|
|
|
More "Superficial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to assure herself that the main part of this might be superficial, like a dish-cover polished with the spots on, and she lost her handkerchief on purpose to come back and try a little test-work of her own. This was a piece of unstopped knotting in the panel of a hatchway, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... a secret surprise. He had never thought ill of Mrs Frothingham; but, on the other hand, had never attributed to her any save superficial qualities, a lightsome temper, pleasure in hospitality, an easy good nature towards all the people of her acquaintance. He would not have supposed her capable of substantial sacrifices; least of all, on behalf of strangers and inspired by a principle. She ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... eminent, and secured for her one great chapter in the history of the world; but he imprinted upon her a certain narrowness uncongenial to her character and to her past, which has undervalued her to many superficial observers, and done perhaps a little, but a permanent, harm to her national ideal ever since. A small evil for so much good, but yet not ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... reiterated condemnation of passages which had so little to do with the argument that they no longer exist in the complete edition of Supernatural Religion. Could there be more palpable evidence of the frivolous and superficial character of his objections? It is not too much to say that in no part of these Essays has Dr. Lightfoot at all seriously entered upon the fundamental proposition of Supernatural Religion. He has elaborately ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... near it, nor breathe the air where it grows, without being affected by it. Alameda seems hardly ready for human occupancy yet, unless something effectual can be done to exterminate it. We often see superficial means taken, like burning it down to the level of the earth; but what short-sighted warfare is that which gives new strength after a brief interval! On one account I forgive it many injuries,—that it furnishes our only bright autumn ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... the same arts to win among city girls. This system of easy victory and of yearning for other worlds to conquer, instead of making him fit himself capably for a larger field, has, on account of this absurd fault of irresistibleness, only made him superficial. His crudeness is, to the uninitiated, almost pitiful. Having never been obliged to work for pre-eminence, he descries exertion, and never admits that he has to try hard to win anything. His cheap little accomplishments ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... subaqueous deposits. They furnish us with a record, the general nature of which cannot be misinterpreted, of the kinds of things that have lived upon the surface of the earth during the time that is registered by this great thickness of stratified rocks. But even a superficial study of these fossils shows us that the animals and plants which live at the present time have had only a temporary duration; for the remains of such modern forms of life are met with, for the most part, only in the uppermost or latest tertiaries, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... you will find the Dane," said the old proverb—none the less ruthless and cruel because of the gloss of a superficial civilisation. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the vague recollections of concepts, ideas, rules. Within a few hours, their phlegmatic blandness had begun to pass. They were becoming men now. Individuals. Out of a dazed and superficial conformity, sharp differences began to emerge. Character reasserted itself, and the five hundred began to ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... first night approached, the condition of affairs improved a little, and Henry saw with satisfaction that the resemblance of Prince's Theatre to a lunatic asylum was more superficial than real. Also, the tone of the newspapers in referring to the imminent production convinced even John Pilgrim that Henry was perhaps not quite an ordinary author. John Pilgrim cancelled a proof of a poster which he had already passed, and ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... department is very conveniently situated close to the Regent's Canal, so as to have easy communication with inland as well as sea navigation. A series of sheds occupy an area of 135,000 superficial feet, and the platforms to receive goods from railway trucks on one side and from waggons on the other, occupy 30,000 feet. These platforms and sheds are provided with 110 cranes, for loading and unloading, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... times of peace—periods of distant foreign cruising succeeding to, and being again succeeded by, periods of employment on shore in some of the many duties connected with the administration of the navy. But while in their superficial aspect there is little to distinguish these monotonous years, with their occasional breaks of exceptional incident, from the ordinary experiences of all naval officers, the journal of Farragut shows an activity of mind, a constant habit of observation, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... to be aimed at in the intellectual part of education is variety of pursuit. A human being, like a tree, if it is to attain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to it from all quarters. This may be done without making men superficial. Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt. But one or two great branches of science must be accurately known. So, too, the choice works of antiquity may be thoroughly appreciated without ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... The superficial parts of his talk were more easily retained. In mere banter, good-humored give-and-take, that froth and bubble of conversational intercourse, he was delightful. His hostess, the wife of a well-known comedian, apologized to him for having to move him out of the large guest-chamber ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... another minute or two on the subject. The Hlats—the word meant "rock lion" in one of the Hyles-Frisian dialects, describing a carnivorous animal which had some superficial resemblance to the creatures Eltak had happened on—frequented the seacoast and submerged themselves in sand, rocks and debris, whipping up out of it to seize some food animal, and taking it down with them again to devour ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... moment to reflect on the physical aspect of death, it would only be to remark that it is as natural an occurrence as birth. In fact, as is obvious to the most superficial mind, birth and death are inextricably interwoven. The great life of the worlds is so one, so powerful, so omnipresent, that nothing can so utterly pass away as to give birth to nothing—no, not even the cremated ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... and superficial method of reasoning obfuscate the public mind on this subject. It is becoming popular to say and to think that slavery at the South is already a dead or a dying institution, by the operation of the war. This opinion has in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... you really disliked him," Lee observed. Then he remembered the hatred he had felt for Fanny. Matrimony had a brutal hand for superficial relationships and conventions. He had spoken lightly but, watching her, he saw the grimness of her passion strike the animation from her face. The jewel case slid over the softness of her wrap to the floor, her hand crept under his ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... circumstance may make one person laugh, which shall render another very serious; or in the same person the first impression may be corrected by after-thought. The misemployed incongruous characters at the Harlot's Funeral, on a superficial inspection, provoke to laughter; but when we have sacrificed the first emotion to levity, a very different frame of mind succeeds, or the painter has lost half his purpose. I never look at that wonderful assemblage of depraved beings, who, without a grain of reverence ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... attempt to run the government, as has been sometimes said, "on business principles." The President was to proceed, and did proceed, as if he had in charge some great estate which he was to manage and direct as a faithful and exact trustee. This, no one can deny, had the superficial look of most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... investigators have suffered much hardship and lost many days in opening paths through tangled underbrush, and in crossing rugged mountain ranges in uninhabited regions. The physical obstacles and the necessarily superficial examination consequent thereon may explain the contradictions of detail in different reports. About the middle of the nineteenth century several studies were published, and three scientists who accompanied the American Commission ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... been astonished since to hear Crane spoken of as "the reporter in fiction," for the reportorial faculty of superficial reception and quick transference was what he conspicuously lacked. His first newspaper account of his shipwreck on the filibuster "Commodore" off the Florida coast was as lifeless as the "copy" of a police court reporter. It was many months afterwards that the literary product ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... looked pretty. She no longer looked even young. Lines of age were evident around her mouth, her forehead was wrinkled. The boy fairly started at the sight of her. She seemed like a stranger to him. Her innermost character, which he had heretofore only guessed at by superficial signs, was written plainly on her face. The boy felt himself immeasurably small and young, manly and bold of his age as he really was. When a young girl stretches to the full height of her instincts, she dwarfs any boy of her own age. Maria's feeling for her little sister was fairly maternal. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... caused a very good woman to be misinterpreted. Such a woman should be able to sit in judgment upon herself; and remembering that in a great city, at a crowded theatre, or at a watering-place, judgments must be hasty and superficial, she should tone down her natural exuberance, and take with her a female companion who is of a different type from herself. Calm and cold Puritanical people may not be more respectable than the fresh-colored and laughing ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... depression are the children of worry." The symptoms and the evil results seem to receive more elaborate and detailed attention than the treatment. "Eliminate it," counsels this writer; "Don't worry," advises another. "Such advice is superficial," says their critic, "it can only be subdued by our ascending into a higher atmosphere, where we are able to look down and comprehend the just proportions of life." "Cultivate a quiet and peaceful frame of mind," urges another; ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... have been calling myself a Christian. I am not a Catholic, and have never been, but during a stay of seven years in Catholic countries and among Catholic relatives, I discovered that the difference between Catholic and Protestant tenets is either none at all, or else wholly superficial, and that the division which once occurred was merely political or else concerned with theological problems not fundamentally germane to the religion itself. A registered Protestant I am and will remain, but I can hardly be called orthodox or evangelistic, but come nearest ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... with a mixture of wonder and admiration. The calm way in which he sometimes alluded to his present circumstances, without a trace of bitterness or fretfulness, amazed her. In old days she would have put it down to "good breeding—good manners," some superficial veneer of good society of which she thoroughly approved; but she had seen too much of the seamy side of "good society" now to be able to accept this explanation of his calmness. It was not want of sensitiveness, she was sure of that: he was by no means obtuse: it was simply that ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... character? Can a nation fully possessed by one type of civilization reject it, and adopt one radically different? Do races have "souls" which are fixed and incapable of radical transformations? What has taken place in Japan, a profound, or only a superficial change in psychical character? Are the destinies of the ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... anxious to discover more certainly which was which. I found, presently, that instead of contenting myself with the superficial layer of thought over my mind, created by the circumstances in which they were placed, I was penetrating into what they really were. A few minutes showed me what had been their occupations for the day, and what ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of instruction is, perhaps, not wholly without its inconveniencies; it certainly fills the nation with superficial disputants; enables those to talk who were born to work; and affords information sufficient to elate vanity, and stiffen obstinacy, but too little to enlarge the mind into complete skill for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of the earth, where, owing to topographic inequalities, and other obstacles, locomotion can take place only in its first and simplest mode—namely, in a linear direction; the plane, produced by the movement of the line, and constituting a higher term of superficial development, corresponds with locomotion upon the water, whose unencumbered surface, which can be traversed in every direction, presents a locomotive medium, the facilities of which, compared with those offered by the surface of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... ideas with which she sympathised, though they were antagonistic to the politics of her life. He had his ideas about books too, as to manners of life, as to art, and even ethics. Whether or no in all this there was not much that was superficial only, she was not herself deep enough to discover. Nor would she have been deterred from admiring him had she been told that it was tinsel. Such were the acquirements, such the charms, that she loved. Here was a young man who ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... be superficial; but he knew a lady when he met one, and Helen had attracted him powerfully. He was thanking his stars for the good fortune that numbered him among the earliest of her acquaintances in the hotel, and it was too bad that the barring edict should have been issued against ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... had obtained a general idea of the appearance of Morro Castle and the batteries at the mouth of the harbor which protected the city from an attack by water; but I was not satisfied with this distant and superficial inspection. External appearances are often deceptive, and forts or earthworks that look very formidable and threatening from the front, and at a distance of half a mile, may prove to have little real ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... bizarre episodes combine to make it a bewilderingly rich but rather 'difficult' work. It cannot be recommended to the lover of light drama or the seeker of momentary distraction. The Road to Damascus does not deal with the superficial strata of human life, but probes into those depths where the problems of God, and death, and eternity become ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... the same de Coetlogon who covered Hicks's flank at the time of the disaster in the desert, and bade farewell to Gordon in Khartoum before the investment. The colonel was abrupt and testy; Mrs. de Coetlogon was too exclusive for society like that of Apia; but whatever their superficial disabilities, it is strange they should have left, in such an odour of unpopularity, a place where they set so shining an example of the sterling virtues. The colonel was perhaps no diplomatist; he was certainly no lawyer; but he discharged the duties of his office with the constancy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only superficial; but, all the same, they were four ugly scratches down the fleshy part of the man's left arm, while over his right shoulder there were three more marks, which had bled pretty freely; and now, as I stood by helpless myself, I listened as he told the attendants how he was slowly journeying, ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Muni preached Vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra[FN117], Lankavatara-sutra, and other sutras, in which he compared Hinayanism with Mahayanism, and described the latter in glowing terms as a deep and perfect Law, whilst he set forth the former at naught as a superficial and imperfect one. Thus he showed his disciples the inferiority of Hinayanism, and caused them to desire for Mahayanism. This is said to be the third period, which ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... task as fraught with hazard as to try to classify minutely the divers kinds of men seen upon the stage of life. And of just as little practical value would it be to have tables showing the scores of superficial variations of character, nationality, time and place which the years have woven into the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... this superficial tale Is but a preface of her worthy praise; The chief perfections of that lovely dame, Had I sufficient skill to utter them, Would make a volume of enticing lines, Able to ravish any dull conceit: And, which is more, she is not so divine, So full-replete with choice of all delights, But ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... fact, unalterable. And then the child. That sweet unconscious baby smile, is not that the best moral rejuvenescence one can have? Ah! I have often thought over that. For us artists, vain as all must be who live by success, by that superficial esteem, capricious and fleeting, that we call the vogue; for us, above all others, children are indispensable. They alone can console us for growing old. All that we lose, the child gains. The success we have missed, ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... much less exciting than the one spent in Carmel, and keenly as Saxon had appreciated the Carmel folk, she now appreciated them more keenly than ever. In Ukiah she formed nothing more than superficial acquaintances. Here people were more like those of the working class she had known in Oakland, or else they were merely wealthy and herded together in automobiles. There was no democratic artist-colony that pursued fellowship disregardful ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... doubting whether I was not out of my sense; but the Stranger continued: "Surely you must now see that my explanation, and no other, suits the phenomena. What you call Solid things are really superficial; what you call Space is really nothing but a great Plane. I am in Space, and look down upon the insides of the things of which you only see the outsides. You could leave the Plane yourself, if you could but summon up the necessary volition. A slight upward or downward motion would enable you ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... broken by our English predecessors. But in England the pro-slavery party had been soon shamed out of the attempt to drag the Bible into their service, and hence the discussion there had been short and some-what superficial. The pro-slavery side of the question has been eagerly sustained by theological reviews and doctors of divinity without number, from the half-way and timid faltering of Wayland up to the unblushing and melancholy recklessness of Stuart. The argument ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... condition of those in the British National Gallery; but here they looked most forlorn, and even their sunshine was sunless. The merits of historical painting may be quite independent of the attributes that give pleasure, and a superficial ugliness may even heighten the effect; but not so ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no perception of extension in any of its dimensions. Not to multiply quotations, the following will, no doubt, be received as sufficient:—"They (i.e. philosophers) have—I think without sufficient reason—universally supposed that the superficial extension of length and breadth becomes known to us by sight originally."[28] Dr Brown then proceeds to argue, with what success we are not at present considering, that our knowledge of extension and figure is derived from another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the defects of character in the Indians, if they are frequently moderated, thanks to the religion that they profess, wholly disappear but with difficulty, and generally even have some influence on the private life and religious character of the natives. Since they are, therefore, more superficial and more impressionable to new things than those of other races, they would perhaps be less constant in their Catholic practices, sentiments, and convictions, and would feel more easily than do others the evil influences of false doctrines and worships, if they had experience with these. They ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... after their expulsion, she retained a high rank in the scale of European kingdoms. The acquisition of her East Indian and American territories, and the high eminence to which she was raised during the dominion of Charles V. and his immediate successors,—events that to a superficial view of things would have appeared of the greatest advantage to her,—proved, in fact, in their real and permanent operation, prejudicial to her industry, knowledge, and power. It would seem that the acquisition of the more precious metals, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... enriched his mind seemed to leave his soul more barren. The pathetic anguish of these moments had little of the moral element, which was dormant and uncultivated rather than perverted. He did not ponder over their moral aspect, for he shared the superficial dislike to the ethical, which we often see in purely artistic natures, who cannot endure the entrance of restraint or pain upon their beauty. His greatest lack was the companionship of fine men or noble women. ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... nurse," he said, with a strange, choking little "cluck" in his throat. Now, the nurse, although, as I've said, of a shining and superficial appearance, was no fool. She had watched the development of the intrigue; her attitude to the master of the house was composed of pity, patronage, and a rather motherly interest. She did not see how her mistress could ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... of the friendship these women entertained for Madame Recamier. That they respected her is evident; that they loved her is not so apparent. Mere complimentary notes prove but little. He must be but a superficial judge of life who draws decided conclusions simply from appearances. Madame Lucien Bonaparte might invite Madame Recamier to her fetes; but the consciousness that all her world knew that her husband was epris with her beautiful guest did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... state. When we have deducted all that is absorbed in sleep, all that is inevitably appropriated to the demands of nature, or irresistibly engrossed by the tyranny of custom; all that passes in regulating the superficial decorations of life, or is given up in the reciprocations of civility to the disposal of others; all that is torn from us by the violence of disease, or stolen imperceptibly away by lassitude and languor; we shall find that part of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... comprehend and follow out in some detail those changes in the form, structure, and relations of animals and plants which are effected in short periods of time, geologically speaking, and which are now going on around us. We may expect it to explain satisfactorily most of the lesser and superficial differences which distinguish one species from another. We may expect it to throw light on the mutual relations of the animals and plants which live together in any one country, and to give some rational account of the phenomena presented by their distribution in different parts of the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... good Stuff in Bagehot's Essays, in spite of his name, which is simply 'Bagot,' as men call it. Also, I find Hayward's Select Essays so agreeable that I suppose they are very superficial. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... is, to say the least, in the highest degree superficial. The assumption that worship is restricted to one single centre runs everywhere throughout the entire document. To appeal specially, in proof of the restriction, to Leviticus xvii. or Josh xxii., is to indicate a complete ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... party spirit, partisanship, clannishness, prestige. [causes of misjudgment. 3] bias, bigotry, warp, twist; hobby, fad, quirk, crotchet, partiality, infatuation, blind side, mote in the eye. [causes of misjudgment. 4] one-sided views, one-track mind, partial views, narrow views, confined views, superficial views, one- sided ideas, partial ideas, narrow ideas, confined ideas, superficial ideas, one-sided conceptions, partial conceptions, narrow conceptions, confined conceptions, superficial conceptions, one-sided ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... liable to universal ridicule, than that of a learned woman; those words imply, according to the received sense, a talking, impertinent, vain, and conceited creature. I believe nobody will deny that learning may have this effect, but it must be a very superficial degree of it. Erasmus was certainly a man of great learning, and good sense, and he seems to have my opinion of it, when he says Foemina qui [sic] vere sapit, non videtur sibi sapere; contra, quae cum nihil ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... into the Senate house, and found the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved by their success? It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks; literary persons despise the unlettered; and people of all pursuits combine to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the crowd principle as it is working to-day, without a due sense of its central place in all that goes on around us, is a spectator in the blur and bewilderment of this modern world, as helpless in it, and as childish and superficial in it, as a Greek god at the World's Fair, gazing out of his still Olympian eyes ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... indicated a contemptuous conclusion: that it should not prove difficult to convict November on the evidence afforded by the condition of the apartment alone. A most superficial inspection ought to convince anybody, even one prone to precipitate conclusions, that Bayard Shaynon had never died ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... cattle, while outraged morality was revenged on the governing race by the shameless licentiousness which is the inevitable accompaniment of slavery. He was well aware that these evils, so far from being superficial or remediable, were essential to the very existence of a social fabric constituted like that within which he lived. It was not for nothing that he had been behind the scenes in that tragedy of crime and misery. His philanthropy was not learned by the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... which are appealed to as evidence that drink does us good. Well, what are the facts? The fresh glow is simply the result of relaxation of the capillary vessels of the skin, allowing a large quantity of blood to come to the surface, so as to give the feeling of superficial warmth. But if a larger amount of blood comes to the surface, it robs the parts within; and the feeling of genial warmth gives way to a general depression, especially when we are exposed to severe cold. The temporary ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... to deep passion. To them he seems only to place his few friends in Heaven and in Hell to roast all his enemies. It must be at once confessed that there are instances in the Divina Commedia which, taken by themselves, would lead one to so superficial an estimate of the man. In Canto VIII of the Inferno Dante with his guide, Virgil, enters a bark on the Styx and sails across the broad marsh. During the passage a spirit all covered with mud addresses Dante, who recognizes him as Filippo ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... who soon made himself conspicuous by his individuality, his good nature and cheerfulness. There was a positive side to his character; he was in earnest, and he put himself by his earnestness into a positive way that to the superficial seemed to savor of the important, so that Irish John nicknamed him "John Almighty," and it stuck to him, as an old simile says, "like a burdock to a boy's trousers." His devotion was rewarded by chances to lecture. He became one of the faithful, and faithful he has always remained. Amid all ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... at command a great many good things and plenty of bad ones might be told of this extraordinary man. He was often superficial in his judgments, and sometimes jumped to unwarranted conclusions. He saw only the evil in the church, and seemed incapable of understanding all that it had done for mankind during the bygone ages. He maliciously attributed ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... plot—good deal more, perhaps, than is generally noticed, and more than Miss Austen herself sometimes gave, as, for instance, in Mansfield Park. It is even rather artfully worked out—the selfish gabble of John Thorpe, who may look to superficial observers like a mere outsider, playing an important part twice in the evolution. There is not lavish but amply sufficient description and scenery—the Bath vignettes, especially the Beechencliff prospect; the sketch of the Abbey itself and of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... in these lines pretty much all that a superficial observer would have noted when he looked into the room. What met Dr. Ashton's eye when he looked out of it, sitting in his leather arm-chair? Little more than the tops of the shrubs and fruit-trees of his garden ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... experiment, and care must be taken that the work of exposition do not fall into foolish and ignorant hands. It must be remembered that there are very few men capable of understanding both the sacred Scriptures and science, and that there are many with a superficial knowledge of the Scriptures and with no knowledge of science who would fain arrogate to themselves the power of decreeing upon all questions of nature. As St. Jerome writes: "The talking old woman, the dotard, the garrulous sophist, all venture upon, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... if she had no one to see her, no one to look after her. She said that her comrades at the theater were kind enough,—idiots,—but obliging and compassionate (in a superficial sort of way). ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... of our own history, and examine it with any attention, what an unsatisfactory picture does it present to us! How dry, how superficial, how void of information! How little is recorded besides battles, plagues, and religious foundations! That this should be the case, before the Conquest, is not surprizing. Our empire was but forming itself, or ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... ever ready at all points and spied on them from balloons. The behaviour of the commander was as tactful as his dispositions were effective; and, as a result of these favouring circumstances (which the superficial may ascribe to luck), he was able speedily to clear Bechuanaland of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was reflected in the distinction and finish of her appearance. Some touches seemed subtly to differentiate her dress from the prevailing fashion, and to make it the expression of a personality which belonged to a century more dignified, more leisured, and less superficial, than our own. [Footnote: Book of the Spiritual Life, p. 120.] Her dress recalled the canvases of Boucher, Van Loo, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... I read a book about a war-marriage, entitled the "Wife of a Hero"; it was not a good novel, but the situation it presented was of great interest. We witness the manifold conflicts resulting from a marriage entered into in haste and under superficial emotions, between a war-hero and the more complicated type of modern woman—the woman of brains and nerves, fastidious, intellectually passionate and at the same time swayed by a sensuality, which ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... heart? He had avoided her—he alone—up till then, and yet now, after this first conversation, he was convinced that of all gathered there he alone knew the real Lilith Ormskirk as distinct from the superficial one known to the residue. And to his mind recurred her former warning, laughingly uttered: "Beware such unholy spells!" With a strange intoxicating recollection did that warning recur, together with the consciousness ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... width, adds to the imposing aspect of the trains. It is necessary to bear these considerations in mind, for the idea prevails throughout the world outside Russia that this colossal road was carried through, not only with great haste, but also on a flimsy and superficial system. The bridges are necessarily very numerous, for Siberia is a land of mighty rivers with countless tributaries. All the permanent bridges are of iron. Those which were temporarily made of timber are being in every case reconstructed, and the Great Siberian includes some of the most ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... hydrangeas—running from the great ilexes to the corner of the house—thick-set with discs of misty pink and blue blossom took his fancy, as contrast to the beds of scarlet and crimson geranium naming in the sun. But below any superficial sense of pleasure in outward things, thought of that likeness—and likeness, dash it all, to whom?—still vexed him as a riddle he failed to guess. Obligation to guess it, to find the right answer, obsessed him as of vital interest and importance, though, for the life ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... humanity which accompanies all the operations of war, the refinements of gallantry, and the point of honour, the three chief circumstances which distinguished modern from ancient manners, may be ascribed in a great measure to this institution, which has appeared whimsical to superficial observers, but by its effects has proved of great benefit to mankind. The sentiments which chivalry inspired had a wonderful influence on manners and conduct during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. They were so deeply rooted, that they continued ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... true that the French peasant drinks wine in the place of beer, eats less than the German, is lighter in build and in wits, but apart from these superficial differences there is much similarity. Under an outside show of brains, both are often of dull and shallow intelligence. The German cracks heavy jokes and the French cynical ones: it is difficult to choose between them as both show little culture ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... first of these is universality, that is, the appeal to the widest human interests and the simplest human emotions. Though we speak of national and race literatures, like the Greek or Teutonic, and though each has certain superficial marks arising out of the peculiarities of its own people, it is nevertheless true that good literature knows no nationality, nor any bounds save those of humanity. It is occupied chiefly with elementary passions and emotions,—love and hate, joy ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... this description applies to the breadth, depth and reality of his sympathy. In the meagre records of his life there is evidence that he deemed no form of suffering humanity foreign to himself. This was not a mere sentiment, nor was his sympathy superficial, for it constituted the essential characteristic of his personality—"He went about doing good." In him the will of the Father for the redemption of the race was incarnate. This led him into the society of those outcasts who were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... read between the lines may discover in these pages constant evidences of care and skill and faithful labor, of which the old-time superficial essayists, compiling library notes on dates and striking ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... shadowy and unreal power; but imposed upon them a responsibility, serious and inescapable. He thus felt himself obliged to discourage the procedure suggested by Premier Fisher of Australia, even though, to the superficial observer, this involved him in the contradiction of, at the same time, exalting and depreciating ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... dowry home became the sanctuary. All her power was but the shadow of her husband's royal sun, and vanished when the orb prematurely set; yet she had all gifts of person in her favour, and a sleek smoothness of manner that seemed to the superficial formed to win; but the voice was artificial, and the eye cold and stealthy. About her formal precision there was an eternal consciousness of self, a breathing egotism. Her laugh was displeasing,—cynical, not mirthful; she had none of that forgetfulness of self, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... persons of the rapid perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of women, and they reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which pass under these names, are merely the outcome of a greater impressibility to the superficial aspects of things, and of the absence of that restraint upon expression which, in men, is imposed by reflection and a sense of responsibility. Talk of the passive endurance of the weaker sex, and opponents ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... separates England from Mesopotamia, reaches the vast table-lands of the Far West and inspects their interesting fauna of antelopes and buffaloes, red Indians and Mormons. In a journey of this sort one gets a very superficial view of the peculiarities, physical and social, which characterize the different portions of our country; and in this there is nothing to complain of, since the knowledge gained in a vacation-journey cannot well be expected to be thorough or profound. The traveller, ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... necessary addition—that unfortunate 'with joy,' which appears in our Authorised Version, but has no place in the true text. If we put it in we necessarily limit the meaning of the word 'finish' to that low, superficial sense which I have already dismissed. If we leave it out we get a far nobler thought. Paul was not thinking about the joy at the end. What he wanted was to do his work, all of it, right through to the very last. He knew there would be joy, but he does ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... not), then you know that you are dealing with a dear confiding girl who will make you a life mate. Then you must know, too, that her mind is worthy of your own. So many men to-day are led astray by the merely superficial graces and attractions of girls who in reality possess no mental equipment at all. Many a man is bitterly disillusioned after marriage when he realises that his wife cannot solve a quadratic equation, and that he is compelled to spend all his days with a woman who does not know ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... polished Italian society of the day, like a primaeval rock rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... us return to our salmon. While you are trying to play your game of patience like a philosopher, you will naturally make a superficial acquaintance with such portions of the river as are accessible to a wayfarer, and if you have not seen it before you will speedily understand why "she" (on Tweedside you always hear the river referred to in the feminine gender) has so many admirers, who pledge her in a life-long devotion. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the superficial pictures of London, gathered by the eye of the tourist. A far deeper meaning is found in the examination of the great historic monuments of the city. The principal ones of these are the Tower of London (just mentioned), the British Museum and Westminster ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... hadn't made successful brokers, wondered how in the face of what they called his "obvious stupidity" Jarrocks Bell had managed to grow rich in Wall Street. The answer was obvious enough to any one who knew him intimately. To begin with, his stupidity was superficial. In the second place, he had studied bonds and stocks until he knew a great deal about them. Then, though a drinking man, he had a head like iron and was never moved by exhilaration to mention his own or anybody else's affairs. Furthermore, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of her scrutiny he gave no sign of it and leaned forward intently, his gaze on the portrait—alone, to all appearances, with the fires of his genius. Hermia's eyes followed his, the superficial and rather frivolous comment which had been on her lips stilled for the moment by the dignity of his mental attitude, into which it seemed Olga Tcherny had also unconsciously fallen. But the silence irritated Hermia—the wrapt, absorbed attitudes of the man and the woman ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... for a young lady; and we both together made merry over these mimicries. The poems also which I had composed in Leipzig were already too poor for me; and they seemed to me cold, dry, and, in respect of all that was meant to express the state of the human heart or mind, too superficial. This induced me, now that I was to leave my father's house once more, and go to a second university, again to decree a great high /auto-da-fe/ against my labors. Several commenced plays, some of which had reached the third or the fourth act, while ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... lurching gait. He sat down immediately opposite them, under Lightmark's presentment, with which Rainham curiously compared him. And it struck him that there was something in that oddly repulsive figure which Lightmark's superficial crayon had missed. The long, haggard face was there, with its ill-kempt hair and beard; and the lips, which, when they parted in a smile that was too full of irony, revealed the man's uneven, discoloured teeth. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... small blue foxy eyes always reddish and always dropping tears. Miliukov! Minister of Foreign Affairs! All his experience consists of a continuous chain of political breaks and a series of moderately paid, superficial articles on Balkan questions in a provincial newspaper. And, Monsieur Kerensky,—la fine fleur—the Minister of Justice, a little man with a single kidney and a double ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... he no longer thought of her. Let no one be astonished at that abrupt mental rupture. Those two superficial beings had nothing to attach them securely to each other. Georges was incapable of receiving lasting impressions unless they were continually renewed; Sidonie, for her part, had no power to inspire any noble or durable sentiment. It was one of those intrigues between a cocotte and a coxcomb, compounded ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... interest in the operatives. Justine was struck by the fact that so natural an allusion should put him on the defensive. She did not for a moment believe that he had lost his interest in the mills; and that his point of view should have shifted with the fact of ownership she rejected as an equally superficial reading of his character. The man with whom she had talked at Dillon's bedside was one in whom the ruling purposes had already shaped themselves, and to whom life, in whatever form it came, must henceforth take their mould. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... to emphasize the point he was about to make. "Apparently it put Warrington out," he resumed. "And yet, after all, I find that it is only a very superficial flesh wound of the shoulder. Warrington's condition is really due to the contusions he received owing to his being thrown from the car. His car wasn't going very fast at the time, for it had slowed down for me. In one way that was fortunate—although one might say it was the cause of everything, ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... offices of the king and his allies had not been effectual for the restoration of general tranquillity, yet the situation of affairs abroad continued to promise to this country the uninterrupted enjoyment of the blessing of peace. But this view of the state of Europe was superficial: in reality it promised nothing but strife and bloodshed. This will be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... brilliant social life is essentially an external one. Its charm lies largely in the superficial graces, in the facile and winning manners, the ready tact, the quick intelligence, the rare and perishable gifts of conversation—in the nameless trifles which are elusive as shadows and potent as light. It is the way of putting things that tells, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... ninety-seven—with a key which Mr. Grimm produced, and a minute or so later walked into a room where three men were sitting. One of them was of a coarse, repulsive type, large and heavy; another rather dapper, of superficial polish, evidently a foreigner, and the third—the third ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... Contarini are very vague and superficial. This is perhaps the only instance wherein Poland; a portion of European Sarmatia, is considered as belonging ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... and to hear Helen; that is, indeed, one of his supreme experiences. But it is not here a matter of superficial staring at a beautiful woman; all that Helen is, the total cycle of her spirit's history, is to enter his heart and become a vital portion of his discipline. It is probable that the youth does not realize every thing that Helen ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... her, and his lip quivered; but he thought the trait hardly consistent with her superficial character. He could not help saying, half sadly, half bitterly, "Well, but of course you have told ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... must have been "struck blind," she had said, for though they had overhauled the place and had taken away with them every suspicious-looking document, they had passed and repassed the papers on her table without a word and with nothing more than a superficial glance. ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... the excretory ducts of the lacrymal glands. A pain of the external membrane of the eye sometimes attends any unusual stimulus of it, then the sensorial power of sensation becomes added to that of irritation, and a superficial inflammation is induced. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... took note of Lanyard, with wonder, some misgivings, and a hint of admiration. For he was not only a personable person in those days, with a suggestion of devil-may-care in his air that measurably lifted the curse of his superficial foppishness, but he was putting a spoke in Prince Victor's wheel. And whosoever did that, by chance, out of sheer voluptuousness, or with malice prepense, won immediate title to Sofia's favourable regard. If she couldn't thwart Victor herself, she would be much obliged to anybody who could ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the life of the passions to virtue; Isaac, [Hebrew: ytshk], the joy or laughter of the soul. These etymologies are more ingenious than convincing, and are not entirely true to Hebrew philology, but neither were those of the early rabbis; and they at least show that Philo had acquired a superficial knowledge of the language of Scripture. Nor can it be doubted that he was acquainted with the Palestinian Midrash, both Halakic and Haggadic. At the beginning of the "Life of Moses" he declares that he has based it upon "many traditions which I have ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... I am qualified to judge," he said, "your father's invention seems to embody an improvement. But you must not rely too much upon my opinion. My knowledge of the details of manufacturing is superficial. I should like to ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... was flat and triangular, like that of certain fish. A Japanese teacher, Mr. Watanabe, of the Normal School of Matsue, identified the little creature as a hydrophid of the species called Pela-mis bicalor. It is so seldom seen, however, that I think the foregoing superficial description of it may not be without ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... addition to their native German, to sustain a conversation in either. We visited Colonel Fred. Grant, then our minister to Austria, at Vosben, about twenty miles by rail from Vienna. I did not seek to make acquaintances in Vienna, as my time would not allow it, but, from a superficial view, I believed that the people of that city were intelligent, social and friendly, with more of the habits of Frenchmen than of the Germans of Berlin, or of the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... description might capture a young man's vacant heart sighing for a new mistress. And if so, further observation assured her Miss Denham was likely to be dangerous far more than professedly attractive persons, enchantresses and the rest. Rosamund watchfully gathered all the superficial indications which incite women to judge of character profoundly. This new object of alarm was, as the General had said of her, tall and slim, a friend of neatness, plainly dressed, but exquisitely fitted, in the manner of Frenchwomen. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... never forgot himself; his whole life was, to use his own expression, an arrangement. He went in for "the art of living"—a miserable trick. In a word, he was a great artist; but emphatically not a great man. In this connection I must differ strongly with Professor Raleigh upon what is, from a superficial literary point of view, one of his most effective points. He compares Whistler's laughter to the laughter of another man who was a great man as well as a great artist. "His attitude to the public was exactly the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... have been carefully excluded such superficial dissensions as always arise between allies after a war, and were especially to be expected after a war in which every national susceptibility was quickened to a morbid degree: they belong to a different category from the profound ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... science of persuasion, until he acquired an infinite art in adapting the means to the end. Every kind of knowledge served him, and though his mind was perhaps not really profound, it was far from being superficial, and the surface of it which he presented when he chose was vast. It was impossible to speak of any question of history, science, ethics, or aesthetics of which Patoff was ignorant, and his information on most points was more than sufficient to help him in artfully indorsing the ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... again to the windward attack, we see at once its superficial resemblance to Nelson's, but so entirely superficial is it that it is impossible to believe Collingwood ever penetrated the subtleties of his great chiefs design. The dual organisation is there and the independent ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... this branch of our subject to consider the causes of the failure and bloody disruption of the great American republic other than those inherent in the form of government, it may not be altogether unprofitable to glance briefly at what seems to a superficial view the inconsistent phenomenon of great material prosperity. It is not to be denied that this unfortunate people was at one time singularly prosperous, in so far as national wealth is a measure and proof of prosperity. Among nations it was the richest nation. But at how great ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... perceives, moreover, that in her musical progress the aesthetic part of her nature has not been permitted to keep in advance of technique. Heretofore she was ever gratifying herself and her friends by undertaking new and more elaborate pieces, not one of which ever became other than a mere superficial possession. Now her taste is inexorably commanded to wait for her muscles: the discipline has been useful to her. After a few more such winters she will return to Woodville a teacher, herself become a quickening ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... he, to whom hitherto my homely name has appeared so sweet. It is only an hour and three-quarters since I parted from him, and yet in that short space an indisputable shade—a change that exits not only in my imagination, but one that no most careless, superficial eye could avoid seeing—has come over him. Face, manner, even gait, are all altered, I think of Algy—Algy as he used to be, our jovial pet and playfellow, Algy as he now is, soured, sulky, unloving, his very beauty dimmed by discontent and passion. Is this the beginning ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... set up by property and marriage. Revolutionists make too much of them. No doubt it is easy to demonstrate that property will destroy society unless society destroys it. No doubt, also, property has hitherto held its own and destroyed all the empires. But that was because the superficial objection to it (that it distributes social wealth and the social labor burden in a grotesquely inequitable manner) did not threaten the existence of the race, but only the individual happiness of its units, and finally the maintenance of some irrelevant political form ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... of the clubs had made any money, but the game was growing steadily in public favor, and it was evident to even the most superficial observer that there was "a good ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... German, because he is conscious that he is not a subject, but a citizen of the empire. Yet he will not infer from the English King's use of the term in formal utterances that an Englishman is a churl, a "servant of his King." That would be a superficial political conception. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Germans are civil to us nowadays.[3] They hate us cordially, envy us sincerely, attack us in the press and out of it, and are insanely jealous of the people they affect to despise. But while the superficial entente lasts, they smile and bow and are outwardly polite. I asked an English lady, the widow of a German official, if her husband, having married an English wife, did not cherish kindlier sentiments towards us ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... been placed at boarding-schools where the system and routine made the youth's life little better than that of a soldier in his barrack. Many boys would have grown hardy, aggressive, callous, and very possibly vicious from being thrown out on the world so early. Young Graham became reticent and to superficial observers shy. Those who cared to observe him closely, however, discovered that it was not diffidence, but indifference toward others that characterized his manner. In the most impressible period of his life he had received instruction, advice and discipline in abundance, but love and ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... first chiselled, but when by dint of patience the rough hewing had reached the desired stage, the work of completion was not entrusted to metal tools. Stone hatchets were used for smoothing off the superficial roughnesses, and it was assiduously polished to efface the various tool-marks left upon its surface. The statues did not present that variety of gesture, expression, and attitude which we aim at to-day. They were, above all things, the accessories of a temple or tomb, and their appearance reflects ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... dramatic interest. I shall make this clear by alluding to a more tranquil species of dialogue, not adapted for the stage, the philosophic. When, in Plato, Socrates asks the conceited sophist Hippias, what is the meaning of the beautiful, the latter is at once ready with a superficial answer, but is afterwards compelled by the ironical objections of Socrates to give up his former definition, and to grope about him for other ideas, till, ashamed at last and irritated at the superiority of the sage who has ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... machinery—which at first brings outer prosperity and success—must be shown to be less lasting and effective