"Apt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... particulars about this special directors' meetin' that was goin' on. Speakin' by and large, though, when you clean up better'n thirty per cent. on a semi-annual, you got to do some dividend-jugglin', ain't you? And with them quiz committees so thick, it's apt to be ticklish work. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the preceding article that the dependence of the nations goes back a good deal further than we are apt to think; that long before the period of fully developed intercommunication, all nations owed their civilization to foreigners. It was to their traffic with Gaul and the visits of the Phoenician traders ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... be cut by one who is an artist at his trade. Another advantage possessed by this cloth is that it is far easier to clean than any rough-faced material. An experienced saddler has drawn my attention to the fact that the dye from skirts made of cheap shoddy material, is apt to come off and seriously injure the leather ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Americans - I say it without presumption - are too apt to think that France is Paris, just as we are accused of being too apt to think that Paris is the celestial city. This is by no means the case, fortun- ately for those persons who take an interest in modern Gaul, and ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... excellence is to be referred to the very general acquirement of what we call "art cultivation" among American women, and this, in conjunction with a knowledge that her social world will be apt to judge of her capacity by her success or want of success in making her own surroundings beautiful, determines the efforts of the individual woman. She feels that she is expected to prove her superiority by living in a home distinguished ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... disappointed. I have not so much as seen a water-course since I left the Fisher, and how far this country may continue it is impossible to tell. I intended to have turned back sooner, but I was expecting every moment to meet with a creek. It is very alluring, and apt to lead the traveller into serious mistakes. I wish I had turned back earlier, for I am almost afraid that I have allowed myself to come too far. I am doubtful if all my horses will be able to get ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... cross, how it had been given him by the hand of the Emperor, and of the innocent- -and, indeed, foolish—sayings of his daughter when he returned with it on his bosom. He had another anecdote which he was very apt to give, by way of a rebuke, when the Major wearied us beyond endurance with dispraises of the English. This was an account of the braves gens with whom he had been boarding. True enough, he was a man so simple and grateful by nature, that the most common civilities were ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will never tell me any news till it has past every impression of the Dutch gazette; for one is apt to mention what is wrote to one: that gets about, comes at last to, the ears of the ministry, puts them in a fright, and perhaps they send to beg to see your letter. Now, you know one should hate to have one's private correspondence made grounds for a measure,-especially ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... colonial bishops, nor could it be possible to obtain them. A more worldly view of church extension could not well be conceived, but the suggestion was not by any means an imprudent one. Bishops, being but men, are too apt to abuse power, and it is surely well that too much of it should not ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... not one mother or nurse in ten knows how to make a poultice.[5] When applied over a wound they should not be covered with oiled silk or any impermeable material, since the edges of the wound and the adjacent skin are apt thereby to be rendered irritable and to become covered with little itching pimples. When used to relieve pain in the stomach, or as a warm application in cases of inflammation of the chest, they should be covered with some impermeable material, and will then not ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... replied: "I think Rosa is right about taking charge of Henriet and educating her. But it seems to me the worst thing you could do for her or her husband would be to let them know that they have a claim to riches. Sudden wealth is apt to turn the heads of much older people than they are; and having been brought up as slaves, their danger would be greatly increased. If Henriet could be employed to sew for you, she might be gratified with easy work and generous wages, while you watched over her morals, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... look out for the cattle, and that as soon as we saw the herd rounded up and clear of the scrub, we might follow in the rear. They advised us to take care should any of them charge us, as they were apt to be vicious, and Toby might have a difficulty in escaping. "You need not hurry yourselves," they added, "but when you hear the sound of our stock whips, you had better mount ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... having called this "beauty." Of course, to those who define beauty as "combinations of lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willingly concede the right of substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet "beautiful" to objects that do not provoke that peculiar emotion produced by works of art. Everyone, I suspect, has called a butterfly or a flower beautiful. Does anyone feel the same kind ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... themselves, that is, not puffed out with veins or flesh; or else in riding over hard ground they will inevitably be surcharged with blood, and varicose conditions be set up, (13) the legs becoming thick and puffy, whilst the skin recedes; and with this loosening of the skin the back sinew (14) is very apt to start and ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... ex Nova Guinea Fluviatilis Pisanae J.B. foliis. These plants are so apt to vary in their leaves, according to their different states, that it is hard to say this is distinct from the last. It has in several places (not all expressed in the figure) some of the small short leaves, or seed vessels mentioned in the former; which makes me apt to ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... of the deficiencies of others, he was quick enough to perceive their merits. A fine recitation or an eminently creditable performance of any college exercise, no matter by whom, gave him positive enjoyment, which in his nervous and emphatic way he was very apt to express. It is really not too much to say that he appeared to enjoy the successes of others as much as though they ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... especially, named Anastasio, descended from the family of Onesti, who by the death of his father, and an uncle of his, was left extraordinarily abounding in riches and growing to years fitting for marriage. As young gallants are easily apt enough to do, he became enamoured of a very beautiful gentlewoman, who was daughter of Messer Paolo Traversario, one of the most ancient and noble families in all the country. Nor made he any doubt, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... would be wrong for him to get drunk for the amusement of lookers-on. Still, in this latter case the evil would be greater, for in drunkenness there is contained a lower degradation, inasmuch as the baser passions are then left without all control, and are apt to become exceedingly vile in their licentious condition. The hypnotic subject has at least the mind and will of the hypnotizer to direct him. Here, however, appears the need of another caution, namely, that the hypnotizer should be known to be a virtuous man; else the evil that he can ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... Plataea! The exaggeration is evident; but it still attests the belief of a populousness and power which must have rested upon no fabulous foundation. The state of Sybaris had prospered for a time by the adoption of a principle which is ever apt to force civilization to premature development, and not unfrequently to end in the destruction of national character and internal stability—viz., it opened its arms to strangers of every tribe and class. Thronged by mercantile ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... having alternately pressed with greater and less force on the plates. Occasionally little bridges of soot were left across the tracks, showing that the apex had at these spots been lifted up. This latter fact was especially apt to occur * 'Ueber das Wachsthum der Wurzeln: Arbeiten des bot. Instituts in Wrzburg,' Heft iii. 1873, p. 460. This memoir, besides its intrinsic and great interest, deserves to be studied as a model of careful investigation, and we shall have occasion to refer to it ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... or mould, add a little sifted sand and a thin sprinkling of either nitrate of soda or one of the "complete" commercial manures. Barn-yard manure, unless very well rotted and thoroughly worked under, is apt to develop fungi destructive to seedlings. This will be sufficient preparation if the soil is in average condition; but if the earth is old and worn out, it must be either sub-soiled or dug and enriched with barnyard (not stable) manure to the depth of a foot, or more if yellow loam is not ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... written above will serve to enforce the statement already made as to the importance of maintaining a strict control over our thoughts. Many a well-meaning man, who is scrupulously careful to do his duty towards his neighbour in word and deed, is apt to consider that his thoughts at least are nobody's business but his own, and so lets them run riot in various directions, utterly unconscious of the swarms of baleful creatures he is launching upon the world. To such a man an accurate comprehension of the effect of thought and desire in producing ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... this method is that it is not self-evident, as in the former one, and being rather difficult to explain, the student is apt to take it on trust, and not to trouble about the reasons for its construction: but to show that it is equally correct, I will draw the two methods in ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... Everybody maintains they were Pointed, and, if so, they would have been inserted at the same time as the new roof; but there seems to be no trustworthy authority for this. In Finden's engravings after Hollar they are taken at a peculiar angle which is apt to mislead. Hollar and his engravers give two windows on the south side in the interior, i.e., of the nave and clerestory. Both seem alike; and Inigo Jones' patched-up north and south fronts represent them both as ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... the High School I had such ambitions as any schoolboy is apt to have. I wished to secure an election to a given secret society; that gained, I wished to become business manager of a monthly magazine published by that society. In these ambitions I succeeded. For one of my age I had ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... reverential assent to his interminable disquisitions on art. Every one in the house was sorry for little Gasper, and the other fellows liked him all the more because it was so impossible to like his sculpture; but his talk was a bore, and when his colleagues ran in to see him they were apt to keep a hand on the door-knob and to plead a pressing engagement. At least they had been till Kate came; but now they began to show a disposition to enter and sit down. Caspar, who was no fool, perceived ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... to mean, etymologically, "surges," "storm-tossed waters,"—"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts." Our word "deep" is apt to give us the idea of stillness—we have the proverb, "Still waters run deep,"—whereas in some instances teh[o]m is used in Scripture of waters which were certainly shallow, as, for instance, those passed through by Israel ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... have made as much as L300 a week. My friends tried to frighten me as to the apathy of my Scotch audiences; as a matter of fact, I have no better audiences anywhere. I like performing to country audiences. I am never nervous as I am apt to be at St. James's, where there are a number of my friends. And it is on my country tours that I have many curious experiences. Amateurs invariably call at the hotel to see me, and to ask my advice as to their powers of recitation. Some are quite hopeless, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... "and then again the current races faster out in the middle, so the boat that ventures may profit by that. But what I had in mind was the innumerable cut-offs we're apt to strike." ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... acquaintance progressed most pleasantly and rapidly, as my daughter's acquaintance is apt to progress; and it resulted in an equally pleasant understanding that the four young gentlemen were to come to a little festivity we are giving in honor of Polly's birthday,—a garden party in our grounds, between the ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... be washed and placed in a basin of cold water the night before they are required for use, and should remain in soak about ten or twelve hours. If left longer than this during hot weather they are apt to ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... busy in the daytime," she said. No cards, no luncheons, no tea-parties could lure her away from the Hall, although, if she and the small girls walked in for mail or were down in the village for any other reason, they were very apt to stop somewhere for a chat on their way home. But the children were allowed to go nowhere alone, and not the smartest of children's parties could boast of the presence of Joanna ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... scheme in the first place, will doubtless be of comfort to your soul, but that particular species of comfort and ordinary everyday common sense are not always as closely united as you might desire. In fact they are occasionally apt to pull in entirely opposite directions, a method of procedure ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... and it may be regarded as a good one, why my uncle objected to display his learning more than was absolutely necessary: he stammered; and when intent upon explaining the phenomena of the heavens, was apt to find himself at fault, and allude in such a vague way to sun, moon, and stars that few were able to comprehend his meaning. To tell the honest truth, when the right word would not come, it was generally replaced ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... wholeness of heart which made anything equivocal repulsive to her: when she believed she gave herself: in the generous ardor of her soul, even in her egoism, she always burned her boats; and, as a result of living with Olivier, she had preserved a moral inability to compromise, which she was apt ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Poland, the father of his people, there arose a deep-rooted conspiracy in certain neighboring states, jealous of his late power and glorious name, determining to undermine the accession of his family to the throne; and they found an apt soil to work on in a corresponding feeling ready to break out amongst some of the most influential nobles of the realm. Foreign and domestic revolutionists soon understand each other; and the dynasty ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and asked of them many questions; and, inasmuch as they had been taught well and trained in every art and science, they answered with propriety and perfect ease. The Shah struck with admiration bitterly regretted that Almighty Allah had not vouchsafed to him sons so handsome in semblance and so apt and so learned as these twain; and, for the pleasure of listening to them, he lingered at meat longer than he was wont to do. And when he rose from table and retired with them to his private apartment he still ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... not carry you off, darling; but you must not go in the street, except in the carriage with me. We will sit up stairs, a little away from the windows; and if I read aloud, you won't forget yourself and sing at your embroidery or drawing, as you are apt to do. It's not likely he will remain in the city many days, and I will try to ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... San Francisco assail the visitor like colors in a gypsy's scarf lustrous and salient. There is so much vivacity in the streets downtown, so much to see in the haunts talked about, that one is apt to overlook in a brief sojourn an outstanding characteristic of the ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... journals are apt to give local matters of interest precedence over affairs at a distance, and so it was that (though Angela usually glanced through a newspaper every day or two during her travels) she had never come upon Paolo di Sereno's name ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... balls also. The requirements of third-baseman are very similar, but he must be an exceptionally good thrower, as he has the longest distance to throw to the first-base; and as he plays nearer to the batsman than do the second-baseman and the short-stop, the balls batted in his direction are apt to be faster and more difficult to field. One of the third-baseman's chief duties is to be ready to run in towards the batsman to field "bunts," i.e. balls blocked by allowing them to rebound from a loosely held bat. These commonly roll slowly in the direction of third-baseman, who, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Jove had driven the Titans out from Heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest-born son, Typhœus (Typhaon, Typhœus, Typhon), by the embrace of Tartarus (Hell), through golden Aphrodite (Venus), whose hands, indeed, are apt for deeds on the score of strength, and untiring the feet of the strong god; and from his shoulders there were a hundred heads of a serpent, a fierce dragon playing with dusky tongues" (tongues of fire and smoke?), "and from the eyes in his wondrous ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... The All-Father has drawn nigh to the souls of His children, through the holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. It is an inestimable privilege to have these Bibles of Humanity ranged along our shelves, and to have their choicest words at hand upon our tables, in some apt anthology. It would be well if their great sayings could be read in our churches, in connection with our Old Testament lessons, as the voices of the ethnic prophets of the Son of Man. But if we have allowed ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... the distribution of the seeds of a parasitical plant was observed here, each seed being enclosed within a sort of pulp, like bird-lime, insoluble in water; the whole resembling a very thin-skinned berry. On this being broken, probably by birds, the bird-lime is apt to attach the seed to trees or branches, and so the parasitical growth commences. On the plains, the blue flowers of a large variety of MORGANIA GLABRA caught the eye: the rare and little known HETERODENDRON OLOEFOLIUM of Desfontaines, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Margaret looked at her oddly, but she did not care to meet her daughter's eyes just then. Lady Caroline was not an unworldly woman, not a very conscientious one, or apt to set a great value on fine moral distinctions; but she did regret just then that she had not impressed on her daughter more deeply ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... whatever may be the period when, or the circumstance by which, the dormant spark is first awakened into action. Parents, it is true, are in general great observers of infantine occurrences; and very apt to be presageful of wonderful results expected from trivial causes. Few parents, however, are so blessed, as to have children who possess genius: of those who are, some silently treasure up their hopes, which may be buried with them in an untimely grave; some are too incessantly busied in the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... was unconscious, while I, myself, retained my senses, I think, only by sheer will. The one on whom all responsibility rests is apt to endure the most. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... enough. The proceedings of other races and other ages do not seem to carry conviction; what our ancestors did, or what the Greeks or Egyptians did, though it is the direct physical cause of the modern young man or the modern young lady, is apt to impress these remarkable consequences merely as an arrangement of quaint, comical or ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... good on Sunday, when his father is with him," explained Master Sunshine; "it's on the week-days, when there isn't a man round, that he is most apt to get into trouble. And I tell you the worst about me, father, so you won't think I'm a better ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... Reybuzh, just facing the church, stands a two-storeyed house with a stone foundation and an iron roof. In the lower storey the owner himself, Filip Ivanov Kashin, nicknamed Dyudya, lives with his family, and on the upper floor, where it is apt to be very hot in summer and very cold in winter, they put up government officials, merchants, or landowners, who chance to be travelling that way. Dyudya rents some bits of land, keeps a tavern on the highroad, does a trade ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... on it by the written correspondence of the period. The historian has rather had occasion to complain of the embarras des richesses; for, in the multiplicity of contradictory testimony, it is not always easy to detect the truth, as the multiplicity of cross-lights is apt to dazzle and bewilder ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... reached us; and if the force which we receive were not undifferentiated in itself it could not take appropriate form in our own minds and become to each of us just what we require it to be. It is this power of the human soul to differentiate limitlessly from the Infinite that we are apt to overlook, but as we come to realize that the soul is itself a reflection and image of the Infinite Spirit—and a clear recognition of the cosmic creative process shows that it cannot be anything else—we find that ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... instance at hand, however, belonging to this region, than which I could scarcely produce a more apt illustration of my thesis. One of the greatest of living painters, walking with a friend through the late Exhibition of Art-Treasures at Manchester, came upon Albert Duerer's Melancholia. After looking at it for a moment, he told his friend that now for the first time he understood it, and ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... seek to carry, "hiddenly," as he would express it, beneath the cloak of his rapture, all sorts of absurd archaisms, awkwardly conventional inversions, hideous neologisms like false antiques, all mere counters. A born writer with a personal instinct for expression, like Arthur Symons, is not apt to resort to the use of counters, even when he is seemingly careless; a carefully trained artist in the use of words, like Stevenson, evidently rejects counters immediately; the man who is not a writer, born or made, sometimes ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... poor child who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his determination to rescue her from the life of the streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged. Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... elements of poetic beauty join to make The Passing of Arthur a masterpiece. Sublime sentiment thrills through the stanzas. A stately meter gives a solemn, rhythmic swing to the noble lines. Sonorous words add to the grandeur. Apt phrases and beautiful figures of speech seize the imagination and enchain the fancy. Rare and choice diction gives artistic finish ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... mail and priests in their full robes, bowing and doing him honour. Thus royally escorted, Abi passed through the open gates and the pylons of the splendid temple dedicated to the Trinity of Thebes, "the House of Amen in the Southern Apt," where gay banners fluttered from the pointed masts, up the long street bordered with tall houses set in their gardens, till he came to the palace wall. Here more guards rolled back the brazen gates which in his folly of a few hours gone he had thought ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... time past. As he recalled what had taken place, the anger of Madame de Nailles in the matter of the picture seemed to him to have been extreme and unnecessary. Jacqueline was just at an age when young girls are apt to be nervous and impressionable; they had been wrong to be rough with one who was so sensitive. His wife was quite of his opinion, she acknowledged (not wishing him to think too much on the subject) that she had ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... the hair of a silly sheep, and for colour, the very blood of a shell-fish; of this nature are all other things. Thy life itself, is some such thing too; a mere exhalation of blood: and it also, apt to be changed into some ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... knew that Aunt Agnes was very fond of me, and I in turn loved and respected her, she was apt to inspire me with awe even on ordinary occasions. Her character was as upright as her figure, which in defiance of the relaxed customs of the day was always arrayed against a straight-backed chair. Conventionalities ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... she gathered up her robes. "I parley with thee no more. Thou art tenfold more detestable than the howling mob down yonder, intent on rapine and destruction. They know no better, and can no other. But thou, apt in speaking the sacred tongue yet brutally ignorant of its treasures, knowing the father of the Gods only to revile him! ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... encouraged him to call it his house) were of more or less importance or standing in the world of business and finance (two were lawyers in their first flight, Bascom Luning and Jimmie Thorne), and the more prosperous he appeared to be (they knew to a dollar the extent of Alexina's income) the more apt would business be to flow his way, the less likely they would be to suspect him of playing the stock market. At all events it enhanced his standing and gave ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... remonstrate when they bade him do this or that, it was not of so much consequence that, in the end, he did exactly as he pleased. This was not often at variance with the desires of the two sisters, for the wordless influence of his will so enveloped them that his wishes were apt to be theirs. But no one could have been more surprised than the little ladies, had they been told that their nephew's intention of practicing law in the lumber town of Lockhaven ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... there is no telling the effect it may produce, & my chief object in being thus particular with you is to conjure your utmost attention to that subject. About the Governor's election there is no sort of doubt. I am not apt to be confident, & I aver that the matter is so. But it is to the Assembly that interested men look, and the difference of ten members will (with the information the members can have when they come to act) be decisive in the opinion of the present members as to the complexion ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... with some information relating to the prices of such books as they stood in need of, and to the various book-collectors who attended public sales, Lisardo expressed himself highly obliged by the promise; and, sinking quietly into a corner of the chaise, he declared that he was now in a most apt mood to listen attentively to Philemon's digressive chat: ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... therefore to marry the widow, being forced to leave France. Madame Husson, then twenty-two years old, married in her deep distress a government clerk named Clapart, aged twenty-seven, who was said to be a rising man. At that period of our history, government clerks were apt to become persons of importance; for Napoleon was ever on the lookout for capacity. But Clapart, though endowed by nature with a certain coarse beauty, proved to have no intelligence. Thinking Madame Husson very rich, he feigned ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... on the journey were marvellous. I read them, and was simply amazed that those small sheets of paper could contain so much youth, purity of spirit, holy innocence, and at the same time subtle and apt judgments which would have done credit to a fine mas culine intellect. It was more like a rapturous paean of praise she sent me than a mere description of the Volga, the country, the towns she visited, her companions, her failures ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... comes on the pulse is usually quickened, as well as the breathing; the bowels are apt to be constipated; and thirst, loss of appetite, headache, and vague pains are felt. When the temperature goes beyond 105 it is very dangerous, and it is for this reason that physicians want to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... noticed this, knowing that these birds were common in the Mimbres, and one might have flown over the ravine; but we thought, or fancied, that it had made an impression upon our adversaries. They were men not apt to show any sudden emotion; but it appeared to us that, all at once, their glances grew bolder, and more triumphant. Could it have been ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of the Chateau—that is, all but Kathleen; she obstinately refused to go, even when the Doctor reasoned with her. "Let me die in my bed," she pleaded. "It's better form. Our best people have always done it, and besides when I'm waked suddenly that way I'm apt to be cross." So, when the sound of the buzzing motor was heard in the sky, she simply drew the covers over her head, and stayed where she was, while a strange, half-clad procession, recruited from stables and granary, filed into the Chateau cellar. These raids were likely ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... parties were apt to be anything but lively. One was morally elevated by being able to look on the comely and high-bred face of Mrs. Bodewin Ranger, but that fine old lady had a sort of religious scruple against saying anything in particular ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... sago in several waters; put it on to boil in a quart of milk, with a stick of cinnamon; stir it very frequently, for it is apt to burn: when it becomes quite thick, take out the cinnamon, stir it in half a pound of butter, and an equal quantity of sugar, with a gill of wine; when cold, add six eggs and four ounces of currants that have been plumped in hot ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... attuned himself to the new medium. This would have been unavailing if there had been nothing in his speeches, but it was soon realized that here was an interesting new member, a man inexperienced in some directions, but with bold thoughts, apt phrases, and an almost unpleasant sincerity. He did not take the House by storm, but still he was listened to. He quickly developed. Within a year his name was frequently in the newspapers as one of the guerrilla fighters ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... condition of her father's will. In the sunny years that were past Lucy had taken no notice of this omission. She had not thought much on the subject herself. She had withdrawn from it tacitly, as one is apt to do from a matter which has been productive of pain and disappointment, and had been content to ignore that portion of her responsibilities. Even when Jock forcibly revived the subject it continued without any practical importance, and its existence was a question between themselves to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Other World, the real world we shall enter when death sets us free of that dream men call life. Mr. Yeats is not so kind to the men "in the highway" as the old Irish bards. When they wrote enigmas they were apt to explain them fully, as does the poet of "The Wooing of Emer" when he tell what was meant by the cryptic questions and answers exchanged between that princess and Cuchulain. When the symbolism is of the kind found in "Death's Summons" of Thomas ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... transforming crucible of a human intelligence which reasons on events as effects of causes. The boundary between Prehistoric and Historic, however, depends too much on the subjectivity of individual historians and is too apt to vary with the progress of research to be a fixed moment. Nor can it be the same for all civilizations. As regards Egypt, for example, we have a body of literary tradition which can reasonably be called Historic, relating to a time much earlier than is reached by respectable literary tradition ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... have me there," said Father Payne. "But I don't despair of our ultimately finding that out. At present, the worst of men of genius is that they are not always the most brisk and efficient boys. A genius is apt to be perceptive and sensitive. His perceptiveness makes him seem bewildered, because he is vaguely interested in everything that he sees; his sensitiveness makes him hold his tongue, because he gets snubbed if he asks too many questions. Men ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... God, the confidence of love, knowing whom we have believed, with the persuasion of our having committed to him an infinite trust, and that he will keep it with covenant faithfulness. So when death comes and knocks at the door, it is true the heart beats quicker, as it is apt to do whoever knocks there; for, to give up one's hold on life, to turn and look eternal things full in the face, to think of meeting God, and of having your endless condition fixed, summons the whole of natural and acquired ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... afraid I couldn't leave," said Roderick, rather taken aback by her frankness. That ideal woman, who sat dimly enthroned in the recesses of his heart, never offered her favours, they had to be sued for, and she was apt to sit in judgment on the girl who departed ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... he exclaimed, genially, and yet at the same time a little resentfully—the kind of disjointed resentment a man who has had the least bit too much is apt to feel on being interrupted. "I'm not going to walk all over Chicago thinking of a woman I've seen somewhere only to be carried away the first time I do meet her. I'm going to talk ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... allowed himself to be seduced by the too prevalent habit of over-indulgence. It had become a thing of frequent occurrence with him now, when he was out on picket duty or had to spend the night in barracks, to take a "pony" of brandy, and if he took a second it was apt to go to his head in the alcohol-laden atmosphere that he was forced to breathe. It had become epidemic, that chronic drunkenness, among those men with whom bread was scarce and who could have all the brandy they wanted by asking for it. Toward evening on Sunday, the 21st ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... my dearest, in circumstances the most favorable to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech of you, make them worse by indulging suspicions and apprehensions which minds in distress are apt ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... life by your self-devotion in the affair of the Jacobites. When you first came to me, you were recommended as a good accountant, and, to a certain degree, a man of business; and, at all events, you proved yourself well acquainted and apt at figures. Do you think that a situation on shore would ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... bad roads, not only expected the offer of some substantial refreshment, but in view of the fatigue they had undergone and their desire that they should be sufficiently recovered before undertaking the return journey, were apt to outstay their welcome. Of a neighbour, however, who resided beyond the distance practicable for a morning call, and with whom Marianne Stanhope had apparently been staying at this date, she gives a more enthusiastic description. Mr Fawkes ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... and delicately tinted as a piece of porcelain, full of enthusiasm for her new surroundings and of a delight half shy, half spontaneous in the companionship of a man so unlike the blase, self-centred youths of her limited experience, had, for the time being, swept him off his feet. And men are apt to do unaccountable things during those hot-headed moments when the feet ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of our beliefs and seem to make our very doubts melodious. For this reason it is obvious that unrestrained indulgence in the pleasures of music or of scenery may tend to destroy habits of clear thinking, sentimentalise the mind, and render it more apt to entertain embryonic fancies than to bring ideas ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... talent or power, either as regards the execution of the compositions of others or of his own, as either Thalberg, Halle, Madame Goddard, or anybody else you ever listened to. I write merely to disabuse your mind of the common impression which we are all apt to form of these singular geniuses; and very strongly recommend you not only to hear him play, but privately test him (as I have done) in any way you like. Improvise to him as difficult or elaborate or out-of-the-way piece as you please, and he will instantly ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... eyes, the only unhappiness I ever had by them, and then he wouldn't see a physician; and if it hadn't been that, just at the right moment, Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Jesuit, and Father Prout of 'Fraser,' knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever got ahead through weakness and mixed up with his own kind hand a potion of eggs and port wine, to the horror of our Italian servant, who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... our provision be in readiness, Collect us followers of the comeliest hue, For our chief guardians; we will thither wend. The crystal eyes of heaven shall not thrice wink, Nor the green flood six times his shoulders turn, Till we salute the Arragonian king. Music, speak loudly; now the season's apt, For former dolors are in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... night-work on some of the morning papers, and the rest was necessary; he had his breakfast whenever he got up, as if he had been at a hotel. He wondered upon what new theory she was really treating him; but he had always been apt to accept what was comfortable in life without much question, and he did not wonder long. He was immensely good-natured now. In his frequent leisure he went out to walk with Marcia and Flavia, and sometimes he took the little girl alone. He even went ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... right, Mr Inspector,' sighed Cargrim, putting on his hat. 'We are all apt to elevate the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... coming to Nealie than to the others. She was older than they were, and had been mother to them so long that she was apt to be thinking out ways and means when she ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... commonly punished by disregard even of his real merits. These may not meet with recognition until later times. The writings of James I wore the pedantic dress of the age; but in the midst of scholastic argumentation we yet stumble upon apt thoughts and allusions. The images which he frequently employs have not that delicacy of literary feeling which avoids what is ungraceful, but they are original and sometimes striking in their simplicity. Naturally thorough and acute, he labours ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... only his private reputation: no trace of such a feeling is observable in his writings, which show throughout a sturdy vein of republicanism, social and political. In truth, the party classification of American literary men is apt to puzzle the uninitiated. Thus Washington Irving is said to belong to the Democrats; but it would be hard to find in his writings anything countenancing their claim upon him. His sketches of English society are a panegyric of old institutions; ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... towards the middle of February. Were I to take a turn into the country, the trees would present a leafless, wintery appearance. As people are apt to pluck twigs as they walk along, I perhaps might do the same, and by chance might observe, that a single bud on that twig had begun to swell. I should reason very unnaturally, or rather not reason at all, to suppose this was the only ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... distinct additional idea C. And where the train of suggestion is one of reasoning distinctively so-called as contrasted with mere 'revery,' ... the ideas bear certain inward relations to each other which we must carefully examine. The result C yielded by a true act of reasoning is apt to be a thing voluntarily sought, such as the means to a proposed end, the ground for an observed effect, or the effect of an assumed cause."[2] Thus what at first sight might seem a fantastic suggestion may, when its bearings are logically ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... arms like strong swimmers—when I saw that. boisterous human flood become still water in a moment, and remain so from the opening to the end of the play, it suggested to me something besides the trustworthiness of an English crowd, and the delusion under which those labour who are apt to disparage and malign it: it suggested to me that in meeting here to-night we undertook to represent something of the all-pervading feeling of that crowd, through all its intermediate degrees, from the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... wild with indignation and tremble all over, and sometimes become quite ill and lose his sleep. It was because he knew his weakness that he drew on his mask of calmness: for when he was angry he knew that he went beyond all limits and was apt to say unpardonable things. People were more resentful with him than with Christophe, who was always violent, because it seemed that in moments of anger Olivier, much more than Christophe, expressed exactly what he thought: and that was true. He judged ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... have one good watering at the roots. In the course of about ten days it will be scarcely perceptible that they have been operated on. They may be lifted and replanted with their heads to the north, but this is apt to check them too much. In exceptionally cold seasons cover the plot with straw or bracken, but this must be removed in wet weather. When it is seen that the heads are forming and hard weather is apprehended, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... brilliant man, but he had a fine instinct for other people's corns and prejudices. Everybody agreed that his remarks were able; there were no dissenting voices. He concluded with an apt and solemnly impressive reference to the wheat and the chaff, the garnering and the casting into furnace, leaving the application concerning the deceased wholly to his audience. That completed his success. When he sat down there was a ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... there are some other considerations which should not be lost sight of. When a man finds he can live easily without much work, that all his neighbours are contented with the scantiest clothing, the coarsest food, and the poorest dwellings, he is very apt to fall into the same slothful habits. Even if he himself has innate energy enough to ward off the insidious foe, he will see his children growing up exposed to all the temptations to lead an easy life ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. The shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in Geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins du Louvre—an establishment where ill-mannered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... description of the House had been apt, he had sadly underrated the furniture. There were FOUR chairs, all "up" to my weight, while two of them were up to the Maluka's. The cane was all gone, certainly, but had been replaced with green-hide seats (not green in colour, of course, only green in experience, never having seen ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... even when he sees is blind," and if, in addition to this artificial blindness, he is practically both deaf and dumb owing to his ignorance of the language of the people among whom he moves, it is almost certain that he will make many mistakes, if not insure failure. Now few results are apt to be more delusive than a mere collection of words, or even of short sentences. The instances of "a dead policeman" as a Non-aryan equivalent for the abstract term "death" which the inquirer wanted; of ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... self-assertion that often bordered, or seemed to border, upon arrogance. His earnestness, moreover, was often mistaken for brusqueness and violence; for he was, in some measure, of that (p. 080) class of men who appear to be excited when they are only interested. The result was that at first he was apt to repel rather than attract. Without referring to other evidence, we need here only to quote the guarded statement of one of his warmest friends in describing the beginning of their acquaintance. "I remember," ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... you,—that is, after I got to bed. But I sat up pretty late reading my favorite Scott. I am apt to forget how the hours pass when I have one of his books in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... many by-ways of fancy and reflection. His companion, a man of five-and-thirty, had a far more striking countenance. His complexion was of the kind which used to be called adust—burnt up with inner fires; his visage was long and somewhat harshly designed, very apt, it would seem, to the expression of hitter ironies or stern resentments, but at present bright with friendly pleasure. He had a heavy moustache, but no beard; his hair tumbled in disorder. To matters of costume he evidently gave ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... United States. Do not expect him to display an intimate or sympathetic understanding of America's true attitude to the War. He is conducting the War according to his lights, and is prepared to abide by the consequences of what he does. So he is apt to be resentful of criticism. Bear with him, for he is having a tough ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... Burton, Fuller, Walton and Jeremy Taylor. Often it was the quaintness of these authors, their conceits or oddities, that charmed him. These oddities reappear in his own style to such an extent that even when he speaks a large truth, as he often does, he is apt to give the impression of being a little harebrained. Yet if you examine his queer idea or his merry jest, you may find that it contains more cardinal virtue than many a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... is not the thing involved but the One involved that makes the issue. If that faithful quiet inner voice has spoken and I know what the Master would prefer and I fail to keep in line, that to me is sin. Then prayer is useless; sheer waste of breath. Aye, worse, it is deceptive. For I am apt to say or think, "Well, I am not as good as you, or you, but then I am not so bad; I pray." And the truth is because I have broken with God the praying—saying words in that ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... Lord to Peter's self-righteous demand is twofold. First, he owns and reiterates the truth that all labourers in his kingdom will be rewarded; and next corrects the abuse of that principle into which a self-pleasing human heart is apt to fall. In the discourse recorded at the close of the nineteenth chapter, he teaches the cheering truth that the Lord will richly reward the services of his people, and in the subsequent parable gives to them and us a solemn admonition against the error ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot |
