his discourse with a sentence which I thought devoid of meaning. I had expected the lecture to be, from first to last, so clever that not a word ought to be taken from or added to it. Disappointed in this, I at once proceeded to draw beneath the heading "First Lecture" with which I had adorned my beautifully-bound notebook no less ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... remarks by stating that I regard you as a lovable fat-head devoid of sufficient mental energy to pound the proverbial sand into the proverbial rat-hole. Now, then, what do you want me to do to save ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the poet—had as yet denied him, in love, the "baptism of sorrow" which has wrung immortal verse from the lips of frailer men. It may even be questioned whether all Browning's poetry of love's tragedy will live as long as a few stanzas of Musset's Nuits,—bare, unadorned verses, devoid of fancy or wit, but intense and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... was the same with architecture, for it was necessary to build, and as form and good methods were lost by the death of good artists and the destruction of good buildings, those who devoted themselves to this profession built erections devoid of order or measure, and totally deficient in grace, proportion or principle. Then new architects arose who created that style of building, for their barbarous nations, which we call German, and produced some works which are ridiculous to our modern eyes, but appeared ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... being blind and insensible, or for having too little penetration and understanding to perceive the force of those natural proofs on which the existence of the Deity has been founded. A God full of equity cannot punish men for having been blind or devoid of reason. The Freethinkers, as foolish as they are supposed, are beings less insensible than those who make professions of believing in a God full of qualities that destroy one another; they are less ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... enjoyed life to its very dregs. He gives dinners, plays at dice, he keeps women, but his heart remains cold and empty, he disbelieves in love, and only cares for absolute freedom in all his actions, but withal his life seems shallow and devoid of interest. Every month he engages a new female slave, with whom he idles away his days, but at the end of this time she is discarded. His antipathy for love partly arises from the knowledge of his ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... commenced, and was carried on in such a manner as to shock the feelings of any one not entirely devoid of the milk of ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... my experiment is easily explained. The Cetonia-larva is alive in every sense. True, I have, by means of bonds, suppressed its outward movements, in order to provide the nurseling with a quiet meal, devoid of danger; but it was not in my power to subdue its internal movements, the quivering of the viscera and muscles irritated by its forced immobility and by the Scolia's bites. The victim is in possession of its full power of sensation; and it expresses the pain experienced as best ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... short laugh failed to hide his annoyance. "You will find nothing in this direction," said he, "to account for the condition I have mentioned to you. Mrs. Packard is utterly devoid of superstition. That I made sure of before signing the lease of this old house. But I forgot; you are doubtless ignorant of its reputation. It has, or rather has had, the name of being haunted. Ridiculous, of course, but a fact with which Mrs. Packard has had to contend ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded. For if you came to that, why might not men, as well as women, be divided into the same three classes, and be pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid than their gentle judges of reason? Moreover, I knew, both from my own sense, and from the greatest of all great poets, that there are, and always have been, plenty of women, good, and gentle, warm-hearted, loving, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... though the proud should pass thee by, And curl their haughty lips with scorn; Like thee, they soon must droop and die, For all of woman born, Are journeying to a shadowy land, Where each devoid of pride must stand, By hovering wings of angels' fanned; There sorrow can assail thee never— Hope ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the Young Fogey, "Plato was a great thinker. In truth, the only incorrigible rogue is he who is devoid of ideals, who has allowed his ethical nature to disintegrate. Such a one ceases to be a person. He has lost the integrating factor—the moral—which binds human personality together. He is a mere aggregation of random impulses. The last stage of moral decay is ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the habit of saying. The older and more solid things,—articles of household stuff that stand the wear of half a century,—had been in the Small House when they came to it. There was, therefore, a question of buying new furniture for a house in Guestwick,—a question not devoid of importance to the possessor of so moderate an income as that owned by Mrs Dale. In the first month or two they were to live in lodgings, and their goods were to be stored in some friendly warehouse. Under such ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... are minute vegetable organisms devoid of chlorophyll and multiplying by repeated bipartitions. They consist of single cells, which may be spherical, oblong or cylindrical in shape, or of filamentous or other aggregates of cells. They ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... God, but the very contrary. Nor is it any consolation to be told that this totality, though not personal, is "super-personal." Such a super-personal Absolute or Whole, to quote Dr. Ballard's penetrating criticism, "is devoid of just those elements which for human experience constitute personality. To our power of vision it matters nothing whether we say that the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum are super-visible or invisible. The pertinent truth is that they are not visible. So, too, that which ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... was harassed by burdensome debts. He was a gambler, too, and, of course, devoid of moral principle. His object was to pay his debts with ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... which alone in ordinary cases at least the poet had to make his choice, further favoured a stock-model treatment. Such a comedy almost of necessity rejected the lyrical element in the older comedy—the chorus—and confined itself from the first to conversation, or at most recitation; it was devoid not of the political element only, but of all true passion and of all poetical elevation. The pieces judiciously made no pretence to any grand or really poetical effect: their charm resided primarily in furnishing occupation for the intellect, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was not so devoid of common sense as to give credit to what the priests said, though they affirmed in the most solemn manner the truth of their assertions. He, however, sent twelve very learned and sensible gentlemen into the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... that the upper classes of impersonal France practise this method of marital selection, their conseils de famille furnishing in some sort a parallel. But, as is well known, matrimony among these same upper classes is largely form devoid of substance. It begins impressively with a dual ceremony, the civil contract, which amounts to a contract of civility between the parties, and a religious rite to render the same perpetual, and there it is ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... importance to life, require an early initiation. Collegiate education, with its preference for the classic languages, Greek and Latin, looks upon the natural sciences as subordinate and neglects them. Hence, the students are frequently devoid of the necessary and preparatory knowledge in natural science that are of decided importance in certain studies, medicine, for instance. Against such a one-sided system of education opposition begins to spring up even in the circles ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... out by these debates. Consult yourselves in the calm and stillness of your souls. If it is not proved to you that Helene Jegado is responsible for her actions you will acquit her. If you think that, without being devoid of free will and moral sense, she is not, according to the evidence, as well gifted as the average in humanity, you will give her the benefit ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... have said, was stern and uncompromising, but his nature was not entirely devoid of feeling, and as he heard the brave admission, his eye lighted up with ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... of the great Emperor was unreserved in everything but expression. Like the religion of earnest men, it was too profound a sentiment to be displayed before a world of little faith. Apart from that he seemed as completely devoid of military anecdotes as though he had hardly ever seen a soldier in his life. Proud of his decorations earned before he was twenty-five, he refused to wear the ribbons at the buttonhole in the manner practised to this day in Europe and even was unwilling to display ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... course of my judicial duties, onerous and often painful as they are and have been, I must say that, although it has fallen to my lot to pronounce the awful sentence of death upon many an unfeeling felon, I am bound to say that a public malefactor so utterly devoid of all the feelings which belong to man, and so strongly impregnated with those of the savage animal as you are, has never stood in a dock before me, nor probably before any other judge, living or dead. Would it be ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... provided the other desirable qualities are equal. Those who attempt to cultivate mushrooms, and depend on commercial or manufactured spawn, should see to it that the spawn purchased possesses these desirable qualities of texture, and the presence of an abundance of the mycelium. That which appears devoid of an abundance of mycelium should be rejected, and good spawn should be called for. There is no more reason why a grower should accept a worthless spawn from his seedsman than that he should accept "addled" eggs from his grocer. In this business, ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... Set-on low; short, 10 TAIL: Set-on low, short, fine and tapering; fine and tapering, straight or screw; devoid of fringe or devoid of fringe or coarse hair, and not coarse hair, and not carried above ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... not make room, he had with some tact taken a chair at the far end of the table and vis-a-vis with his host, protesting that he chose it as the better vantage-ground for delivering a small speech. His speech, too, had been neat, happy in phrase, and not devoid of good feeling. Having delivered it, he had slipped away early, on an excuse ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... therefore, without such sympathy? Powerless, amoral desolation! We read in God's Word, of men losing natural affection, and of mothers forgetting their sucking children. But these were worse than brutes. What shall we then say of Christian parents being devoid of spiritual sympathy,—shedding no tear of anguish over their moral ruin, nor showing the least concern about their salvation? Such parents do not rejoice even over the return of their children to God. They are a disgrace ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... something mysterious or occult. He uses much psychotherapy himself but it is nearly always applied unconsciously and indirectly through some form of physical or chemical therapy that he believes will cure. He is usually quite devoid of insight into the effect of his own expressed beliefs and bodily attitudes upon the adjusting mechanisms of his patients. Conscious and direct psychotherapy is left by the average practitioner to New ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... the pose and structure of the natural body, a delicate tact in the definition of muscle and articulation, an acute feeling for the qualities of flesh and texture. None of the creations of this period, moreover, are devoid of intense ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the governorship, was a man of harsher temperament. But although his anxiety for the loyalty of the French province was much increased by the intrigues of revolutionary agents, he soon perceived their plans to be fatuous and their enterprise devoid of importance. While the forward spirits in Quebec were leavening the mass of the habitants with specious reports of a French fleet ready to co-operate with them, a force composed for the most part of ill-disposed Americans was to percolate into Canada from Vermont. This so-called fleet ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... filth, where gorged buzzards, reeking of the tomb, flapped upward under his nose from the garbage and offal of their feast. Simpson paused for a moment at the market-stalls, where negroes of all shades looked out at him in a silence that seemed devoid of curiosity. The cripple beckoned him and he hurried on. On the steps of the cathedral he saw Father Antoine, but, although the priest must have seen him, he gave no sign as he passed. He kept to what shade there was. Presently his guide turned down ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... has long been applied to the territory of Mexico. Dr. E. Seler, of Berlin, published an article asserting that this was an error, and devoid of native authority. In (43) I pointed out that in this he was wrong, as early Nahuatl records use ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton
... which in 1787 framed the Federal Constitution, despite its firmness and patriotism, was, like all public bodies, evidently not entirely devoid of a spirit of compromise. A majority of its members were desirous of freeing the institutions of the young nation from the burden of slavery, and yet they consented to engraft the following provision upon the body of our ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... room, turned and paced back and forth again some half-dozen times, before he emerged from the chapel door. In her present humour she did not want him, yet she resented his abstraction. The physician of the soul, like the physician of the body, appeared to her lamentably devoid of power to sustain and give comfort at the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... point, so fundamental in his thought, Bergson turns to music. "Let us listen," he says, "to a melody, letting ourselves be swayed by it; do we not have the clear perception of a movement which is not attached to any mobility—of a change devoid of anything which changes? The change is self-sufficient, it is the thing itself. It avails nothing to say that it takes time, for it is indivisible; if the melody were to stop sooner, it would not be any longer ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... bright sneering Invective against Women, have been put down to him on no other ground than that they cannot be traced to a different source. He might have been the author of the graceful Praise of his Sacred Diana. He might have sighed for a land devoid of envy, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... at her. In his egotism he had not thought of his timid little wife, whom all this might well have made ill; but that he was not devoid of regard for her Sarah ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... second and much larger chamber ten marble sarcophagi were discovered, precious as works of art, but devoid of historical interest, because no name is engraved upon them. Perhaps the experience of their ancestors warned the Calpurnii of later generations not to tempt obnoxious fate again, but to adhere to obscurity and retirement, even ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... young men back, and to stop the holes by which they might slip through to the front. I've heard my father say so a score of times. He had the largest practice in Scotland, and yet he was absolutely devoid of brains. He slipped into it through seniority and decorum. No pushing, but take your turn. Very well, laddie, when you're at the top of the line, but how about it when you've just taken your place at the tail? When I'm on the top rung I shall look down and say, 'Now, you youngsters, we are going ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... cells, created in immense numbers, decay almost as rapidly as they are produced because the abnormal growths are devoid of normal organization. They have no established, regular blood and nerve supply, nor are they provided with adequate venous drainage. They are, therefore, cut off from the orderly life of the organism and doomed to ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... regard plants as devoid of the power to conduct true excitation. Dr. Bose had already shown that this view was incorrect. He now showed, by experiment, that the response of the isolated vegetal nerve is indistinguishable from that of animal nerve, throughout a large series ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... its accomplishment.... With regard to the rank which Daniel's prayer occupied among the various means or agencies that were to be employed in bringing about the object of it, he had good reason to believe that it was neither without a definite place, nor in itself devoid of efficacy.... He had been honored to vindicate the power and assert the supremacy of the Lord God of Israel; by the wisdom of his counsels and the weight of his personal character, he had paved the way for that decision ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... virtue, he stood fast by that which he knew to be just; free from illusions; never dejected by the apprehension of the difficulties and perils that went before him, and drawing the promise of success from the justice of his cause. Hence he was persevering, leaving nothing unfinished; devoid of all taint of obstinacy in his firmness; seeking and gladly receiving advice, but immovable ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... capable of realizing them. Evidently she had no inconsiderable pleasure in display; but she made on the whole a very good wife, only one to be protected by him from every care, and not one to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in his dreams. Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control. For instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed Marmion in the Edinburgh in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was then considered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on the very day on which the review ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... her thoughts are gone, She nothing sees—no sight but one! The maid, devoid of guile and sin, I know not how, in fearful wise, So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, That all her features were resigned To this sole image in her mind: And passively did imitate That look of dull and ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... is almost needless for us to say that these women are entirely devoid of personal attractions. They are generally thin maiden ladies, or women who perhaps have been disappointed in their endeavors to appropriate the breeches and the rights of their unlucky lords; the first class having found it utterly impossible to induce any young or old man ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... review in question are first, its unfaithfulness to its own announced and excellent plan, by subjecting to criticism works neither indecent nor immoral, yet of such trifling importance even in point of size and, according to the critic's own verdict, so devoid of all merit, as must excite in the most candid mind the suspicion, either that dislike or vindictive feelings were at work; or that there was a cold prudential pre-determination to increase the sale of the review by flattering the malignant ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a fair, pernicious creature, endowed too richly with the art of pleasing, and quite devoid of principle. Few bad men knew right so well, and went so wrong. Ina buried her face for hours on his bed, and kissed his cold features and hand. She had told him before he died she would recall all her ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... admired the long lashes of her eyelids, the blackness of her eyebrows, and the dazzling whiteness of a skin devoid of even the faintest tinge of color. Tiny blue veins alone broke the uniformity of its pure white tones. When the marquis turned to his friend as if to share with him his amazement at the sight of this singular creature, he found him stretched on the ground as if dead. D'Albon fired ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... defect in this respect has been either that the light has been too abrupt, and consequently the high lights are very white and the shadows heavy, giving the pictures an under-exposed appearance, or the face is devoid of shadow, one side being as light as the other; hence it lacks the roundness necessary to constitute a good picture. In most instances the former defect has arisen from the reflecting screen not being properly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... gods exists no more. The word sunyam or sunyata, that is void, is often used as the equivalent of paramartham. Void must be understood as meaning not an abyss of nothingness but that which is found to be devoid of all the attributes which we try to ascribe to it. The world of ordinary experience is not void, for a great number of statements can be made about it, but absolute truth is void, because nothing whatever can be predicated of it. Yet even this colourless ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... though devoid of moral principle, was a man of highly respectable abilities, of pleasing manners, and was an entertaining companion. Lord Bute, who was in power, was the warm friend of Dr. Franklin. He therefore caused his son William to be appointed ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... themselves, is generally simple, and devoid of extravagance or ostentation: they have the best of every thing it is true, but then they have all the advantages of unbounded competition. and unlimited credit: they pay when they think proper, but no tradesman ever dares venture to ask them for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... participants in the joint undertaking can be assured, and harmony and successful working be rendered possible? Then, our best-informed Irish critics assured us that voluntary association for humdrum business purposes, devoid of some religious or political incentive, was alien to the Celtic temperament and that we should wear ourselves out crying in the wilderness. We were told that Irishmen can conspire but cannot combine. Economists assured us that even if we succeeded ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... the Fenachrone vessel bored on, with its frightful and ever-increasing velocity, through the ever-thinning stars, but it was not until the last star had been passed, until everything before them was entirely devoid of light, and until the Galaxy behind them began to take on a well-defined lenticular aspect, that Ravindau would consent to leave the controls and to ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... a wedding was toward. Except a few rude jests; except that there is an attempt to walk arm-in-arm (it is only an attempt, for they forget to allow for each other's motions); except the Sunday dresses, utterly devoid of taste, what is there to distinguish this day from the rest? There is the drunken carousal, it is true, all the afternoon and evening. There are no fete days in the foreign sense in the English labourer's life. There are the fairs and feasts, and a fair ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... stone show a knowledge of Sanskrit, of Indian poetry and theology, which is surprising if we consider how far from India they were composed, but they are almost without exception artificial, frigid and devoid of vigour or inspiration. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... altogether! I knew already you were very selfish and heartless and headstrong, but I didn't know you were quite so unmanageable and so unkind as this. I appeal to your better nature—for you HAVE a better nature—I'm sure you have a better nature: you're MY son, and you can't be utterly devoid of good impulses. I appeal confidently to your better nature to throw off this unhappy, designing, wicked girl before it is too late! She has made you forget your duty to your mother, but not, I hope, irrevocably. Oh, my poor, dear, wandering boy, won't you listen to the voice of reason? won't ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... from man, so differ these souls' years. The most material life is not devoid of them; the story of the most spiritual is told in them. And it may chance that some, looking back, see the past cut out ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... publish in capital letters measures of police, the whole strength of which consists in their secrecy. It reminded me of M. de Sartines, who had formerly proposed to give spies a livery. It is not that the director of all these absurdities is, as some say, devoid of understanding: but he has such a strong desire to please the French government, that he even seeks to do himself honor by his meannesses, as publickly as possible. This proclaimed inspection was executed with as much ingenuity as it was conceived: a corporal, or a clerk, or perhaps ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... laughed heartily. The detective, greatly vexed, bit his lips; to him the joke was quite devoid of humor. The arrival of a prison guard gave Ganimard an opportunity to recover himself. The man brought Arsene Lupin's luncheon, furnished by a neighboring restaurant. After depositing the tray upon the table, the guard retired. Lupin broke his bread, ate ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... them in thinking and taste; but it was in a condition resembling that of a human frame in which, (through an injury in the spinal marrow,) some of the most important functions of vitality have terminated at some precise limit downward, leaving the inferior extremities devoid of sensation and the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... statute law, the use of which powers and the adoption of which methods would be denounced as the worst of crimes, even made the basis of an impeachment, should the mass of the populace be dissatisfied with his proceedings. It is easy to find fault, easy in positions devoid of public responsibility to think we see how errors might have been avoided, how powers might have been more successfully employed and greater results achieved. But the American Executive is surrounded with difficulties too little appreciated by the public, while an almost merciless criticism, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... governorship, was a man of harsher temperament. But although his anxiety for the loyalty of the French province was much increased by the intrigues of revolutionary agents, he soon perceived their plans to be fatuous and their enterprise devoid of importance. While the forward spirits in Quebec were leavening the mass of the habitants with specious reports of a French fleet ready to co-operate with them, a force composed for the most part of ill-disposed Americans was to percolate ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the attitude of her mind towards this young officer. He kindled her enthusiasm and evoked admiration without stint. He represented to her the highest type of manhood in that period of doubt, danger, and strong excitement. Brave to the last degree, his courage was devoid of recklessness. The simple, untutored description of his action given by the refugees had only made it all the more clear that his mind was as keen and bright as his sword, while in chivalric impulses ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... his subject is alive to him, he mixes it up with the queerest personalities and sudden zigzags, with all manner of digressions and side-flings. And last of all, he has that new style of which we spoke—a style by no means devoid of affectation and even trick, threatening, to experienced eyes, the disease of mannerism, but attractive in its very provocations, almost wholly original, and calculated, at least while it retains its freshness, to drive what is said ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... did not like her. Had he been a younger man, she would have captivated him; as it was, she would have repelled him entirely, but that she offered him a good subject. He said to himself that she was a bad lot, but what sort of a bad lot was not so clear as to make her devoid of interest to him; he must discover how she played her life-game; she had a history, and he would fain know it. As I have said, however, so far it had come to nothing, for, upon the surface, Sepia showed herself merely like any other worldly girl who knows "on which side ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... listening and thinking what it was his duty to do, but listening in vain, for no such sound again broke the silence of the night, while after standing by him a few minutes, Serge walked away into the darkness and then returned to his seat in the chariot, where he too, utterly devoid of all inclination to sleep, sat and thought about their position there and asked himself whether it was yet too late to reverse their plans, and seeking the first opportunity to hurry his young ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... equality of its three angles to two right angles, from the essence of a (rectilineal) triangle; so that it is not less impossible to conceive a God, that is, a being supremely perfect, to whom existence is wanting, or who is devoid of a certain perfection, than to conceive a mountain without ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... lay about my feet, Where trees were green and flowers sweet. The climate was devoid ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... circumstance that, contrary to what usually obtains in old countries, the males in this region considerably outnumber the females; yet, while that disproportion exists throughout the provinces, polyandry is confined to the Tibetans. Their wretched lands, verging on the line of perpetual snow, devoid of fuel, and in many places unable to ripen grain, keep them poor; and they assign as a justification for the practice the necessity of repressing population and retaining property undivided. One mistress of the house and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... evacuate three of the number to the nearest dressing station—the remainder flatly refusing to go. The layer, in particular, deserved great credit for his grit, for, in spite of having been buried, and having scarcely a hair left on his head and devoid of eyebrows, not to mention the shock to his nervous system, he was again serving his gun 24 hours later, on the arrival of the new piece. Some idea of the force of the explosion can be gathered from the fact that the barrel was found, in two pieces, some 150 yards ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... was a typical Tenderloin grafter. A woman absolutely devoid of moral conscience, she styled herself an actress, yet was one only by courtesy. By dint of pulling all kinds of wires she contrived from time to time to get a part to play, but her stage activities were really only a blind to conceal ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... base of stone, freshly cemented, on which the church rested—"see, I save his soul, and he preserves my buildings for me. It's a fair deal, isn't it? How does it come about, that he is converted? Ah, you see, although I am a man without science, without knowledge, devoid of pretensions and learning, the good God sometimes makes use of such humble instruments to work His will. It came about in the usual way. The Duke came here carrying his religion lightly, as one ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... watched it all with a sense of growing aching depression. It was so utterly trivial to his eyes, so devoid of interest, and yet it was so real, so serious, so implacable in its continuity. The brain grew tired with the thought of its unceasing reproduction. It had all gone on, as it was going on now, by the side of the great ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... the top of the Ladder Ecclesiastical, which he hath a fair probability to reach; without the merit of one single virtue, moderately stocked with the least valuable parts of erudition, utterly devoid of all taste, judgment, or genius; and, in his grandeur, naturally choosing to haul up others after him, whose accomplishments most resemble his own, except his beloved sons, nephews, or other kindred, be in competition; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... right enough," whispered Dave, who a moment later was crouching low and looking through a large keyhole devoid of a key. "There he goes into the room where the two ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... black hair dangling loosely about his shoulders, the broad frightful countenance, which, however, was devoid of paint, the glittering, basilisk-like eyes, the sinewy half-bent finger, with the right fingers closed like a vise around the handle of the knife at his waist, while gently drawing it forth, the catlike advance,—all these made him so terrible an enemy that the bravest man might well ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... we do, we cannot desire a softer bed than the air, where we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers"! Of the latter he finds somewhat more difficulty in disposing,—"and here it is considerable, that, since our bodies will then be devoid of gravity and other impediments of motion, we shall not at all spend ourselves in any labour, and so, consequently, not much need the reparation of diet, but may perhaps live altogether without it, as those creatures have done, who, by reason of their sleeping for many days ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... greatness are too often confounded together. "A man may be great without being good, or good without being great." The story of "Jonathan Wild" is really a bitter, satirical attack on what Fielding called "the greatness which is totally devoid of goodness." He avowed it his intention "to expose the character of this bombast greatness," and no one can deny the success of his achievement. Surely no story was ever written under more desperate circumstances. The evils of poverty, which at this period were at their height, were aggravated ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... from attaining to such permanent developments in the domain of culture as form the mark of the true civilized races and the guaranties of progress. Yet we should not venture to call any of them cultureless, so long as none of them is devoid of the primitive means by which the ascent to higher stages can be made—language, religion, fire, weapons, implements; while the very possession of these means, and many others, such as domestic animals and cultivated plants, testifies to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... long-wished-for time was really come, packing up actually commencing, and that her waking would find her under a different roof from that which she had never left. She did not know till now that she had any attachments to the place she had hitherto believed utterly devoid of all interest; but she found she could not bid it farewell without sorrow. There was the old boatman with his rough kindly courtesy, and his droll ways of speaking; there was the rocky beach where she and her brother had often played on the verge of ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fogey, "Plato was a great thinker. In truth, the only incorrigible rogue is he who is devoid of ideals, who has allowed his ethical nature to disintegrate. Such a one ceases to be a person. He has lost the integrating factor—the moral—which binds human personality together. He is a mere aggregation of random impulses. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... determined, and had firmness and courage to bear up against the heaviest afflictions, she had no coldness or insensibility in her temperament, but was endowed with the tenderest and warmest affections. She was not by nature imaginative, but her understanding was excellent and utterly devoid of lumber and affectation. She had the sound practical sense of a vigorous and healthy mind, without a particle of vanity or conceit; she never attempted to plunge out of her depth, or to soar beyond the level of her comprehension and ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... melancholy, while living in the midst of idle pleasures and luxurious indulgence, have found a remedy in marriage, and felt themselves cured the moment they became fathers.' A sentence this full of sound instruction. It is not, then, because life is devoid of pleasure, that men are the prey of melancholy. That demon pierced, it is true, like a gnawing worm, through all the luxuries of the Roman world; there was no resource against it, either in beautiful slaves, or Ionian dances, or magnificent repasts, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Eternal Love—alone of all beings devoid of self-love! Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, for Thy ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... Sunday of suspense had come. The Sundays of good young ladies little resembled those of a century later, though they were not devoid of a calm peacefulness, worthy of the "sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright." The inhabited rooms of the old house looked bright and festal; there were fresh flowers in the pots, honey as well as butter on the breakfast table. The Major and Palmer ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of the Upsaroka character. The mouth extended nearly from ear to ear, the lips were thin, and seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of natural pliancy, so that the ruling expression never varied under the influence of any emotion whatever. This ruling expression may be conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... shows us that English travellers may find ample interest of other kind. The artist, the ecclesiologist, the art-loving have here a storehouse of unrevealed treasure. A little-read but weighty writer, Mme. de Stael, has truly averred that the most beautiful lands in the world, if devoid of famous memories and if bearing no impress of great events, cannot be compared in interest to historic regions. Hardly a spot of the annexed provinces but is stamped with indelible and, alas! blood-stained, records. From the tenth ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... yours, for, as I have said, you have never known what life really means—never experienced its hardships, never beheld the bright face of danger, nor tasted the joys of the great free life in the open, the simple daily life devoid of the cares of civilized men, without which the life of a man can never be complete, be he what ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... memory has been made manifest to me by the study of perversions. Processes which in childhood were entirely devoid of any sexual tinge, but which later became associated with sex-feelings, very readily acquire false sexual associations also when they are revived in memory. Consider, for instance, the case of a homosexual man. He remembers that, as a small boy, he was ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... sufficient allowance for her difficulties, and insisted over and over again on the mischief which would arise to her from the habit of surrendering her judgment to these princesses. She told her that, though far from being devoid of virtues and real merit, "they had never succeeded in making themselves loved or esteemed by either their father or the public;[3]" and she added other admonitions which, as they were avowedly suggested by reports that had reached her, may be taken as indicating some errors into which her daughter's ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... sport, as they seem to be devoid of that friendly intelligence so noticeable in our own breeds, while their powers of scent are much inferior. I have heard that in the island of Hainan a certain breed exists which is very good for hunting leopards and wild boar, but this ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... all that can be desired, beyond which there is nothing. Hence that which is opposite also followeth, that the same men are wicked and destitute of all forces. For why do they follow vices, forsaking virtues? By ignorance of that which is good? But what is more devoid of strength than blind ignorance? Or do they know what they should embrace, but passion driveth them headlong the contrary way? So also intemperance makes them frail, since they cannot strive against vice. Or do they wittingly and willingly forsake goodness, and decline ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... and dignity of life; play-acting might become a substantive art, not a mere spoiling of the work of poetry. Methinks that if this happened, or happened often, my friend and I, who also hates the play.... But it seems probable, on careful consideration, that my friend and I are conspicuously devoid of the dramatic faculty; which being the case we had better not discuss plays and play-going ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... ch. cccxxxvi. of the Ming History as having sent an embassy to China in 1427. These embassies were subsequently often repeated. The country, which lay 22 days' voyage west of Kuli (supposed Calicut, but perhaps Kayal), was devoid of grass or trees. (Bretschneider, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... another word, sir! Am I to believe that I have a son who is entirely devoid of principle? Are you so lacking in ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... fallen in love with the son of my old enemy, that you want to marry him—you ask me to help you, to—to forego my just revenge, to use my hold over him as a lever, to induce him, force him—Good God! have you no sense of right or wrong, are you utterly devoid of—of modesty, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... with the ebony cane she always used. Stiffly she sank upon her knees. The habit was as strong as putting her shoes outside the door at night to be cleaned,-those shoes that never knew the stain of roadway dust-and equally devoid of spiritual significance. Yet, for a moment, as the embittered mind gabbled through the string of words that long habit had crystallised into an empty formula, Mother noticed that the lines of grey grew slightly clearer; the coil and tangle ceased; they even made an effort to ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... again rises above the level of the sea as new land. Nothing can be more erroneous than the idea of a firm and unchangeable outline of our continents, such as is impressed upon us in early youth by defective lessons on geography, which are devoid of a geological basis."[3] ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... he might rehearse a passage, which wasn't—as he gladly believed—altogether devoid of merit. He did rehearse it. And we broke into applause the more tempestuous because suspicion of a chill queerly lay upon us. A chill insidious as it was vague, disturbing as it was—wasn't it? we silently, quite violently, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... youngest sister was established solely, I think, by one big braid down her back. Neither was it because she was the plainest, for the beauty of the Piper girls was a recognized general distinction, and the youngest Miss Piper was not entirely devoid of the family charms. Nor was it from any lack of intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness alarming. Neither do I think it could be said that a slight deafness, which ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... and part with the electric charge readily. Without such a coating the charge and discharge would be very slow, and would operate by degrees only, as one part of a non-conducting surface might be densely charged and another part be quite devoid of sensible charge. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... mind it would appear that each little church, however simple and devoid of ornament, requires its own special colours and design, besides the individual motive of the giver; and people forget that the whole effect in any such compositions must be comprehensive, and that one careless mistake ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Defoe, gradually, we may reasonably believe, allowed himself to fall. The substance of the apology has been crystallized into an aphorism by the author of Becky Sharp, but it has been, no doubt, the consoling philosophy of dishonest persons not altogether devoid of conscience in ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... which consists of an endless monologue, full of prophecy, and overladen with obscure mythology, these productions of a subtle dilettantism must have been extremely inanimate and untheatrical, and every way devoid of interest. The creative powers of the Greeks were, in this department, so completely exhausted, that they were forced to content themselves with the repetition of the works ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... who would work if there was no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants? Political economy has not treated of gifts. It has hence been concluded that it disowns them, and that it is therefore a science devoid of heart. This is a ridiculous accusation. That science which treats of the laws resulting from the reciprocity of services, had no business to inquire into the consequences of generosity with respect to him who receives, nor into its effects, perhaps still more precious, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... Plain, where they lived at free quarters, to the utter ruin of the Indians, one of them eating more in a day than would suffice an Indian for a month. They besides lived in a most disorderly manner, devoid of discipline, and gave infinite offence to the natives by their licentiousness. The council to which the admiral had confided the government in his absence, reproved Margarite for allowing his troops to live in this disorderly manner, and endeavoured to prevail ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... design. But neither gives one the feeling of outdoors that our modern landscape painters so successfully impart. Historically they are very interesting, and even though they carry the name of such a master of portraits as Gainsborough undoubtedly was, they are devoid of all the refreshing qualities that modern art has given ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... picture-books that filled my mind as a child with dreams of a delightful world. But now that I was wise enough to make the best of my unboyish emotionalism, I began to take pleasure in certain phases of school-life. Though I was devoid of any recognisable religious sense I liked the wide words in the Psalms that we read at night in the school chapel. This was not due to any precocious recognition of their poetry, but to the fact that their intense imagery conjured up all sorts of precious visions in my mind, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... to the good sense of the British people and ensure the success of their cause. And in return—to quote from Mr. Winston Churchill's life of his father—the two great parties treated Mr. Butt and the Irish members with 'that form of respect which, being devoid of the element of fear, is closely akin to contempt.' Then arose Parnell. He held that the Irishmen must make themselves the terror of the nation. They must embarrass and confuse the English leaders, and throw the ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... nothing but a "dirty tawnie," a "salvage heathen," and "devil's imp." Many of them were well educated,—men of varied and profound erudition, and familiar with the best specimens of Greek and Roman literature; yet they seem to have been utterly devoid of that poetic feeling or fancy whose subtle alchemy detects the beautiful in the familiar. Their very hymns and spiritual songs seem to have been expressly calculated, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Likkhavis, hearing the report, with fear and apprehension assembled in a body; devoid of their usual ornaments, they hastened to the place where Buddha was. Having saluted him according to custom, they stood on one side, wishing to ask him a question, but not being able to find words. Buddha, knowing well their heart, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... usual three rooms below and a long garret above and as it stood on a plain, bare to the winds, my father took the precaution of lining it with brick to hold it down. It was as good as most of the dwellings round about us but it stood naked on the sod, devoid of grace as a dry goods box. Its walls were rough plaster, its floor of white pine, its furniture poor, scanty and worn. There was a little picture on the face of the clock, a chromo on the wall, and a printed portrait of General Grant—nothing more. It was home by reason ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... chases, the runner to take unexpected turns and dodges, making capture difficult. The shortest distance between two points for a chase often makes a dull game, devoid of sport. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... thief; whether he shirks the duty of work under the pretext of poverty or riches." Cf. also Tolstoy, in What to Do? For example (from chap. XXVI), "How can a man who considers himself to be, we will not say a Christian, or an educated and humane man, but simply a man not entirely devoid of reason and of conscience, how can he, I say, live in such a way that, not taking part in the struggle of all mankind for life, he only swallows up the labor of others, struggling for existence, and by his own claims increases the labor of those who struggle, and the number of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... His yellowish grey hair, well flattened and shining, grew far back on his forehead. And this, combined with small blue eyes, clear as a child's, a slight inward squint to them, produced an effect of permanent and innocent surprise not devoid of pathos. In character he was guileless and humble-minded. The spectacle of cruelty or injustice would, however, rouse him to the belligerent attitude of the proverbial brebis enrage. He believed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... his meeting with her (as I see from some papers written by my aunt and kindly supplied me from the Oratory, Birmingham), was of no more avail than before. She mentions having met him shortly after his return, and it is evident that it was a meeting not devoid of awkwardness on her part and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... father, ascended the bed of my wretched mother, and begat children, my brothers, whom I destroyed, having received down the curse from Laius, and given it to my sons. For I was not by nature so utterly devoid of understanding, as to have devised such things against my eyes, and against the life of my children, without the interference of some of the Gods. Well!—what then shall I ill-fated do? who will accompany me the guide of my dark steps? She that lies here ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... glance at her father, and was glad that he was looking straight before him, for she did not feel able to meet his gaze just them. On the other hand, though she knew St. Vincent was eying her narrowly, she took no notice of him, and all he could see was a white face devoid of expression. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... these words on his death-bed, and nothing quivered even then in his stony heart,—in that heart devoid of a fleck or ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... their wish only that he consented to its being printed. It is, however, submitted to the reader, in the hope that the unbiassed impressions of colonial life, as they fell freshly on a young mind, may not be wholly devoid of interest. Its value to his friends at home is not diminished by the fact that the MS., having been sent out to New Zealand for revision, was, on its return, lost in the Colombo, and was fished up from the Indian Ocean so nearly washed ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... Reuben Lloyd, Of breath deprived, of sense devoid. The Templars' Captain-General, he So formidable seemed to be, That had he not been on his back Death ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Monet from the point of view of a Raphael, he will see nothing but a meaningless jargon of wild paint-strokes. And if anybody looks at a Raphael from the point of view of a Claude Monet, he will, no doubt, only see hard, tinny figures in a setting devoid of any of the lovely atmosphere that always envelops form seen in nature. So wide apart are some of the points of view in painting. In the treatment of form these differences in point of view make for enormous variety in the work. So that no apology ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... thoroughly incompetent to judge our character as a community, and that they have no true estimate of its spirit and its resources. The view they have taken of the strife in which we have been and are engaged is not only devoid of any high moral sympathy, but utterly shallow, and flagrantly falsified by the whole course of events, political, financial, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... on the north side of the room differ slightly from those on the south side. They are rather larger, the ends are of a different shape and devoid of ornament (fig. 57), and there is a wider interval between the bar and the top of the desk. It seems to me probable that the more highly ornamented desks are those which were put in when the room was first fitted ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... gave a little laugh that was totally devoid of mirth. "Yes, I'm going to be—human! I fought that battle all day yesterday! I find that Ocky means more to me than—than honor, to put it ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... moment Ray's face seemed devoid of all expression. It was flat and lifeless as dark clay. Then Beatrice felt the insult of ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... out that Ernest did not like games, but she saw also that he could hardly be expected to like them. He was perfectly well shaped but unusually devoid of physical strength. He got a fair share of this in after life, but it came much later with him than with other boys, and at the time of which I am writing he was a mere little skeleton. He wanted something to develop his arms and chest ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... and misery ever since I knew you. I saw you first, so impetuous, yet self-contained! Incapable of insincerity, devoid of affection and courageously naturally beautiful. Then, to my amazement, I saw that, unlike most women, you understood your instincts; that you dared to define them, and were impious enough to follow them. You debased ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... finish his days in a madhouse. His delight was to kick my shins with all his might, under the desk, not at all as an act of hostility, but as a gratifying and harmless pastime. Finding this, so far as I was concerned, equally devoid of pleasure and profit, I managed to get a seat by another boy, the son of a very distinguished divine. He was bright enough, and more select in his choice of recreations, at least during school hours, than my late homicidal neighbor. But the principal called ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... great deal better, after a full summary of life, were we to be created utterly devoid of feeling, equally impervious to joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. We should be manifestly benefited, for the greater part of our life is now full of sorrow, anxiety, fear, pain, ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... him huddled there in the pillows, restless, comfortless, neglected, wrung her heart. Hitherto her love for Martin had been singularly devoid of intimacy. They had kissed each other, they had eaten dinner and tea and supper together, they had explored the Three Marshes in each other's company, but she had scarcely ever been to his house, never seen him asleep, and in normal ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... together to Venice, and then in less than a year had quarreled and separated. Both made good copy of the "poetic interval," as George Sand called it. Chopin was not a stickler for conventionalities, but George Sand's history, for him, proved her to be coarse and devoid of all the finer feeling that we prize ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... above all the adherence of the great body of the people to the religion of their fathers in spite of the serious attempts that were made to seduce them, prove conclusively enough that the alleged demoralisation of the Irish Church is devoid ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... nor as a bad man, neither as an acute thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply sensuous. On his own ground he is even very fresh and healthy: his delineation of youthful maternity, for example, is as true as it is beautiful; and his sympathy with the gleefulness of children is devoid of affectation. We have then only to ask ourselves whether the defect in him of all thought and feeling which is not at once capable of graceful fleshly incarnation, be sufficient to lower him in the scale of artists. This question must of course be answered according to our ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Service is devoid of partisanship; its importance should appeal to every American citizen and should receive the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... and bone, of the mammoth, reindeer, and horse, are so masterly that these men stand forth as the spiritual ancestors of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. And what is also remarkable is that the race which succeeded, that which discovered the use of metal, was devoid of the artistic sense, and their attempts at delineation are like the scribbling of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... address which lady Catherine would perhaps have admired, Archibald entered into conversation with the young baronet, if conversation that might be called, which consisted of a species of fashionable dialect, devoid of sense, and destitute of any pretence to wit. To Forester this dialect was absolutely unintelligible: after he had listened to it with sober contempt for a few minutes, he pulled Henry away, saying, "Come, don't let us waste our time here; let us go to the brewery that ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... in the landscape, and withdrew herself into the left-hand corner. The conversation between the king and La Valliere began, as all lovers' conversations generally do, namely, by eloquent looks and by a few words utterly devoid of common sense. The king explained how warm he had felt in his carriage, so much so indeed that he could almost regard the horse he then rode as a blessing thrown in his way. "And," he added, "my benefactor is an exceedingly intelligent man, for he seemed ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... familiarly known as "Father Cats." His gifts were, however, of a very different order from those of Vondel. His long poems dealt chiefly with the events of domestic, every-day existence; and the language, simple, unpretentious and at times commonplace, was nevertheless not devoid of a certain restful charm. There are no high flights of imagination or of passion, but there are many passages as rich in quaint fancy as in wise maxims. With Constantine Huyghens (1596-1687) the writing of verse was but one of the many ways in which one of the most cultured, versatile, and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... any minute examination of these dramas. Suffice it to say, that they are devoid of interest at the present day; and from what we have been able to read of them, we question whether the success that is said to have attended their private representation was other than mere compliment. Unfortunately for their dramatic unity, the author is impatient of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... done?" demanded Ogilvy, playing nervously with a gold pencil on the polished table. He was one of those Americans who in a commercial atmosphere become prematurely white, and today his boyish, smooth-shaven face was almost as devoid of colour as his hair. Even Leonard Dickinson showed anxiety, which was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I have not lived, but only dreamed of living. It may be true that there have been some unsubstantial pleasures here in the shade, which I might have missed in the sunshine, but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction all my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking that future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore more tolerable ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... one widely-credited myth about the moon which must be regarded as devoid of foundation. The idea that our satellite and the weather bear some relation has no doubt been entertained by high authority, and appears to be an article in the belief of many an excellent mariner. Careful comparison between the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... culture are entirely ignorant of him and his work in the world—men, these, who deem themselves in touch with world-affairs and with the ones who make and move the world. It is inexplicable, this, except that never was there a man more devoid of the faculty of self-exploitation, self-advertising, than Russell Conwell. Nor, in the mere reading of them, do his words appeal with anything like the force of the same words uttered by himself, ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... of roses for the preparation of otto is limited chiefly by climatic conditions. The odoriferous constitutent of the otto is a liquid containing oxygen, the solid hydrocarbon or stearoptene, with which it is combined, being absolutely devoid of perfume. The proportion which this inodorous solid constituents bears to the liquid perfume increases with the unsuitability of the climate, varying from about 18 per cent. in Bulgarian oil, to 35 and even 68 per cent. in rose oils distilled in France and England. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... with the least detriment to themselves, but also make known the names and quality of wares of various dealers. The man who might have subscribed ten dollars, is content to pay one hundred for an object contributed from the time and labor of some individual devoid of other commodities. If the wares in question become more widely known, and benefit hence accrue to the giver, the consequence is surely a legitimate one, and even a fortunate condition of the facts, as increasing the size of the fund received. They who give simply with the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... not wonder that mankind, whose minds we look upon as akin to those of the gods, can sometimes discern what is likely to be beneficial or hurtful to them, when even animals devoid of reason sometimes secure their own safety by profound silence, of which the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... NOTE I. Old theories of nitrification 196 II. Nitrification takes place in solutions devoid of organic matter 196 III. Oxidising power of micro-organisms in soils 197 IV. Effect of urine on nitrification in soils 197 V. Solution used by Professor Frankland in cultivating nitrificative micro-organisms 198 VI. Experiments by Boussingault on rate ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... a hundred thousand men, among whom are certainly to be found some right-minded persons who are convinced of the justice of their cause. These unknown and suddenly elevated chiefs, whom the revolution has singled out, are they all unworthy of our esteem, and devoid of capacity? They possess, perhaps, a new and vital force that it would be right and perhaps necessary to utilise somehow. The ideas which they represent ought to be studied, and if they prove useful, put into practice. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... jury,'' he said, "at the matter brought out by these debates. Consult yourselves in the calm and stillness of your souls. If it is not proved to you that Helene Jegado is responsible for her actions you will acquit her. If you think that, without being devoid of free will and moral sense, she is not, according to the evidence, as well gifted as the average in humanity, you will give her ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... been compelled to abandon the Black Bear, and had retreated to Bath with his family. 'Bath,' we are informed, 'was at that time London devoid of its mixed society and vulgarity. It contained its selection of all that was noble, affluent, or distinguished in the metropolis; and amongst this circle our artist was now caressed.' It became a kind of fashion to sit to him for oval crayon likenesses at a guinea and a half apiece. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... choosing as the source of our heat-waves a plate of copper, against the back of which a steady sheet of flame is permitted to play. On emerging from the copper, the waves, in the first instance, pass through a space devoid of air, and then enter a hollow glass cylinder, three feet long and three inches wide. The two ends of this cylinder are stopped by two plates of rock-salt, a solid substance which offers a scarcely sensible obstacle to the passage ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... inland county, is naturally devoid of many charms to be found in those counties which have a sea-coast. But it has beauties of its own, being particularly varied and undulating. Its scenery is pleasantly diversified by many woods, which however are mostly of but small extent, by swelling cornfields, and by several ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... is that so many mothers take no care of their children, but send them out, half-clad, into the cold. Perhaps this lad's mother also was a feckless old woman, and devoid of character? Or perhaps she had no one to work for her, but was forced to sit with her legs crossed—a veritable invalid? Or perhaps she was just an old rogue who was in the habit of sending out pinched and hungry boys ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... potentates was, of course, as full of affected kindness and compliment as it was totally devoid of sincerity. But the temper of the Duke rendered it much more difficult for him to preserve the necessary appearances, in voice, speech, and demeanour; while in the King, every species of simulation and dissimulation seemed so much a part ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... is one of the most arduous that an army has ever been called upon to perform, being at a distance of something like 1200 miles from the real base of operations, on the sea, in a climate the conditions of which are trying, and amidst deserts devoid of all resources—even of those few which existed in 1884 when the British forces under Lord Wolseley advanced to Metammeh, and which have since been utterly destroyed by the complete devastation of the villages on the banks of the Nile and the murder or despoliation of their inhabitants."—Field-Marshal ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... reason, God would be unjust to punish them for being blind and insensible, or for having too little penetration and understanding to perceive the force of those natural proofs on which the existence of the Deity has been founded. A God full of equity cannot punish men for having been blind or devoid of reason. The Freethinkers, as foolish as they are supposed, are beings less insensible than those who make professions of believing in a God full of qualities that destroy one another; they are less dangerous ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... position of this Byzantine Empire was a curious one: European in origin, mainly West-Asian in location. Its situation permitted it to last on so long into the West-Asian manvantara; its origin doomed that long survival to be, for the most part, devoid of the best characteristics of life. Yet during most of the European pralaya it was far and away the richest and most civilized power in Christendom; and, except during the reigns of extraordinary kings in the west, like Charlemagne, the strongest ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... political matters. In spite of the foundation of Cardinal College in which he was now engaged, and of the suppression of some lesser monasteries for its endowment, the men of the New Learning looked on him as really devoid of any interest in the revival of letters or in their hopes of a general enlightenment. He took hardly more heed of the new Lutheranism. His mind had no religious turn, and the quarrel of faiths was with him simply one factor in the political game which he ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... the art-world at the International Exhibition of 1862, where it was universally admired for its extreme brilliancy and beauty, a brilliancy equalled by few of the colours with which it was associated, and a beauty devoid of coarseness. We remember well the power it possessed of attracting the eye from a distance; and how, on near approach, it threw nearly all other pigments into the shade. It has in truth a lustrous luminosity not often to be met with, added to a total absence of rankness or harshness. ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... the leaders also left the town they had so bravely defended. On the following day, indeed, Berruyer, having learned the position of Leigonyer, returned to Chemille and, two days later, was in communication with Leigonyer's force. The latter had occupied Chollet, which had been left devoid of defenders since the day ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... or imagination in a way always beautiful, often lofty or even sublime. Failing this, there may be verse, rime, and meter, but not poetry. There is much in literature that is beautiful and sublime in thought and artistic in construction, which is yet not poetry, because quite devoid of the element of song, whereby poetry differs from the most lofty, beautiful, or ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... man does not appreciate how almost devoid of incentives to broadmindedness, to many-sidedness, to liberal growth, the home ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... again what has already been done so well. But we are of opinion that even after this laborious and well-planned compilation something still remains to be said. In the first place, Professor Bernheim deals largely with metaphysical problems which we consider devoid of interest; while, conversely, he entirely ignores certain considerations which appear to us to be, both theoretically and practically, of the greatest importance. In the second place, the teaching of the Lehrbuch is sound enough, but lacks vigour and originality. Lastly, the Lehrbuch is ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... satisfying every need, had suppressed desire, that king of creation, which fills an enormous place in the moral forces. Extreme heat, extreme sorrow, complete happiness, are all despotic principles that reign over spaces devoid of production; they insist on being solitary; they stifle all that is not themselves. Vandenesse was not a woman, and none but women know the art of varying happiness; hence their coquetry, refusals, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... ascribed. His life was one series of profligacy. Yet, such was the perverted judgment of the day, that this unworthy descendant of the Plantagenets was as popular as any peer of his time. When sober, he was accessible, conversable, and devoid of pride. When intoxicated, he used half to confess that he was still a Catholic at heart. His conversion to the reformed faith was held not to be very sincere; and his perpetual blue coat of a peculiar shade—a dress he never varied—was said to be a penance imposed on ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... to hoe corn, to bring roots and herbs from the woods for beers, go to the Strand for a gallon of molasses or liquor as the case might require, and 'browse around,' as she expresses it. It was a life that suited her well for the time-being as devoid of hardship or terror as it was of improvement; a need which had not yet become a want. Instead of improving at this place, morally, she retrograded, as their example taught her to curse; and it was here that she ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... be happy to look into it and to give you such advice as I can," said Holmes, rising and putting on his overcoat. "The case is not entirely devoid of interest. Had anyone visited you in your room after the papers came ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... almost with indifference. Jane had an absolute passion for children. She had married a quarter for faith, a quarter for love, and a whole half for hope. This divinely inexplicable child-passion is as unintelligible to those devoid of it, as its absence is marvellous to those possessed by it. Its presence is its justification, its being its sole explanation, itself its highest reason. Surely on those who cherish it, the shadow of the love-creative God must rest more than on some other women! Unpleasing ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... perch. There being few trees and fences in this region, he has doubtless gained expertness through practice in the art of securing a foot-hold on the tops of the weed-stems. Some of the weeds on which he stood with perfect ease and grace were extremely lithe and flexible and almost devoid of branches. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... flirtation. Young girls are not posted and they do not know men. They do not realize the pressure that will be brought to bear upon them. Many young girls grow to womanhood without any idea of the relations of the sexes. To them, love is devoid of ideas of sex, practically the same as their love for a brother or sister. It is not until they are thrown alone in the company of some older man that they suddenly awaken to a realization of what it ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... have kept himself continually in evidence. But to go away for eighteen months, unknown and unheard of, till one's sense of security had had time to re-establish itself, and then to turn up again like this without one minute's warning—oh, it was infamous, scandalous. The fellow must be devoid of all consideration for others. Sir Gilbert wiped his clammy brow with those ample hands. What on earth was he to do for his wife, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... families lived wholly on venison for nine months of the year. In Virginia were vast numbers of red and fallow deer, the latter like those of England, except in the smaller number of branches of the antlers. They were so devoid of fear as to remain undisturbed by the approach of men; a writer of that day says: "Hard by the Fort two hundred in one herd have been usually observed." They were destroyed ruthlessly by a system of fire-hunting, in which tracts of forests were burned over, by starting ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... thoughts? And can you imagine that power developing until that detection is possible at interstellar ranges, with members of that race being able to pick up faint impressions from received thoughts—distorted impressions? And can you imagine that same race, ignorant of the humanic equations, devoid of a stable ethic, superstitious, distrustful and fearful of advanced entities? They would be undetectable by normal telepathic means, you know. And suppose they were disposed to destroy what they ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... longer on this singular instance of slavery, existing devoid of its attendant horrors, because the fidelity and affection resulting from a bond of union so early formed between master and servant, contributed so very much to the safety of individuals, as well as the general comfort of society, as will hereafter appear.—"Memoirs ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... substratum, viz., matter, lies at the basis of bodies. Matter is the foundation of each ([Greek: to bathos hekastou he hule]); it is the obscure, the indefinite, that which is without qualities, the [Greek: me on]. As devoid of form and idea it is the evil, as capable of form ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... revelation to my eye and my ear, as much as to my heart and mind. Indeed, I seemed never before to have seen a woman. Whom had I seen? Veronica? We had been too poor, and my mother too proud, to keep up a social intercourse with our neighbours; the village girls had been devoid of even the most rustic kind of charm; the people were too poor to be handsome. I had never been tempted to look at a woman's face; and the manner of my going from home is known. In Jamaica, sharing with an exaggerated loyalty the unpopularity ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... at length to two hundred and fifty a year. Himself a small and slow person, he had every reason to be satisfied with this progress, and hoped for no further advance. He was of eminently sober mind, profoundly conscientious, and quite devoid of social ambition,—points of character which explained the long intimacy between him and Stephen Lord. Yet one habit he possessed which foreshadowed the intellectual composition of his son,—he loved to write letters to the newspapers. At very long intervals ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... believe. I met him in the Champs Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to myself at that moment, 'There is a man devoid of judgment!'" ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... fighters from whom the politic Ibrahim had desired to deliver his master when he had urged the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din: brave as a lion, keen as the edge of his own good scimitar, fanatical, as became a Hodja who had visited the Holy Places, Sinan was a type of the Turkish sea-officer: devoid of strategical instinct and tactical training, his one idea was a headlong attack, then victory or the houris of Paradise. It will be seen that Barbarossa had not only Doria and the Christian fleet and army against which to contend ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... woman entered, at the sight of whom Arnold forgot all his feelings of mingled annoyance and amusement. She was of little over the medium height, exceedingly slim—a slimness which was accentuated by the fashion of the gown she wore. Her face was absolutely devoid of color, but her features were almost cameo-like in their sensitive perfection. Her eyes were large and soft and brown, her hair a Titian red, worn low and without ornament. Her dress was of pale blue satin, which somehow had the effect of being made in a single ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... surprise they found that he showed not the slightest disposition to exploit himself; that, having millions at his command, he could expect to gain nothing financially by his course; and that he was absolutely devoid of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the shelter of the skiff was utterly devoid of comfort; it was narrow and damp, tiny cold drops of rain dribbled through the damaged bottom; gusts of wind penetrated it. We sat in silence and shivered with cold. I remembered that I wanted to go to sleep. Natasha leaned her back against the hull ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... translated from St. David's, was a man of great munificence, and of the best intentions, of whom it may be said he spent "not wisely but too well." He was entirely devoid of any aesthetic feeling or of architectural fitness, and in the most religious spirit committed acts of wholesale sacrilege. He employed, it is said, in the work of restoration in the palace, the stones of the chapter-house, at that time much injured, but ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... cylindrical, parasitic worms, with no near allies in the animal kingdom. Its members are quite devoid of any mouth or alimentary canal, but have a well-developed body cavity into which the eggs are dehisced and which communicates ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... kept down and humbled, shut out from his arms and his kisses, her heart heavy with grief because she longed to love and had nothing to love. She was beginning to suffer from the cold void that is formed about a woman by an unattractive, unfascinating girlhood, by a girlhood devoid of beauty and sympathetic charm. She could see that she aroused a sort of compassion with her long nose, her yellow complexion, her angular figure, her thin body. She felt that she was ugly, and that her ugliness was made repulsive by her miserable costumes, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... o'clock had come, and she had not. Would 'The Girl on the Magpie Horse' be all he would see of her to-day—that unsatisfying work, so cold, and devoid of witchery? Better have tried to paint her—with a red flower in her hair, a pout on her lips, and her eyes fey, or languorous. Goya could have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Court bears witness How, thy Royal Sire beside, With due graciousness and fitness, Dignity devoid of pride, Thou (thy gallant kinsman near thee) Dost with homage far and wide, And the praise of all to cheer thee, Humbly ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... may be said, if each nation is independent of every other, and if there is no constituted authority to enforce the fulfillment of treaty stipulations, the rights guarantied by treaties are still insecure. But few governments are so devoid of a sense of honor as, by a palpable violation of treaty obligations, to incur the odium and condemnation of all mankind. Self-respect and the fear of provoking a war, have generally proved sufficient incentives to the ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... miles of country without passing one hut; and when in the distance a human habitation appeared and gave promise of warmth and food, they found upon approach that it was deserted and devoid of everything. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... little girl started now on her wild-goose chase after Nan, she was by no means devoid of a plan of action. The knowledge she had taken so many years to acquire came to her aid, and she determined to use it for Nan's benefit. She knew that the gypsies, with all their wandering and erratic habits, had a certain ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... at once in the most plucky manner, urged on as the men were by their leader, who seemed utterly devoid of fear. But the other boat rowed right round by the stern, and its occupants were damped on finding that unless they could mount by the fore or mizzen-chains, there was apparently no means of reaching the deck. They ceased rowing in each of these ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... record a little book called "Aunt Sally, or the Cross the Way to Freedom," as being the most faithful account of the evils of slavery we have met with. It is the story of a female slave's life, and is said to be strictly true and devoid of all exaggeration, and it is a most touching account of the power of religion in her case, in upholding her through a long ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... of his face indicative of a benign and dignified spirit. His nose is straight, and his eyes inclined to blue. He wears his hair in a becoming cue, and from his forehead it is turned back, and powdered in a manner which adds to the military air of his appearance. He displays a native gravity, but devoid of all appearance of ostentation. His uniform dress is a blue coat with two brilliant epaulets, buff-colored underclothes, and a three-cornered hat with a black cockade. He is constantly equipped with an elegant small-sword, boots and spurs, in readiness to mount ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... that day—a spacious old house in Purchase Street together with a well-established malt business. For business, however, the young man, and not so young either, was without any aptitude whatever, being entirely devoid of the acquisitive instinct and neither possessing nor ever being able to acquire any skill in the fine art of inducing people to give for things more than it cost to make them. These deficiencies the younger Adams had already exhibited before the death of his father, ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... vain and empty sound, devoid of sense. Think of some heavier-weighted line of yours, To drag your scale down: something ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive methods suited to small problems directly to large ones. The term can also be used in reference to programming style: brute-force programs are written in a heavyhanded, tedious way, full of repetition and devoid of any elegance or useful abstraction (see also ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of such fair and reasonable sum as might be necessary for the emigration of such occupier and his family; the Guardians being empowered to pay to the emigrating family, any sum not exceeding half what the landlord should give, the same to be levied off the rates. This clause, although not devoid of redeeming features, was proposed and carried in the interest of the landlord-clearing-system, yet it was agreed to without what could be called even a show of opposition. It is, however, on the second clause—the renowned quarter-acre-clause—that ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the summer of 1806; and the surprise which he expressed to Mollien at the rejection of his offers is probably genuine. Sensitive to the least insult himself, his bluntness of perception respecting the honour of others might almost qualify him to rank with Aristotle's man devoid of feeling. It is perfectly true that he did not make war on Prussia in 1806 any more than on England in 1803. He only made ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... goodwill, he now declared definite plans based on knowledge. He came armed with figures and facts, and his method of expression had changed from ideas to intentions. His very manner chimed with his new power. He was decisive, and quite devoid of sentimentality. He feared none, but his attitude to all ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... of sheer cliffs or crossed the little plateaus