than the living and flexible organisations of democratic Peoples. They must be proved failures before the world, so that the glamour of superficial successes may be destroyed for ever. They have had their day and their place in evolution, and have done their educative work. Now they are out-of-date, unfit for survival, and must ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... the present day, a fashion in Literature, and in Art generally, which is very deporable, and which may, on a superficial glance, appear at variance with what has just been said. The fashion is that of coat-and-waistcoat realism, a creeping timidity of invention, moving almost exclusively amid scenes of drawing-room existence, with all the reticences and pettinesses of drawing-room conventions. Artists ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the street, or his plunging into the gutter, excites the laughter of those who witness the accident: but let the fall be dangerous, or let a bone be broke, and then comic feelings give way to the sympathetic emotions which belong to tragedy. On a superficial consideration, the delight we feel in tragedy bears the aspect of a cruel tendency in our hearts, yet it is implanted in us for the purposes of mutual beneficence. The pleasure we feel in comedy, too, looks like ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... squatter's veranda than you will in Park Lane. I have been in London, young fellow; in fact, I'm English, although I've been a long time in Australia. So don't say I'm biased. But I am speaking from an intimate knowledge of the people—not from a superficial glance which a hen-brained tourist gets. It isn't affectation, trinkets, dresses and a Society drawl that makes a lady. That's your standard. Society at home—at least, in certain circles, is the most hollow and unhappy ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... of it that lends itself to reasoned proof by a plus b, and the practical denial of everything that only appeals to vaguer sentiment, show a mind so oddly limited to ratiocinative and explicit processes, and so wedded to the superficial and flagrantly insufficient, that one begins to wonder whether in the philosophic and scientific spheres the same mind can have wrought out results ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... story possesses the usual features. There is the clever young detective, in whose company we expectantly scour the bazaars and alleys of Mangadone in search of a missing boy. There are Chinamen and Burmese, opium dens and curio shops, temples and go-downs. Miss MARJORIE DOUIE has more than a superficial knowledge of her stage setting, and gets plenty of movement and colour into it. And if she has elaborated the characters and inter-play of her Anglo-Burmese colony to an extent that is not justified either by their connection with the plot or the necessity of mystifying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... at the time that Darwin's views were first made public, many thought that they were subversive of Christianity, so, even now, some whose acquaintance with the problem and its history is of a superficial character, are inclined when they see the word creation, even with the qualifying adjective "special" prefixed to it, used in contradistinction to evolution, to imagine that the theory of creation, and of course of a Creator, must fall to the ground if evolution should ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... tortoiseshell and metal are used is got by rubbing with blocks of charcoal used endways with oil and the finest rotten-stone powder, much like polishing marble, using oil instead of water. Wet polishing should not be used for inlaid works; the water may soften the glue. A superficial wetting is likely to warp the woods and make them curl up at the edges, and the grain of the wood is almost certain to rise. Oil is better than water, but light woods are almost certain to become stained by polishing powders and ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... wife may be destitute of youth and beauty, or other superficial attractions, which distinguish many of her sex: should this be the case, remember many a plain face conceals a heart of exquisite sensibility and merit; and her consciousness of the defect makes her peculiarly awake to the slightest attention or inattention from you: and ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... often reflected with myself on this unaccountable humour in womankind, of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial; and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition. I myself remember a young lady that was very warmly solicited by a couple of importunate rivals, who, for several months together, did all they could ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... to Paradise Lost, not backward to the masks of the previous generation of poets. The "loud uplifted angel-trumpet" is sounded in it, and we know that we have travelled a long way from the trivial, superficial and often coarse entertainments which would have been the models of Comus if Milton had been the man to accept models of any kind, least of all of such a kind. Like them his mask was an aristocratic entertainment, played to a noble {114} audience by the scions of a great ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... nature just and deserving of sympathy, and all wars for empire ignoble and worthy only of reprobation, or as if these easy phrases in any way characterized this terrible struggle,—terrible not so truly in any superficial sense, as from the essential and deadly enmity of the principles that underlie it. His Lordship's bit of borrowed rhetoric would justify Smith O'Brien, Nana Sahib, and the Maori chieftains, while it would condemn nearly every war in which England has ever ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... with an open-work screen or frame of wood, while the face of the rock about the opening was carved into the semblance of a sumptuous structural faade. Among the finest of these caverns is that at Karli, whose massive columns and impressive scale recall Egyptian models, though the resemblance is superficial and has no historic significance. More suggestive is the affinity of many of the columns which stand before these caves to Persian prototypes (see Fig. 21). It is not improbable that both Persian and classic forms were introduced into India through the Bactrian ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... nothing which can be positively pronounced necessary, shall produce no more effect than an advertisement of a capital residence and a desirable pleasure-ground. To take another example: the great features of the character of Hotspur are obvious to the most superficial reader. We at once perceive that his courage is splendid, his thirst of glory intense, his animal spirits high, his temper careless, arbitrary, and petulant; that he indulges his own humour without caring whose feelings ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... believed, much blamed; whereas a man who conceals with care is often supposed to have more than he has, and his reputation of discretion gets him others. It is just so with a man of learning; if he affects to show it, it is questioned, and he is reckoned only superficial; but if afterward it appears that he really has it, he is pronounced a pedant. Real merit of any kind, 'ubi est non potest diu celari'; it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it but a man's exhibiting it himself. It may not always be rewarded as it ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... know how these words came to be spoken. Love another! So unexpectedly the secret of her heart revealed itself in superficial words. But did he love ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... truth and the error in this view. The arguments for the contention that time is unreal and that the world of sense is illusory must, I think, be regarded as fallacious. Nevertheless there is some sense—easier to feel than to state—in which time is an unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality. Past and future must be acknowledged to be as real as the present, and a certain emancipation from slavery to time is essential to philosophic thought. The importance of time is rather practical than theoretical, rather in relation to our desires ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... himself and saying sarcastic things about the entire human race, until he achieves a local reputation as a cynic. When in this state of mind there is no use in telling him that he is not the only original possessor of a bona fide broken ideal. He'll show you a little superficial scratch and say in husky tones, 'see this great wound it has made in my constitution, it will never heal. Happiness is an iridescent dream. Go and leave me to my fate! 'Then he'll heave a sigh which he thinks comes from a broken heart, but which really emanates from a dyspeptic condition, caused ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... slurred over. It was a downright challenge! The matter must be thrashed out. For four months he poured over books on surgery and anatomy. Then, having acquired a knowledge of the subject—adequate, though necessarily superficial—he applied to the ecclesiastical authorities for permission to view the relic. It was politely refused. The saintly object, they declared, could only be exhibited to persons profession the Roman Catholic Faith, and armed with a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... that animals communicate their impressions by an inarticulate voice. Common sense and the most superficial observations are opposed to the negative of this proposition. But when a canary bird warbles till it stuns us, or a nightingale sings in the shadows on the fine nights of June, can we follow and discover the significance of those modulations—now sharply ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Hunter would award this distinction to the wolf; supposing also that the jackal is the same animal a step further advanced towards civilization, or perhaps the dog returned to its wild state. As the affinity between wolf, jackal, fox, and dog, cannot fail to attract the notice of the most superficial observer; so he may ask if they do not all really belong to one species, modified by varieties of climate, food, and education? If answered in the negative, he would want to know what constitutes a species, little thinking that this question, apparently so simple, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... lateral leaflets are seen to execute pulsating movements which are apparently uncaused, and are not unlike the rhythmic movement of the heart to which we shall see later that their resemblance is more than superficial. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... these social experiences, many of them sufficiently frivolous, and all of them superficial in so far as their interest related to individuals, Oxford provided me with others which went to the very roots of life. Of these deeper experiences the first was due to Jowett, though its results, so far as I was concerned, were neither intended, understood, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; but many superficial writers on Japan, have dismissed it by simply attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in making proper reply upon ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... Jesus is infused into the soul, and acts in the life of man, we know that sin, in its various forms of sensuality, oppression, and bloodshed, must disappear. All reforms, which are not based on this corner-stone, are superficial; and, however goodly their proportions may appear to the eye of man, they want that firm foundation which will secure them against being undermined or overthrown by the force of adverse circumstances. "Other foundation ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... consider such innocent recreations as science and literature are able to furnish will be a very fit occupation of the thoughts and the leisure of young persons, and may be made the means of keeping them from bad employments and bad companions. Moreover, as to that superficial acquaintance with chemistry, and geology, and astronomy, and political economy, and modern history, and biography, and other branches of knowledge, which periodical literature and occasional lectures and scientific institutions diffuse through the community, I think ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... in any section of society where hired service can be had, mothers give more than a superficial personal superintendence to nursery or school-room—a superintendence about as thorough as their housekeeping, and as efficient. The one set of duties is quite as unfashionable as the other, and money is held to relieve from the service ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... has been possible in the present case would certainly be added to the list. A complete history of the organization would also give a large place to the association of its veterans formed shortly after the war, whose frequent gatherings have more than a superficial likeness to the reunions of college classes. Memorable among these meetings was the one held on October 21, 1896, the occasion being the dedication of the regiment's monument in the National Cemetery at Arlington, with a pilgrimage also to the scenes ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... think; yet all have opinions. Hence men's opinions are superficial and confused. It is nothing strange that tenets which in themselves are ever so different, should nevertheless be confounded with each other, by those who do not consider them attentively. I shall not therefore be surprised if some men imagine that I run into the enthusiasm of Malebranche; ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... is a social wet blanket, a goblin shadow at the domestic hearth. By no means. Nature has gifted him with that vein of humor and that impulse to friendly joviality which are frequent developments in sad-natured men, and often deceive superficial observers as to their real character. He who laughs well and makes you laugh is often called a man of cheerful disposition, yet in many cases nothing can be further from it than precisely this kind ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... monographs on Cicero and Thackeray. His novels are light of touch, pleasant, amusing, and thoroughly healthy. They make no attempt to sound the depths of character or either to propound or solve problems. Outside of fiction his work was generally superficial and unsatisfactory. But he had the merit of providing a whole generation with wholesome amusement, and enjoyed a great deal of popularity. He is said to have received L70,000 ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... brown hair, and so blue were her eyes, so straight the little features, so soft the curves of the rosy lips. It is true those blue eyes had an expression in them which never in this world could Mrs. Ogilvie understand, nevertheless, the child's beauty was apparent to the most superficial observer; and Mrs. Ogilvie turned and accompanied Lord Grayleigh in the direction of the merry ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... spiritual being, than the existence of a stick without two ends? Is the notion of an infinitely good and powerful being, who causes or permits an infinity of evils, less absurd or impossible, than that of a square triangle? Let us conclude then, that religious scepticism can result only from a superficial examination of theological principles, which are in perpetual contradiction with the most clear and ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Clinker. If all the admirers of these two books would but bestir themselves and look into the matter, I am sure that Sterne's only too clever assault would be relegated to its proper place and assessed at its right value as a mere boutade. The borrowed contempt of Horace Walpole and the coterie of superficial dilettanti, from which Smollett's book has somehow never wholly recovered, could then easily be outflanked and the Travels might well be in reasonable expectation of ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... age when the mind is maturing, and fondly clings to general ideas,[3339] they embraced the theory and aimed at a reconstruction of society according to abstract principles. They have accordingly set to work as pure logicians, rigorously applying the superficial and false system of analysis then in vogue.[3340] They have formed for themselves an idea of man in general, the same in all times and ages, an extract or minimum of man; they have pondered over several thousands of or millions of these abstract mortals, erected their imaginary wills into ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... made no other response. At that moment it would have been impossible for him to have expressed the thoughts passing through his fierce mind. Sunny, however, was more superficial. Words were bursting from his lips. And when he spoke his first remark was a ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and make life indeed a dreary struggle. In the splendor of large cities, amid the glitter and magnificence of palaces and churches, the varied paraphernalia of aristocracy and wealth, and all the excitements, allurements, and novelties apparent to the superficial eye, the real condition of the masses is not perceptible. They must be seen in the country—in their far-off villages and homes throughout the broad land; there you find no disguise to cover the horrible deformities of their bruised and crushed life; ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... of this discontent is apparent. There is something in the commonplaces of fashionable life which turns woman from the real to the unreal, from the substantial to the superficial, which smothers all originality of thought, and makes her a simple reproduction in appearance, if not in disposition, of the "Anonyma," with her meretricious beauty and dashing toilets. Is it well for woman to subject herself to be criticised as follows? "The girl of the ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... remarkable linguist, and an untiring letter writer. He had been on intimate terms with the leading politicians of several countries. But nothing sensational was discovered among the documents which filled his drawers. As to his relations with women, they appeared to have been promiscuous but superficial. He had many acquaintances among them, but few friends, and no one whom he loved. His habits were regular, his conduct inoffensive. His death was an absolute mystery and likely to ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Strength and manliness, and a blithe, cheery spirit, were ever the badges of the Teuton. But though originally gross and rough, he was capable of a smoother polish, of a glossier enamel, than a more superficial, trivial nature. He was ever deeply thoughtful, and capable of profounder moods of meditation than the lightly-moved children of the South. Sighs, as from the boughs of Yggdrasil, ever breathed through his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... committing needless errors. She wrote and spoke with a wit and sarcasm which charmed all but those at whom it was directed. Her bitter rebuffs and severe trials were mainly of her own making. For the most part she wrote with superficial feeling and without real soul. During the Napoleonic regime, time was a creeping horror to her, but she found pleasure in the thought that it was a torture to her suffering heart. George Eliot knew and used her extraordinary power; ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Gospel as divine. And even Max Mueller testifies that, while making every allowance for whatever is good in the ethnic faiths, he has been the more fully convinced of the great superiority of Christianity. Really, those are in danger who receive only the superficial and misleading representations of heathenism which one is sure to meet in our magazine literature, or in works like "Robert Elsmere" and "The ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra[FN117], Lankavatara-sutra, and other sutras, in which he compared Hinayanism with Mahayanism, and described the latter in glowing terms as a deep and perfect Law, whilst he set forth the former at naught as a superficial and imperfect one. Thus he showed his disciples the inferiority of Hinayanism, and caused them to desire for Mahayanism. This is said to be the third period, which lasted some ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... of the masses, his mind used the pious formula from the superficial force of habit, but with a deep-seated sincerity. The popular mind is incapable of scepticism; and that incapacity delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders inspired by visions of a high destiny. She was dead. But would God consent ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... only great man he had ever seen who looked all his greatness. Tall, strongly built, with thick gray hair, a short gray beard, clipped closely, ruddy complexion and blue eyes, he was as careful in dress as Jackson had been careless. He spoke with a uniform politeness, not superficial, but from the heart, and his glance was ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... show us how a congregate education by clubs may be the way. But just now the method is a little crude, and lays us open to the charge—which every intelligent person of this scientific age will repudiate—of being content with the superficial; for instance, of trusting wholly to others for our immortal furnishing, as many are satisfied with the review of a book for the book itself, or—a refinement on that—with a review of the reviews. The method is still crude. Perhaps we may expect a further ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fates—a foreboding stranger than that which falls as a shadow to all ecstatic youthful hope and joy. Other faults—as evident, undoubtedly, to her and to her advisers, as to us—are for the most part superficial, and will disappear in a little further experience. A first appearance, coupled with so much merit and youth, may ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... property of the crown. Coals prohibited to be worked by individuals, but to be procured by government at ten shillings per ton, and cedar at three halfpence per superficial foot, exclusive of other duties and fines; viz. Licence 2s. clearance 1s. harbour-dues at Sydney at established rates, entrance in and clearance from the river 2s. entrance at Sydney 1s. King's ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... more, perhaps, than is generally noticed, and more than Miss Austen herself sometimes gave, as, for instance, in Mansfield Park. It is even rather artfully worked out—the selfish gabble of John Thorpe, who may look to superficial observers like a mere outsider, playing an important part twice in the evolution. There is not lavish but amply sufficient description and scenery—the Bath vignettes, especially the Beechencliff prospect; the sketch of the Abbey itself and of Henry's parsonage, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... in his thirty-sixth year, and was remarkable for those superficial graces which please the multitude and fit a man to lead in a popular cause. He was young, well-spoken, witty, and skilled in all martial and manly exercises. On his progress in the West he had not thought it beneath him to kiss the village maidens, to offer prizes at the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... angle between which and the prism faces is 77deg 6'; the angles between these three cleavages thus approximate to the angles (74deg 55') between the three cleavages of calcite, and there are other points of superficial resemblance between these two minerals. Chemically, barytocalcite is a double salt of barium and calcium carbonates, BaCa(CO3)2, thus differing from the orthorhombic bromlite (q.v.) which is an isomorphous mixture of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... any loss of time, his meal was sent to him in his little apartment. Law, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, chemistry, astronomy, electricity, drawing, music, and mechanics, by turns engaged his attention; and though his acquirements in some of those studies were very superficial, his proficiency in many of them was far from contemptible. His papers on law evince so much industry, that had that subject alone occupied his leisure hours, his diligence would have been commendable. He was ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... unconditionally and for its own sake, while all the other philosophers make a happy life—vita beata—the aim of all virtue; and it is acquired through the medium of moral behaviour. Christianity released European humanity from its superficial and crude absorption in an ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... salt, as all the shores are of mud instead of sand, they pare off in summer the superficial part of this mud, which has been overflowed by the sea-water, and lay it up in heaps, to be used in the following manner: Having first dried it in the sun, and rubbed it into a fine powder, they dig a pit, the bottom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... ashes and ruins and smouldering brands; here and there the flame still blazed up among the ruins, but the fire was everywhere mastered, and there was no further threatening of danger. It is to be regretted that we no longer sufficiently discern in the superficial accounts handed down to us the causes of this sudden revolution. While undoubtedly the dexterous leadership of Strabo and still more of Sulla, and especially the more energetic concentration of the Roman forces, and their more rapid offensive contributed materially ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... suffer me to forget: he was endowed with a clear head and a warm heart; his innate benevolence had assuaged the spirit of the church; he was rational, because he was moderate: in the course of his studies he had acquired a just though superficial knowledge of most branches of literature; by long practice, he was skilled in the arts of teaching; and he laboured with assiduous patience to know the character, gain the affection, and open the mind of his English pupil. As soon ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... artificiality and theatricality. In using the word theatrical I do not mean there is any return to, for instance, the Rienzi style: the music is theatrical in Wagner's own later way: it seems to fit the situation, but the appearance is an appearance only: the stuff is superficial: the feeling of the moment is not expressed—the music, in a word, is essentially the same as that of many inferior but clever opera composers, only, of course, the Wagner idiom is always there. The Waltraute scene is fine, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... before" you have the facts. Never judge till after you have the facts. Nothing is so utterly devoid of reason as a passionate hatred of any race or class. All men are much the same when you come to know them. Class or race faults are superficial. The human qualities ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... you of what I told you a little after the beginning of this essay, touching the blue and red and yellow that may be produced upon a piece of tempered steel; for these colours, though they be very vivid, yet if you break the steel they adorn, they will appear to be but superficial.' He then describes, in phraseology which shows the delight he took in his work, the following ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... to speak of extremes meeting; but it is wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and word-coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and "business" they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large portion of the public, not knowing of these things,—not knowing perhaps that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and revengefulness ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... columns devoted by the press to the doings of the polite world; and Adrian Bond kept between the covers of his two or three thin little books—a confinement richly deserved by a writer so futile, superficial and insincere; but Leverett Whyland was less easily evaded by anybody who "banged about town" and who happened to be interested in public matters. Abner came against him at one of the sessions of the Tax Commission, a body that ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... from the surplus pasture lands had a bad tendency on the morals of the Indians, encouraging them in idleness; and that the present system retarded