"Innocuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should bring down the sulphur contents even of concentrates so as to be innocuous to mercuric amalgamation. The sulphur left in the ore should never be allowed to exceed two ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... the laws upon which the Senate based its demand and said: "After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth—apparently the repealed as well as the unrepealed—and put in the way of an Executive who is willing, if permitted, to attempt an improvement in the methods ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... prevailed to any extent in the neighborhood of Ypres, and there can be no doubt that the effect of these poisonous fumes materially influenced the operations in that theater, until experience suggested effective counter-measures, which have since been so perfected as to render them innocuous. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... crystal sea. The most ignorant and erroneous 'religious sentiment'—to use a modern phrase—is mightier than all other forces in the world's history. It is like some of those terrible compounds of modern chemistry, an inert, innocuous-looking drop of liquid. Shake it, and it flames heaven high, shattering the rocks and ploughing up the soil. Put even an adulterated and carnalised faith into the hearts of a mob of wild Arabs, and in a century they will stream from their deserts, and blaze from the mountains of Spain to the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... this yere Crwafish Jim is as a den of serpents. I reckons now he has a plumb dozen mowed away in his raiment. Thar's no harm in 'em; bein' all bull-snakes, which is innocuous an' without p'ison, fangs, ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the organism and the variable effects produced by it. The type reached by cultivation through a few generations may differ so widely from the original in appearance and behaviour as to be hardly recognizable, while, on the other hand, of two organisms apparently indistinguishable one may be innocuous and the other give rise to the most violent cholera. This variability offers a possible explanation of the frequent failure to trace the origin of epidemic outbreaks in isolated places. It is commonly assumed that the micro-organism is of a specific character, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... can he humbugged as well as John Bull. A Chinese botanist came here, and bethought him of trying his skill as a doctor. Everybody became mad to consult him; no street was ever so crowded as the one he lived in, since Berners-street on the day of the hoax. He got a barrel of flour, or some other innocuous powder, packed up in little paper parcels, and thus armed he received his patients. On entering, he felt the pulse with becoming silence and gravity; at last he said, "Great fire." He then put his hand on the ganglionic centre, from which he radiated ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... at an age when one believes nothing in the line of evil; later on comes the age when one believes everything. Suspicions are nothing else than wrinkles. Early youth has none of them. That which overwhelmed Othello glides innocuous over Candide. Suspect Cosette! There are hosts of crimes which Marius ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... food. But these authors apparently have not considered the many accounts given by travellers of the wretched food collected by savages. I have read an account of the savages of Australia cooking, during a dearth, many vegetables in various ways, in the hopes of rendering them innocuous and more nutritious. Dr. Hooker found the half-starved inhabitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from having eaten arum-roots,[523] which they had pounded and left for several days to ferment, so as partially to destroy their poisonous nature; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... after the champion of a romance then popular) had returned from banishment in the hope, as he was perfectly innocuous, of renewing his ancient friendship with the Scottish king; and James declared that he would again have received him into his service, but for his oath, never more to countenance a Douglas. He blamed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... evils which arise out of purveying physiological and psychological refreshments and excitements, which are, according as they are indulged in temperately or intemperately, grateful and innocuous, or sources of disaster and ruin. The evils which are associated with the drink traffic and the betting industry ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... of the Bright scheme was made for some time. Six years of Conservative rule (1886-1892) diverted the attention of Liberals as a party in opposition to other matters, and the Lords subsided, as they always have done in such periods, into an entirely innocuous, negligible, and utterly useless adjunct ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... British Freemasons may make on this verdict is that Barruel regards Masonry as a system which originally contained an element of danger that has been eliminated in England whilst they regard it as a system originally innocuous into which a dangerous element was inserted on the Continent. Thus according to the former conception Freemasonry might be compared to one of the brass shell-cases brought back from the battle-fields of France and converted into a flower-pot ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long, peculiar look. It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity, nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do without it. It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect, flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed. M. Nioche's gaze was a profession of moral flatness. "You despise me terribly," he said, in the weakest ...
