"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deny, but it is as easie to send Truth backward, as it is to spur Falsities egregiously forward, and might have caus'd any Asse, as knowing as Balaam's, to have rebuk'd such a Poet as will needs prophecy against the sense of Heaven and Men. But I have enough ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... company by singing extempore love songs in praise of the bride and groom to tambourine accompaniment and pendulous swayings of the body. Pretending to be carried away by the melodiousness and sentiment of his own productions, he gradually bends backward with hands outstretched and castanets jingling, until his head almost touches the floor, and maintains that position while keeping his body in a theatrical tremor of delight. This is the finale of the performance, and the luti comes and sets his skull-cap in front of me for a present; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a train of dusky attendants entered, each of whom deposited his load on the floor with a guttural grunt and returned backward, until the sitting-room was blocked with piles of sacks, and bales, and chests, whereupon the head driver appeared and intimated that the tale of ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... McGee, glancing backward, saw the take-off and the zoom. "The poor fish!" was his mental comment. "If he shows that kind of stuff to this squadron they'll be needing a lot of replacements—or yelling for ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... cannot be better than another, nor can we be mistaken as to its value except with reference to some purpose which it fulfills or does not fulfill. There is no growth or evolution apart from a purpose in terms of which we can read the direction of change as forward rather than backward. ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... respective journeys with their engines properly in front. He also contrived to reverse the engines the fewest times possible. Could you have performed the feat? And how many times would you require to reverse the engines? A "reversal" means a change of direction, backward or forward. No rope-shunting, fly-shunting, or other trick is allowed. All the work must be done legitimately by the two engines. It is a simple but interesting puzzle if ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... literary value. Only he was not in a mood to appreciate literary values. He attended strictly to business, which was to lift the excellent animal on which he was mounted as rapidly as possible over the ground. In this he attained a moderate success. Venturing a backward glance, after a few moments, he noted with pleasure that the distance between himself and the maniacs had sensibly increased. Then one of those zipping bullets passed between his body and his arm, cut off three heavy locks of the horse's ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... of treating the king's sentiments with indifference, and considering his displeasure as an affair of no consequence. Before the disgrace of the Choiseuls they were equally the objects of madame de Luxembourg's most bitter hatred, nor was madame de Grammont backward in returning her animosity; yet, strange as it may seem, no sooner was the Choiseul party exiled, than the marechale never rested till she saw her name engraved on the famous pillar erected to perpetuate the remembrance of all those who had visited the exiles. She employed their ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... The poor squarehead cowered backward, and Swope stepped forward and drove his clenched list into the boy's face, smashing him against the cabin skylights. The boy cried out with pain and fear, the blood gushing from his nose, and, placing his hands over ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... of our task. You have witnessed the phenomena of crystallisation, and have had placed before you the facts which are found associated with the cleavage of slate rocks. Such facts, as expressed by Helmholtz, are so many telescopes to our spiritual vision, by which we can see backward through the night of antiquity, and discern the forces which have been in ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... poker to strike. A pair of terrified blue eyes arrested her. Tommy forgot to cry, in sheer amazement at what she was about to do. Ashamed of herself, she threw the poker aside, and taking advantage of Mr. Stubbins's crouching position, she thrust him suddenly backward into the closet. The manoeuver was a brilliant one, for while Mr. Stubbins was unsteadily separating himself from the debris into which he had been cast, Lovey Mary slammed the door and locked it. Then she picked up Tommy and fled out of the ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... protruding, fishhook spears still stuck in their bodies—realistic pictures from the darker side of war. Thus absorbed, the soldiers hardly noticed the growing musketry fire from the peak. But suddenly the bang of a field-gun set all eyes looking backward. A battery had unlimbered in the plain between the zeriba and the ridge, and was beginning to shell the summit of the hill. The report of the guns seemed to be the signal for the whole battle to reopen. From far away to the right rear there came the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... blades of mace, and boil for three or four hours. When properly boiled, strain it off, taking care to skim off all the fat; then put into it two ounces of rice, well boiled, half a pint of cream beaten up, and five or six yolks of eggs. When ready to serve, pour the soup to the eggs backward and forward to prevent it from curdling, and send it to table. You must boil the soup once after you add the cream, and before you put it to the eggs. Three laurel leaves put into it in summer and six in winter make a pleasant addition, instead ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... this, as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the 25 malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi. The first tempest of the desolating fury of the Tartars discharged itself upon their own habitations. But this, as cutting off all infirm looking backward from the hardships of their march, had been thought so necessary a measure by all 30 the chieftains that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize the act by his own example. He seized a torch previously prepared with materials ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... hygiene, and to take steps against illiteracy—in 1910 the efforts of the "Narodna Odbrana" had had such success that an inquiry, in which the French participated, found that out of a hundred recruits from a backward region 61 per cent. could read and write, 99 per cent. had some knowledge of the battle of Kossovo and the reign of Du[vs]an, while 82 per cent. could enumerate the provinces inhabited by their unredeemed brothers. The rise of Serbia was due ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... sermon, the hymns.... All through the world-body the straining toward the larger thing, the enveloping Person! As he sat there he felt blood-warmth, touch, with every foot that sought hold, with every hand that reached. He saw the backward-falling, and he saw that they did not fall forever, that they