"Disadvantage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reverse, tender love and violent passion, are presented with emphasis, and yet blended into a dramatic unity and a poetic perfection, entitling the author to the very first place amongst those dramatists of the century who have laboured under the enormous disadvantage of ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... not expect the sally, were scarcely able to form an opposing rank when they found themselves engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, fighting desperately for their lives. In such a battle, however, the Turks were at a disadvantage, for the active Tatars slipped beneath their horses and disabled them, bringing both the animals and ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... descend to his heirs, if he has no children, and the wife be left with no means of support. Of course the result would be the same in the case of the husband upon the death of the wife, if she held the title to all of the common property. That this law of descent has not operated to the disadvantage of the husband, but invariably to the disadvantage of the wife, is not due to any defect in either the letter or spirit of the existing law, but is the natural and inevitable result of the custom which gives the husband the title to and the control ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... good idea of the war; separately, either is utterly unreliable, especially in matters of opinion.] Every little American author crowed over Perry's "Nelsonic victory over a greatly superior force." The Constitution was declared to have been at a disadvantage when she fought the Guerriere, and so on ad infinitum. But these writers have all faded into oblivion, and their writings are not even referred to, much less believed. James, on the contrary, has passed through edition after ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... accident, and links uniting remote incidents which else seemed casual and disconnected, greatly disturbed and confused her manner, which confusion again had become more intense upon her own consciousness that she was confused, and that her manner was greatly to her disadvantage; but—which was the worst effect of all, because the rest could not operate against her, except upon those who were present to witness it, whereas this was noted down and recorded—so utterly did her confusion strip her of all presence of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... persistent fault-finding, we bring about reformation in hotels and travelling conveniences generally—whereas the French, partly from a dislike of making themselves disagreeable, partly from the feeling that they are not likely to go over the same ground again, leave things as they find them, to the great disadvantage of those who follow. The French, indeed, travel so little for mere pleasure that, whenever they do so, they think it useless to make a fuss about what seems to them a part and parcel of the journey. Thus it happens that, wherever you go off the ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... disadvantage—when the conductor turns his back to the orchestra, as in theatres—of permitting only a small number of musicians to perceive the very important indication of the second beat; the body of the conductor ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... thought it a grave disadvantage that our street was unlighted. Our street was not drained nor graded; no municipal cart ever came to carry away our ashes; there was not a water-butt within half a mile to save us from fire, nor more than the one thousandth part ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... reason, the constituents of secularism, are the mortal enemies of supernaturalism. Secularism, however, is at a disadvantage at this stage of our mental development, since it is approached only by the calm light of the intellect. And intellect can but make an appeal to reason. If the seeds of these appeals fall on the fertile minds of mentally advanced humanity, they will ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... "have always protected my eyes from the bedazzlement frequently incident to the sight of royalty. Nor do I wish to flaunt unduly my excellent fortune in being born an American and a democrat, but for once. Prince, we must overlook your trifling disadvantage of caste and meet on a common footing. Permit me to offer my humble secretarial apology that the business is wholly mine—and one other's—and not ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... supposed herself to have sustained. Nothing here said is intended to convey the slightest censure on the conduct of that State. She no doubt sincerely believed herself to have been injured by the decision; and States, like individuals, acquiesce with great reluctance in determinations to their disadvantage. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... been more carefully selected at some fashionable school but I was already beginning to realize that selected associates aren't always select associates and that even if they are this is more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The fact that the boy's fellows were all of a kind was what had disturbed me even in the little suburban grammar school. For that matter I can see now that even for Ruth and me this sameness was a ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... a window-tax in limiting the size and number of the windows. A few French windows are to be found in Adelaide, but the old sashes are almost universal. Of, late a fashion has sprung up for bow-windows, which, however pretty, have here the great disadvantage of attracting the sun unpleasantly. Shutters are not much used. Venetian blinds are more common. On a hot summer day it is absolutely necessary to shut all windows and draw down the blinds if you wish to keep at all cool. About five o'clock, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... for the journey, yet I did not bring any bullocks' horns, and it was too late now to send Tommy back to procure some; we consequently could not fill up our camels at starting, after the Arab fashion. In order to obviate any disadvantage on this account, to-day I sent, with Mr. Tietkens and Alec Ross, three camels, loaded with water, to be deposited about twenty-five miles on our next line of route, so that the camels could top up en passant. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... had a thick veil on. If later she made acquaintance with this man, she did not wish him to know that she and the girl who had offered him a shilling were one and the same. If he knew she might be at a certain disadvantage with him. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... has held that great nation together, united and heart-whole for centuries, in spite of every disadvantage of internal division, and the bad influence of foreign taste; and the greatest of their poets have not thought it beneath them to add their contributions, and their very best, to the common treasure, meant not only for the luxurious and learned, but for the workman and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... wills; everything is fair to him in war; and there—in his unscrupulousness—lies his evil strength. The man who has a conscience dares not do what he likes. His scruples—in plain words, his fear of God—hamper him, and put him at a disadvantage, which will always defeat him, as often as he borrows the devil's tools to do ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... one. But should the battalion to which he belongs be composed of that large class of persons who consider "one man as good as another, and better," no little tact is required in keeping up discipline. Besides this, he starts at a disadvantage. Every retirement from the regiment means the loss of an earner of the capitation grant; and as the maintenance of a Volunteer corps is an exceedingly expensive matter, a "free and independent private" feels that if he withdraws, or ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... finds good hunting the year round, clad in a suit of rich brown; while the weasel, at the approach of winter, sheds his summer dress of chocolate hue and dons a pure white fur, a change which would seem to put the poor mice and rabbits at a hopeless disadvantage. Nevertheless the ermine, as he is now called (although wrongly so), seems just able to hold his own, with all his evil slinking motions and bloodthirsty desires; for foxes, owls, and hawks take, in their turn, heavy toll. Nature ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Shakespeare that Webster can ever be compared in any way to his disadvantage as a tragic poet: above all others of his country he stands indisputably supreme. The place of Marlowe indeed is higher among our poets by right of his primacy as a founder and a pioneer: but of course his work has not—as of course it ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the destructibility of a material object, since too this disadvantage cannot be offset, as in the case of a person, by the continuity of heredity, it is very dangerous for the group to seek such a support for its self-preservation. Many a regiment has lost its coherence with the loss of its standard. Many kinds of associations have dissolved after their palladium, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... money-lender wagged his chin and smiled, but he originated no new remark, and they sat for some little time without speaking. Each was looking out to take the other at a disadvantage. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... appears to me, rashly. In the first place, this volume was posthumous; in the second, for no less than twenty-three years Ben Jonson allowed the verses to appear as Raleigh's without protest; in the third, where they differ from the earlier version it is always to their poetical disadvantage. They were found, as the editor of 1641 says, amongst Jonson's papers, and I would suggest, as a new hypothesis, that the less polished draft in the Underwoods is entirely Raleigh's, having been copied by Jonson verbatim when he was preparing the History ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... those great calm, oily stretches of ocean that a ship is rocked gently in for a few hours before the storm tosses it first to Heaven and then to hell. He is so psychic, and in a way attuned to me, that he partly understands my purpose in declaring my love for him to put him at a disadvantage in his love-making to me, and he hasn't let me do it yet, while his tacit suit goes on. It is a drawn battle between us and is going to be fought to the death. In ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the interview the host should do all he can to make his visitor comfortable. You see a lot in certain magazines about setting the visitor at a disadvantage by giving him an awkward chair, making him face the light and grilling him with questions. It ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... bleaching at so much a piece goods of all lengths and widths, and dressing at so much all widths, has caused the new machines to be all wide, and capable of producing long pieces; of course to the serious disadvantage, if not utter ruin, of the small owner ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... down upon his prey would mean that in the event of missing his erratic moving foe, the attacker would plunge into the cloud fog and be at a disadvantage. At the same time, he would risk it. Suddenly up went his tail. But Tam had vanished in the mist, for as he saw the tail go up, he had followed suit, and nothing in the world dives ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... She gave him Shakespeare's genius, and bade him, like Shakespeare, to depend on that alone. Let not the youthful reader, however, deduce from the example of Mr. Henry, an argument in favor of indolence, and the contempt of study. Let him remember that the powers which surmounted the disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon this earth. Let him remember, too, how long the genius even of Mr. Henry was kept down, and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they doomed him to struggle; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the disadvantage of an unsought notoriety, or reputation, or whatever his local fame might be called. A man with a fighting name must live up to it, however distasteful the strife and turmoil, or move beyond the circle of his fame. Move he would not, could not, although it seemed ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... find a connection resembling that which exists between the Jewish "Two Ways" and the Christian instruction of catechumens. If this observation is correct, it clearly explains the cautious use of historical and dogmatic material in the oldest liturgies—a precaution not to their disadvantage. As in the prayers of the synagogue, so also in Christian Churches, all sorts of matters were not submitted to God or laid bare before Him, but the prayers serve as a religious ceremony, that is, as adoration, petition and intercession. [Greek: Su ei ho theos monos kai Iesous Christos ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... interior of the hive should be dry, and not a particle of frost should ever find admission; and in summer, the bees should not be forced to work to disadvantage in a pent and almost suffocating heat. (See these points discussed in the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... after the junction of the French squadron under the Count d'Etrees, one hundred forty-nine ships-of-war, besides the smaller vessels. Sailing in quest of the enemy, De Ruyter discovered them lying in Solebay, evidently unprepared for his approach. On this occasion was felt the disadvantage of intrusting an officer with the chief command without at the same time giving him sufficient authority to insure its beneficial exercise. In consequence of the presence on board of Cornelius de Witt, the deputy of the States, De Ruyter, instead of ordering an immediate attack, was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Monmouth's life, the Author must confess that it will be no surprise to him to find (with a mass of other matter more voluminous and important than we may now anticipate) new evidence affecting Henry's character, probably to his utter exculpation, possibly to his disadvantage, yet forthcoming from the countless treasures of unpublished records. Meanwhile, he can now, after a patient examination of all the books and manuscripts, original documents and subsequent histories, with which it has been his lot to meet, only return a verdict ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... unusually encouraged by this day's work, for they realized that we could compel Hood to come out from behind his fortified lines to attack us at a disadvantage. In conversation with me, the soldiers of the Fifteenth Corps, with whom I was on the most familiar terms, spoke of the affair of the 28th as the easiest thing in the world; that, in fact, it was a common slaughter of the enemy; they pointed out where the rebel lines had been, and how they ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to Himself the power of setting this uniformity aside, and indeed believed that He had used this power. The believer who asserts the universality of a law except when God works a miracle to set it aside is certainly at no real disadvantage in comparison with an unbeliever who makes the same assertion with no qualification at all. It is granted on all hands that miracles are, and ever have been, exceedingly rare, and for that reason need not be taken into account in the investigation of nature. It ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... not positively prove much; yet it indicated how little he must be to her: and somehow it made him realize more clearly the great disadvantage at which he lay, compared with an admirer belonging to her own class. Hitherto his senses had always been against his reason: but now for once they co-operated with his judgment, and made him feel that, were he to toil for years in London, or Birmingham, and amass a ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... only to recall the confidences which men that meet casually on the train will sometimes repose in each other, to realise how this can be. Under such circumstances, each tells his story to unprejudiced ears, without fear that it will one day be turned to his disadvantage. Nor was this the first time in Leigh's life when he had been surprised to find himself the recipient of another's secrets. The conversation finally became almost a monologue, or, more specifically, a statement ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... judged everything by a Bismarckian test of blood and iron. It tended to neglect the very real disadvantages, even in practical life, which lie upon the man of blood and iron, as compared with the man of blood and bone. It is one grave disadvantage, for instance, that if a man made of iron were to break his bones, they would not heal. In other words, the Prussian Empire, with all its perfections and efficiencies, has one notable defect—that it is a dead thing. It does not draw its life from any primary human religion or poetry; ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... bullet used by the French has the disadvantage that when firing rapidly the chamber of the barrel becomes nickel plated and great friction is caused, mounting up the pressures and causing the muzzle velocities to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... disadvantage in being down the slope and so having to charge straight uphill, she hurled herself at the enemy with a ferocity that rather took him aback. He wheeled, settled upon his haunches, and lifted a massive forepaw, to meet the attack ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... trade missed him. He always recognized a good article, and was willing to pay a fair price for it. He believed in a system of just equivalents in all business; he was exact to the smallest fraction, but not mean. He was simple, upright, honest, in all his dealings, never using his shrewdness to the disadvantage of his fellow-men. ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... certain impressions made on their minds, differ more or less in their mode of obtaining an object dear alike to the hearts of both; and unless some equally zealous, yet impartial, friend steps in to remove or lessen the cause of their dissension, grave consequences, to the disadvantage of both, ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... been waiting for Harry Hardy to come home, confident that he would do something of an exciting character to the disadvantage of those persons who had been instrumental in sending his brother Frank to gaol. Harry was much the younger of the two brothers; for some years he had been away droving, and the news of his brother's misfortune was bringing him home from a Queensland station. The township thought, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... could—not because they were wise, but because they were strong. The count of noses determined, not the better policy, but the more powerful party. The weaker submitted, as a rule, for it had to or risk a war in which it would be at a disadvantage. Yet in all the early years of the republic they seem honestly to have dignified their submission as "respect for the popular verdict." They even quoted from the Latin language the sentiment that "the voice of the people is the voice of God." And this hideous blasphemy was as glib upon the lips ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... enemy to accept battle in that position. If the Persians ignored the Greek fleet and moved to the Isthmus, the Greeks would be caught in an awkward predicament. To regain touch with the Greek army, the fleet would be then compelled to come out of the straits and fight at a disadvantage in the open. There was only one chance of defeating the Persian fleet and that was to make it fight in the narrow waters of the strait where numbers would not count so heavily. Everything depended on ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... however, one obvious disadvantage; their long, narrow shape made a large number of the seats and a large proportion of the spaces available for standing room distinctly bad places from which to see what was happening on the stage. To remedy this defect, the builders of the theaters took a suggestion from the bull-baiting ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... intended to be impudent, even though the arrogant manner in which Mr. Graylock had patronized him, and compared him to his disadvantage with his paragon of a son, had cut him to ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... There is one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of mind suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... life on his own account as helper to the porter of the house. My father, sir—we may speak well of the departed—had great abilities. He was a wonderful man—not so much on account of what he accomplished, (and, in his station, this was not a little,) as for what he proved himself to be, under every disadvantage that could retard a man struggling through the world, even from his infancy. His perseverance was remarkable, and he had a depth of feeling which no ill treatment or vicissitude could diminish. He must have risen amongst men; for mind is buoyant, and leaps above ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... that this is an argument against adopting liturgies in the first instance as vehicles of worship; and such undoubtedly it is in so far forth as immobility ought in such matters to be reckoned a disadvantage. But we are bound to take into account the gain which comes with immobility as well as the drawbacks. We must consider how large a proportion of the reverence which the great institutes of human life exact from us is due to the fixity ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... about it. And so staid without a good while, and saw my Lady Peters, an impudent jade, soliciting all the Lords on her behalf. And at last W. Joyce was called in; and by the consequences, and what my Lord Peterborough told me, I find that he did speak all he said to his disadvantage, and so was committed to the Black Rod: which is very hard, he doing what he did by the advice of my Lord Peter's own steward. But the Serjeant of the Black Rod did direct one of his messengers to take him in custody, and peaceably conducted him to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... is a languid satisfaction to compare St. Peter's with St. Paul's to the disadvantage of the former, and to think there is nothing in Switzerland to equal the Trossachs, Loch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... with an embarrassment that annoyed him. He was not at all accustomed to find himself at a disadvantage with a ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an echo of these words, where the poet, in contrasting England and France, monarchy and republic—much to the disadvantage of the latter—says: ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... notice, and that such as did have been magnified beyond the truth." The events of the eighteenth of March and of the tenth of June were reviewed: the former were pronounced trivial, and such as could not have been noticed to the disadvantage of the town but by persons inimical to it; the latter were conceded to be criminal, and the actors in them guilty of a riot; but, in justice to the town, it was urged that this riot had its origin in the threats and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... port is more exposed than the other, adjust by means of the eccentric screws till a balance is obtained. Should the ports still not be fully uncovered, the throw of the eccentric is too small, and you must either make a new eccentric or reduce the width of the valve. (The second course has the disadvantage of reducing the expansive working of the steam.) Excess movement, on the other hand, implies ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... was placed with his brothers in the upper class of the Edinburgh grammar school, known as the High School. Though he had had some lessons in Latin with a private tutor, he was behind his class in this subject, and being a high-spirited and sensitive boy, he felt rather keenly this disadvantage. Perhaps the fact that he could not be one of the leaders of his class made him careless; at any rate, he could never be depended upon to prepare his lesson, and at no time did he make a consistently good record. However, he found not a little comfort for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... be at such a disadvantage by-and-by with other young ladies without half your intelligence just because they know things you refuse to learn. Then you'll ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... for warrant-officers in the Navy not to see that they are placed at a disadvantage as compared with non-commissioned officers in the Army, and it must be very difficult to persuade them that the two cases are so essentially different as to afford no real ground for grievance."