— The American • Henry James
... As the judicious physician informs the patient suffering under some cutaneous or other external torture, that the poison lay deep in his constitution—that it must have worked in some shape—and well it is that it has taken one so innocuous—so may even the book-hunter be congratulated on having taken the innate moral malady of all the race in a very gentle and rather a salubrious form. To pass over gambling, tippling, and other practices which cannot be easily spoken of in good ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... newspapers. They were, I hope, better written than the run of Penny Dreadfuls, and perhaps with more discrimination of taste in the choice of adventures. But I certainly do not feel able to claim that their effect upon a perverted mind would be innocuous. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Going to the spot I find, indeed, " caldrons of boiling water;" but the caldrons are in the depths. At irregular openings in the rocky ground the bubbling water wells to the surface, and the fires-ah! where are the fires. On another part of this desert are curious springs that look demure and innocuous enough most of the time, but occasionally they emit columns of spray and steam. It is related of these springs that once a party of emigrants passed by, and one of the men knelt down to take a drink of the clear, nice-looking water. At the instant he leaned ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... now than on her first arrival in the neighbourhood, less haggard, a little plumper, but as he compared her dulled and faded beauty with Toni's youthful bloom he wondered, not for the first time, if her companionship were altogether innocuous. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... was conquest, by whatever innocuous name it passed. But was it for good or evil? In the first shock of reality, Martin Lord had doubted himself and the destiny of the Federation. But only for a moment. What he saw was good—he had been taught to believe that—because the Federation ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... strength of the German army. She understood it to be a combination of a warlike spirit bent on oppressing others, and supported by the best and strongest army in the world. The first would have been innocuous without the second; and the splendid German army was in England's eyes the instrument of a domineering and conquest-loving autocrat. According to England's view, Germany was exactly the counterpart of France under Bonaparte—if for Napoleon be substituted a many-headed being ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... convulsively moves her legs. So long as these throes continue, the Pompilus does not release her prey. She seems to watch the progress of the paralysis. With the tips of her mandibles she explores the Spider's mouth several times over, as though to ascertain if the poison-fangs are really innocuous. When all movement subsides, the Pompilus makes ready to drag her prey elsewhere. It is then I take charge ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... scared at nothing out in No Man's Land. The laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house, and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous. Liquor was prohibited. The regime was military. Soon after the bugle had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters chafing through the turbines continually ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... emphatic——until the Commandant, sending for Cornelius (whose duties cut him off, unrepining, from his wife's society), ordered him to remove her, silence her, beat her if necessary—and so save her from the unpleasant alternative of solitary confinement on bread and water until she could be, if not useful, innocuous. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... that part of the country, a fascinating belief in witchcraft. There was in our near neighbourhood, for example, a person known as the Dudley Devil, who could bewitch cattle, and cause milch kine to yield blood. He had philtres of all sorts—noxious and innocuous—and it was currently believed that he went lame because, in the character of an old dog-fox, he had been shot by an irate farmer whose hen-roost he had robbed beyond the bounds of patience. He used to discover places where ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... sort of existence most of these people do," he retorted, "I'd take measures to be broke as soon as possible. What the deuce is there to it? The women get up in the morning, spend the forenoon fixing themselves up to take in some innocuous gabblefest after luncheon. Then they get into their war paint for dinner, and after dinner rush madly off to some other festive stunt. Swell rags and a giddy round. If it were just fun, it would be all right. But it's the serious business ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... been as toxic as the maternal. The blood of infected cattle was filtered through filters made of unbaked porcelain and having very fine pores which allowed only the blood fluid to pass, holding back both the blood corpuscles and the rods, and such filtered blood was found to be innocuous. It was further shown that the rods increased enormously in number in the infected animal, for the blood contained them in great numbers when but a fraction of a drop was used for inoculation. Attempts were also made ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... habit of mind so long prevalent