caught and held and climbed again. He saw that because he had done that, time ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... The land was covered with fog, and looked desolate enough, but nevertheless seemed acceptable after a tedious journey against head winds and calms. The wind was still directly out of the straits, and we had to beat backward and forward from Resolution to Button Island, and it seemed as if the straits were unapproachable. Toward night the wind blew a perfect gale, and added to the usual dangers was the risk of running upon the innumerable pieces of loose ice which appeared on every side, many of them ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Through countless aeons hopelessly forlorn, Out to the very utmost verge and bourn, God at the last, reluctant, made the sun. He loved His darkness still, for it was old: He grieved to see His eldest child take flight; And when His Fiat lux the death-knell tolled, As the doomed Darkness backward by Him rolled, He snatched a remnant flying into light And strewed it with the stars, and called ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... got out paper and pencil. She was backward in all schooling at this time, and could only print. However, she sat down at the table beside her father and went to work. It proved a very difficult task to her, but she persevered until she ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... flying-machines driving up from the east. They rose up out of the haze above the houses and came round in a long curve as if surveying the position below. The fire of the Germans rose to a roar, and one of those soaring shapes gave an abrupt jerk backward and fell among the houses. The others swooped down exactly like great birds upon the roof of the power-house. They caught upon it, and from each sprang a nimble little figure and ran towards ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... woke with a start and sat up in bed, listening intently, listening for he knew not what. Except for the backward scream of the pebbles, dragged down every few seconds by the receding waves, an unbroken silence seemed to prevail. He struck a match and looked at his watch. It was exactly three o'clock. He got out of bed. He was a man in perfect health, ignorant of the meaning of ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... worse. I put myself in her place as well as I could, and felt her feelings when von Francius introduced her to one of the young ladies near her, who first stared at him, then at her, then inclined her head a little forward and a little backward, turned her back upon Miss Wedderburn, and appeared lost in conversation of the deepest importance with her neighbor. And I thought of the words which Karl Linders had said to us in haste and anger, and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... it! and backward with terrified glance To the sheltering door ran the warder; As calm as before look'd the moon on the dance, Which they footed in hideous order. But one and another seceding at last, Slipp'd on their white garments and onward they pass'd, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... is coming?" mused Jack Young, as he stopped to let Jean Forette hurry on a little in advance. Then a backward lance told him that two other figures were joining the procession. These last two—a man and a woman—walked more slowly, and they did not talk, except now and then to pass ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... was himself. It tells how, having heard in advance that the more authentic one was black-haired, handsome, and overtowering, they singled out the drum-major, were set right only by the roaring laughter, and huddled backward like caged quails from Kincaid's brazen smile, yet waved again as the train finally jogged on with the band playing from the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... French prototype, Racine, they reveal their full merit only to connoisseurs. They are the work of a man who was better able than most men of his generation to prove all things, and who held fast to that which he found good. His art is not forward-looking, like that of Kleist, nor backward-looking, like that, say, of Theodor Koerner. It is in the strictest sense complementary and co-ordinate to that of Goethe and Schiller, a classicism modified by romantic tendencies toward individuation and localization. He did not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... passing the ring or the button, and detecting the hand which holds it. In the present game, the object hidden, or the cache as it is called by the trappers, is a small splint of wood, or other diminutive article that may be concealed in the closed hand. This is passed backward and forward among the party "in hand," while the party "out of hand" guess where it is concealed. To heighten the excitement and confuse the guessers, a number of dry poles are laid before each platoon, upon which the members of the party "in hand" beat furiously with short ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... went away, after some heavy compliments that seemed to amuse Yasmini prodigiously, helping along the man who had drunk sherbet and who now seemed inclined to weep. They dragged him down the stairs between them, backward. Yasmini waited at the stair—head until she heard them pull him into a gharri and drive away. Then she turned ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... been so successfully taken to put these principles into effect. The progress has been by evolution, not by revolution. Nothing radical has been done; the action has been both moderate and resolute. Therefore the work will stand. There shall be no backward step. If in the working of the laws it proves desirable that they shall at any point be expanded or amplified, the amendment can be made as its desirability is shown. Meanwhile they are being administered with judgment, but with insistence upon obedience to them, and their need ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... before he could half clear the distance, O'Keefe had leaped too, had caught the Norseman by the shoulders and toppled him backward, where he lay whimpering and sobbing. And as I rushed behind Marakinoff I saw Larry lean over the lip of the Pool and cover his eyes with a shaking hand; saw the Russian peer into it with real pity in his ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... food supply and has largely curtailed those of the enemy, and when the few German cruisers which still infest the more distant ocean routes have been disposed of, as they will be disposed of very soon, [cheers,] it will achieve for British and neutral commerce passing backward and forward, from and to every part of our empire, a security as complete as it has ever enjoyed in the days of unbroken peace. Let us honor the memory of the gallant seamen who, in the pursuit of one or another of these varied ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... jerking a backward thumb at the closed door, "lives or dies, goes free or hangs, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... present Pickett Street erected in its stead. P. CUNNINGHAM. In Humphry Clinker, in the letter of June 10, one of the poor authors is described as having been 'reduced to a woollen night-cap and living upon sheep's-trotters, up three pair of stairs backward in Butcher Row.