—The "Times," on "An Earnest Appeal on Behalf of the Rank ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... to you, as I shall say to Myra, I have made up my mind not to surrender it. It is true I have the misfortune to be a year older than Charles Fox when he entered the senate, but even with this great disadvantage I am sometimes conceited enough to believe that I shall succeed, and to ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... enemies upon unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him because of his weakness—it was no one's business to help him in such distress, to make the fight the least bit easier for him. Even if he took to begging, he would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he was to discover in ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... must hasten the hour by two, and 'twill incur no disadvantage save to bring the maid to a greater discretion and show of wit; for 'twill be harder for her to ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the name Which is the Heroine very well, and I dare say shall grow to like it very much in time; but Enthusiasm was something so very superior that every common title must appear to disadvantage. I am not sensible of any blunders about Dawlish; the library was particularly pitiful and wretched twelve years ago and not likely to have anybody's publications. There is no such title as Desborough either among dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake the x's and y's, with which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... quartermaster had been connected with frontier posts from Fort Clark, Texas, to his present position. According to report, the opposition were active and waging an aggressive campaign, but not being Western men, were at a disadvantage. Champagne had flowed freely at a dinner given the night before by our employer, during which Senator Aspgrain, in responding to a toast, had paid the army a high tribute for the part it had played in reclaiming the last of our western frontier. The quartermaster, in replying, had felicitously ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... security to Germany in the present condition of the great European States. In the actual development of weapons and munitions, and of the art of quick intrenching, the attacking force in battle on land is at a great disadvantage in comparison with the force on the defensive. That means indecisive battles and ultimately an indecisive war, unless each party is resolved to push the war to the utter exhaustion and humiliation of the other—a long process which involves incalculable ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... is gone you can speak freely of pea-cocks," said Axius, "for if you should say any thing to their disadvantage in his presence, you might perchance have a crow to pluck with him on account of ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... newspaper. Written during a period of ill-health, Merriman thought it beneath his best work, and, true to that principle which ruled his life as an author, to give to the public so far as he could of that best, and of that best only, he declined (of course to his own monetary disadvantage) to permit its publication ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it is almost impossible to proceed;"—"at other times you are exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is necessarily more confined—a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be considered as trivial." "Under all these circumstances," he says, "it may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... me to preach you a little sermon on this text. Well, my dear girl, I am at a disadvantage in not knowing you better, and not knowing your ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... refuge, he dived and swam for home through the loud uproar. But the muskrat's small forelegs are of little use in swimming, so much so that as a rule he carries them folded under his chin while in the water. Now, therefore, he was at a piteous disadvantage. His progress was slow, as in a nightmare,—such a nightmare as must often come to muskrats if their small, careless brains know how to dream. And in spite of his frantic efforts, he found that he could ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... officers he had under him were his brother Edward, his nephew Randolph, his faithful follower the Douglas, and other brave and experienced leaders, who commanded the same men that had been accustomed to fight and gain victories under every disadvantage ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... never known the danger of the Osmia-blocked vestibule. Once these facts are duly recognized, the conclusion is irresistible: it is obvious that, as the insect does not hand down the casual modification tending towards the avoidance of what is to its disadvantage, neither does it hand down the modification leading to the adoption of what is to its advantage. However lively the impression made upon the mother, the accidental leaves no trace in the offspring. Chance plays no part in the genesis of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... in sports and athletic games that over-developed biceps, startling pectoral muscles, and tremendously muscled legs are a disadvantage rather than an advantage. The real essential is, after all, the engine, the part under the hood, as it were—lungs, heart, and trunk. Finally, if we give a man endurance and suppleness he becomes more available in ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... The Roman matron had learned how to be a mother, the lesson of love was an unopened book; and, when the foreign hetairai poured into the city, and the struggle for supremacy began, she soon became aware of the disadvantage under which she contended. Her natural haughtiness had caused her to lose valuable time; pride, and finally desperation drove her to attempt to outdo her foreign rivals; her native modesty became a thing of the past, her Roman initiative, unadorned ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... woman, and exquisitely groomed and dressed, although with an utter absence of ostentation. She knew the value of appearance, especially before the critical eyes of her schoolgirls, and never allowed herself to be seen at a disadvantage. Her rule was mild, but just and firm, and all the girls knew that she was not to be trifled with. Behind her back they often referred to her as Doctor Beulah, but none permitted herself any familiarity in her presence. Her poise was perfect. No one had ever seen her ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... brought her eyes to her immediate surroundings, it seemed to her suddenly that the sky was growing larger, and then she realised that this was because their refuge was growing smaller. The edges of the cloud were dissolving. She saw at last her peril and her disadvantage. If Harold should be killed or disabled she could never reach the earth again, except by means of a fatal fall of several thousand feet. The enemy witch, with her ingenious cloak contrivance strapped securely about her, stood a reasonable chance of escape. But our witch was ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... patience.... On the other hand, for children of high intellectual capacity, our present system does not go far enough. I believe that much innate potentiality remains undeveloped, even amongst the working classes, owing to the absence of opportunity for higher education, to the disadvantage of the nation. In consequence of these fundamental differences, the catchword 'equality of opportunity' is meaningless and mere claptrap in the absence of any equality to respond to such opportunity. What is wanted is not equality of opportunity, but education adapted to individual ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... pleaded by them as a valid title. Besides the actual loss of power and authority, which the surrender of these foundations would occasion, besides the inevitable confusion which would necessarily attend it, one important disadvantage to which it would lead, was, that the restoration of the Roman Catholic bishops would increase the strength of that party in the Diet by so many additional votes. Such grievous sacrifices likely to fall on the Protestants, made the Emperor apprehensive of a formidable opposition; and until ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... hurricane order, the third defender going down within a minute after the assaulting party closed in about them. The fourth, who was only slightly hurt seemed to have been caught at less disadvantage. He was a warrior of wonderful activity and strength, and used his hunting knife with good effect upon his first and second assailants with lightening-like quickness. Then as they began to crowd in upon him faster than he could provide against he circled his weapon around his head several times, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... [1] This disadvantage is greater on the stage, since the audience neither see nor hear more of Bourbon, and only four acts of the piece are performed. In the closet it will not be so obvious, as Bourbon returns in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... until her outer garments were completely consumed. Her education was very slender, being confined to the simplest rudiments of human knowledge,—a circumstance she often regretted, although in after life the disadvantage was in a great measure overcome by ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... services. Where customary relations were replaced by a new bargain, the bargain was always in favor of the tenant. What was the source of this strategic advantage of the villain? The great number of holdings made vacant by the Black Death and the scarcity of eligible holders placed the landowner at a disadvantage, but this situation was temporary. How can the difficulty of filling vacant tenements before the Black Death be accounted for, and why were villains still able to secure reductions in their rents a generation after its effects had ceased ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... very much entertained during their stay in Paris, and we met them nearly every night. W. liked the general very much and found him quite talkative when he was alone with him. At the big dinners he was of course at a disadvantage, neither speaking nor understanding a word of French. W. acted as interpreter and found that very fatiguing. There is so much repartee and sous-entendu in all French conversation that even foreigners ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... to do a good action, take advantage of it, and silently decline the disadvantage of having your attention riveted to it by the praise ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... To avoid the maze of streets that would have helped them to a shorter cut on a clearer night, the driver struck along Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, and thence south toward Oxford Street. This straighter and plainer course had the disadvantage of being more frequented. Many a collision became imminent in the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... assertions as to suggest doubts, I hope you will look upon what I have propos'd, rather as a Narrative of my former conjectures touching the principles of things, then as a Resolute Declaration of my present opinions of them; especially since although they cannot but appear Very much to their Disadvantage, If you Consider Them as they are propos'd without those Reasons and Explanations by which I could perhaps make them appear much lesse extravagant; yet I want time to offer you what may be alledg'd to clear and countenance these notions; ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Island at four. Bammiuk and Solomon accompanied us as far as the North Ikkerasak (the Esquimaux name for a strait) between Cape Mugford Island, in 58 deg. N. latitude, and the mountains of Kaumayok. Their being in company retarded our progress, but in the sequel proved no disadvantage. ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... a wealth of possibility: the dull-witted man sees the same, but his mind travels no farther than the actual vision. The quick mind supplies the apt repartee, while the dullard thinks of the appropriate reply next morning—if at all. The disadvantage of the latter mind is that it does not work easily, the danger of the former is that it may work too easily and get out of control. Where the central control does not suffice to keep a strong hand upon this easy-running mental machinery, it ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... you to it," continued Captain Merrifield, in his vexed voice. "I never mean to force my sons to any profession if I can help it; and you have a right to be considered. It has always been a disadvantage to me, and to this place, that I was bred to the sea instead of to farming; and though you can't live on the property without some profession, it may be quite as well that you should turn your mind to something ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moving pictures. The reels of new plays are sent out to the different theaters, and to fix it so a theater quite a distance from New York won't be at a disadvantage with one right here, which would get the film sooner, there is a certain date set for the release of the film. That means that though one theater gets it first it can't use it until the date set, when all the playhouses ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... ran it would look cowardly, and he knew for certain that the dog would come after him, and take him at a disadvantage; so, making a virtue of necessity, he whipped out his dirk and ran hard at the dog, who checked his pace, hesitated, stopped, barked more furiously than ever, and then turned round, and was chased by the midshipman, who drew up on finding himself ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... frequent cause of permanent disability after fracture is angular displacement. A comparatively small degree of angularity may lead to serious loss of function, especially in the lower limb; the joints above and below the fracture are placed at a disadvantage, arthritic changes result from the abnormal strain to which they are subjected, and rarefaction of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... revolutionary spirit was the rebellion of the knights. This class, now in a state of moral and economic decay, had long survived any usefulness it had ever had. The rise of the cities, the aggrandizement of the princes, and the change to a commercial from a feudal society all worked to the disadvantage of the smaller nobility and gentry. About the only means of livelihood left them was freebooting, and that was adopted without scruple and without shame. Envious of the wealthy cities, jealous of the greater princes and proud of their tenure immediately from the emperor, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... never to travel a mile together until I obtain my right to do so, by making her my wife. She has got some trumpery notions in her head that any slight transgression over the bounds of delicacy made by women before marriage is ever after remembered by the husband to their disadvantage, and she is, therefore, resolved not to sacrifice her principle even at such a crisis ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... hands that morning. Maurice was shut in between Nieuport on one side and the archduke's army on the other, planted as it was on the only road of retreat. Had Albert entrenched himself, Maurice must either have attacked at great disadvantage or attempted embarkation in the face of his enemy. To stay indefinitely where he was would have proved an impossibility, and amid the confusion necessary to the shipping of his army, how could he have protected himself by six demi-cannon placed on ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unfairness. The banker had, I think, sixty-four chances to one in his favour. The consequence of this was that very soon he became possessed of all the money which green youths, unsuspecting their disadvantage, chose to lay on the board. This game, in the hands of a sharper, was often the means of robbing a battalion of very large sums of money; sometimes forty thousand francs were made by the banker. The police had orders to arrest anyone playing it and I used to (p. 265) do my best ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... circumstances—Skinner's advance, Colby's car appearing down the road, Skinner's retreat—was repeated, it was as plain as an open book to the perspicacious little lady. Dearie was shabby, and for the first time in his life he had realized the disadvantage of it. She was secretly glad, for she had always felt that Dearie's thrift with regard to clothes was misplaced. But she could never get him to see it that way. The mere flashing by of Stephen Colby had done more for Skinner in that particular than years of affectionate solicitude ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... finds an enormous advantage in being able to transfer his instrument from one hand to the other. The dentist has to multiply instruments to make up for the lack of such acquired power. The fencer who can transfer his weapon to the left hand places his adversary at a disadvantage. The lumberer finds it indispensable, in the operation of his woodcraft, to learn to chop timber right-and-left-handed; and the carpenter may be frequently seen using the saw and hammer in either hand, and thereby not only resting his arm, but greatly facilitating his work. In all ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... such disabilities would place the negro under such disadvantage in the race of life as to deprive ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... of the gigantic trapper swept the confidence from Houston and left him at a disadvantage. His decision had been a hasty one,—a thing to gain time, a scheme by which he had felt he could, at the proper time, take Thayer off his guard and cause him to come into the open with his plans, whatever they might be. Fate had played a strange game with Barry Houston. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... year. It's a long time, but an Indian never forgets an injury or an insult, and I knew that he was only bidin' his time. So I always went armed, and kept a good lookout. It was only this mornin' that he caught me at a disadvantage. I'd been taking a walk, and left my gun at home. He was prowlin' round, and soon saw how things stood. He'd have killed me sure, if you hadn't come ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr. |