among practitioners of medicine; once let it be everywhere understood that the presumption is in favor of food, and not of alien substances, of innocuous, and not of unwholesome food, for the sick; that this presumption requires very strong evidence in each particular case to overcome it; but that, when such evidence is afforded, the alien substance or the unwholesome food should ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... well. After the first year or so they were obliged to mortgage it, and sometimes the interest was hard to meet. But after the stormy factory years, these anxieties seemed innocuous enough and Roger and his ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... silver vase! It was wrought by the hands of the renowned Benvenuto Cellini, and is well worthy to be a love gift to the fairest dame in Italy. But its contents are invaluable. One little sip of this antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias innocuous. Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of Rappaccini. Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your Beatrice, and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... precaution suggested by Dr. Clarke, of intermitting intellectual effort during the menstrual period, would be inadequate whenever it was not superfluous. But in Dr. Clarke's theory this period has a peculiar influence in rendering morbific conditions that at other times are innocuous. This, in virtue of the law already quoted, that the evolution of force at one centre of the nervous system is incompatible with an evolution of equal intensity at another, since it diminishes the sum of resources ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... and very practical, Leopold Travers established with that very clever and very practical representative of the rising generation, Chillingly Gordon. Between them there was this meeting-ground, political and worldly, a great contempt for innocuous old-fashioned notions; added to which, in the mind of Leopold Travers, was a contempt—which would have been complete, but that the contempt admitted dread—of harmful new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts, threatened ruin to his country ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an ailing child to inspection by a European medical man, the danger incurred may be warded off by the gift from the stranger to the child of some small article of value. In a similar way the breach of other tabus, such as the entering of a room which is LALI, may be rendered innocuous. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... general rule, the herring-pickling came under the category of pleasant work, but to-day there was dissatisfaction all along the line. The women chattered freely as they worked, but their talk was not quite innocuous—it was all carefully aimed; the men had made them malicious. When they laughed, there was the sound of a hidden meaning in their laughter. The men had to be called out and given orders about every single thing ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to sell spirituous liquors under the name of Sarah Schnetterling, tobacconist. The window had the placard 'Ici on parle Francais', and was adorned in a tasteful manner with ornamental pipes, fishing-rods and flies, jars of sweets, sheets of foreign stamps, pictorial advertisements of innocuous beverages. A woman with black grizzling hair, fashionably dressed, flashing dark eyes, long gold ear-rings, gold beads and gaudy attire, came out to reclaim her property. A word or two passed about payment, during which Clement had a strange thrill of puzzled recollection. The bottles bore ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fortunes of the London theatres were menaced by two manifestations of unreasoning prejudice on the part of the public. The earlier manifestation, although speciously the more serious, was in effect innocuous. The puritans of the city of London had long agitated for the suppression of all theatrical performances, and it seemed as if the agitators triumphed when they induced the Privy Council on June 22, 1600, to issue to the officers of the Corporation ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange walking-stick ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... of ferocious joy disturbed Lezard's otherwise innocuous features; he winked horribly at Dr. Fooss and at me, and uttered a faint click with his teeth and tongue like the snap of ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... the discovery of certain and innocuous methods of preventing conception. The application of this knowledge would have to be encouraged by public opinion in cases where conception would result in a degenerate offspring. Public opinion would also have to endorse the segregation of persons tainted ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... to the former question, we have not to take into account the Old Testament symbolism which makes the serpent the emblem of Satan or of sin. Serpents had bitten the wounded. Here was one like them, but without poison, hanging harmless on the pole. Surely that would declare that God had rendered innocuous the else fatal creatures. The elevation of the serpent was simply intended to make it visible from afar; but it could not have been set so high as to be seen from all parts of the camp, and we must suppose that the wounded were in many cases carried from the distant parts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... a soft innocuous food, slightly sugary in flavour, suitable for infants. I should never have dreamed of describing the articles in The Belfast Newsletter as pap. An infant nourished on them would either suffer badly from the form of indigestion called flatulence or would grow up to be an exceedingly ferocious ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... painful occurrence which has taken place during my absence at the Geysirs;— no less a catastrophe, in fact, than a mutiny among my hitherto most exemplary ship's company. I suppose they, too, had occasion to bear witness to the proverbial hospitality of Iceland; salt junk, and the innocuous cates which generally compose ship-board rations, could never have produced such an emergency. Suffice it to say, that "Dyspepsia and her fatal train" having taken hold of them, in a desperate hour they determined on a desperate deed,—and ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... they got to Rilby Head, where they found plenty to amuse them. It was a splendid headland, rising bluff four hundred feet out of the sea, and presenting magnificent reaches of rock scenery on all sides. The boys lay on the turf at the summit, and flung innocuous stones at the sea-gulls as they sailed far below them over the water and every now and then pounced at some stray fish that came to the surface; or they watched the stately barques as they sailed by on the horizon, wondering at their cargo and destination; or chaffed the fisherman, whose ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Donne, but the slices of sponge-cake and glasses of cowslip or primrose wine she had at different times administered to Sweeting, when he came to see her in her little cottage, were ever offered with sentiments of truly motherly regard. The same innocuous collation she had once presented to Malone; but that personage evinced such open scorn of the offering, she had never ventured to renew it. To Donne she always served the treat, and was happy to see his approbation of it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the Arab fusillade was almost innocuous, it harassed the troops, keeping them on the alert all night. And when, with the first streaks of dawn, the dreary march began, all traces of the foe had disappeared. All the morning dragged along, till fatigue and the heat of the sun compelled the mid-day halt. Then forward ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... like impersonal treatment and sharers in a like usual mercy. At opposite ends of the social course, they displayed, in respect to the "figure" that each, in his way, made, one the expansive, the other the contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat. A scratch company of two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now offered itself to Mrs. Stringham, who rustled in a little breathless and full of the compunction of having had to come alone. Her companion, at the last moment, had been indisposed—positively not ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... complain of papery ices here," said the Marchesa. "Ices may be innocuous, but I don't favour them, and no one seems to have felt the want of them; at least, to adopt the phrase of the London shopkeeper, 'I have had no complaints.' And even the ice, the very emblem of purity, has not ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... warning he permitted himself an occasional playful fling at the regular church-going of Mr. and Mrs. Summers, at the innocuous character of the literature in their library, and at their guileless appreciations in art. He even ventured to banter Mrs. Summers on her refusal to receive the irrepressible Kitty Mayne who, after a rapid passage with George Darrow, was ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... demonstrated once for all that 'patriotism' ought to be written 'Pat riotism.' Deep regret was expressed that those who attended the meeting had not been armed with revolvers instead of stones, and that the platform had not been defended with Maxim guns instead of comparatively innocuous wooden chairs. Had modern weapons of precision been used the Daily Express would have been able to congratulate mankind on getting rid of quite ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... having launched Miss Carstairs and the sailing-master's wife upon a strictly innocuous conversation, came around the deck-house again, neither the candidate nor his sister was anywhere to be seen. Peter—he who had engaged to accompany the lady—stood alone on the sunny deck, staring off at the returning gig, his great hands clenched ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... peach. I presume you're acquainted with the average run of British generals, but this was my first. I sat on his left hand, and he talked like—like the Ladies' Home Journal. J'ever read that paper? It's refined, Sir—and innocuous, and full of nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. He was it. He began by a Lydia Pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and hoped the boys had done me well, and that I was enjoying ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... an old man of Hong Kong, Who never did anything wrong; He lay on his back, with his head in a sack, That innocuous old man of ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... Mary was at pains to insist upon, is a much better instructor for the young than any story-book, however innocuous it may seem to grown-up people, who for the greater number have not the faculty of seeing how the tale would have ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... that it becomes almost inoperative, until such a time as a new tooth is grown, and again calls it into action, which is commonly but a few weeks at most; and a person purchasing a poisonous serpent under the supposition that it has been rendered innocuous, will do well to keep watch of its mouth lest he be some time taken unaware. It may be rendered permanently harmless, however, by first removing the fang, and then cauterizing the duct by means of a needle or wire, heated to redness; when for experimental ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... recently replaced by this structure was much more picturesque, curving across the flood and supported upon multitudinous feet, like a long-legged centipede of the innocuous kind. For three hundred years it had stood over the stream firmly and well, and it ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... further history of the 'Lovely Jane' was we were not informed, for Ruth Devlin announced that the song must wait, though it appeared to be innocuous and child-like in its sentiments, and that lunch would be served between the acts of the touching tragedy. When lunch was over, and we had again set forth upon the Whi-Whi, I asked Ruth to sing an old French-Canadian song which she had once before sung to us. Many a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... invented: Jest not with a rude man lest thy ancestors be disgraced. To this day the oriental methods of insult have survived in the Ghetto. The dead past is never allowed to bury its dead; the genealogical dust-heap is always liable to be raked up, and even innocuous ancestors may be traduced to the third ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... such a matter the cardinal rule to be observed is, that errors of excess are innocuous but errors of defect are destructive. Too much reserve only means a small loss of profit, but too small a reserve may mean 'ruin.' Credit may be at once shaken, and if some terrifying accident happen to supervene, there may be ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... is this:—In organic influences, you are not at liberty to lay down the law of concomitant variations without exception, or to affirm that what is bad in large quantities, is simply less bad when the quantity is small. There may be proportions not only innocuous, but beneficial; reasoning from the analogy of the action of many drugs which present the greatest opposition of effect in different quantities. I mean this—not with reference to the inutility for intellectual stimulation, in which I have a pretty clear opinion ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... they termed liberty, and by no means admirers of priestly domination, being mostly Protestants. Just before the outbreak of this rebellion, it was determined between the priests and the —-, that this party should be rendered comparatively innocuous by being deprived of the sinews of war—in other words, certain sums of money which they had raised for their enterprise. Murtagh was deemed the best qualified person in Ireland to be entrusted with the delicate office of getting their money ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... and leaped out into the waste under the stars, just as the owner of the van rose with a clatter of coins. To pick up money is a deeply rooted human instinct. Barney Bill lit his lamp, and, uttering juicy though innocuous flowers of anathema, searched for the scattered treasure. When he had retrieved three shillings and sevenpence-halfpenny he peered out. Paul was far away. Barney Bill put the money on the shelf and looked at it in a puzzled way. Was it an earnest of the boy's return, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... that moment broken. Those who had expected to see the goddess, armed with flames and sulphurous smoke, burst forth and destroy the daring heroine who thus braved her, in her very sanctuary, were awe-struck when they saw the fire remain innocuous, and the flames roll harmless, as though none were present. They acknowledged the greatness of the God of Kapiolani; and from that time few indeed have been the offerings, and little the reverence paid to ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... analogous trials, but have never had an opportunity, and it is not likely that you or any one would be willing to try so troublesome an experiment. Colouring or staining the fine red breast of a bullfinch with some innocuous matter into a dingy tint would be an analogous case, and then putting him and ordinary males with a female. A friend promised, but failed, to try a converse experiment with white pigeons—viz., to stain their ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Between these innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly taller, more commanding and distinguished in bearing, than his companions. Even from here, the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... debauch, a silent stranger walked into his presence, looked long and steadily into his eyes, and ended forever his reign of lawlessness. Sometimes the two-gun man was "planted," sometimes he subsided into innocuous ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... the animal; he moves all round the little table, which contains no appliances of any sort; for the most part, he stands behind the horse which is unable to see him, or comes and sits beside his guest on the innocuous corn-bin, busying himself, while lecturing his pupil, in writing up the minutes of the lesson. He also welcomes with the most serene readiness any restrictions or tests which you propose. I assure you that the thing itself is much simple, and clearer than the suspicions of the ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... began hunting, time pressing him into frantic speed. The idea was incredible, but it had to be true. He searched the micro-film files for three hours before he found it, in a "Who's Who" dating back to 1958, three years before the war with China. A simple, innocuous listing, which froze him to his seat. He read it, unbelievingly, yet knowing that it was the only possible link. Finally he read ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... a case in point. Theoretically I should have here the innocuous union of three harmless chemicals; as a matter of fact I had occasion to experiment with it and learned that I had innocently produced a vicious and unheard-of poison. The stuff is of no use. It is one of those things ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... above related, was so innocuous that it need not be counted to his discredit. His was the case of the pugilist who slipped on a piece of peel and felt unable to rise: had the place been a ring, instead of a pavement, he would have been up and dancing within ten seconds. So with Anthony—had Fortune frowned, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... assures me that this reptile is not specifically distinct from the common Cobra of India; though all the mountain specimens of it which he has examined retain the same small size and dark colour. Of the other Sikkim reptiles which I procured seven are Colubridae and innocuous; five Crotalidae are venomous, three of which are new species belonging to the genera Parias and Trimesurus. Lizards are not abundant, but I found at Choongtam a highly curious one, Plestiodon Sikkimensis, Gray; a kind of Skink, whose only allies are two ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... cabin was well appointed in hardwood, with red cushions on the transoms and a creeping plant or so hanging here and there. A canary chirped up and broke into rolling song. It was all homy, innocuous. Yet he had been drugged at the same table not so long before. And now he was pledged a share of ungathered gold. It was a far cry back to his ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... York market, which always invites the superior esculent, we would like to suggest to Mr. JOHNSON that this Mixture be administered to the Bug with a spoon, and not sprinkled promiscuously on the ground. We have drank Tea with a "green flavor," and found it comparatively innocuous; but Potatoes with a green flavor, (especially if flavored by the JOHNSONIAN method,) we should consider as doubtful, to say the least. It is the general impression that there is nothing Green in Paris; but your house painter knows there is such a thing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... waiting for that moment every evening, and his satisfaction when he caught it was rather that of a person who is pleased at verifying something he has had the acumen to discover than any more poignant emotion. He went far oftener to see this than he did to watch Blanche in her small part as one of the innocuous and well-bred company performing at the little old Strand Theatre, which was then still a phalanx ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... pathology which the Yankee had asserted himself to be the possessor of. Under all the circumstances I judged it expedient to forego any direct opinion upon the case, and to administer a compound quite as innocuous in its nature as the "soothing syrup" of infantile notoriety. It was, how ever, a gratifying fact to learn next morning that—whether owing to the syrup or not, I am not prepared to state the patient had shown decided symptoms of rallying, and took my departure from Battle River ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... from the hen-nests. They stole away, and devoured, the young ducks, and chickens. They literally came into the "kneading troughs" of the kitchen. Oh! the rats were intolerable! Traps were no use. Arsenic was innocuous—they wouldn't touch it. Opportunity favored us, and we got two high-bred, smooth, English terriers—a dog, and a slut. Then commenced such a slaughter as we seldom see. The rats had got bold. The dogs caught them daily by dozens, as they ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... does please me," he admitted, when I think of Gordon Atterbury and Everett Constable and a few others,—Eldon Parr,—who believe that religion ought to be kept archaic and innocuous, served in a form that won't bother anybody. By the way, Nell, do you remember the verse the Professor quoted about the Pharisees, and cleansing the outside of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... us the snail would still demand more. As the unaccustomed food proves to be good and satisfying, and also harmless, we may come to like it. That, however, which many good and eminent naturalists find to be healthful and reasonable, and others innocuous, a few still regard as most unreasonable and harmful. At present, we call to mind only two who not only hold to the entire fixity of species as an axiom or a confirmed principle, but also as a dogma, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... walked home, that night, the doctor told my sister and me that, whatever the greater world might think of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, whether innocuous or virulent, Jagger was beyond cavil flagrantly corrupting our poor folk, who were simple-hearted and easy to persuade: that he was, indeed, a nuisance which must be ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... in his hand, and contemplated the repast. It was only logical to suppose it to be innocuous, and a keen appetite hastened the issue. He sidetracked his suspicion, and made an excellent breakfast. So the first day ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... living entirely within himself for the moment. He might have made you think of the Trojan Horse—innocuous without, but teeming with belligerent activity within. He seemed to be laughing maliciously, though without movement or noise. Then he was all frank joyousness again. "Good!" he exclaimed. He smote Harboro on the shoulder. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Twain had thought long and deeply upon the problematical nature of a future life. It is, in essence, a reductio ad absurdum of those professors of religion who still preach a heaven of golden streets and pearly gates, of idleness and everlasting psalm-singing, of restful and innocuous bliss. Mark Twain wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the allegories and the figurative language of the Bible literally. Of course everybody called for a harp and a halo as soon as they reached heaven. They ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... army-game outfit at which a pimple-faced young man presided, small whiskers growing between his humors where they had escaped the razor, like the vegetation of that harsh land in the low places, out of the destroying edge of the wind. For army-game was held so innocuous in Comanche that even ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... officer to say that no violence is required and enough is done for present purposes if the enemy is successfully observed and quietly apprehended? The first enemy to approach turned out, on arrest, to be just an innocuous cow; but this disappointment served only to make the aspect of my men even more menacing. The next arrival was a hapless scout of the attacking party: he had come to surprise, but was himself violently surprised. What advice and exhortations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... your trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a good name for these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black currant enters largely into their composition, though not in sufficient quantity to render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little problem for the oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or climate or treatment can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anything drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Infinitely preferable would stone or wood have been, for dwellings; but as Jannati Shahr was, so the Legion had to take it. And doubtless long generations of familiarity with it had made it wholly normal, pleasant, and innocuous to these super-Arabs. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... exhibition which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily have said, if he was determined to compliment me, that they had "improved," "progressed," or something equally adequate and innocuous. But no. The man must needs be effusive, positively gushing. He came to me in transports. "Wonderful!" ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... The screens put over the candles should not have this paper- fringe; it is very dangerous. But if a candle screen takes fire, have the coolness to let it burn itself up without touching it, as thus it will be entirely innocuous, although rather appalling to look at. Move a plate under it to catch the flying fragments, and no harm will be done; but a well-intentioned effort to blow it out or to remove it generally results in a very much more ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Was the house haunted? Was it some one else's shelter? Had some family lived there and all died out? You may imagine the questions that assailed me, once I had lain down. But whether evil was connected with the house or no, it was innocuous for me. Nothing happened; only the moon looked through the open doorway; winds wandered among the broken rafters, and far ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... have stated make it impossible for the greater monopolies to defend themselves, on the ground that their profits inure to the benefit of any great number of people. But this is not an innocuous state of affairs. It is one of serious injustice and evil. The workman who struggles hard to save a hundred dollars a year can receive only a paltry three dollars and a half of interest or less, if he deposits it in a saving-bank. But the capitalist ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... Hartford, and putting on all steam, led off through a track which had been lined with torpedoes by the rebels; but he says, "Believing that, from their having been some time in the water, they were probably innocuous, I determined to take the chance ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... the Independent's fiery columns came out with red scare heads and gory recital full of reference to "something rotten in the State of Denmark" and "damnable rascality," there was only one emasculated innocuous column given to the local event, but seven columns were steeped with the bloody details of sheep massacres and stock raids and Range Wars in other states in "the good ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... struck the sense, as our life's passing bell; we feared to look at each other, but bent our gaze on the stage, as if our eyes could fall innocuous on that alone. The person who played the part of Rosse, suddenly became aware of the dangerous ground he trod. He was an inferior actor, but truth now made him excellent; as he went on to announce to Macduff the slaughter ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... like those of most antelopes, are large, bright, and melting, without any expression of fierceness; and the animal, though so very large and strong, is of the most innocuous disposition—showing fight only ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... blue and gamboge, two pigments possessing a like degree of stability, and perfectly innocuous to each other. It is a mixture more durable and more transparent than chrome greens made with chromate of lead. There are two varieties in common use—No. 1, a light grass green, in which the yellow predominates; and No. 2, a deeper and ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... contradict. Later the system of Copernicus, incompatible at heart with the anthropocentric and moralistic view of the world which Christianity implies, was accepted by the church with some lame attempt to render it innocuous; but it remains an alien and hostile element, like a spent bullet lodged in the flesh. In more recent times we have heard of liberal Catholicism, the attitude assumed by some generous but divided minds, too much attached to their traditional ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused, humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these youths who seemed so much more assured and old than himself. He often thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing at Lloyds—'it's so innocuous. You can't look down on a painter—you can't take him seriously enough.' For Jolly, who had a sort of natural lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused his father. The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his grandfather's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... magnificent parlor of a modern Chesterfield. It was thronged with elegant ladies and gentlemen. The daughter of the happy household was playing and singing Verdi's "Ah! I have sighed to rest me;" the fond mother was turning the pages; the fond father was sighing and resting up stairs, in a state of innocuous desuetude, produced by the "music" of old Kentucky Bourbon; but he could not withstand the power of the melody below. Quickly he donned his clothing; he put his vest on over his coat; put his collar on hind side foremost; buttoned the lower buttonhole ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... fare, in the shape of three-quarters of a pint of tea and eight ounces of dry bread. Whether the price of groceries was affected by the Christmas demand, or whether the kitchen was demoralised by the holiday, I am unable to decide; but I noticed that the decoction was more innocuous than usual, although I had thought its customary strength could not be weakened without a miracle. My breakfast being devised on the plainest vegetarian principles, there was no occasion for grace before meat, so I sipped the tea ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... bosses in the district was easy," Caesar used to say; "I managed to have one make all the others innocuous, and then I made that one, who was Don Calixto, innocuous and ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... perilous sovereignty. He shrank from nothing. Self-preservation was the guiding principle of his policy, his first object and his only excuse. Among many wicked and ingenious expedients three main methods are remarkable. First, he removed or rendered innocuous all real or potential rivals. Secondly, he pursued what Sir Alfred Milner has called 'a well-considered policy of military concentration.' Thirdly, he maintained among the desert and riverain people a balance of power on the side of his own tribe. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... purpose. The flank of the advance being thus protected, the attack on Tangku itself began with a cannonade from thirty- six pieces of the best artillery of that age. The Chinese fire was soon rendered innocuous, and their walls and forts were battered down. Even then, however, the garrison gave no signs of retreat, and it was not until the Armstrongs had been dragged within a very short distance of the walls, and the foot-soldiers had absolutely effected an entrance, that the garrison ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... areas and gun-positions. Its effectiveness was not, however, great, partly owing to the extreme difficulty of searching all the crannies of the mountain country, partly because the level of Austrian efficiency was low. Their gas-shells, in particular, seem to have been almost innocuous. The shelling began about 3 a.m., and lasted for three hours, when the infantry left the trenches. The two British Divisions in the line, 23rd and 48th, were attacked by portions of four Austrian Divisions; it is said that the latter had been brought up immediately before ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... preaching of virtue that they have lent their genius to the recommendation of vice. This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains of valuable ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... innocuous. That which is most injurious is to entertain unworthy conceptions of the nature and attributes of God; and it is this that Masonry symbolizes by ignorance of the True Word. The true word of a Mason ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... her existence a fortnight ago. Then coming down cheerfully one morning to breakfast—it was the very day after my return from England—I found a letter from an English friend, who up till then had been perfectly innocuous, asking me to befriend Minora. I read the letter aloud for the benefit of the Man of Wrath, who was eating Spickgans, a delicacy much sought after in these parts. "Do, my dear Elizabeth," wrote my friend, "take some notice of the poor thing. She is studying art in Dresden, and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... differences of climate, of energy, of tastes, of age, equality among men is physically impossible. But civilised man can make this inequality innocuous, as he has already done with bogs and bears. A learned man succeeded in making a cat, a mouse, a falcon, a sparrow, all eat out of one plate; and education, one must hope, will do the same thing ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov |