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... suddenly stopped. She barked no more; she understood. It is the wise one that gives in, thought she. She stretched her head up as if to look down on that other four-legged beast in front of her, then turned and scratched as dogs do, backward, with her hind feet, whirling up dust and sand, so that the other brute got his eyes and mouth full of it, which made him beat a retreat, breaking out in the human bark—curses, to wit. But Almira retired ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... our reporter with every appearance of earnestness, subsequent to the occurrence. At any rate, the moment that Warren's pistol appeared, Morrison whipped out his revolver, and shot him through the head. Warren fell backward, and died in a few minutes. The dreadful act has caused the utmost excitement throughout the country, whose annals, as far as serious crime is concerned, are stainless. A singular circumstance must be noted. There is not a single person who regards Morrison in the light of a murderer. ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... window-ledge and bit deeply into it. Piece after piece of the ancient adobe came away, until presently the bases of the iron bars lay exposed; whereupon Okada seized them, one by one, in his hands and bent them upward and outward, backward and forward, until he was enabled to remove them altogether. Then he stole quietly back to the blacksmith shop, restored the bolt-clippers, went to ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... leaned too far backward in making his cast. He had lost his balance and toppled over. Here his training in aerial work served him in good stead. As he felt himself going he turned quickly facing toward the outer end of ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... have induced him to take the command. Later, the young La Fayette, who had left behind him in France wealth and luxury in order to fight a hard fight in America, was shocked at the slackness and indifference among the supposed patriots for whose cause he was making sacrifices so heavy. In the backward parts of the colonies the population was densely ignorant and had little grasp of the deeper meaning of ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... bifurcates, one line going to Murcia, and the other to Alicante. A large part of the province is only accessible by road, and even the main highways maintained by the state are ill kept. Education is very backward even in the towns; many of the inhabitants carry arms; and crimes of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... terror, the savage dropped the wig, and, running backward, fell over the body of the doctor. The cry attracted his, comrades; and several of them, dismounting, approached the strange object with looks of astonishment. One, more courageous than the rest, picked up ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... shining almost overhead. His orb looked less than two-thirds the size it did from the Earth, and one could look at its duller light fixedly without hurting the eyes. Phobos was also faintly visible, steering his backward course across the ruddy sky. The thermometer showed a temperature just above freezing, but I was perfectly warm within the diver's suit and its envelope of air. The red haze and utter lack of breeze added a deceptive appearance of ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... I do?" I answered, stirred to the deepest that was in me, throwing my arms backward, and standing with an open breast into which ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... Without a backward glance of pity or excuse, Broken Feather himself leapt to the pony's back, urged the animal to a gallop, and sped off, rallying his remaining warriors ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... head briskly with both hands, collected his nerve and slowly rose to his feet. He cast fearful glances at the firing line, but the demand for his surgical skill was a talisman that for a time enabled him to conquer his terror. With frightened backward glances he ran to the ambulance and made a dive into it as if a pack of wolves was at ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... immortal youth. So much had they flung aside the sombre habitudes of daily life, that they seemed born to be sportive forever, and endowed with eternal mirthfulness instead of any deeper joy. It was a glimpse far backward into Arcadian life, or, further still, into the Golden Age, before mankind was burdened with sin and sorrow, and before pleasure had been darkened with those shadows that bring it into high relief, and make ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... now re-heated and subjected to the process of rolling. "The rolls" are heavy cylinders of cast iron placed almost in contact, and revolving rapidly by steam-power. The bloom is caught between these rollers, and passed backward and forward until it is pressed into a flat bar, averaging from four to six inches in width, and about an inch and a half thick. These bars are then cut into short lengths, piled, heated again in a furnace, and re-rolled. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Albania Poor and backward by European standards, Albania is making the difficult transition to a more modern open-market economy. The government has taken measures to curb violent crime and to spur economic activity and trade. The economy ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and when thou diest and the Lord hurrieth thy soul to hell-fire, she shall blacken thy face with her skite, of her mourning for thee, and shall keen and beat her face, saying O frosty-beard, what a fool thou wast?'"[FN143] thereupon Harun al-Rashid laughed till he fell backward, and ordered the Badawi three thousand silver pieces. And a tale ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Captain Martin," Peters said, rubbing his hands. "I warrant me you will not find one of the crew backward at that work, and for my part I should like nothing better than to tackle a Spaniard who does not carry more than two or three times our own strength. The last fellow was a good deal too big for us, but I believe if we had stuck to him we ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... not your backward faith to shrink Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home To find Him in the names of buried men; Nor your ingenious recreance to think We cherish, in the life that is to come, The scattered features ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... him shed Protection: now are wav'ring in applause To that blest son of foresight! Lord of fate! That awful independent on to-morrow! Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past; Whose yesterdays look backward with ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... before me was real and not artificial as supposed. As if by magic her mouth twitched slightly and her whole frame quivered perceptibly; then she opened her eyes and finally with a most graceful spring she landed squarely upon her feet directly in front of me. I jumped backward in utter amazement. And there we stood face to face staring into each other's eyes. I then noticed that she was about seven feet in height and although not lean still there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on her serpent-like figure. Like the men, she too ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... excursions in the environs of Paris, when she and Hugh found in earth and air a world of delights more than they could tell anybody but each other. And at home, what peaceful times they two had,—what endless conversations, discussions, schemes, air-journeys of memory and fancy, backward and forward; what sociable dinners alone, and delightful evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur in the saloon when nobody or only a very few people were there; how pleasantly in those evenings the foundations were laid ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Legrandin himself, whom the husband of the lady we had seen with him, on the previous occasion, was just going to introduce to the wife of another large landed proprietor of the district. Legrandin's face shewed an extraordinary zeal and animation; he made a profound bow, with a subsidiary backward movement which brought his spine sharply up into a position behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have been trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's hips, which I had not ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... background. He glanced at his watch. It wanted still ten minutes to twelve. For a moment then he suffered his thoughts to go back to the new thing which had crept into his life. He was suddenly back in the Milan, he saw the backward turn of her head, the almost wistful look in her eyes as she made her little pronouncement. She had broken her engagement. Why? It was a battle, indeed, he was fighting with that still, cold antagonist, whom he half despised and half feared, the ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the course from Toulon to Bastia, and at first it seemed to the king that the sailors' predictions were belied; the wind, instead of getting up, fell little by little, and two hours after the departure the boat was rocking without moving forward or backward on the waves, which were sinking from moment to moment. Murat sadly watched the phosphorescent furrow trailing behind the little boat: he had nerved himself to face a storm, but not a dead calm, and without even interrogating his companions, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... he placed the chair close to the wall, stood upon it, and, with his ear against the wallpaper, moved his head backward and forward and up and down. Then he stopped moving and reaching up felt along the wall with ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... intentions are always right. Once when she was a little creature of three or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot down upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of indignation, then fetched it a backward wipe, and stooped down to examine the result. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... consistently with the public safety. The good sense of the community has seconded the efforts of the Legislature; and now, even in the country, the pentagonal construction has superseded every other. It is only now and then in some very remote and backward agricultural district that an antiquarian may still ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... exigencies, another more purely moral and social consideration offers itself. Experience proves that it is possible for one nationality to merge and be absorbed in another; and when it was originally an inferior and more backward portion of the human race, the absorption is greatly to its advantage. Nobody can suppose that it is not more beneficial to a Breton, or a Basque of French Navarre, to be brought into the current of the ideas and feelings of a highly civilized ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... articulation, as it is called, of the jaw. Its condyles, which we saw just now in the Carnivora enlarged transversely and deeply embedded in the fossae or cavity of the temporal bone, extend here longitudinally; an arrangement which enables the jaw to move backward and forward at pleasure, like the arm of the locksmith when using the file. Furthermore, those little teeth, which are constantly rubbing against each other, would be very soon worn out, if, like our own, they were made once for all; accordingly their germ, or pulp, to ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Religious ceremonies are moulded by, and seek to express, the worshipper's conception of his God, and his own relation to Him; his aspirations and his need. Of late years scholars have been busy studying the religions of the more backward races, and explaining rude and repulsive rites by pointing to the often profound and sometimes beautiful ideas underlying them. When that process is applied to Australian and Fijian savages, it is honoured as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... The old man fell backward on the seat with an exclamation of keenest surprise. His sunken eyes stared into Mollie's face as she bent over him; at the golden hair curling beneath the dark toque, the grey eyes, the curving lips. Each feature in turn was scrutinised as if he were searching ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... it came out that it was to entertain Hicks and another person; but it should seem that other persons were not named; and Barter tells you that Hicks and another person (who afterwards proved to be Nelthorp) are promised to be entertained, and ordered to come in the evening. But not to go backward and forward, as he has done in his evidence, denying what he afterwards acknowledged that he saw anybody besides a little girl; that he pulled down the hay out of the rack for his horse; that he eat anything but cake and cheese that he brought with him from home; that he was ever made to ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... hand and she shrank back, terrified, when she saw what it was that he was holding. Then he struck her down and without a backward glance fled ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock of it, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward with a crash that sent Marise and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm; a babel of excited voices sounded, rushing feet scuffled and flashed along the shaking floor, and Merode and his followers ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... extensive mines prove that this source of public wealth was not neglected; navigation laws encouraged transit and traffic; and ordinances for the fisheries aimed at developing a branch of industry which is still backward even during the xixth century. Most substantial encouragement was given to trade and commerce, to manufactures and handicrafts, by the flood of gold which poured in from all parts of earth; by the presence of a splendid and luxurious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... laurels, but in vain. The world applauded, and Johnson never replied. "Abuse," he said, "is often of service: there is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence; his name, like a shittlecock [Transcriber's note: sic], must be beat backward and forward, or it falls to the ground." Lexiphanes professed to be an imitation of the pleasant manner of Lucian; but humour was not the talent of the writer of Lexiphanes. As Dryden says, "he had too much horse-play in ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... as at Saint-Cloud, one of silk stockings, for more than once on the bivouac I shared with him a bundle of straw, which I had been fortunate enough to procure. In such cases I must avow the sacrifice was much greater on my part than when I had shared my wardrobe with him. The king was not backward in expressing his gratitude; and I thought it a most remarkable thing to see a sovereign, whose palace was filled with all that luxury can invent to add to comfort, and all that art can create which is splendid and magnificent, only too happy in procuring half of a bundle of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... backward glance or thought he passed from the attic home, his foot in fancy already mounting his throne. Marie was forgotten in the dream of a royal crown and visions of ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... is not backward with explosive English whenever the subject is mentioned, and no amount of persuasion could ever reconcile ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... her house by the light of the full moon, Miriam saw Marcus ride away at the head of his band of soldiers. On the crest of a little ridge of ground outside the village he halted, leaving them to go on, and turning his horse's head looked backward. Thus he stood awhile, the silver rays of the moon shining on his bright armour and making him a point of light set between two vales of shadow. Miriam could guess whither his eyes were turned and what was in his heart. It seemed to her, even, that ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... October of 1642 there came to Cambridge a man from over-seas. He was travelling backward, after the interval of a generation, through the stages of his youth. From his landing at the port whence he had sailed so many years before in chase of fortune he came to London, where he had bustled and thundered as a stage-player. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... like lobsters, and, when they are dead, Like lobsters change their colors and turn red; And while they are living, with their backward gait Displace and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... were returning from Sunday school, a hand suddenly reached out of the crowd on J Street and touched Georgia's shoulder, then stopped me. A startled backward glance rested on Castle, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... narrow seem the ambition and desires of Alexander or Napoleon when the bold and prophetic genius of Whitney, dealing with continents and nations as with parishes and neighborhoods, stretches his iron road around half the globe and shows you, moving forward and backward over its rails, the flux and reflux of a world's commerce and intercourse, a sublime tide of benefits and universal relations! What poet, what artist, what philosopher, what statesman, has equalled in grandeur these conceptions of science, or the splendid results which have followed their practical ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... said the Echo, trying hard not to look sulky and virtuous; and so Sara ran down the path after the others, with the Plynck and the Teacup fluttering gracefully over her head. As she passed through the hedge she cast a backward look at the Garden, which was now so still that she thought it looked like a picture in a dream—shimmering and bright and clear, without a soul left at home but the Plynck's cerulean ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... provision-store in a newly developed district, and the big wholesale dealers found him very backward in payment ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... looking for their returning Lord. Their proper attitude of mind is pictured by a series of acts; one who is on the housetop is not to come down to secure his goods; one in the field will not return to his house; they will not look backward, but will go forth eagerly to meet their Master in whom alone is their safety and ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... winter was of a different sort, for Mr. Simonds writes on May 10, 1770, "This spring has been so backward that there has been no possibility of burning any lime. The piles of wood and stone are now frozen together." The next winter was extremely mild, and Mr. Simonds writes on February 18, 1771, "There has not been one day's sledding this ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... as I have been brought up, there is little wonder I should see the danger of an high education, let me be ever so ignorant of everything else; for I, and all my sisters, have been the sufferers the whole time: and while we were kept backward, that he might be brought forward, while we were denied comforts, that he might have luxuries, how could we help seeing the evil of so much vanity, and wishing we had all been brought up according to our proper ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... returned Zenas Henry with a backward glance. "Captain Benjamin's shoulder pesters him some about layin', but I tell him he can't expect rain an' fog not to ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... path. I turned the corner—nobody; only a little scrambling sound, and the treacherous flutter of a branch in the laurel hedge. Of course I immediately thought of poachers, and in my imagination already saw Emilia Fletcher stretched a lifeless corpse upon the ground. I took three backward steps, then ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... with a pair, that are charged for any service," returned Manual, drawing a pistol from his own belt, and stepping backward ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sorry progress. A man must indeed have lived radically wrong when he looks backward for the best of his life. Gray-haired Mr. Walton was looking forward. Gregory's habit of self-pleasing—of acting according to his mood—was too deeply seated to permit even the thought of returning the hospitality he hoped to enjoy by a cordial effort ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... right and left, savagely as ever, and though Joe blocked the blows, such was the force of them that he was knocked backward several steps. Ponta was after him with the spring of a tiger. In the involuntary effort to maintain equilibrium, Joe had uncovered himself, flinging one arm out and lifting his head from beneath the sheltering shoulders. So swiftly had Ponta followed him, that a terrible swinging blow ...
— The Game • Jack London
... when I was a lad o' the place; an' he cotched his load, down north, lean seasons or plenty, in a way t' make the graybeards an' boasters blink in every tickle o' the Shore. A fish-killer o' parts he was: no great spectacle on the roads o' harbor, though—a mild, backward, white-livered little man ashore, yieldin' the path t' every dog o' Rickity Tickle. 'I gets my fish in season,' says he, 'an' I got a right t' mind my business between whiles.' But once fair out t' sea, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... resistance) No! You are too much! You are not enough. (still wanting not to hurt her, he is slow in getting free. He keeps stepping backward trying, in growing earnest, to loosen her hands. But he does not loosen them before she has found the place in his throat that cuts off breath. ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks then, all must close again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rustling of stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward footsteps to and fro across the chamber. We suspect Miss Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a step upward into a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her appearance on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet-glass, that hangs above her table. Truly! ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... just as well as ever. There must be an opening for me somewhere. There are plenty of small schools where they don't go in for sports, plenty of girls who have to be educated at home—delicate girls, backward girls, girls who are, perhaps, like myself! I could teach them still if ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... shadow of regret or even a backward look, I bade farewell to the Pacific and returned to the Atlantic of my youth, until the day dawns and the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Looking backward from the year 1918, we may see some new meaning in the spectacle of two modern leaders in fiction, Hardy and Meredith, each preferring as a means of expression poetry to prose, each thinking his own verse better than ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... the way, for he had had to realize that Apollonie was not in the least backward now that she had the master's full support. She first sought out her old chamber, and Loneli was extremely puzzled to see her grandmother wiping her eyes over and over again. The whole thing was like a beautiful fairy story to the child, and she ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... exquisitely escaping the perdition of too much length, which makes a conscientious mind ashamed that it cannot help, on occasion, admiring the tip-tilted. Her hat lay pinned to the grass beside her, and the lively breeze played with her thick dark hair, blowing backward the two broad bandeaux that should have covered much of her forehead, and agitating a hundred tiny curls from the mass gathered at her nape. Everything about this lady was black, from her shoes of suede to the hat that she had discarded; lustreless black covered her to her bare ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the colours of life as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past, and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.... One generation is always the scorn and wonder ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... for him; to apprehend with resignation that there might be a period ahead during which he might feel hatred for her, loathing her for being alive when his mother, who deserved so well, was dead. She stepped backward from the desk so that he need not be vexed by any sense of her. Yet she had a feeling as she moved that she was taking a ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... mind to say it, as a condemnation for his so unkindly judging her; but the girlish pettishness and recklessness went away, and a better spirit came. She sat, her right hand nervously pushing backward and forward the still unfamiliar wedding-ring, until in accidentally feeling the symbol, she suddenly ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... was within sight of home, a luckless slice of orange-peel came between the general's heel and the pavement, and caused the poor fellow to fall backward. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one of the two riders, dropping his carbine to the ground, clapped his right hand convulsively to his breast as he swiftly wheeled his horse and galloped off; while the horse of his companion, rearing upright and pawing the air furiously for a moment with his fore hoofs, fell backward with a crash and lay dead, pinning his helpless rider beneath him: whereupon the remainder of the party wheeled their horses, and, dashing in their ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... without a regretful voice they summoned to their aid their last irresistible ally: the dykes were cut, and soon the waters, destroying to save, spread over all that trim and fertile land. The tide of invasion was checked, and with the next spring it began to roll slowly backward. The great princes of the Continent became alarmed at this new prospect of French ambition. The sluggish Emperor began to bestir himself. Spain, fast dwindling to the shadow of that mighty figure which had once bestrode two worlds, sent some troops to aid a cause which was, indeed, half her ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... recitation, Iffland approached the old man quickly, knelt down before him and imprinted a kiss on his clasped hands. Then, without adding another word, he rose, and, walking backward as if before a king, approached the door, opened it softly, and went out, followed by Schmid. [Footnote: The whole account of this interview between Joseph Haydn and Iffland is in strict accordance with Iffland's ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... just about to spring up and rush upon her. Then all at once there was the most terrible noise. It was almost as loud as thunder, and it seemed to Tommy that the ground was rising right up in front of him. He was so startled that he fell over backward. And his heart thumped ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... his last look backward at the blue lake from the northern end, Maren and Dupre were making their last camp before the Big Bend ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... inhabited by savages is poor in food-supply their number is, as a rule, small and their condition poor. It is not good for a people to have too easy times; that deprives them of the incentive to work. But also it is not good for people who are backward in civilization to be kept to a land which treats them too harshly; for then they never get a fair chance to progress in the scale of civilization. The people of the tropics and the people near the poles lagged behind in ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... large, elegant house, handsomer than any they had passed on the avenue. As long as it was in sight Steven strained his eyes for a backward look, but saw ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... has moved into position 2, and with the compass point on the centre of 2 we mark line 2, showing that while the crank-pin moved from 1 to 2, the rod end moved from a to b; by continuing this process we are enabled to discern the motion for the whole of the stroke. The backward stroke will be the same, for corresponding crank-pin positions, for both strokes; thus, when the rod end is at 7 the crank-pin may be at 7 or at 17. This fact enables us to find the positions for the positions later than 6, on the other side ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... wishing to have it in his power to do them more good. Lord Lyttelton's observation, that "he loathed much to write," was very true. His letters to his sister, Mrs. Thomson, were not frequent, and in one of them he says, "All my friends who know me, know how backward I am to write letters; and never impute the negligence of my hand to the coldness of my heart." I send you a copy of the last letter which she had from him[1071]; she never heard that he had any intention of going into holy ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... dreamily from the casement of her turret-chamber—hers, only because nobody else liked the room? Her eyes were fixed earnestly on one little spot of ground, a few feet from the castle gate; and her soul was wandering backward nineteen years, recalling the one scene which stood out vividly, the earliest of memory's pictures—a picture without text to explain it—before which, and after which, came blanks with no recollection to fill ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... quantity. Then he sees that this quantity is really wealth; that the dim confusion of faces is a magnificent composition, and that some of the details of this composition are extremely beautiful. It is impossible however in a retrospect of Venice to specify one's happiest hours, though as one looks backward certain ineffaceable moments start here and there into vividness. How is it possible to forget one's visits to the sacristy of the Frari, however frequent they may have been, and the great work of John Bellini which forms the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... grown rather friendly towards the slaves; and, even where they did not speak out in public against the enslavement of human beings, their hearts led them to the performance of many little deeds of kindness. They discovered many noble attributes in the Negro character, and were not backward in expressing their admiration. When summoned before a justice, and fined for entertaining Negroes after nine o'clock, they paid the penalty with a willingness and alacrity that alarmed the slave-holding caste. This was ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... study and a new circle of alliances. He went laboriously through records of forgers and check raisers and counterfeiters. He took up the study of all such gentry, sullenly yet methodically, like a backward scholar mastering a newly imposed branch of knowledge, thumbing frowningly through official reports, breathing heavily over portrait files and police records, plodding determinedly through counterfeit-detector manuals. For this book work, as ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... hand raised to height of eye, palm to front, fingers leaning slightly backward. Fingers of ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... holding a passive character in the strange assembly. This was encouraging; and Bunce, forgetting his wonder in the satisfaction which such a prospect afforded him, endeavored to force his way forward to them, when a salutary twitch of the arm from one of the beldam troop, by tumbling him backward upon the floor of the cavern, brought him again to a consideration of his predicament. He could not be restrained from speech, however—though, as he spoke, the old women saluted his face on all hands with strokes from brushes of fern, which occasioned ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... cried: "You've crushed our mistress' bundle." In the carriages yonder, one screamed: "You've pulled my flowers off." Another one nearer exclaimed: "You've broken my fan." And they chatted and chatted, and talked and laughed with such incessant volubility, that Chou Jui's wife had to go backward and forward calling them to task. "Girls," she said, "this is the street. The on-lookers will laugh at you!" But it was only after she had expostulated with them several times that any sign of improvement ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... before every paragraph of invective, like a prelude and refrain. "You, you, you!" and she fairly hurled the words at Carroll—"you, you, you! gettin' my man"—with a fierce backward lunge of her bare right elbow towards her husband, who shrank away, and a fierce backward roll of a blue eye—"gettin' my man to take all his money and spend it for no goot. You, you, you! When I haf need of it for shoes and stockings for the children, when I go with my dress ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to the hill, she perceived that the children had stopped, and were forming a little group as they looked backward up ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... in Donati's comet, of 1858, from the 15th to the 22d of October, that the nucleus threw out intermittingly from itself appendages having the form of brilliant, coma-shaped masses of incandescent substance twisted violently backward. He accounts for these very remarkable changes of configuration by the influence first of the sun's heat upon the comet's substance as it approached toward perihelion, and afterward by the production in the luminous emanations ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... friction would hold it, and that it would not come open again. To his great surprise, therefore, a few minutes afterwards, he heard a thumping sound, and, on turning over to see what the cause of it was, he found that the little door was loose again, and was swinging backward and forward as before. The fact was, that, although the door had shut in tight at the moment when Rollo had closed it, the space into which it had been fitted had been opened wider by the springing of the timbers and framework of the ship at the next ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... to the treatment I was being subjected to, and I decided to rebel. Mrs. Barker and her small son had been riding on the back seat, and I felt that I was as much entitled to a seat here as the boy, nevertheless I had been sitting on the seat with Mrs. Phillips's servant and riding backward. This was the only place that had been left for me at the post that morning. After thinking it all over I made up my mind to take the small boy's seat, but just where he would ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... She was turning backward, for the benefit of onlookers who pressed close to the glass, the leaves of a mammoth pad resting ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... a long, low whistle. Instinctively he threw a furtive, backward glance at the prisoner, then he raised his shifty eyes to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... idleness, love of liberty, immodicus amor libertatis effecit ut diu cum perfidis amicis, as he confesseth, et pertinaci pauperate colluctarer, bashfulness, melancholy, timorousness, cause many of us to be too backward and remiss. So some offend in one extreme, but too many on the other, we are most part too forward, too solicitous, too ambitious, too impudent; we commonly complain deesse Maecenates, of want of encouragement, want of means, when as the true defect ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... where the most light was. I gazed at the bright point, with my eyes close to it, and tilted upward till they strained to see. At the same time I relaxed all the will of me and gave myself to the swaying dizziness that always eventually came to me. And when I felt myself sway out of balance backward, I closed my eyes and permitted myself to fall supine ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... climb up the scarcely indented, slippery, moist, slimy rock, where his hands and feet could hardly find any hold; and when at length he reached the top, he was so panting and dizzy, that Somerville at first held him to hinder his slipping backward into the sea. No one could get at King or Queen Daisiana, so it was left in its glory; while the young people struggled back over rocks that seemed much steeper, and pools far deeper, than in their ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... together an army, as large as he was able, and joined to it the runagate and wicked Jews, and came against Judas. He came as far as Bethhoron, a village of Judea, and there pitched his camp; upon which Judas met him; and when he intended to give him battle, he saw that his soldiers were backward to fight, because their number was small, and because they wanted food, for they were fasting, he encouraged them, and said to them, that victory and conquest of enemies are not derived from the multitude in armies, but in the exercise of piety towards God; and that they had the plainest instances ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... will send him over the handles. He has, therefore, to balance stability and safety against comfort and power; the more forward he is, the more furiously he can drive his machine, and the less does he suffer from friction and the shaking of the little wheel; the more backward he is, the less is he likely to come to grief riding down hill, or over unseen stones. The bicyclist is no better off than the rider of any other machine with a little wheel, the vibration from which may weary him nearly as much as the work he does. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... awe-inspiring, more confounding to the faculties than that roaring column of consuming fire. It was a thing incredibly huge, incredibly furious, incredibly wild. Human figures, black against its glare, were flying to safety, near-by silhouettes were flinging their arms aloft and dashing backward and forward; faces upturned to it were white and terrified. The scattered mesquite stood against the night like a wall, spotted with inky shadows, and, above, the heavens resembled a ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... every fibre, and Raffles raised the lifeless trunk, I suppose by the armpits, and led the way backward into the night, after switching off the lights within. But the first stage of our revolting journey was a very short one. We deposited our poor burden as charily as possible on the gravel, and I watched over it for some of the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... necessary safeguard. As the tree is slowly lifted by the windlasses, the guy-ropes are loosened, as needed. The tree will pass obstructions, such as trees by the roadside, but in doing so it is better to lean the tree backward. When the tree has arrived at its new place, the two timbers are placed along the opposite edges of the hole so that the hind wheels can be backed over it. The tree is then lowered to the proper depth, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... their Journey lay, The Deep divides to make them Way; The Streams of Jordan saw, and fed With backward ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... cohorts reel. 'Fix bayonets!' At once our lines bristle with burnished steel. 'Charge!' And our gallant regiments burst through the feu d'enfer. Before their furious onset the rebel hosts give way; And, surging backward, hide again within the forest's shade, Whose mazes dark and intricate our charging ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... inclined downward from 10 deg. to 15 deg. to the horizontal, and were spaced to converge at the location of the drainage ditches. The heading was usually driven from 10 to 20 ft. in advance of the bench. At this distance a large part of the muck from the heading was shot backward over the bench. In the single tunnels the muck was loaded ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... M'Loughlin's, he was not a little surprised to see worthy Phil walking, backward, and forward on the lawn, accompanied by no less a ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and an architecture so quaint as to even impress one who has come from Belgium. The whole town has a wharf-y look; and it is difficult to say why the tall brick houses, their gables running by steps to a peak, and each one leaning forward or backward or sideways, and none perpendicular, and no two on a line, are so interesting. But certainly it is a most entertaining place to the stranger, whether he explores the crowded Jews' quarter, with its swarms of dirty people, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... any decided second attack of her malady, the old woman seemed to have crawled backward in her recovery from the first. She was more lean and shrunken, more uncertain in her imbecility, and made stranger confusions in her mind and memory. Among other symptoms of this last affliction, she fell into the habit of confounding the names of her two sons-in-law, the living and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... backward state of the season having rendered it useless earlier. Even now the soil is cold, and requires to lay some ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... man of excelent judgment. But to resoom backward, I had a dretful good visit with Faith and enjoyed her bein' with us the best that ever wuz. Instead of makin' work she helped, though I told her not to. She would wipe and I would wash, and we would git through the dishes in no time. She hunted round in my work basket and found some nightcaps ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... officers were not backward in the same liberal and generous conduct. I had on one occasion—I omitted to mention it—an opportunity of showing a favour to the son of a Colonel Matthews in the American army. Colonel Matthews immediately came and offered money, servants and ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... again, under a narrow sloping covering, is the deep arch of the Cathedral's porch. This, in its prime, must have been the church's ornamental glory. Beneath the outer arch, which is continued to the buttresses by half-arches, are the great roll-mouldings that twist backward to a plain tympanum. Capitals still support these massive curves of stone, but the niches in which the columns formerly stood are empty, and grinning lions, lying on the ground, no longer support the larger columns of the plain arch. All ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... human race is ONE, we are next called upon to inquire in what part of the earth it may most probably be supposed to have originated. One obvious mode of approximating to a solution of this question is to trace backward the lines in which the principal tribes appear to have migrated, and to see if these converge nearly to a point. It is very remarkable that the lines do converge, and are concentrated about the region of Hindostan. The language, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... nature requires adequate knowledge of the capabilities of weapons, so that new possibilities may be perceived as to coordination in their use. While analogy looks backward to find applicable lessons, the search for novelty seeks suggestions from potentialities not ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College |