of their summits. Hapaa lay bathed in a purple mist that hid from me the mute tokens of depopulation; Hapaa that had given Porter its thousands of naked warriors, and that now was devoid of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Schiller seems to have the greater genius; Alfieri the more commanding character. Alfieri's greatness rests on the stern concentration of fiery passion, under the dominion of an adamantine will: this was his own make of mind; and he represents it, with strokes in themselves devoid of charm, but in their union terrible as a prophetic scroll. Schiller's moral force is commensurate with his intellectual gifts, and nothing more. The mind of the one is like the ocean, beautiful ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... that changed, abject aspect, that bearing, devoid totally of confidence? All pretense of a certain coster smartness that he remembered, had vanished; the hair, once curled with cheap jauntiness, hung now straight and straggling; a tawdry ornament which had ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... between them, and as the said Mary Almira was a young lady of very pleasing face and form and agreeable manners, it is by no means improbable that he (Roswell) manifested to said Mary Almira that in those matters he was not wholly devoid of sensibility and discernment." The next morning Mary returned to Brattleboro with Mrs. Jonathan, and Roswell "did not then expect ever to see ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... some three hundred a year would obtain the increment it so desperately needed. And as Mrs. Penfold looked upon a girls' school as something not far removed from a nunnery, a place at any rate painfully devoid of the masculine element; and as her whole mind was set—sometimes romantically, sometimes financially—on the marriage of her daughters, she felt that both she and Lydia had escaped what might have ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that is, that they mutilated the classics. Would to God that every pure Christian would follow such an example; and that we might thereby present such an expurgated edition, as would create all the good they may contain, devoid of evil. Any who have read Virgil, Ovid, Terence, or other classic works, must acknowledge this necessity. Even Shakespeare's plays can not be read, as printed, in a modest company. There is not, either, any prudery in this. And, accordingly, a family expurgated ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... photographed under the best conditions. But no change has been established beyond question, nor does the photograph show the slightest difference of structure or shade which could be attributed to cities or other works of man. To all appearances the whole surface of our satellite is as completely devoid of life as the lava newly thrown from Vesuvius. We next pass to the planets. Mercury, the nearest to the sun, is in a position very unfavorable for observation from the earth, because when nearest ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... cover was fitted, and by May 29th, R 34 was completed to the satisfaction of the Admiralty and was accepted. On the evening of the same day she left for her station, East Fortune, on the Firth of Forth. This short passage from the Clyde to the Forth was not devoid of incident, as soon after leaving the ground a low-lying fog enveloped the whole country and it was found impossible to land with any degree of safety. It having been resolved not to land until the fog lifted, the airship cruised ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... other's acquaintance, and soon became good friends. They were not at all alike, for Stella Martin was a thin, pale child with a long braid of straight, light hair, and light blue eyes. She was timid, too, and absolutely devoid of Marjorie's impetuosity and daring. But they were both pleased at the discovery that they were to be near neighbors throughout the summer. Stella's home was next-door to Grandma Sherwood's, although, as both country places were so large, the ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... abomination. 'Fore God! I had done no evil, nor had I wronged any man, nor did I contemplate evil; yet was I aware of evil. Why? I do not know, save that there goes much dignity with dollars, and being devoid of the one I was destitute of the other. The person I sought practised a profession as ancient as the oracles but far more lucrative. It is mentioned in Exodus; so it must have been created soon after the foundations of the world; and despite the thunder of ecclesiastics ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... shipboard confinement seemed irksome to a maddening degree. There was absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there were books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr. Stranger's Manhattan night's entertainment the walls were devoid of reading matter; and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion weariful enough when ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... was radiant. The girl he had known nearly all his life, impetuous, devoid of self-consciousness, giving her sweet, sexless love with both generous hands, had vanished with the old frank days of dropping an uninvited head on a boy's shoulder. Now, though she was still impetuous, still unconscious of self, she was glowing ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... to hear a word devoid of sense, and knew not what to do with it. A man, a God, a human-God, a Divine Man - all well and good, but what was that to me? Words, words. Satan who drew me downward I had felt, God who drew me upward I had ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... work of poetry. Methinks that if this happened, or happened often, my friend and I, who also hates the play.... But it seems probable, on careful consideration, that my friend and I are conspicuously devoid of the dramatic faculty; which being the case we had better not discuss plays ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... taken splendid positions, so as to command either side of the herd on their arrival, with our gun-bearers squatted around us behind our respective trees, while the non-sporting village followers, who now began to think the matter rather serious and totally devoid of fun, scrambled up various large ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... be a clear space at the bottom of the cup devoid of tea-leaves, it shows water, and that, in all probability, the letter is coming from abroad. If the symbol of the letter comes very near to a bird flying, it shows a telegram. If the bird is flying towards the ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... is nothing, except the mark of my pencil, a mark devoid of meaning to the insect, to indicate that the auger has already been at work there, it may easily happen that the same operator, finding under her feet a spot already exploited by herself but effaced from her memory, repeats the thrust of her tool in a compartment which she believes herself to ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the citizens, was sternly repressed, the mask of sullen indifference was known to be but a mask. Hearts beneath were bounding with pride and joy and hope. Almost without exception, houses were closed and devoid of all appearance of life. Yet behind those closely-shut blinds women embraced each other with tempestuous joy, or paced the floor in uncontrollable agitation, or knelt in earnest prayer, mingling thanksgivings with agonized petitions for those whose fate ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... to the opposition which the project aroused; for it commenced when the foundations were being laid. Indeed, however "beautiful" it may have been (Sec. 63), it was probably, like the churches of the Cistercians, of simple design and devoid of ornament. See St. Bernard's Apologia ad Guillelmum, Sec. 28 ff. (P.L. clxxxii. 914 f.). The only relic of the medieval monastery of Bangor is a rudely built wall, once pierced by a door and a window, now built up. It seems to be later than the twelfth century. About 120 ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... are entirely ignorant of him and his work in the world—men, these, who deem themselves in touch with world-affairs and with the ones who make and move the world. It is inexplicable, this, except that never was there a man more devoid of the faculty of self-exploitation, self-advertising, than Russell Conwell. Nor, in the mere reading of them, do his words appeal with anything like the force of the same words uttered by himself, for always, with his spoken words, is his personality. Those who have heard Russell ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... passion adds to the strength and purpose of George Eliot's genius. No supreme literary creator has been devoid of this characteristic, however objective and impersonal he may have been. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Shakspere, Scott, were all earnest ethical teachers. The moral problems of life impressed them profoundly, and they showed a strong personal preference for righteousness. The ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... scarcely an individual, is so devoid of intelligence as not to recognize power. Few gifts are more courted. Power is almost as varied as character, and the kind of power most desired or appreciated is a good measure of character. The pre-eminence furnished by thew and muscle is most ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... turned out that that great fortress had been stripped of all its stores for the service of the Duke of Brunswick's army before Jena. Hohenlohe, therefore, was compelled to retreat towards the Oder. He was defeated in a variety of skirmishes; and at length, finding himself devoid of ammunition or provisions, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; 20,000 surrendered with the Prince. His rear, consisting of about 10,000, under the command of the celebrated General Blucher, were so far behind as to render it possible for them to attempt ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... in every cranny and interstice. Take a dozen such pyramids, and do your morning constitutional over them, after the scrappiest of breakfasts at 5 a.m., and you will find twelve or fourteen miles quite as much as you care about. But the march was not devoid of interest, though we met with no Boers. Small buck, hares, and partridges were there in sufficient number to afford a good day's sport under other circumstances, while a profusion of various kinds of flowers afforded satisfaction to the eye, in strong contrast to the bare and barkless ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... encampment to hold divine services among you. Red men or white, we are brethren, and we are sinners in common." The close-shut mouth, the dull flush visible beneath the tan, the flash of the eye, all bespoke him a man not devoid of courage. Yet his speech brought only ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... laughing mien, Yet was he study for the painter's art: He joined not in their sports, but rather seemed To please his eye with sight of others' joy. There was a cast of sorrow on his brow, As though it had been early there. He sat In listless attitude, yet not devoid Of gentlest grace, as down his stalwart form He bent, to catch the playful whisperings, And note the movements of a bright-hair'd child Who danced before him in the evening sun, Holding a tiny brother by ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... death relieved Otto of his most dangerous rivals, Archbishop Frederic of Mainz and his own son, Duke Liutolf. Then, in 960, arrived the long-delayed call from Rome. John XII, a dissipated youth of twenty-two, the son of Alberic (died 954) but devoid of his father's ability, invoked the aid of Germany to protect the temporal possessions against Berengar. Otto required no second summons. Descending upon Italy, he expelled his vassal, assumed the Italian crown at Pavia (961) and then ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Darwin's title-page amount to when written out plainly, but to an assertion that the main means of modification has been the preservation of races whose variations have been unintentional, that is to say, not connected with effort or intention, devoid of mind or meaning, fortuitous, spontaneous, accidental, or whatever kindred word is least disagreeable to the reader? It is impossible to conceive any more complete denial of mind as having had anything to do with organic development, than is involved in the title-page ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... other girl, with a tray of things. It was strange to see them set the table on the floor, but Cora remembered that this was a custom of the wanderers. When the breakfast had been arranged, the queen slipped down beside her coffee like a creature devoid of bones. ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... face, and he saw the man start. He had not forgotten the name. Just for an instant his face was stark pale and devoid of expression. "Virginia!" he cried. "My God, what do you know ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... poor grandfather and little Charley, both of whom she knew would suffer all the anguish of uncertainty and fear, with reference to her fate. Then, perhaps, her mind reverted to the happiness she used to enjoy within the hallowed precincts of her humble home—which, humble as it was, and devoid of every luxury, and many comforts, was nevertheless endeared to her by a thousand tender associations, and had been to her as an ark of safety from the storms of life. Her thoughts next dwelt upon the kind young lady, who had given her ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... simple supposition that the lower part probably served the purpose of securing the bears, lions, tigers and other savage animals; the middle part, that of housing the gentle and tractable animals, together with the provender, which cannot be kept in a place devoid of all air-currents; the upper that of accommodating human beings themselves, together with the domestic animals and the birds. This should be ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... order to be the fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family, the husband must share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim. You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others in those momentous concerns, you must care for them and conduct their course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... sound came, he saw a young girl, in the dress worn by the children of the fishermen, holding on to a wet, seaweed-covered rock, on which she had fallen to save herself from slipping off into the water. He was not so devoid of good feeling as not to wish to help her, so he ran on, and taking one of her hands, he dragged her up and enabled her to reach a spot where the footing was ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... satisfying in any one feature; too many courses, constructed, as I had observed, after photographs printed in the back pages of women's magazines; doubtless they possessed a certain artistic value as sights for the eye, but considered as food they were devoid of ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... for the Academy some day, when he got tired of portrait-painting. He would dwell upon his subject lovingly, describing it in minute detail, and then forget all about it, while some one else went and painted it, and won money and fame thereby. Being of an easy temper, and entirely devoid of ambition, Mr. Clair was unable to sympathise with Eddie's impatience; but though not enthusiastic about art, he had a thorough knowledge of its technicalities, and Eddie might have learned much from him if he would. Meantime, Agnes was studying hard and making wonderful progress, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... congeals water and suspends animation; for who would work if there was no longer to be any connection between labour and the satisfying of our wants? Political economy has not treated of gifts. It has hence been concluded that it disowns them, and that it is therefore a science devoid of heart. This is a ridiculous accusation. That science which treats of the laws resulting from the reciprocity of services, had no business to inquire into the consequences of generosity with respect to him who receives, nor into its effects, perhaps still more precious, on him who gives: such ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... irritability at every sentence of the preacher. Your soul did not soar heavenward with the same unreserved confidence; you left St. Thomas's with your head hot and your feet cold; and you so far forgot yourself as to say, as you got into your carriage, that Father Nicholas was a Gallican devoid of eloquence. Your coachman heard it. And, finally, on reaching home you thought your drawing-room too small and your husband growing too fat. Why, I again ask you, this string of vexatious impressions? If you remember rightly, dear Madame, you wore for the first time ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... utterly devoid of expression she watched him now while he held back the gate with one hand while trying to stuff the bulkily folded targets ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... Development there certainly has been as estimated by an outsider, an onlooker, but not as perceived by the tree itself. It has not known where it was going. Out of the unknown earth the seed pushes its way into the still less known air. But in doing so it is devoid of purpose. Nor, if we endow it with consciousness, can we suppose it would behold its end and seek it. The forces driving it toward that end are not conscious forces; they are mechanic forces. Through every stage it is pushed from behind, not drawn from before. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... lived in the freedom of her instincts; but in Mrs. Rossall's drawing-room she could only act a part, and all such divergence from reality was pain. It was not that she resented her subordination, for she was almost devoid of social ambitions and knew nothing of vulgar envy; still less did it come of reasoned revolt against the artificial ordering of precedences; Emily's thoughts did not tend that way. She could do perfect justice to the ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... This enclosure was devoid of all artistic effect, but in summer-time it served as a screen to break the rigour of the wooden farm-buildings. It was a practical but incongruous piece of man's handiwork, divided down the centre by a pathway ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... reproduction might lead ignorant and misguided people back to the abominations of idolatry, so they look on relics of ancient statuary with suspicion amounting to fear and connect them with magic and witchcraft. It is, therefore, with awe not devoid of horror that they tell travellers that the mounds contain underground passages which are haunted not only by wild beasts, but by evil spirits—for have not sometimes strange figures carved in stone been dimly perceived in the crevices? Better instructed foreigners have long ago ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... domination in Northern Italy are preserved in local legends and have not remained entirely unnoticed by sober history. What name his family bore is unknown; the statement that it was a branch of the Sereni, originally made by Celso Rosini and repeated by later writers, being devoid of foundation. Ties of relationship, which seem to have united his immediate forebears with the illustrious family of Trivulzio and possibly also with that of Borromeo, furnished him with sounder justification for some pride of ancestry than did the remoter ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... professor, half rising in his seat. "Is it a hold up?" He looked around in all directions. But the desert seemed devoid of human life. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... divided among themselves, animated by ardent ambition, possessing none of the qualities which constitute the greatness and power of others, devoid of energy, equally wanting in military spirit and in the spirit of association, and respecting neither ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... grief, or by speaking to live with shame." In "The Monastery," a novel which the author himself considered a failure, Sir Walter Scott represented a Euphuist. But the language of Sir Piercie Shafton is entirely devoid of the characteristics of Euphuism, and gives a very false impression concerning it. (See introduction to "The Monastery.") Compare passages quoted in the text with one in chap. xiv ("Monastery") beginning: "Ah, that I had with me my Anatomy ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... gentlemen had finished their wine and discussed their coffee in the drawing-room, down we went, through stone passages and long underground galleries into a splendidly-lighted apartment, somewhat devoid of furniture, but decorated with evergreens, and further adorned by a sort of muslin transparency hanging from the roof. This was the servants' hall, and although on a stone floor, a capital room for dancing it was. We were all ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... woman," was Mary Raymond's thought, as she slipped into a seat in front of Marjorie, and stared resentfully at the rigid figure, so devoid of womanly beauty, in its severe brown linen dress, unrelieved by even a touch ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... 14, 22, 28 and 32. If this has been done without due authorization you are liable for trespass. Fine of not less than $200 or imprisonment for not less than twelve months—or both." He delivered this in a voice absolutely devoid of expression. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... have a gay season every year at the first hotels at Newport, and not be able to afford the wife a fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the servants enough food to keep them from constantly deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen, the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort, where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole time, are witnesses to what such families consider economy. Economy in the view of some is undisguised slipshod slovenliness in the home circle for the sake of fine clothes to be shown abroad; it ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... So an unsaved man may mistake some flash of fancy, some pleasant emotion, for the witness of the Spirit. But if he is honest, the absence of these secondary evidences and witnesses will correct him. He must know that so long as sin masters him, reigns within him, and he is devoid of the tempers, graces, and dispositions of God's people, as portrayed in the Bible, that he is mistaken in supposing that he has the witness of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot witness to what does not exist. He cannot lie. Not until sin is forgiven does He witness to the ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... of property must be sought. Is there any thing new in this doctrine? Apparently it never has occurred to those who, since the days of Cicero and Aristotle, and earlier, have maintained that THINGS BELONG TO THE FIRST OCCUPANT, that occupation may be exercised by beings devoid of conscience and personality. The human personality, though it may be the principle or the subject of property, as matter is the object, is not the CONDITION. Now, it is this condition which we most need to know. So far, M. Troplong tells us no more than his masters, and the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... dishonor, produces a double portion of indignation at the discovery of their profligacy, because it supposes, in the first place, that something like imposture must have been practised upon us in securing our affections, or what is still more degrading, that we must have been materially devoid of common penetration, or we could not have suffered ourselves to become the dupe ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... extended upwards of fifty miles along the Red and Assiniboine rivers, which streams supplied the settlers with a variety of excellent fish. The banks were clothed with fine trees; and immediately behind the settlement lay the great prairies, which extended in undulating waves—almost entirely devoid of shrub or tree—to the base of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... farther than the Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive. It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a northern flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of a pair of reflectively deep blue eyes—it threw itself ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne, where Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her accounts, Soames thought with wonder of those seven years at Brighton. How had he managed to go on so long in that town devoid of the scent of sweetpeas, where he had not even space to put his treasures? True, those had been years with no time at all for looking at them—years of almost passionate money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte had become solicitors to more limited Companies than they could properly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... generally devoid of presence of mind, but at that moment I behaved as awkwardly as a school-girl. If I could only have thought of some excuse for leaving him,—an errand or a message to Mrs. Drabble; but no form of words would occur to me. I could only mutter ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fairest Rosiere of Salency. What more can I say," he demanded, "but that, lovely as this flower appears, yet for once it will be excelled by her to whom its beauty is devoted. Exquisite and charming is virtue, devoid of the graces of youth and loveliness; but when it is adorned with both, then it is irresistible. My friends and children, can you doubt to whom this description is applicable? If so, let doubt be banished from your minds, and receive with joy, in its stead, Lisette Durocher, ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... he had on a portion of one of these bear-skins; and it added no little to the natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of the Upsaroka character. The mouth extended nearly from ear to ear; the lips were thin, and seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of natural pliancy, so that the ruling expression never varied under the influence of any emotion whatever. This ruling expression may be conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly long and protruding, and were ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... The hair, though devoid of sensibility and unsusceptible of expression under the influence of the will and the ordinary mental feelings, like the mobile portions of the face, and though it may be popularly regarded rather in the light of a parasitic growth than as an essential ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... they trudged down became one of many. Others angled from it frequently, all dark, all hushed, all seemingly devoid of people. The volcano—extinct, almost surely, for the warmth was only that of the earth—was honey-combed with corridors. The marvelous ingenuity of the Egyptian race had come into play in fashioning this warm home in the barren ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... had however an altogether different expression. They looked dreamy, and seemed almost careless of what passed before them, though now and then a certain quick, sharp turn of the head showed him not devoid ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... but his wife only once and then not by name but as "the princess who was the mother of Rahula[307]." His separation from her becomes in the later legend the theme of an affecting tale but the scanty allusions to his family found in the Pitakas are devoid of sentimental touches. A remarkable passage is preserved in the Anguttara Nikaya[308] describing his feelings as a young man and may be the origin of the story[309] about the four visions of old age, sickness, death and of peace in ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... been reversed. The advantage of situation, however, remains with the historic town, whence the view on every side is perfectly enchanting, where the air is deliciously pure, the vegetation splendid, and the residents, in harmony with nature, are friendly souls, good fellows, and devoid of Puritanism, though two-thirds of the population are Calvinists. Under such conditions, though there are the usual disadvantages of life in a small town, and each one lives under the officious eye which makes private ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... fruit. To this surfeit he used to ascribe the giddiness in his head, which, with intermissions sometimes of a longer, and sometimes of a shorter continuance, pursued him till it seemed to compleat its conquest, by rendering him the exact image of one of his own STRULDBRUGGS; a miserable spectacle, devoid of every appearance of human nature, except ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... utterly confounded. He drew not forth an arrow, nor brandished a tomahawk. While he thus stood, and the rest of the party were moving hurriedly about, a few paces distant, Mary again repeated the word "FATHER!" As suddenly as if by enchantment every savage was paralyzed. Each stood as devoid of animation as a statue. For many moments an intense silence reigned, as if naught existed there but the cheerless forest trees. Slowly at length, the tomahawk was returned to the belt, and the arrow to the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... infinite pains and a vast expenditure of time was not only non-productive of expressive sounds, but actually harmful and misleading as regards the development of the musical sense. I could see no object in practicing evenness in scales, considering that a perfectly even scale is essentially devoid of emotional (musical) significance. I could see no reason for limiting tone production to a certain kind of sound that was called 'a good tone,' since the expression of feeling necessarily demands in many cases the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... eleven, as a boy at school, and so forth! While Hyacinth delightedly recognised Cecil, Anne wondered how on earth she could tell one from the other. Of course, he was not a bad sort. He was rather clever, and not devoid of a sense of humour, but the fault Anne really found with him, besides his taking his privileges so much as a matter of course, was that there was nothing, really, to find fault with. Had he been ugly and stupid, she could have minded ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... a summer morning" in defence of his foreign policy, and carry the vindication of it by a majority of 46, was certainly no common performer on the parliamentary stage; and yet Lord Palmerston had very slender claims to the title of an orator. His style was not only devoid of ornament and rhetorical device, but it was slipshod and untidy in the last degree. He eked out his sentences with "hum" and "hah;" he cleared his throat, and flourished his pocket-handkerchief, and sucked his orange; he rounded his periods with "you know what I mean" and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... hide the stains which are looked upon as a necessity, just as certain sins and certain crimes are still considered to be inevitable in the world; the alternative of avoiding them has never occurred to any one. Class-rooms have black desks, and bare, gray walls, more devoid of ornament than those of a mortuary chamber; this is to the end that the starved and famishing spirit of the child may "accept" the indigestible intellectual food which the teacher bestows upon it. In other words, every distracting element has to be removed from ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... little doubt that most of the many stories related by the Swiss of the cruelty and extortion of the Austrian bailies are wholly or in great part devoid of a historical basis of truth, as are the dates given for their occurrence. They doubtless sprang from the very natural feelings of hatred the mountaineers of the Forest State felt against a foreign master, who was probably only too ready to punish them for the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and about two miles inland from the northern shore. The southern slope of the range descended to a flat plain, or perhaps moor, some two miles across at its broadest point and ran in varying width from one end of the island to the other. It was green and almost entirely devoid of timber. The central eminence from which the observations were taken was the loftiest of a range of ten or twelve diminishing hills that formed what might actually be described as the backbone of the island. The eastern extremity tapered off to a long, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... modern architecture which creates our dwelling-houses, factories, and even to a large extent our places of worship, is pure craft unmixed with art On the other hand, it might be argued that such works of architecture are not always devoid of decoration, and that "decorative art," even though the "decorative artist" is unconscious of this fact, is based upon rules and employs symbols which have a deep significance. The truly artistic element in architecture, however, is more clearly manifest ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... through the night,—he who for fifteen years had ministered to her with all the tenderness of a woman. It was a night devoid of suffering to her. As morning approached, and for two hours previous to the dread moment, she seemed to be in a partial ecstasy; and though not apparently conscious of the coming on of death, she gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... confession there thus arose at the first a loose system of dogmas which were necessarily devoid of strict style, definite principle, or fixed and harmonious aim. In this form we find them with special plainness in Tertullian.[475] This writer was still completely incapable of inwardly connecting his rational (Stoic) theology, as developed by him for apologetic purposes, with the Christological ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Naples, they were during the past two or three centuries permitted to greatly deteriorate in the southern part of the peninsula, to the great detriment of both agriculture and commerce. The condition of the large Italian islands is still more lamentable, Sicily and Sardinia being almost entirely devoid of roads. She that was the granary of ancient Rome to-day scarcely produces enough grain to supply ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... fool as a man "without a heart," and it is probably in the same sense that modern Arabs describe the brute creation as devoid of hearts. The fox in the narrative just given knew better. Not so, however, the lady who brought a curious question for her Rabbi to solve. The case to which I refer may be found in the Responsa ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... writings he never attributes any passage found in the extant dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of (2) length, (3) excellence, and (4) accordance with the general spirit of his writings. Indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient Greek authors may be summed up under ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... raised the question to show you that I was not devoid of merit in handing you the sum. Are you so short of cash? for the Bank will ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... compare with dreams certain comic scenes in which one of the characters systematically repeats in a nonsensical fashion what another character whispers in his ear. If you fall asleep with people talking round you, you sometimes find that what they say gradually becomes devoid of meaning, that the sounds get distorted, as it were, and recombine in a haphazard fashion to form in your mind the strangest of meanings, and that you are reproducing between yourself and the different speakers the scene between Petit-Jean and The ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... The room was dark, and as far as Helmar could see at first glance, it was as devoid of windows and in almost as ruinous a condition as his prison. He saw in one swift glance an untidy bed, covered with brown blankets, occupying one side of the room, and then his attention was riveted on a man dressed in Egyptian costume writing at a ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... of this force which is not god, and is certainly not the higher than deity of whom I have written. It is a force without a mind. I wish to indicate something more subtle than electricity, but absolutely devoid of consciousness, and with no more feeling than the force ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... could he have belonged to other than British—with those rosy cheeks, that fresh complexion, and that little perky moustache which adorned his upper lip? His "How do you do?" in the purest English as he met a companion in the street was as devoid of accent as would have been that of a habitue of London. There was nothing exaggerated about his method of raising his hat to a lady whom he passed, no gesticulations, no active nervous movements of his hands, and none of that shrugging of the shoulders which, public opinion ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... splendid bravery. And in giving them hearty words of praise for what they had done—which yet fell far short of their deserts—I naturally likened them to the Roman hero. Indeed, I may say that the parallel that I there drew was an apt one, and in some of its turns was not devoid of grace. ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... without any opposition, and consequently, all those who had aspired to be sharers of his property, balked by my unexpected appearance, immediately withdrew to vent their disappointment in abusing me. They represented me as a wretch, devoid of all respect for my parents, as one without religion, an adventurer in the world, and the companion ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... these considerations, this and other similar theories are completely disproved by the fact that every tone which the human voice is capable of producing can be produced by inspiration as well as by expiration. The tones sung by inspiration are, as might be expected, wholly devoid of beauty, because the vocal apparatus is, as it were, put upside down, and the position of bellows and resonator reversed. But that does not alter the question. The fact remains, and clearly proves that the pockets have no more to do with the falsetto than with the ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... not devoid of wisdom. Fine clothes sometimes went with a long purse, and a long purge might do wonders to help the comfort of any prisoner in London, as well as the comfort of his keeper. Truly his eyes opened wide as he saw the contents of the box. He felt the lapel of the coat, passing it approvingly between ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... times nine, were required for turning round by turns the axle-tree or wimble. If any of them had been guilty of murder, adultery, theft, or other atrocious crime, it was imagined either that the fire would not kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual virtue. So soon as any sparks were emitted by means of the violent friction, they applied a species of agaric which grows on old birch-trees, and is very combustible. This fire had the appearance of being immediately derived from heaven, and manifold were ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... shown in. You know very well that that is not what I mean. There must be some unpremeditated action, some impulse which comes from your own heart. Frankly, Arranmore, there are times now when I am afraid of you. You seem to have no heart—to be absolutely devoid of feeling, to be cold and calculating even in your slightest actions. There, now I have told you just what I feel sometimes, and it doesn't sound ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... himself checked those steeds. That heroic warrior then, bow in hand, stood upon his car (ready for battle). Beholding this feat, his troops applauded it highly. Resting for a short space of time, Kritavarman then urged those good steeds of his. Himself devoid of fear, he inspired his foes with great fear. Satyaki, however, had by that time, left him behind, while Kritavarman himself now rushed against Bhimasena without pursuing Satyaki. Thus issuing out of the division of the Bhojas, Satyaki ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... passage: arm in arm, glad enough, no doubt, to stretch their legs while resting their arms. Their crimson sashes gave a factitious touch of gaiety to the smoky atmosphere of the concert-hall; and Heyst felt a sudden pity for these beings, exploited, hopeless, devoid of charm and grace, whose fate of cheerless dependence invested their coarse and joyless features with ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Sea Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it is not devoid of interest. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... with several aromatic herbs, emitted a peculiar perfume in the cool morning air. These now gave place to the hardy berberris which grew in thick prickly bushes at long intervals, leaving a bare surface of rocks between them devoid of vegetation. There was little of geological interest; gneiss and syenite predominated, with extremely large crystals of hornblende in the latter rock, that would have afforded handsome slabs had not the prevailing defect throughout Cyprus rendered all blocks ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... his full, submerged, watchful eyes, he could look into her and see her, what she was, see her secrets. He would only want her to be herself—he knew her verily, with a subconscious, sinister knowledge, devoid of illusions and hopes. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... companies to any extent until after the Restoration. Female parts were taken by boys, and, except in plays acted by the children's companies, there were rarely more than two important female characters in a play. Though without scenery, the Elizabethan stage was by no means devoid of spectacle. Processions, battles, all kinds of mythological beings, ascents to heaven, descents to hell, fire-works, and elaborate properties, were employed. Numerous contemporary plays indicate that neither the fairyland of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... the people, seeing them approach, called out to the knight: "Ill come, sire, ill come. This lodging-place was pointed out to you in order that you might suffer harm and shame. An abbot might take his oath to that." "Ah," he replied, "foolish and vulgar folk, full of all mischief, and devoid of honour, why have you thus assailed me?" "Why? you will find out soon enough, if you will go a little farther. But you shall learn nothing more until you have ascended to the fortress." At once my lord Yvain turns toward the tower, and the crowd cries out, all shouting aloud ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... and while Howard gave his exclusive attention to the management of the canoe, Elwood devoid himself to consoling Tim O'Rooney in the ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... interfere with you, Mr. Henry," said Philo Gubb. "But I'll do my dooty as I see it. Fear don't frighten me. The first words in Lesson One is these: 'The deteckative must be a man devoid of fear.' I can't go back on that. If them gools want to kill me, I can't object. Deteckating is a dangerous employment, and ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... retained by the Belgians, and part was ruled by the king of Holland as grand duke. In other respects, the status quo ante was preserved, and the partition of Holland and Belgium was confirmed, as it has ever since remained. The history of Belgium thenceforward has been almost wholly devoid of incidents; the little nation may quite too apothegm as applying to themselves, "Short are the annals of a happy people!" Their insignificance and their geographical position secure them against all disturbance. They live ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... I was offending any body," she said, in a manner not devoid of childish dignity. "I was trying to do a little bit of good. I think, if you please, I had ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... until he had finally settled down to take charge of the little church in Blue Creek. He was neither a great man, nor an educated one. On the contrary, he was ignorant of any life outside of his own narrow sphere, and intolerant of all spirit of advance or change, singularly devoid of tact, but literal, honest, and well-meaning. Moreover, he was absolutely self-satisfied, but utterly lacking in the sense of fun which makes conceited people so much less disagreeable, since it gives them a glimmering ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... accepts Darwin's inference, explains how the fear of man, acquired by experience, becomes instinctive in birds, in the following passage: "It is well known that in newly-discovered lands not inhabited by man, birds are so devoid of fear as to allow themselves to be knocked over with sticks; but that, in the course of generations, they acquire such a dread of man as to fly on his approach: and that this dread is manifested by young as well as by old. Now unless this change be ascribed to the killing-off of the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... writing. In accordance with these general ideas, and bearing out, moreover, the somewhat sober effect which bookcases always produce, the style of design and decoration ought to be, although not devoid of cheerfulness, certainly subdued ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... attach entire credit to the pleasing descriptions of the muses, we must admit, that the earliest ages of the world deserved the epithet of "golden" as exhibiting man devoid of those artificial wants which refinement and luxury have superinduced, and divested of those violent prejudices, that selfishness and that arrogance, which have filled the cup of human wo to the brim: we should see him inhabiting a tent of the simplest construction, furnishing himself ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... in respect of all that entered it—Jose was now installed in the office of the Papal Secretary of State as an office assistant. He had received the appointment with indifference, for he was wholly devoid of ecclesiastical ambition. And yet it was with a sense of relief that he now felt assured of a career in the service of the Administrative Congregation of the Church, and for all time removed from ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that morning. A snake-charmer was showing off his tricks and reaping a rich harvest. The juggler went round with his collecting bowl, leaving his performing cobras in their basket. One cobra, probably devoid of the artistic temperament, or finding stage-life uncongenial to him, hungered for freedom, and, leaving his basket, glided swiftly on to the crowded verandah. He certainly occupied the middle of the stage at ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... bird, the very existence of which was at one time denied by shrewd men and good naturalists. Perhaps the following history of this curious creature, from its first to its last appearance before the eyes of men, will not be considered devoid ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... and cloudless, and the little colony of four set about surveying their situation, and exploring their new domain. They found it a wilderness indeed—barren, rocky, almost devoid of vegetation, save for the coarse bracken and juniper bushes which grew in patches, and for an occasional clump of birches, stunted pines, or firs. No sign that any human foot save their own had ever visited it could be discovered: and the only animals ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... made him more intent than ever. After that he heard that Isabel Boncassen would also be at Killancodlem, having been induced to join Mrs. Montacute Jones's swarm of visitors. Though he was dangerously devoid of experience, still he felt that this was unfortunate. He intended to marry Mabel Grex. And he could assure himself that he thoroughly loved her. Nevertheless he liked making love to Isabel Boncassen. He was quite willing to marry and settle down, and looked forward ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... occasion, it may be worth while to give a short account of it in this place: For there never was, perhaps, a literary composition so strangely mixed up of unconnected and discordant sense and nonsense, and so totally devoid of any thing like order or arrangement, in the whole chronology of authorship, or rather of book-making, as has been produced by this scion of the Incas. No consideration short of our duty to the public, could have induced us to wade through such a labyrinth of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... from its adamantine foundation, gave signs that it was to encircle the globe, some imagined him too prudent. Some thought him devoid of sensibility; a cold, colossal mass, intrenched in taciturnity, or enfolded in a mantle of dignity. The sequel disclosed that his complete mastery over passion, moving in harmony with his other powers and faculties, lent its essential aid towards his unrivalled name. Opinion and passion ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... Yet for a moment a queer sense of apprehension troubled her. Was it true, she wondered, that she did not like the man? She banished the thought almost as soon as it was conceived. The very idea was absurd! His manner towards her had always been perfectly respectful. He seemed equally devoid of sex or character. She withdrew her gaze and turned ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Oh! realm devoid of beauty—how the light From glory's sun streams down for evermore, Hallowing your ancient ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... kind; without a mouth, nerves, muscles, or distinct organs, and only manifesting its vitality to ordinary observation by thrusting out and retracting from all parts of its surface long filamentous processes, which serve for arms and legs. Yet this amorphous particle, devoid of everything which in the higher animals we call organs, is capable of feeding, growing, and multiplying; of separating from the ocean the small proportion of carbonate of lime which is dissolved in sea-water; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... been living with the Wendlings. Frl. Wendling, who had engaged Mozart's interest for a time, turned out to be a disreputable character and the father to be devoid of all religion. The deeply pious Mozart writes in the same letter to his father, "Friends who have no religion cannot long be our friends." Then, with man's usual consistency, he outlines the white lie by which he is going to break off the association with the Wendlings; ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... inactivation became inevitable. The fear of white opposition that had inhibited the staff planners and local commanders also proved groundless. According to a Fahy Committee staff report in March 1950, integration had been readily accepted at all levels and the process had been devoid of friction. "The men," E. W. (p. 408) Kenworthy reported, "apparently were more ready for equality of treatment and opportunity than the officer corps had realized."[16-36] At the same time, Kenworthy noted the effect ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... only a temporary position until the church at Sandycliffe had been restored and was ready for use; the living had been already promised to him, and small as it was, he wished to hold it, at least for the present. Raby was a man singularly devoid of ambition, and though he must have been conscious that his were no common gifts, he always told us that he did not wish a wider sphere until he had tested his powers, and had worked a ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
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