all progress in agriculture and the industrial arts. The report was superficial, religiously concealing the truth, but dealing with broad generalities. Had the report emanated from some philanthropical society, it would have passed unnoticed or been commented on as an advance in the interest of a worthy philanthropy ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... to be regretted that Rob's knowledge of geography was so superficial; for, as he had intended to reach Cuba, he should have taken a course almost southwest from Boston, instead of southeast. The sad result of his ignorance you will presently learn, for during the entire day he continued to travel over a boundless waste of ocean, without ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... Edward, the heir-apparent. This form had been devised by the heads of the faction to conceal their real views from the people; and was so contrived that they retained in their own hands the sovereign authority, while to the superficial observer they seemed to have resigned it to the King and his council. It was enacted that Henry should delegate the power of choosing his counsellors to a committee of three persons, whose proceedings should be valid, provided they were attested by the signatures ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... programs of reform upon which the whole country had set its heart; and that whenever you analyzed the power that was behind those little groups you have found that it was not the power of public opinion, but some private influence, hardly to be discerned by superficial scrutiny, that had put those men there to ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... in. The latter was thin and dark; his face was rather inscrutable, but he had a superficial urbanity. Jim wondered what lay beneath this, and imagined it might be long before he found out. Until he got down from the train, they had not met since Mordaunt came to the telegraph shack, and Jim did not know if he liked the fellow or not. After a ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... constitutes a prominent characteristic of his animal existence. The economy and order of nature is no less marked in the carnivorous than in the herbivorous mammalia and quadrumana; and although their physical distinctions are not always so marked as to render apparent, to superficial observation, the uses and functions of their entire organism, yet science has been a tolerably faithful interpreter of cause and effect, and has not failed to recognize those organic qualities, and the structural adaptability of the African race, which qualify ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... though in some cases it may have died out. From this type the varieties are derived, and the way of this derivation is usually quite manifest to the botanist. It is ordinarily [14] by the disappearance of some superficial character that a variety is distinguished from its species, as by the lack of color in the flowers, of hairs on stems and foliage, of the spines and thorns, &c. Such varieties are, strictly speaking, not to be treated in the same ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... general nature of which cannot be misinterpreted, of the kinds of things that have lived upon the surface of the earth during the time that is registered by this great thickness of stratified rocks. But even a superficial study of these fossils shows us that the animals and plants which live at the present time have had only a temporary duration; for the remains of such modern forms of life are met with, for the most part, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits, are only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... when I was ... able to identify the charming little eyebright, the strange-looking cow-wheat and louse-wort, the handsome mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax, and to find that all of them, as well as the lordly foxglove, formed parts of one great natural order, and that under all their superficial diversity of form was a similarity of structure which, when once clearly understood, enabled me to locate each fresh species with greater ease." This, however, was not sufficient, and the last step was ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... was pretty certain to be in the wrong. He assumed that, during those few years in Paris, she had learned it all in one big lesson only. The time had been too short to confirm all this sudden instruction into a reasoned and assimilated way of life; by no means had that superficial miscellany been rubbed into the warp and woof of her being. The Parisian top-dressing would be removed and the essential ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... months of his long absence, and none the less poignant because it was involuntary. The wide, cool, shadowy halls of his mother's house, always aglow with blossoms and haunted with their odors, all the superficial lotus-charm of Southern life—and he had lived it superficially enough to catch all its poetry rose before him. It caught away his breath and choked sudden tears into his eyes. Came and went like a flash—for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and the bullet had not lodged in him. The doctor was relieved to find that the bayonet had not penetrated deeply but had only glanced along a rib, tearing the intercostal muscles and inflicting a long, jagged but superficial wound which bled freely. Indeed, the most serious matter was the great loss of blood, which had ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... have mercy upon me; Christ, have mercy upon me; Lord, have mercy upon me". But do I never want—does God never want—anything more than this? The soul is not always satisfied with such an easy method of going to Confession. It needs at times something more impressive, something perhaps less superficial, less easy going. It demands more time for {147} deepening thought, and greater knowledge of what it has done, before sin's deadly hurt cuts deep enough to produce real repentance, and to prevent repetition. At such times, it cries for something more ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... or it may be immersed in a solution of 1 part of phosphorus in 15 parts of bisulphide of carbon, 1 part of bees-wax, 1 part of spirits of turpentine, 1 part of asphaltum, and 1/8 part of caoutchouc dissolved in bisulphide of carbon. This leaves a superficial film which is metallised by dipping in a solution of 20 grains of nitrate of silver to a pint of water. On this metallic film a thicker layer of gold and silver in different shades can be deposited by the current, and the silver surface may also be "oxidised" ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... follow out in some detail those changes in the form, structure, and relations of animals and plants which are effected in short periods of time, geologically speaking, and which are now going on around us. We may expect it to explain satisfactorily most of the lesser and superficial differences which distinguish one species from another. We may expect it to throw light on the mutual relations of the animals and plants which live together in any one country, and to give some rational account of the phenomena presented by their distribution in different parts of the world. ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... which the faith is apprehended, the distinction does and must exist, not only in religion but in every department of belief, as long as there are different levels of culture in the same body of believers. It is, after all, a much more superficial difference than it sounds—a difference of language and symbolism for the same realities. Where language fits close, as it does to things measurable by our senses, divergency makes the difference between truth and error; but where it is question of the substitution ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... on the yard, where the Ghost vanished and went to rest, and was not again troubled. He got up early and went his way, but, before long, he returned to Ty Felin accompanied by a policeman, whom he requested to dig in the place where his mark was. This was done, and, underneath a superficial covering, a deep well was discovered, and in it a corpse. On examining the tenant of the house, he confessed that a travelling Jew, selling jewelry, etc., once lodged with him, and that he had murdered him, and cast his body ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... putting the date of the Channel 'towards the close of the Glacial epoch.' What does Austen make the date of the Channel?—ante or post Glacial?" The changes in level and other questions are dealt with in a paper by R.A.C. Austen (afterwards Godwin-Austen), "On the Superficial Accumulations of the Coasts of the English Channel and the Changes they indicate." "Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." VII., 1851, page 118. Obit. notice by Prof. Bonney in the "Proc. Geol. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... intellectual pursuits,—a man of fine powers of mind, but not fully progressed in thought. As far as he knew, at the time of this writing, he was appreciative of your suggestions, and of scientific progress. He was a cool-headed man,—not a light or superficial thinker, but thought on deep subjects. He was a brain worker; it makes my brain tired. I think he published books—poems. I think he was more a poet than a prose writer. He was not like Tom Moore—there was nothing light or superficial—his poetry was grand, solid, deep, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Treasurer's, whither, I told him, I was going. I believe he had a mind to discourse of some Navy businesses, but Sir Thomas Clifford coming into the coach to us, we were prevented; which I was sorry for, for I had a mind to begin an acquaintance with him. He speaks well, and hath pretty slight superficial parts, I believe. He, in our going, talked much of the plain habit of the Spaniards; how the King and Lords themselves wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies mantles, in cold weather, of white flannell: ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... he is conscious that he is not a subject, but a citizen of the empire. Yet he will not infer from the English King's use of the term in formal utterances that an Englishman is a churl, a "servant of his King." That would be a superficial political conception. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of good fables,—pithy wisdom, ingenious moral instances, homely illustrations, easy colloquial dialogue; and the ethical teaching has a striking superficial likeness to the common-sense morality of prudence and content, which fables, like proverbs, habitually expound. "Cultivate your garden, don't trouble your head about insoluble riddles, accept your ignorance and your limitations, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Head, a Knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, a retired half-pay Major, an Assistant Poor-Law Commissioner for one of the Kentish districts, and the author of several entertaining but exceedingly superficial books of travel. To no one was the appointment a greater surprise than to Sir Francis himself. He must have felt the utter absurdity of the thing—that he had no claim to such a post, and was disqualified from filling it with credit. He neither knew nor cared ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... sister colony in New York, there are no show places in Limehouse. The visitor sees nothing but mean streets and dark doorways. The superficial inquirer comes away convinced that the romance of the Asiatic district has no existence outside the imaginations of writers of fiction. Yet here lies a secret quarter, as secret and as strange, in its smaller way, as its parent in China which is called ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... friend. But the next thing which I saw—on the pier-table—caused me such a shock of surprise that I readjusted my glasses upon my nose with both hands at once, and then felt myself over so as to get at least some superficial proof of my own existence. In less than one second there thronged from my mind twenty different conjectures—the most rational of which was that I had suddenly become crazy. It seemed to me absolutely impossible that what I was looking at could exist; ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... literary merit in these Letters. He does not deprecate nor seek to disarm criticism; he only asks that his sketches be taken for what they profess and strive to be, and for nothing else. That they are superficial, their title proclaims; that they were hurriedly written, with no thought of style nor of enduring interest, all whom they are likely to interest or to reach must already know. A journalist traveling in foreign lands, especially those which have been once the homes ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... outgrown the scheme of life based on status that the relation of personal subservience is no longer felt to be the sole "natural" human relation; there the ancient habit of purposeful activity will begin to assert itself in the less conformable individuals against the more recent, relatively superficial, relatively ephemeral habits and views which the predatory and the pecuniary culture have contributed to our scheme of life. These habits and views begin to lose their coercive force for the community or the class in question so soon as the habit of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at that time, that he may wonder at them, so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed the ages fled. He is but a superficial thinker who would despise and refuse to hear of them merely because they are absurd. No man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors, either of thought or action, and no society has made such advances as to be ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... was made to bury the remains of Elksfoot, inasmuch as our adventurers had no tools fit for such a purpose, and any merely superficial interment would have been a sort of invitation to the wolves to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... conceivably think the moon to be made of green cheese, so philosophy in its childhood thinks here of all things as made of water. Water was a well-known substance, possessing well-known predicates. To define all nature in terms of it, was to maintain that in spite of superficial differences, all things have these predicates in common. They are the predicates which qualify for reality, and compose a community of nature from which all the individual objects and events of nature arise. The successors of Thales were evidently dissatisfied with his fundamental conception, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... spark ready to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile upon his lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would have said he was as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial good-matured disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton who had tied himself up in a white cravat and come to ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... reversed case. The self-fertilised and crossed seeds thus obtained were allowed to germinate in the same glass vessel on damp sand; and as the seeds successively germinated, they were planted in pairs on opposite sides of the same pot, with a superficial partition between them, and were placed so as to be equally exposed to the light. In other cases the self-fertilised and crossed seeds were simply sown on opposite sides of the same small pot. I have, in short, followed different plans, but in every case ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... quickly became lost in feelings of a deeper and stronger nature as Buck passed out into the open. His was not a nature to dwell unnecessarily upon the clashings of every-day life. Such pinpricks were generally superficial, to be brushed aside and treated without undue consideration until such time as some resulting fester might gather and drastic action become necessary. The fester had not yet gathered, therefore he set his quarrel aside for the time when he could give ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... a little volume, with an uncommonly attractive exterior, entitled Chanticleer, a Thanksgiving Story, consisting of quiet descriptions of American country life and manners, set forth in the framework of a superficial and not very skillfully managed narrative. It contains some passages of considerable beauty, but as a whole, it has hardly sufficient freshness and fervor to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... into a nest of bees. And, even though individually and singly the Germans were all innocent and merely led astray, they would be none the less guilty in the mass. This is the guilt that counts, that alone is actual and real, because it lays bare, underneath their superficial innocence, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Were a superficial observer suddenly transported from one of the reedy ponds of Europe to this water-hole in Suttor Creek, he would not be able to detect the change of his locality, except by the presence of Casuarinas and ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... other hand, faith without repentance is not possible, in any deep sense. But in so far as it is possible, it produces a superficial Christianity which vaguely trusts to Christ without knowing exactly what it is trusting Him for, or why it needs Him; and which has a great deal to say about what I may call the less important parts of the Christian system, and nothing to say about its vital centre; which preaches ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... England from Mesopotamia, reaches the vast table-lands of the Far West and inspects their interesting fauna of antelopes and buffaloes, red Indians and Mormons. In a journey of this sort one gets a very superficial view of the peculiarities, physical and social, which characterize the different portions of our country; and in this there is nothing to complain of, since the knowledge gained in a vacation-journey cannot well be expected to ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... readily granted. Mrs. Travilla was an inimitable story-teller, and Lucy, whose knowledge of Scripture history was but superficial, listened to the narrative with almost as much interest and ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... concern for what might become of me. Bitter were the tears, but it roused me. I determined to rely upon myself. My father had been a thorough scholar, and I was educated according to his system. There was nothing superficial, and the extent of my reading, both in English and the classics, was far more than the course usually prescribed for ladies. I also inherited a talent for music which had been carefully cultivated, so that I was well able to teach any branch that might be desired. Through ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... this time had learned, however, that William forgot nothing and never failed to carry out his plans, and his pulse beat quicker when the Prince requested him to be in attendance one afternoon, and to accompany him alone to Whitehall, where the Duke of York was in residence. There was a certain superficial likeness in character between the Prince and his father-in-law, for both appeared unfeeling and unsympathetic men, but what in James was obstinacy, in William was power, and what in James was superstitious, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... their secret political services, so that the efforts of its agents cannot be ascribed to cupidity. Also it must be admitted that the kingdom of Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, thanks to the internal chaos and dynastic scandals of the previous forty years, resulting in superficial dilapidation, intellectual stagnation, and general poverty, lacked the material as well as the moral glamour which a successful Piedmont should possess. Nobody could deny, for instance, that, with all its natural advantages, Belgrade ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... his pupil, when Queen, to help Brienne to the Ministry, he did her and her kingdom more injury than their worst foes. Of the Abbe's power over Marie Antoinette there are various opinions; of his capacity there is but one—he was superficial and cunning. On his arrival at Vienna he became the tool of Maria Theresa. While there, he received a salary as the daughter's tutor, and when he returned to France, a much larger one as the mother's spy. He was more ambitious to be thought a great man, in his power over his ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... is too highly organized, too sensitive, too knit together by memories and prevision for you to leave behind you anything that has really entered into your life. It is a shoddy and superficial nature that passes easily from experience to experience, and when you look at such you can see how shallower still it becomes. It is the deeper and the loftier nature that cannot enter into any human relationship and then pass away from ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... R. W. Hegner, 'Experiments with Chrysomelid Beetles,' III., Biological Bulletin, vol. xx. 1910-11.] for example, found that in the egg of the beetle Leptinotarsa, which is an elongated oval in shape, there is at the posterior end in the superficial cytoplasm a disc-shaped mass of darkly staining granules, while the fertilised nucleus is in the middle of the egg. When the protoplasm containing these granules was killed with a hot needle, development in some cases took place and an embryo was formed, but the embryo contained no germ cells. Here ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... requisite for a truly perfect adaptation, namely, a real analysis of the vocational demands with reference to the desirable personal qualities, is so far not in existence. The young people generally see some superficial traits of the careers which seem to stand open, and, besides, perhaps they notice the great rewards of the most successful. The inner labor, the inner values, and the inner difficulties and frictions are too often unknown to those who decide for a vocation, and ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... woman of the world with such an unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones, seemed to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no inactive part in arranging the affair; there were considerations of expediency which she would be far more likely to appreciate ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and at his Return the Relation of it was drawn-up, from his own Mouth, by Friar William of Solanga, in 1330. Ramusio has inserted it in Italian, in the second Volume of his Collection; as Hakluyt, in his Navigations, has done the Latin, with an English Translation. This is a most superficial Relation, and full of Lies; such as People with the Heads of Beasts, and Valleys haunted with Spirits: In one of which he pretends to have entered, protected by the Sign of the Cross; yet fled for Fear, at the Sight of a Face that grinned at him. In short, though he relates some ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... self-confidence, a sweetly smiling determination to have her own way, and go her own course, though the skies fell, and all creation conspired to prevent her—these were the characteristics of Miss Cornelia Briskett most apparent on a superficial acquaintance. On the morning after her arrival, when Mary the housemaid carried the cup of early morning tea to her bedside, she found the young lady leaning back against the pillows, enveloped in a garment which suggested a garden party, rather than a night-gown, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Having no other business in hand, Barney devoted himself to that business which ran like a core through all his businesses—paying court to Maggie. And when Barney wished to be a courtier, there were few of his class who could give a better superficial interpretation of the role; and in this particular instance he was at the advantage of being in earnest. He forced the most expensive tidbits announced by the dinner card upon Maggie; he gallantly and very gracefully put on and removed, as required by circumstances, the green ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... beloved Husband REAL and solid happiness, which no Politics, no worldly reverses CAN change; it could not have lasted long as it was then, for after all, kind and excellent as Lord M. is, and kind as he was to me, it was but in Society that I had amusement, and I was only living on that superficial resource, which I THEN FANCIED was happiness! Thank God! for ME and others, this is changed, and I KNOW WHAT REAL HAPPINESS IS—V. R." How did she know? What is the distinction between happiness that is real and happiness that is felt? So a philosopher—Lord M. himself perhaps—might have inquired. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... which give notice of approaching danger; there are courses of action which have uniformly produced the same results; and the wise politicians are those who have learnt from experience the real tendencies of things, unmisled by superficial differences, who can shun the rocks where others have been wrecked, or from foresight of what is coming can be cool when the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... not know what I should do in that case. I attach very slight importance to such trifles. I merely consider what is suitable for myself, and should be very sorry to judge of others by the superficial information afforded ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... United of what is now the Symphony Literary Service. We are rather at a loss to divine Mr. Macauley's precise notion of amateur journalism. He speaks of it as a "tarn", but we cannot believe he would have it so stagnant a thing as that name implies. Surely, the United is something greater than a superficial fraternal order composed of mediocre and unambitious dabblers. Progress leads toward the outside world of letters, and to cavil at work such as Mrs. Renshaw's is to set obstacles in the path of progress. Professional literary success on the part of amateur journalists can never ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... twenty thousand, nearly four thousand attended school, at least during the winter months. However, it will be seen that the real work of education was not in so satisfactory a condition as the above statement, in a superficial point of view, might imply. To show this we will descend to details as to the schools, their kind, structure, fittings, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... perception miles below that of the Psalmist, who saw man, to all appearance a negligible speck, yet in reality made by the Almighty little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honour. Neither need we combat at length the strangely superficial notion that such questions as unemployment, the Budget, etc., have little or no relation to that of saving the individual soul, as commonly understood. If they have no relation to that subject, they are hardly worth considering; but ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... his way into the smoke-filled passageway and across to the other cabin. They found Stubbs lying on the floor unconscious. A superficial examination revealed no serious wound and so, urged on by the increasing noise above, they left him and hurried to the deck. They found the second mate pushing the stubborn group nearer and nearer their own quarters. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... merely giving vent to his delight at being under canvas. He said the same thing every year, and he said it often. But it more or less expressed the superficial feelings of us all. And when, a little later, he turned to compliment his wife on the fried potatoes, and discovered that she was snoring, with her back against a tree, he grunted with content at the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... served me for an excuse. However, after some time, I began to look into his charts and books; and, as I could write a tolerable hand, understood some Latin, and began to have a little smattering of the Portuguese tongue, so I began to get a superficial knowledge of navigation, but not such as was likely to be sufficient to carry me through a life of adventure, as mine was to be. In short, I learned several material things in this voyage among the Portuguese; I learned particularly to be an arrant thief and a bad sailor; and I think I may say ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.... People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
