"Casual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... refolding the wills as the Governor finished reading them, marveled at this unexpected revelation of his friend's profession let fall in the most casual fashion, ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... toward new-found activity: toward an enormous, never-before-witnessed expenditure of intelligent care on children; toward self-support; toward civic service. The character which is neither positive nor negative runs along as a neutral mixture of modern facts and of old ideals of casual idling and of casual child-rearing. The negative character—like Marie's—just yields to the facts and is swept along by them into final irresponsibility ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the fact that the guard had his gun, and if he saw us would shoot, but the shady lane was deserted and still, and we pushed on with an unconcerned stride that covered the ground, but would not attract the attention of the casual observer. ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... so deep that the casual observer would not at first recognise their colour. But when you had perceived that they were blue, and had brought the fact home to your knowledge, their blueness remained with you as a thing fixed for ever. And you would feel, ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... most pleasant papers arose from "the casual sight of an old playbill which I picked up the other day; I know not by what chance it was preserved so long." It was but two-and-thirty years old, however, and presented the cast of parts in "Twelfth Night" at Old Drury Lane Theatre, destroyed by fire in 1809. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... was more than consoled by the caressing sympathy with which he was assured that his broken trunk could not be mended till the day after to-morrow; he had quite forgotten about the festas and the sympathy. That night the piazza on which he lodged seemed full of snow to the casual glance he gave it; then he saw that it was the white Italian moonlight, which he had ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... herself, before she discovered, by a casual glance over the prospect, and at some distance, a youth, who seemed to advance with hasty steps towards the castle. At first she was tempted to turn away her eye with carelessness and inattention. There was however something in his figure, that led her, by ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... (Rich) I came to serve him at a time when many of his best actors had deserted him; that he might now have the refusal of me; but I could not afford to carry the compliment so far as to lessen my income by it; that I therefore expected either my casual pay to be advanced, or the payment of my former sallary made certain for as many days as we had acted the year before. No, he was not willing to alter his former method; but I might chuse whatever parts I had a mind to act of theirs ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... from time to time as to what they were doing in the way getting their teams ready, looking around the premises, but without taking more than a casual glance at the rear of the house, however, and ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... whether I should be able to ford the next real watercourse, when we came to a broad bottom down the middle of which ran a swift shallow stream which rose over the young grass. For a few rods the road ran directly down this casual river of flood water, and as I looked back it all at once came into my mind that I might follow this flood and leave no track; so instead of swinging back into the road I took instantly the important resolution to leave the Ridge Road. By voice and whip I turned my cattle down the stream ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... casual remark Henry continued his labor, with a scowl of occupation. Presently he said: "I done tol' yer many's th' time not to go a-foolin' an' a-projjeckin' with them flowers. Yer pop don' like it nohow." As a matter of fact, Henry had never mentioned ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... pink-cheeked, star-eyed, in a frock of dull blue linen made with wide white pique collar and cuffs. Her hair waved and rippled and curled, despite its loose braiding, almost to her waist. Rosemary was simply going to the station to meet the 4:10 train, but nothing was ever casual to her; she met each hour expectantly on tip-toe and, as her mother had once observed, laughed and wept her way around the clock. Sarah smiled broadly—going to the station to meet Aunt Trudy had, for some ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... a familiarity with the style and the train of observation and reasoning which characterized the principal speakers. It happened also that I was not absent a single day, nor more than the casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... doesn't know himself.' 'Has he any resources?' 'Well, yes,' said Barillaud, laughing; 'just now he is talking of buying land among the savages in the United States.' I carried away with me the drop of vinegar which casual gossip thus put into my heart, and it soured all my feelings. I went to see my old master, in whose office Mongenod and I had studied law; he was now my counsel. When I told him about my loan to Mongenod ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Southern Europe. The northern part is everywhere separated from the southern by immense and continued chains of mountains. From Greece it is divided by Mount Haemus; from Spain by the Pyrenees; from Italy by the Alps. This division is not made by an arbitrary or casual distribution of countries. The limits are marked out by Nature, and in these early ages were yet further distinguished by a considerable difference in the manners and usages of the nations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hover and lodge in your hair Bird-like, bird-like—You're aware Anacreon had a bird— A bird! and filled his bowl with roses. Ha ha! ye laugh in ghastlywise, And the smoke comes through your eyes, And you're looking very grim, And the air is very dim, And the casual paper flare Taketh ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... most brilliant of all constellations to the casual star-gazer, but it contains the richest mines that the delver for telescopic treasures can anywhere discover. We could not have made a better beginning, for here within a space of a few square degrees we have a wonderful variety of double stars and multiple stars, ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... the 23rd of December an ambulance train arrived of six wagons, all full of sick demanding instant attention; and, close upon these, four other wagons laden with cavalrymen, wounded more or less severely in a foraging excursion beyond the Agueda, which had brought them into conflict with a casual party of Marmont's dragoons. The weather was bitterly cold; the men, apart from this, were unfit for so long a journey and should have been attended to promptly at their own headquarters. To make matters ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fact of what we are; the rest is drifted to us, uninvited, undeserved, upon the tides of chance. When disasters overwhelm us, the fault is sometimes in ourselves, but at other times is merely in our stars. Because so much of life is casual rather than causal, the theatre (whose purpose is to represent life truly) must always rely on melodrama as the most natural and effective type of art for exhibiting some of its most interesting phases. ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... a lot, all over the world," he explained in a casual way during a talk they had had on the night of their marriage, at the first stopping-place to which their motor brought them. "My mother died when I was a small boy, died in a terrible way I don't want to talk about, and losing her broke up my father and me for a while. He never got ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... all and everything, it drew in a line with me. Not once did its eyes meet mine, O'Donnell; not once did it glare at the natives who were hiding on the banks of the cutting; but it stole silently on its way with a something in its movements that left no doubt but that it was engaged in no casual venture. I remembered, O'Donnell, that my wife had promised to come with Eric to meet me along the cutting, as she was sure no tiger would be there. I ran as fast as I could, and yet somehow my feet seemed weighted down. I cursed my folly for not forbidding ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... sergeant," the New-UN orderly said. She was ushered into a small, comfortably appointed chamber adjoining the main conference hall, and the perfectly controlled coolness of her bearing was at its peak. To the casual glance of the orderly, perhaps, it flawlessly masked the vital convictions which had long seethed within her and made her the little known woman she was. The studied mask itself had made her the ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... as we turns into a cross street just before it ends in the East River. "The main works," and I waves my band around casual. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... ten years had elapsed from the time Her Majesty had last seen the Cardinal to speak to him, with the exception of the casual glance as she drove by when he furtively introduced himself into the garden at the fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King's cabinet when arrested, and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face. The Prince started ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... of the trial, Mr. Stead curdles our blood by talking of the eleven women who stood up upon oath to testify to the ill-treatment which they had received at the hands of our troops. Taken with the context, the casual reader would naturally imagine that these eleven women were all complaining of some sexual ill-usage. In the very next sentence he talks about 'such horrible and shameful incidents.' But on examination ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... casual enough, but the minister's face was grave. The former endeavored to pass lightly over the matter ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... The casual observer of life in England would find himself forced to write of sport, even as in India he would write of caste, as in America he would note the undue emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany, wherever he turns, whether ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Lantee?" The question was painfully casual, but a note in it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut for the first time through the wall which had stood between them from their chance meeting by ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... as you; and the weight attached to all you say and do (you two I mean) in your several occupations seems at all events one hopeful sign among not a few gloomy ones. I suppose you and Mr. Keble little estimated the influence which even a casual word or sentence of yours exercises upon a man of my age, predisposed (it is true) to hearken with attention ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Daisy had placed herself and her baby in the hands of his half-brother formed a connecting link which could not always be ignored. She always dropped into silence when a reference was made to him. Not in the most casual conversation had Daisy ever heard her ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... finding them unusual, every one of them a different story, and yet not difficult to read. These lessons gave meaning to trees and seasons. Such observations have always meant much to me, even when made in the most casual way in the midst of constraining activities. And now in this later day I come back to a bare twig with all the joy of youth. The records of the years are ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... accounts have appeared about my casual encounter with an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, to myself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear, that the celebration of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... guess you didn't," admitted Bud. "Dad sort of mentioned, casual like, that you'd be along sooner or later, but he didn't get any ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... of them are effaced. I saw none very old. A quarter of a century is sufficient to obliterate the letters, and make all smooth, where the direct pathway from gate to gate lies over the stones. The climate and casual footsteps rub out any inscription in less than a hundred years. Some of the monuments are cracked. On many is merely cut "The burial place of" so and so; on others there is a long list of half-readable names; ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all minds not forejudging, the testimony of Miss Anna E. Surratt, and various friends and servants of Mrs. Surratt, relative to physical causes, might fully explain and account for such ocular remissness and failure. In times and on occasions of casual meeting of intimate acquaintances on the street, and of common need for domestic uses, the eyesight of Mrs. Surratt had proved treacherous and failing. How much more liable to fail her was her imperfect vision on an occasion of excitement and anxiety, like ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Then, grounding arms, he began to feel in his pocket, and dragged out a soda-water-bottle, which felt soft, for it had been carefully stitched up in very thick flannel to guard it from the consequences of casual blows. On his twisting the cork, the neck emitted a peculiar squeak, followed by a gurgling sound, which lasted till the bottle was half-empty, by which time the thirsty private had become fully conscious ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... the world's history through which we pass complacently is of no light portent, its happenings no casual concern, but, in point of crucial fact, a virtual "rending of the sphere"—a cosmic upheaval such as never yet before has racked the tense life sinews of the world, confounding the wisdom of the wise and wrecking in one fell climax of contempt the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... to-night in a place where the miners congregate, listened to their talk, and put a few casual questions to them, more as if we were only asking out of idle curiosity, we might ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... clergyman of that name, and is five thousand six hundred feet in height. But the Three Brothers, with an average height of less than four thousand feet, and Sentinel Dome, measuring four thousand five hundred feet high, seem to the casual observer to be quite as prominent, while El Capitan, which is about three thousand three hundred feet in height, appears from its more favorable position to be the most striking and effective of them all. ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... by casual critics that Maupassant lacked one quality indispensable to the production of truly artistic work, viz: an absolutely normal, that is, moral, point of view. The answer to this criticism is obvious. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... must be, the result of some law, be a coincidence whence, simply because we do not know all the circumstances, we have no ground to infer an uniformity. When neither Deduction, nor the Method of Difference, can be applied, the only way of inferring that coincidences are not casual, is by observing the frequency of their occurrence, not their absolute frequency, but whether they occur more often than chance would (that is, more often than the positive frequency of the phenomena would) account for. If, in such ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... reopened his eyes and unbent his brows, his gaze happened to be directed toward a row of curious big photographs which ran like a pictured frieze round the upper side of the wall of the room. A casual observer might have thought that the little man had been amusing himself by photographing the explosions of fireworks on a Fourth of July night; but it was evident by his expression that these singular pictures had no connection with civic pyrotechnics, but must represent something ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... careful to maintain an attitude toward him, at once correct and civil, there had never been any approach to friendliness. As a matter of fact, Major Bayne was too entirely occupied with his own interests to have either the leisure or the inclination for anything but a casual concern for the chaplain and his affairs. That was not to be wondered at. Life in the army, notwithstanding all its loyalties and its fine unselfishnesses, is, in some of its phases, a brutally self-centred form of existence. Its routine consists in the continual performance of "duties" ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... bit further on," said Caroline, striving to make her voice sound casual. "Don't you ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Christ, the Son of the living God." You see the intensified relief which this brought to our Lord, the keen satisfaction He felt as He heard it distinctly and solemnly uttered as the creed of the Twelve; as He heard what hitherto He could only have gathered from casual expressions, from wistful awe-struck looks, from overheard questionings and debatings with one another. You see how at once, He steps on to a new footing with them, as He cordially, and with intense gratitude, says to Peter, ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... doing there? Mr Verloc asked himself. What's the meaning of these antics? He looked dubiously at his brother-in-law, but he did not ask him for information. Mr Verloc's intercourse with Stevie was limited to the casual mutter of a morning, after breakfast, "My boots," and even that was more a communication at large of a need than a direct order or request. Mr Verloc perceived with some surprise that he did not know really what to say to Stevie. He stood still in the middle of the parlour, and looked ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... reasonably hope for or expect; and more—that its officers and professors are entitled to great credit and much praise, for securing under so much discouragement, that degree of success which is apparent here even to the casual observer; and claim of us, and are entitled to receive at our hands, a proper and just recognition of their valuable services, and the fidelity with which they have ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... Wraysford and Greenfield were concerned, this absence of goodwill had ripened into something like soreness, by the way in which Loman had made use of his own position as a monitor, on a casual reference by Oliver to the probable coming of Stephen to Saint Dominic's, to secure that young gentleman as his fag, although he quite well knew that Wraysford was counting on having him. Though ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... hard winter, a team of eleven fine dogs, I was enabled to become better acquainted with their good qualities than could possibly have been the case by the casual visits of the Esquimaux to the ships. The form of the Esquimaux dog is very similar to that of our shepherds' dog in England, but it is more muscular and broad-chested, owing to the constant and severe work to which he is brought up. His ears are pointed, and the aspect of the head ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... sat in his library before a brisk wood fire with the day's papers in a heap on the floor beside him. In repose, the one dominant expression of the judge's face was pride, an austere pride, which manifested itself even in the most casual intercourse. Yet no man in Mount Hope combined fewer intimacies with a wider confidence, and his many years of public life had but augmented the universal respect in which he ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... me, after being so closely confined, the ever-present attendant seemed a companion rather than a guard. These excursions into the sane and free world were not only a great pleasure, they were almost a tonic. To rub elbows with normal people tended to restore my mental poise. That the casual passer-by had no way of knowing that I was a patient, out for a walk about the city, helped me gain that self-confidence so essential to the success of one about to re-enter a world from which he had ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... my casual intercourse with H. Truhn rather more entertaining. I used to treat him to a good glass of wine at Lutter and Wegener's, where I went occasionally on account of its association with Hoffmann, and he would then listen with apparently growing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... apology which I have neither the wit nor the desire to invent for myself. With the best will in the world to speak in praise of cities it must be owned that the epic and lyric moments of London are infrequent. As a casual resident in London, a student and spectator, free to leave it when I willed, I could have been heartily content; but I, in common with some insignificant millions of my fellow-creatures, was bound to live in London as a means of living at all. He ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... A casual observer even, would have decided that these four maidens were bound together by an unusual bond of friendship—an incongruous friendship it might have seemed, and ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... occasions are useful, as promoting the general feeling of reciprocation. But from visitors the tip is generally essential to ensuring the due meed of respect. Yet we can reasonably imagine a time when it may not be; and even now, for the casual service of holding a horse or brushing off the dust, a hearty "thank you" is perhaps on the whole better ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the Romans were his own. He reminded one sometimes of Hawthorne's saying that "in these days men are born in their clothes," although Dr. Holmes's conventions were more easily shuffled off than a casual observer would believe. Nothing could be farther from the ordinary idea of the romantic "man of genius" than was his well-trimmed little figure, and nothing more surprising and delightful than the way in which his childlikeness of ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... man might need, but in addition there were a box of books—big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting—and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw—glass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping being them in. Out ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... desires to grant to her beloved servant the cardinal. This suggestion was rendered practicable by one of those mere coincidences which are found though rarely in history, and which are too improbable to put into a novel—the casual discovery of a young woman of loose character who looked much like the Queen. Whether her name was d'Essigny or Gay d'Oliva, is uncertain; she is usually called by the latter. She was hired and taught; and with immense precautions, this ostrich of a cardinal was one ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... expenses and complications above enumerated, would be avoided, and the king's revenue no longer exposed to any other deficiencies than those arising out of the insolvency of the sub-collectors and their sureties, or casual risks, and the trifling charges paid for the conveyance of the money. If in opposition to this it should be alleged that it would be advisable to except some of the provinces from this general rule, owing to the advantages the government might derive ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... be a varying aptitude to experience the sexual organism, or any voluptuous sensations before puberty. I find, on eliciting the recollections of normal persons, that in some cases there have been voluptuous sensations from casual contact with the sexual organs at a very early age; in other cases there has been occasional slight excitement from early years; in yet other cases complete sexual anaesthesia until the age of puberty. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to be of a very inferior kind and know it to be incapable of sound, deep application, I should have been very foolish if I had attempted to sneer at you or your pursuits. Mine have always been light and trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual amusement; I will not say, without a little vain ambition of showing some parts but never with industry sufficient to make me apply to any thing solid. My studies, if they could be called so, and my productions, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Miss Cornelia, and subsided into silence over a complicated arrangement of tucks until Captain Jim deliberately stirred her up again by remarking in a casual way: ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thoroughly forgave Zenobia for her conduct on this occasion. But women are always more cautious in their casual hospitalities than men. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... friendship, and the rights of friendship. How else could he justify the scene at Field, when he had so brusquely probed her secret anxieties for Philip? Her pride rebelled when she thought of it, when she recalled her wet eyes, her outstretched hand. Mere humiliation!—in the case of a casual or indifferent acquaintance. No; on that day, certainly, he had claimed the utmost privileges, had even strained the rights, of a friend, a real friend. But his behaviour since had almost revived her ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... anything; so I suggested instead that I should treat him, and that seemed to be rather what he had meant by his proposal. Nothing much came of our discussion, and we marched on hot and faint for an hour more, when a casual man told us that our straight line to the Foire de Fondeurle lay across the plain on our left hand, and up a most objectionable-looking hill beyond, thickly covered with brushwood and showing no ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... coloured birds as the sun-birds of Africa are, according to an excellent observer, often protectively coloured. Mrs. M.E. Barber remarks that "A casual observer would scarcely imagine that the highly varnished and magnificently coloured plumage of the various species of Noctarinea could be of service to them, yet this is undoubtedly the case. The most unguarded moments of the lives ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and pace up and down my narrow room, restless and unhappy. I knew that I could not long delay revealing to Penelope the paramount fact, and in revealing it to her I seemed to say that after all she was only a casual friend, that all my life's interest was bound up in Gladys Todd, and my life's ambition expressed in a room with an easel by the window, a bird's-eye-maple mantel, and around the walls a rack for odd lots of china and black-framed prints. It was hard to tell ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of them, by the grace of God, of a humorous disposition. Outwardly, there is not much resemblance between them: Pa[vs]i['c], the picture of a benevolent patriarch, letting fall in his deep voice a few casual words which bring down his critics' case, hopelessly down like a wounded aeroplane, and Radi['c] the fervid little orator, the learned man, whose life has been devoted to the Croat peasants and who is said to find it difficult to make a speech that is under eight hours in length. Last year when ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... submissive was not the remarkable element in Nina's nature. She usually resisted advice, and resented anything like dictation from any quarter. Indeed, they who knew her best saw that, however open to casual influences, a direct show of guidance was sure to call up all her spirit of opposition. It was, then, a matter of actual astonishment to all to perceive not only how quietly and patiently she accepted Walpole's ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... A casual observer would have said that Densie Densmore had heard less of that strange story than any one else, but her hearing faculties had been sharpened, and not a word was missed by her—not a link lost in the entire narrative, and when the narrator expressed his love for his daughter, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... remarkable power, not only in his own college, but among the finer spirits of the University generally. He had the gift which enables a man, sitting perhaps after dinner in a mixed society of his college contemporaries, to lead the way imperceptibly from the casual subjects of the hour—the river, the dons, the schools—to arguments "of great pith and moment," discussions that search the moral and intellectual powers of the men concerned to the utmost, without exciting distrust ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wander in the snow or seek the temporary shelter of some remote farm-house or Indian wigwam in the woods. Some wandered for days in the adjacent dismal "Black Swamp," feeding on frost-bitten cranberries, or on a casual ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... given for salvation of the soul would have seemed to Baxter or Bunyan; indeed, there was an element of Puritan severity in his attitude towards statesmen both ecclesiastical and civil. He was no "light half-believer of a casual creed," but had a sense of reality more like Dante ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... age, when they were islands washed by the waves of the Tertiary sea. A description of the different parts of the vast Panjab plain, its great stretches of firm loam, and its tracts of sand and sand hills, which the casual observer might regard as pure desert, will be given in the paragraphs ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... have met, in the works of a lady novelist (but not elsewhere), with an Elzevir 'Theocritus.' The late Mr. Hepworth Dixon introduced into one of his romances a romantic Elzevir Greek Testament, "worth its weight in gold." Casual remarks of this kind encourage a popular delusion that all Elzevirs are pearls of considerable price. When a man is first smitten with the pleasant fever of book-collecting, it is for Elzevirs that he searches. At first he thinks himself in ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... kindly, "To the trained eye, Miss Calhoun, much is apparent that escapes the casual observer. But you can understand that the taste displayed in the wall decoration, shows a refined and cultured nature. A woman of the adventuress type would prefer more garish display. Of course, I am generalizing, but there is much to bear me out. Then, I see, by certain tiny marks and cracks, ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... pocket have they gone," answered Otto, simply as if stating the most casual fact. "They are all ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... perfect cheval-de-frise of fallen and peeled hemlocks, and, entering the dense woods above, began to look anxiously about for the wood-road. My companions at first could see no trace of it; but knowing that a casual wood-road cut in winter, when there was likely to be two or three feet of snow on the ground, would present only the slightest indications to the eye in summer, I looked a little closer, and could make out a mark or two here and there. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of this Thomas Young, a Scotchman, and one of the authors of the Smectymnuus. This, however, is a misreading of Milton's mind—a mind which was an organic whole—"whose seed was in itself," self-determined; not one whose opinions can be accounted for by contagion or casual impact. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... which immediately succeeds, the narrative is inelaborate, casual, secondary; the dialogue is simple and touching. The agony of the fratricide and his remorse are better expressed by his own lips than could be done by any skill of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... emphasis on the indefeasible and unwavering character of moral action, suggests something that rouses admiration from common sense, unsophisticated by moral theory. We do not think highly of the man who is at the mercy of every chance appetite, or every casual incident. Morality must be constituted of more enduring stuff. We do not deeply admire the caliber of a man who yields to every pressing exigency, surrendering thereby every ideal, principle, or value, the attainment of which demands some postponement ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... cheering capacities are not great. Her mode of attack is first to enlarge on every possible ill, and reduce one to a state of collapse from pure self-pity, and then to proceed to waft the same troubles aside with a casual flick of the hand. She sat down beside me, stroked my hand (I hate being pawed!) and set ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... many peculiar customs among the Indians of an earlier period, some of which tended to strengthen the character of the people and preserve their purity. Perhaps the most unique of these was the annual "feast of maidens." The casual observer would scarcely understand the full force and meaning ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... by conflicting emotions and could not make up her mind how to act. Act, however, she did, in a literal sense, for although her heart was still throbbing wildly and her mind was in a whirl, she managed somehow to assume an almost casual air. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... it strange that none of his fellow-convicts appeared to suspect him, or if they did, they kept it back from the jail authorities; and certainly to any casual observer the deception was complete, and it was the best case of feigned blindness we have ever known ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... could dim the horror of the word. The sound of his own voice made him shudder, yet he almost hoped that Echo might hear him, and wake the slumbering city from its dreams. He felt a mad desire to stop the casual ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... mentioned that he knew her—mentioned it in casual conversation," answered Fullaway. "She and I being fellow Americans, the subject interested me, of course. But—he only said that he had met her ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... Other Powers also—Powers at that time regarded as less friendly to Britain than Germany was supposed to be—started in the race for overseas dominions, international commerce, and strong fleets. It became evident to the most casual observer that sooner or later British command of the sea might be challenged, Britain and the Dominions attacked, and the future of the Empire put to the issue of war. Hence prudent patriots, who in course ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... the widow of an officer of German extraction, was herself a native of Mittau, where she had spent the first years of her childhood and where she had numerous poor relations, about whom she concerned herself very little, especially after a casual visit from one of her brothers, an infantry officer of the line. On the day after his arrival he had made a great disturbance and almost beaten the lady of the house, calling her "du lumpenmamselle," ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... it may seem to the casual visitor rather a sleepy place to-day, appears to have been pretty lively in Anna Seward’s day. “Plays thrice in the week, balls and suppers at our Inns, cards and feasting within our houses.” And again, “Lichfield has been of late wondrous gay. Six private balls were given, ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... been looking at himself in the mirror with a satisfaction which, to the casual observer, his appearance would not have seemed to justify. Hignett had not been suffering from a delusion. His cousin's face was black; and, even as he turned, he gave it a dab with a piece of burnt cork and made ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the ways of dogs. With them he employed a superior reason where Le Beau had used the club and the rawhide. So he came up openly and boldly, and, as if by accident, dropped the end of the pole between the bars. With his hands against the cage, apparently unafraid, he began talking in a casual way. He was different from Le Beau. Miki watched him closely for a space and then let his eyes rest again on the darkened cabin window. Stealthily Durant began to take advantage of his opportunity. A little at a time he moved the end of the pole until it was over Miki's ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... form. Here, from first hand, are three words, which we may take to be the essence of the whole. Grumkow reporting, in a sordid, occasionally smutty, spy manner, to his Seckendorf, from Berlin, eight or ten months hence, has this casual expression: "He [King Friedrich Wilhelm] told me in confidence that Wreech, the Colonel's Wife, is—to P. R. (Prince-Royal); and that Wreech vowed he would not own it for his. And his Majesty in secret is rather pleased," adds the smutty spy. [Grumkow to Seckendorf, Berlin, 20th August, 1732 ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... involved in the Breakdown as it affected Anvhar, since the planet was completely self-sufficient. Once they had made the mental adjustment to the fact that they were now a sovereign world, not a collection of casual visitors with various loyalties, life continued unchanged. Not easy—living on Anvhar is never easy—but at least without difference ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... drove on, and the most casual observer might have remarked the strained tightening of the lips and the two red spots which came and went in the damask-peach cheeks. But it was not until she had reached Mereside, and had gained the shelter of the deserted ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... through a snowdrift, with an Amplach twin in his pocket. "Suthin' ought to be done," he growled, "to make Meary a little more careful o' them Amplach children; I picked up one outer the snow a mile beyond Big Bend." "God bless my soul!" said a casual passenger, looking up hastily; "I didn't know Mr. Amplach was married." Jim winked diabolically at us over his glass. "No more did I," he responded gloomily, "but you can't tell anything about the ways o' them ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... accustom us to the separation of art from life. Our methods of studying art, making a beginning of art-study while traveling, tend to perpetuate this separation. It is only on reflection, after long experience, that we come to perceive that the most fruitful moments in our art education have been casual and unsought, in quaint nooks and unexpected places, where nature, art, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... vicissitudinous backwoodsman. He was about the same age as R———, but had spent, apparently, his whole life in Liverpool, and has long occupied the post of Inspector of Nuisances,—a rather puffy and consequential man; gracious, however, and affable, even to casual strangers like myself. The great contrast betwixt him and the American lies in the narrower circuit of his ideas; the latter talking about matters of history of his own country and the world,—glancing over the whole field of politics, propounding opinions and theories of his own, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... On the wall next to this map and at right angles to it, is a large-scale map of the entire region over which the squadron operates. On this map are numerous conventional markings which would have no meaning to the casual observer. ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... principal actors in the scene, the idlers from the street slowly dispersed, each one loudly expressing his opinion as to the merits of the question in dispute. With the dissolving of the crowd, it would have seemed to the casual observer that no further proceedings were to be taken in the matter. The god's face wore its usually placid look, unmoved by the shifting panorama of human life which ebbed and flowed in front of him from morning till night. The ghastly-looking policemen, ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... pause at the big round, rugged doorway that admits you to what is now the drawing-room. The massive step by which you ascend to the threshold is a trifle crooked, as it should be: the lintels are cracked and worn by the myriad-fingered years. This strikes your casual glance. You look up and down the miniature cloister before you pass in: it seems wonderfully old and queer. Then you turn into the drawing-room, where you find modern conversation and late publications and the prospect of dinner. The new life and the old have melted together: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... very like boiling a kid in its mother's milk, but I had the gratification of remarking once or twice with casual superiority during conjugal conversation, that revolutions were expensive things, and ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... kinds of finding. There is a casual stumbling upon a thing that you were not looking for, and there is a finding as the result of seeking. It is the latter which is here. Christ did not casually stumble upon Philip, upon that morning, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... decidedly not the town to visit for an hour or two or for half a day. No one can possibly gain a correct impression of these smaller English towns by a casual call, as it were, between trains. A short stay, or two or three day visits (not on "early closing" day) is the least one can do before ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... of the school. The janitor, a highly efficient but exceedingly bad-humoured cockney, who was dissatisfied with all things Canadian because "in the old country we do things differently"—whose sharp tongue was feared by many, and who once remarked to a lady teacher in the most casual way, "If you was a lidy, I'd wipe my boots on you!"—this selfsame janitor, standing by the furnace, turned slowly around, showed his pale and hollow-eyed face, and smiled a withering and commiserating smile. "Ye ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... two other dimly seen faces about her and introduced their owners in a most casual manner while she compounded a hot drink for ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... They are no more expensive than many a thoroughbred dog. Yet we shall not have one. Not only is the climate of Westchester County, New York, too unlike that of their native India for them to thrive, but consider the task of soothing terrified tradesmen and casual visitors. One may explain that although appearances are against him he is not really a leopard but just an overgrown cat. They will not believe it. They will not even hear because they will be a mile down ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... either knowledge or experience, could not be as prudent and far-seeing as a man all his life acquainted with business. Mr. Murray had been a loser in the mines himself, but to a comparatively slight extent, and as he was an exceedingly rich man, he only regarded the matter as one of the casual losses incurred in business. But his old friend's losses troubled him deeply, and he resolved to do everything in his power to repair the effects of his ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and in elocution Emerson was a practised and consummate artist, who knew how both to command his effects and to conceal his means. The casual, practical, disarming directness with which he writes puts any honest man at his mercy. What difference does it make whether a man who can talk like this is following an argument or not? You cannot always see Emerson clearly; he is hidden ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... without wax to seal it?" interrupted Smith in a casual tone. Darling could not know that the thought of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... this resolution occupying her mind the talk presently ran rather thin, her contribution to it for whole minutes drying up entirely. It was after a rather blank silence that he said he supposed Paula was lying down, resting for to-night's performance. His inflection struck Mary as a little too casual and reminded her that it was his first mention of her stepmother's name. This roused ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... manipulation to be thus condensed into a small volume, like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its furry coat. Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity? I am not certain. But it is always the case that these exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless and the feathered game featherless, except for the pinion- and tail-feathers. Reptiles and fish, on the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... construction trains also arrived, and the quiet little siding was soon a scene of wild bustle and excitement. The R.E. went to work on the broken bridge, and made a most excellent job of it in a surprisingly short time, though a casual inspection of the temporary structure they built for trains to pass over gave the lay mind the impression that an extra strong puff of wind would blow the whole thing over. However, it answered its purpose very thoroughly, and reflected ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... Marianne seemed of casual importance to her now. We seldom think of our best friends in time of love. Yvonne cried for his kisses which at first she did not wholly understand, but which she grew to hunger for, just as when she was little she craved for all she wanted to ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... said St. Luc. "It was merely a casual reference to the changes that affect us all. I shall come to Albany some day, Mr. Lennox. It is an interesting town, though perhaps somewhat ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... very slender and aristocratic nose, with a note from Lee Greenfield which had just come to her, asking her to go with him in his car over to Hillsboro to spend the day with Tom Pollard's wife, a visit he knows she has been dying to make for two months, for she was one of Pet's bridesmaids. He made casual and dastardly mention that there would be a moon to come home by, but ignored completely the fact that Tuesday was the day on which he had been invited by the League, of which he knew she was a member, to meet and rally around ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with the conviction that it was an utter failure. Captain Elkanah and the gracious Miss Annabel, his daughter, had been kind enough to express gratification, and their praise alone saved him from despair. Then, to his amazement, the call had come. Of casual conversation at the church and about the Daniels's table he could recall nothing. So there was another religious organization in town and that made up of seceders from his own church. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... left the tent together. He led me about the camp, and then we walked upon the surrounding hills overlooking the great city of white tents and sleeping soldiers. Very little was spoken between us, beyond a few words as to the pleasantness of the morning or similar casual observations. Lincoln seemed to be peculiarly serious, and his quiet, abstract way affected me also. It did not seem a time to speak. We walked slowly and quietly, meeting here and there a guard, our thoughts leading us to reflect on that wonderful situation. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... legendary records, and artistic remains. The evidence from language is treated scientifically, and not as a kind of ingenious guessing. Senor Lopez first combats the idea that the living dialect of Peru is barbarous and fluctuating. It is not one of the casual and shifting forms of speech produced by nomad races. To which of the stages of language does this belong—the agglutinative, in which one root is fastened on to another, and a word is formed in which the constitutive elements are obviously distinct, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the Irishman was off, with an oath at the major's stupidity in forgetting to order his men forward. Presently the battalion came creeping up, silently enough, I thought, but the adjutant made the excuse of a casual 'ouch' from a man on whose heels Hrsthzschnoffski had casually trodden, to shriek out his favorite 'Stop 'at talken'!' 'Do you command this battalion?' asks Captain Pipes, sternly; and straightway there would have been a dire altercation, but for the major's gentle interference. The bridge began ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... than "interesting"—it is as a poem distinctly inferior to "La Saisiaz." Although detached lines are often far from truly indicative of the real poetic status of a long poem, where proportion and harmony are of more importance than casual exfoliations of beauty, yet to a certain extent they do serve as musical keys that give the fundamental tone. One certainly would have to search in vain to find in the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... boast of an enormous population for there were endless rows, or rather groups of houses, crowded together, face to face, back to back, and side by side, giving the idea of a casual conglomeration of several villages. All these were scrupulously clean and neat, and fenced round with little bamboo rails. Nearly every house had a tiled roof, and all were of a superior class to the majority of those up country in the Peninsula. ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... hold myself responsible for the often severe and sometimes scornful judgments pronounced by my friends in the provinces upon public men at Paris. But I had no right to modify or withhold them. In the case of conversations held with friends, or with casual acquaintances, I have used names only where I had reason to believe that, adding weight to what was recorded, they might be used without injury or inconvenience of any ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... patient and constant, sprightly and tender, consuming and passionate. We find, getting over the inexperienced beginning, that the style of the work is noble and accomplished, and that—far from being a half-hewn and casual fancy, a head surmounting a trunk of stone—its plan is thought out with scientific exactness, no line blurred, no clue forgotten, the work of an intense and poetic temperament whose vision is ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... certainty of finding him in the same mood in which she had left him,—as some bright wayward vine of Southern forests puts out a tendril to this or that enticing point, yet, winding back, will find its first support unchanged. Shut out, as Mr. Raleigh had been, from any but the most casual female society, he found a great charm in this familiarity, and, without thinking how lately it had begun or how soon it must cease, he yielded himself to its presence. At one hour she seemed to him an impetuous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... his coat hurriedly, there came a knock at the door. "Come in," said Von Barwig rather impatiently, thinking that it was Poons. He did not feel in the mood just at that moment for casual conversation. "Come in," he repeated in a louder voice, and to his utter amazement in ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... miles from Haynes' and the soldiers reached Boone's place about 1:30 o'clock P.M. and their horses looked, to a casual observer, like they had been ridden fifty miles. They were all covered with dust which the crafty soldiers had thrown upon them and were flecked with sweat. One soldier went forward and asked politely to be given ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... hunger to be alone with you. You are mine, are you not? Or, I should say, I am yours. Isn't it true? I spend my life in looking for opportunities to meet you. Our love is made up of chance meetings, of casual bows, of stolen looks, of slight touches—nothing more. We meet on the avenue in the morning—a bow; we meet at your house, or at that of some other acquaintance—twenty words; we dine somewhere at the same table, too far from ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... abbeys and cathedrals, factories, brick-yards, foundries, timber-yards, docks, and railway works. On this occasion Yule, contrary to his custom, kept a journal, and a few excerpts may be given here, as affording some notion of his casual talk to those who ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the necessaries or conveniencies of life. There is no way of living without the need of foreign assistance, but by the product of our own land, improved by our own labour. Every other source of plenty is perishable or casual. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... but had no character; she described the stickiness of his collar; and because she was always readily responsive to her surroundings, she found it natural to be humorous in a somewhat spiteful way; and at a casual mention of the Battys, she became amusing at the expense of Charles and felt a slight regret when she had roused Christabel's laughter. It seemed unkind; he had confided in her; she had betrayed him; and Rose completed her discomfiture by saying, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... kettle. We have worked too hard without knowing why we were doing it, or what our work would do with us. We were never wise enough to loaf properly, to stop and glance casually around for our bearings. We went blindly on. Consider the newspapers, as they are now! A casual inspection of the mixture of their hard and congested sentences is enough to show that what is wanted by our writers famous for their virility, their power of "graphic description" as their outpour ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... off Clement's heart. For a moment he had feared that the man knew something; but now he began to suspect Grimbal's question to be what in reality it was—casual interrogation, without any shadow of knowledge behind it. Hicks therefore breathed again and trusted that his own emotion had not been very apparent. Then, taking the water, he shot a thin shower into the air, an operation often ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... You have enough to do without that. Leave it to those professionally trained in such mysteries. If a man is responsible for this atrocious thing, then it should be within the reach of man's wits to find him. We failed before; but this time no casual examination of this place, or the antecedents of your son-in-law's life, will serve the purpose. We must go to the bottom, or, rather, skilled minds, trained to do so, must go to the bottom. They will approach ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... paused with a basilisk stare till Renouard had conceded a casual: "I dare say," and only then went on to explain that old Dunster, during his European tour, had been made rather a lion of in London, where he stayed with the Moorsoms—he meant the father and the girl. The professor had been a widower for ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... on this line, which, whether true to the subject or not, is very characteristic of the writer: "If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterizing Brutus even in his first casual speech."—/soothsayer./ By derivation, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... jetty clearly almost below their feet, and in the distance the glittering lights of Pierside. Vague forms of vessels at anchor loomed on the water, and there was a stream of light where the moon made a pathway of silver. After a casual glance the three men proceeded down the slope to the jetty. Three of them at least had revolvers, since Hervey was an ill man to tackle; but probably Date, who was too dense to consider consequences, was unarmed. Neither did Don Pedro think it necessary to tell the officer ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... and boldly thrust his hand into his breast, withdrew it, and burst out into a wild hysterical laugh as he gave a casual glance at his hand before passing it cautiously into his left breast-pocket and bringing out, bit by bit, the fragments of the bottle of preparation which the doctor had dispensed, and that it had been his mission to ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... is obvious that they did not clearly see the mode of its accomplishment. The General Government has seized upon none of the reserved rights of the States. AS far as any open warfare may have gone, the State authorities have amply maintained their rights. To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring. They move in their respective orbits in perfect harmony with the central head and with each other. But there is still ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... that there are many varieties of great men. Daddy LAMBERT was a great man, so was the living skeleton, yet even a casual observer could perceive the difference in their greatness. The greatness of the fleshy world is one thing; the greatness of the no-fleshy world is another. Also, strange as it may seem, a man may be great and yet ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... each reader in succession. Or again, that no book can convey the special spirit and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind with mind, through the eyes, the look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation. But I am already dwelling too long on what is but an incidental portion of my main subject. Whatever be the cause, the fact is undeniable. The general principles ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... height, intervene between the present and the supposed ancient level of the stream. To assent to this suggestion, would be to admit an almost immeasurable antiquity to the structure under consideration." The casual observer would say that it was intended to afford an ascent from one terrace to the other. But as the height was only seventeen feet, we can not see why it was so necessary to have a long passage way of easy grade from one terrace to the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... in their chairs and tried to keep their guilty eyes off the overturned basin. 'Two slices, Annie?' said Mr. Knight in a loud tone, elaborately casual. 'Yes, please,' said Aunt Annie. Mrs. Knight began to pour out coffee. They all three looked at each other, joyous, naughty, strategic; and the thing of which they were least conscious, in that moment of expectancy, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... years in the country. Good God! would not one rather have expected to hear him put all these travellers to shame by the authority of a man who had resided so long in the supreme situation of government,—to set aside all these wild, loose, casual, and silly observations of travellers and theorists? On the contrary, as if he was ignorant of everything, as if he knew nothing of India, as if he had dropped from the clouds, he cites the observations of every stranger who had been hurried in a palanquin through the country, capable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... him, and in particular, while treating him with engaging attention, as if a friend, he brought him into the house where all his weapons were stored, a numerous and exceedingly noteworthy array. Thereupon they say that the weapons shook of their own accord and gave forth a sound of no ordinary or casual sort, and then it seemed to Gizeric that there had been an earthquake, but when he got outside and made enquiries concerning the earthquake, since no one else agreed with him, a great wonder, they say, came over him, but he was not able to comprehend the ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... never a chance to shake a foot with anybody or buy a drink for somebody in the inner circles of Viennese night life. He is emphatically on the outside, denied even the poor satisfaction of looking in. At that I have a suspicion, born of casual observation among other races, that the Viennese really has a better time when he is not trying ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb |
