"Obsolete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first found myself a prisoner; and although a military prison be not altogether a garden of delights, it is still preferable to a gallows. In the third, I am almost ashamed to say it, but I found a certain pleasure in our place of residence: being an obsolete and really mediaeval fortress, high placed and commanding extraordinary prospects, not only over sea, mountain, and champaign, but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of the inhabitants, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Prime Minister holds all the trumps in advance, not up his sleeve, but openly on the table? As for the speeches in the House, they have as much effect upon the issue as the conversations at the card-table. They are an obsolete survival from the times when members were liable to come to the House with open minds, instead of having them closed by their constituencies. Indeed, I can suggest a simple device by which, without any departure from the ancient forms of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... know what it is—of ignorant fanatics or crafty knaves, who care for you no further, than as by your great name, they may stand a little higher in the world. I protest, before Jupiter, that to save others like you from such loss, I feel tempted to hunt over the statute books for some law, now obsolete and forgotten, but not legally dead, that may be brought to bear upon this mischief, and give it another Decian blight, which, if it do not kill, may yet check, and ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... to the hotel for twenty-five cents in paper. I immediately established the fact, that there are no fellow-citizens in Nantucket of foreign descent. "For," said I, "if you offered that obsolete fraction of a dollar to the turbulent hackmen of our cities, you would meet with offensive demonstrations of contempt." I seized the opportunity to add, apropos of the ways of that class of persons: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... age full of such strange, such complex influences; at once so progressive and conservative; an age in which the same man is often craving after some new prospect of the future, and craving at the same moment after the seemingly obsolete past; longing for fresh truth, and yet dreading to lose the old; with hope struggling against fear, courage against modesty, scorn of imbecility against reverence for authority in the same man's heart, while ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... hear this historical example, the terrible punishment the Jewish people suffered in the wilderness, think not it is an obsolete record and without present significance. The narrative is certainly not written for the dead, but for us who live. It is intended to restrain us, to be a permanent example to the whole Church. For God's dealings with his own flock are always the same, from ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... convinced me that the Convention of Young Liberals had had a waking-up. Cargill had addressed them on what he called the true view of citizenship. He had dismissed manhood suffrage as an obsolete folly. The franchise, he maintained, should be narrowed and given only to citizens, and his definition of citizenship was military training combined with a fairly high standard of rates and taxes. I do not know how the Young Liberals received his creed, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... impatiently by several and agreeably by the majority. They were all travel-stained and worn. Dorn did not comment on the news, but the fact was that he hated the French villages. They were so old, so dirty, so obsolete, so different from what he had been accustomed to. But he loved the pastoral French countryside, so calm and picturesque. He reflected that soon he would see the devastation wrought by ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... C.H.T. Marshall notes that this species "builds a globular nest of moss and hair and feathers in thorny bushes. The eggs we found were pinkish white, with a ring of obsolete brown spots at the larger end. Size 0.55 ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... execrate the tyrant creditors; yea, he would heap condign punishment on their obdurate heads. Time after time did he tell them the fallen man was penniless; how strange, then, that they tortured him to death within prison walls. He would sweep away such vengeance, bury it with his curses, and make obsolete such laws as give one man power to gratify his passion on another. His burning, surging anger can find no relief; nor can he tolerate such antiquated debtor laws: to him they are the very essence of barbarism, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... just before their marriage, and after an ecstatic, swift inspection of it, had raced like children to the agent, to crowd into his willing hand a deposit on the first month's rent. Anne had never kept house before, she had no eyes for obsolete plumbing, uneven floors, for the dark cellar sacred to cats and rubbish. She and Jim chattered rapturously of French windows, of brick garden walks, of how plain little net curtains and Anne's big brass ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... me to myself, and I returned into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very handsome, in its own obsolete style, and must be an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad. There are shrubs against the wall, on one side; and on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... writer who gave special attention to the separation of his prose into paragraphs,—a matter apparently trivial, but really of no small importance. Finally, it is a remarkable fact that the number of words to be found in Euphues which have since become obsolete is a very small one—"at most but a small fraction of one per cent.[83]" And this is in itself sufficient to indicate the influence which Lyly's novel has exerted upon English prose. As he reads it, no one ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... bottle attentively. It seemed to have no cork. Formed of some obsolete, opaque glass, its twisted neck was apparently hermetically sealed by the same material. The maiden smiled, as ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... corrects, and out of the abundance of his learning he stops a moment to show how Carlyle has misled the learned Dr. Murray in attributing to Cromwell the use of the word "communicative" in its modern meaning, when it was on the contrary employed in what is now an obsolete sense.[154] ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... be questioned, for monarchs of old had needed no such ceremonial backing to their very practical incursions into ministerial debate. What we have to notice is that the ceremony had survived, while the other thing—the practice of substantial interference—had become obsolete. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... early years of the settlement was the matchlock. By 1625, however, the picture had changed, for the wheel-lock, snaphaunce, and "doglock," were being used in large numbers, and the matchlock had become obsolete. ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... groans of their colics are echoed all over the land. If a milkman misrepresents his honest cows by falsifying their product, the chemist detects him, and the press puts him in the pillory. If the Cochituate or Mystic water is too much like an obsolete chowder, up go all noses, and out come all manner of newspaper paragraphs from "Senex," "Tax-payer," and the rest. But air-poisoning kills a hundred where food-poisoning kills one. Let me relate a circumstance which ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... among Lutherans and Reformed, and it has been deemed proper to abandon the view of both Luther and Calvin on the subject of both these doctrines." (74.) "The whole mass of the old Confessions, occasioned by the peculiar circumstances of those troublous times, has become obsolete by the lapse of ages, and is yet valuable only as matter of history. Those times and circumstances have passed away, and our situation, both in regard to political and ecclesiastical relations, is entirely changed. ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... begin a story in that old-fashioned, obsolete way," exclaimed Ernest. "I never can fancy that a story is worth hearing when it begins ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... pointed out to him. The plan contemplated a line of railroad from the heart of the lumber regions down the south side of the valley of the Pingsquit to Kingston, where the lumber could take to the sea. In short, it was a pernicious revival of an obsolete state of affairs, competition, and if persisted in, involved nothing less than a fight to a finish with the army, the lobby of the Northeastern. Other favoured beings stood aghast when they heard of it, and hastened to old Tom with timely counsel; but he had reached ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Chaucer died, A. D. 1400; and Henry the Fifth (who was king only 9 years, 5 months, and 11 days) began his reign scarcely 13 years after the death of that Poet. Sir Thomas, then, must, at least, have written in the obsolete phraseology of Chaucer,—and, probably, would have imitated him,—as did Lidgate, Occleve, and others;—nay, Harding, Skelton, &c. who were fifty or sixty years subsequent to Chaucer, were not so modern ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... I was anxious to focus upon the lives and doings of these 'Quaker Saints.' I have therefore presupposed a certain familiarity with the chief actors and parties, and an understanding of such names as Cavalier, Roundhead, Presbyterian, Independent, etc.; but I have tried to explain any obsolete words, or those of which the meaning has altered in the two and a half centuries that have elapsed since ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... she was going to set right and re-establish on new grounds and principles[1332]." "The English worshippers of American institutions," said the Saturday Review, "are in danger of losing their last pretext for preferring the Republic to the obsolete and tyrannical Monarchy of England.... It now appears that the peaceable completion of the secession has become impossible, and it will be necessary to discover some new ground of superiority by which Mr. Buchanan or Mr. Lincoln may be ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather, was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and- salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed that these buttons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and appeared ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... these last was occupied by the venerable Dr. Hamilton, a very conspicuous character in Edinburgh. He continued to wear the cocked hat, the powdered pigtail, tights, and large shoe buckles, for about sixty years after this costume had become obsolete. All these houses are still in perfect condition, after resisting the ordinary tear and wear of upwards of a hundred and ten northern winters. The opposition to building houses across the North Loch soon ceased; and the New Town arose, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the shores of the Hadriatic he heard of Amalasuentha's captivity. He waited for further instructions from his master, and on his arrival at Ravenna he found that all was over. The letter which he was to have handed to the deposed Queen, assuring her of Justinian's protection, was already obsolete. The kinsmen of the three nobles had been permitted or encouraged by Theodahad to end the blood-feud bloodily. They had repaired to the Lake of Vulsinii and murdered Amalasuentha in her bath[64]. The Byzantine ambassador sought the presence of the King, boldly denounced his wicked deed, and ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... commencement of the present century, Pantheism might have been justly regarded and safely treated as an obsolete and exploded error,—an error which still prevailed, indeed, in the East as one of the hereditary beliefs of Indian superstition, but which, when transplanted to Western Europe by the daring genius of Spinoza, was found to be an exotic too sickly to take root and grow amidst ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... sentence which the woman underwent was not executed. The barbarous fulfilment of such a law was, it may be hoped, already obsolete. The motives, however, upon which this law ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... as a hunting-box by one of my predecessors many years ago," observed the Count. Many hundreds of people used to assemble here in the olden days, to hunt in a style of magnificence which has now become obsolete. Open house was kept, and all comers were welcome. Intimates of the family, or those of rank, were accommodated inside, some in beds and some on the floor, while others bivouacked outside as best they could under arbours of boughs or beneath the vault of heaven. They used to hunt all day and feast ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... many laws they passed increasing the severity of the punishments inflicted on those who ate meat in secret, the people found means of setting them aside as fast as they were made. At times, indeed, they would become almost obsolete, but when they were on the point of being repealed, some national disaster or the preaching of some fanatic would reawaken the conscience of the nation, and people were imprisoned by the thousand for illicitly selling and buying ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... help you get through. You don't know him yet. Some time, perhaps, you will—two hundred and fifty pounds of soul. He'll do all he can to get you the same chance he has, because I asked him; and then he'll try to make The States look obsolete as a newspaper, wherein, of course, he'll fail. But he'll try. If he takes to you, it won't make him try less, but he'd do your stuff and his, if you fell sick. There isn't another Boylan—a great newspaper ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... be any doubt that the coming of the Loyalists hastened the advent of free institutions. It was the settlement of Upper Canada that rendered the Quebec Act of 1774 obsolete, and made necessary the Constitutional Act of 1791, which granted to the Canadas representative assemblies. The Loyalists were Tories and Imperialists; but, in the colonies from which they came, they had ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... Obsolete words and words of Scottish dialect, with a few more as to the meaning of which some readers might be uncertain, will be found explained in the Glossary ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... smiled. "I might say obsolete! But you Americans with your reputation for divorce and originality are very old-fashioned in some ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... hope. Once the government men fully understood how to run it, in which Tom played a prominent part in giving instructions, they put the Mars to a severe test. She was taken out over the ocean, and her guns trained on an obsolete battleship. Her bombs and projectiles ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... have we here? Mercy on 's, a bairn; a very pretty bairn! a boy, or a child, I wonder?" For some hundred years, editorial ingenuity has been strained to the utmost to explain why child should be thus used in opposition to boy; and nothing would do but to surmise an obsolete custom of speech which made child signify girl. The simple explanation is, that boy is a misprint for god. For this felicitous restoration we are indebted to Mr. R.G. White, of New York, who was guided to it by the corresponding passage of the novel: "The shepherd, who before ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... no longer regarded, and that marriage is now prohibited between persons having the same surname. It is stated that if a girl is not married before adolescence she is finally expelled from the caste, but this rule has probably become obsolete. The proposal for marriage comes from either the boy's or girl's party, and sometimes the bridegroom receives a small sum for his travelling expenses, while at other times a bride-price is paid. At the wedding, rice coloured red is put in the hands of the bridegroom and juari ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... of treason was to "kill the king?" Or, if that limitation was not held to be sufficiently ample, could it not have been added, it is treason to "attempt, intend, or contrive to kill the king?" We are apt to make much too large an allowance for what is considered as the vague and obsolete language of our ancestors. Logic was the element in which the scholars of what are called the dark ages were especially at home. It was at that period that the description of human geniuses, called the Schoolmen, principally flourished. The writers who ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... use, by French women, was, we learn from his work on equitation, still, a kind of pillion, on which the rider sate, diagonally, with both feet resting on a broad suspended ledge or stirrup. The pillion in this country has not yet become obsolete; being still, frequently, to be seen, on the backs of donkies and hack ponies, at watering places. During the early part of the present century, its employment continued to be general. It was fixed ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... in troubles and disorders; whilst the seniors were often so ancient that they could not mount their chargers unaided, nor, when they were mounted, could they see anything a dozen yards before them. But they had served in a certain obsolete campaign, and until Rajeshwar gave them pensions and dismissals, they claimed a right to take first part in all campaigns present and future. The commander-in-chief refused to use any captain who could not stand steady on his legs, or endure the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to himself, 'they shall have it! At least they shall be awakened to feel their need of it, their right to it. What a high destiny, to be the artist of the people! to devote one's powers of painting, not to mimicking obsolete legends, Pagan or Popish, but to representing to the working men of England the triumphs of the Past and the yet greater ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... spiritual physic," replied the spectre, "is obsolete, and the holy-water cure, in particular, has almost ceased to number any advocates, except the Rev. Dr F. G. Lee, whose books," said this candid apparition, "appear to me to indicate superstitious credulity. No, I don't know that any new discoveries have been made in this branch of therapeutics. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... condition, as "Sir" is to their brethren. This will be easily seen when it is recollected that it is a derivation from ma dame, my lady, and since our language is deficient in any equivalent term to the pretty French Mademoiselle, or the German, Fraeulein, and, as "Dear Miss" is obsolete, we must be content to utilize "Madam" on all necessary occasions. There is another form much used ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... he did in due course, before the Juge d'Instruction, he attempted to fall back on the obsolete Civis Romanus sum! He was an English citizen. He had written to the English ambassador, or rather to an old St. Gatien's man, an attache of the embassy, whom he luckily happened to know. But this great ally chanced to be out of town, and his ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... sound to spelling. Thus the modern pronunciation of cucumber (instead of 'cowcumber') gets rid of the ridiculous association with the word cow; and only a fanatical adherent of the principle 'Whatever was is right' would desire to revive the obsolete form. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... parts the now omitted line: This shall the Author choose, or that reject, Precise in style, and cautious to select; 70 Nor slight applause will candid pens afford To him who furnishes a wanting word. [xv] Then fear not, if 'tis needful, to produce Some term unknown, or obsolete in use, (As Pitt has furnished us a word or two, [5] Which Lexicographers declined to do;) So you indeed, with care,—(but be content To take this license rarely)—may invent. New words find credit in these latter days, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... chiefly grow among arable crops, as corn, &c. As these every year spring up from seeds, it is a very difficult matter for the farmer to prevent their increase, especially since the practice of fallowing land has become almost obsolete. It is a fact worthy notice, that the seeds of most of the annual weeds will lie in the ground for many years, if they happen to be place deep: so that all land is more or less impregnated with them, and a fresh supply is ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... to preach. It is also common in New England to say of a person who is licensed by the county courts to sell spirituous liquors, or to keep a public house, that he is approbated; and the term is adopted in the law of Massachusetts on this subject." The word is obsolete in England, is obsolescent at our colleges, and is very seldom heard in the other senses ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... effort to understand, for it seems to be built on sand, on a classification of things superficial, imperfect, and capricious, which would not have been accepted by learned men, and if accepted would have become obsolete in a quarter of a century. The syllable Co stands for all relations between human beings, and these relations are of eight kinds. What would a professor of social science now say to this? What would an ichthyologist say to Wilkins' definition of ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... invaders made their first large capture of war material, which included 130 guns, though most of them were said to be of an obsolete pattern, the others being without breech-blocks. Within forty-eight hours the Germans had reached Krushevatz, where 3,000 Serbian soldiers were captured, not counting 1,500 wounded ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... some quality of his body or mind, or of the place where he dwelt, so that every one should be distinguished from the other." But this statute did not effect the object proposed, and Spenser, in his "View of Ireland," mentions it as having become obsolete, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... ready and prepared, so that on the third day should occur the celebration of that regal dignity [fastigii], and the [provectio] promotion of a new king and the erection of a new kingdom or the restoration and renovation of an ancient one, now obsolete from antiquity, were expected by all with great attention;—something occurred. I do not know what; hesitation or suspicion, fancied or justified, unexpectedly affected the emperor ... and embarking on his ship in the very early morning he sailed down the river ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... in the booty. Philip V. of Spain put in his claim for the Austrian crown as the lineal descendant of the Emperor Charles V. Augustus, King of Poland, urged the right of his wife Maria, eldest daughter of Joseph. And even Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia, hunted up an obsolete claim, through the line of the second daughter ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Kate was getting hold of certain significant similes. She saw that it was past the time of walls and limits. Walled cities were no longer endurable, and walled and limited possibilities were equally obsolete. If the departure of the "captains and the kings" was at hand, if the new forces of democracy had routed them, if liberty for all men was now an ethic need of civilization, so political recognition was necessary for ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... the twelfth part of the visible surface of the Sun or Moon; but before the word went out of use, it came to be applied to twelfths of the visible diameter of the disc of the Sun or Moon, which was much more convenient. However, the word is now almost obsolete in both senses, and partial eclipses, alike of the Sun and of the Moon, are defined in decimal parts of the diameter of the luminary—tenths or hundredths according to the amount of precision which is aimed at. Where an eclipse of the Moon is described as being of more ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... significance of the head, by allowing it to be sufficient if the head alone were buried in holy ground. In Art it is naively indicated by exaggerated size of the head and of the eyes,—a very common trait of the earlier times, and not quite obsolete at the time of the Pisani. This clumsy expedient is relinquished, but the need it indicated continued, without the possibility of finding any complete satisfaction in Sculpture, instead of the intensity and directness that Art now insists upon, Sculpture can give only extension ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... dear!" she said to me afterwards. "Such manners! such a voice! quite one of the old school—evidently well-bred, and with that respect for good blood which in these days, I regret to say, is fast becoming obsolete. Kate, I like ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... domain, available in source code form, implemented on most commonly-available computers, and frozen by their authors so that, unlike many commercial products, the syntax is unlikely to change in the future and obsolete current texts. ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... this had been a body of officers, and of men-of-war seamen, strong in professional sentiment, and admirably qualified in the main for the duties of a calling which in many of its leading characteristics was rapidly becoming obsolete. There was the spirit of youth, but the body of age. As a class, officers and men were well up in the use of such instruments as the country gave them; but the profession did not wield the corporate influence necessary to extort better instruments, and impotence ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... of New England might be found many an old English provincial phrase, long since obsolete in the parent country; with some quaint relics of the roundheads; while Virginia cherishes peculiarities characteristic of the days of Elizabeth and Sir ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... relatives by the dimness of the spots upon his breast. The wood thrush has very clear, distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the hermit, the spots run more into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish white; in the veery, the marks are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull yellowish appearance. To get a good view of him you have only to sit down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... "Arbitration Commission" then sitting at Brunswick, and European affairs in general. Conversation which is carefully preserved for us in the Brigadier's Despatch of the morrow. It never was intrinsically of much moment; and is now fallen very obsolete, and altogether of none: but as a glance at first-hand into the dim old thoughts of Friedrich Wilhelm, the reader ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... idea of the German nobility half a century ago. The debauch of last night was the usual carouse which crowned the exploits of each day when we were a boy. The revolution has rendered all these customs obsolete. Would that it had not sent some other ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... presbyters who had sworn to refuse the office. Gregory's remonstrance against this breach of faith only drew upon him the hatred of the Eastern bishops. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were glad to join any attack on a nominee of Meletius, and found an obsolete Nicene canon to invalidate his translation from Sasima to Constantinople. Both parties were thus agreed for evil. Gregory cared not to dispute with them, but gave up his beloved Anastasia, and retired to end his days at Nazianzus. The council ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... any rate by the Church of England, in a texture of obsolete ideas about the nature of the physical universe and the behaviour of physical things which science has ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... even studied old volumes of Addison's Spectator; but after a time she gave up this course of study, for she found it so difficult to mold her English to Addison's that she came to the comfortable conclusion that Addison was decidedly obsolete, and that if she wished to do full justice to "The River" she must trust to ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... once," Gibson said. "The Bees set up this colony as a control unit to study the species they were invading, and they had to give their specimens a normal—if obsolete—background in order to determine their capabilities. The fact that their experiment didn't tell them what they wanted to know may have had a direct bearing on their decision to ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... trite; and never obsolete. It is as good doctrine to-day as it was in poor Richard's time. Of that I ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... gave this Babel of savage sounds a wrench towards their own language. Such a mixture necessarily required ages to bring it to some standard: and, consequently, whatever compositions were formed during its progress, were sure of growing obsolete. However, the authors of those days were not likely to make these obvious reflections; and indeed seem to have aimed at no one perfection. From the Conquest to the reign of Henry the Eighth it is difficult to discover any one beauty ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... mightiest might, and the rightest right in the universe! This is—Niagara—the Atlantic—the power of the stars—and the strength of the tides. It is all the winds of the world, and all the fires of the centre. You surely cannot be serious in asking it to take, in exchange, some obsolete ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Fowls, said he, who build on their own Merit, are extremely impertinent. The Colonel now in Question is one of your Fowls who might by his Principles have made a Fortune, had he lived Two or Three Hundred Years ago; but they are now obsolete, and he starves by tenaciously practising his musty Morals. Why, he'll have the Impudence to be always speaking Truth; and tho' he has been thrust out of the Palace for this Vice more than once, he is not to ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... of Austria, a method of dividing the electric current, by the insertion of a polariser in a secondary circuit connected with each lamp, a method, it need not be said to electricians, now utterly obsolete. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... as well, more and more, the importance of numbering other things, until men, women and children have come to be embedded in a medley of steam-engines, pigs, newspapers, schools, churches and bolts of calico. For twenty centuries this taking of stock by governments had been an obsolete practice, until revived by the framers of the American Constitution and made a vital part of that instrument. The right of the most—and not of the richest, the best, the bravest, the cleverest, or the oldest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... which quotations from Anglo-Saxon texts are to be found. Avast mass of valuable information as to the etymology, meaning and occurrence of Old English words is contained in that Dictionary, but is to a very large extent overlooked because it is to be found under the head of words which are now obsolete, so that unless one happens to know what was the last form which they had in Middle English, one does not know how to get at it. This information will be made readily available by the references in the present work, which will form a practically complete ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... measly pork: in Scotch, a leper is called a mesel; and, among the Swedes, the word for measles is one nearly similar in sound, maess-ling. The French academy, however, have refused to admit meselle to the honor of a place in their language, because it was obsolete or vulgar in the time of Louis XIIIth. The word is expressive, and no better one has supplied its place; and we may suppose that it was introduced by the Norman conquerors, and that it properly belongs ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... changes are to be found scattered here and there through the book, some of them for the better, some, perhaps, for the worse. The prevailing purpose seems to have been to expunge all obsolete words and phrases while dealing tenderly with obsolescent ones. In this course, however, the revisers were by no means always ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... up in local folk-lore, and had mastered the history of Whitby and St. Hilda, and Sylvia Robson; and of the old obsolete whaling-trade, in which she took a passionate interest; and fixed poor little Chips's mind with a passion for the Polar regions (he is now on the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... was objected, that to abrogate our whole system would be a bold measure, and probably far beyond the views of the legislature; that they had been in the practice of revising, from time to time, the laws of the colony, omitting the expired, the repealed, and the obsolete, amending only those retained, and probably meant we should now do the same, only including the British statutes as well as our own: that to compose a new Institute, like those of Justinian and Bracton, or that of Blackstone, which was the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... that the dead may still retain—and compel, not that which ought properly to be called the Soul, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather a phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth to make itself apparent to our senses—is a very ancient though obsolete theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power to be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of the 'Curiosities of Literature' cites as credible: A flower perishes; ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... he was threshing some of this corn with a flail. I heard of it with astonishment. "A flail?" "Yes," he said; "my old dad put me to it when I was seventeen, so I had to learn." He seemed to think little of it. But to me threshing by hand was so obsolete and antiquated a thing as to be a novelty; nor yet to me only, for a friend to whom I mentioned the matter laughed, and asked if I had come across any ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... our day, the love and practice of truth have grown obsolete; dramatic pieces and works of fiction, indeed all kinds of literature, especially biography, and even history, combine to outrage truth with impunity; no compunction is felt in transforming great characters into monsters, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... dipping first into this work and then into that, I light upon a very curious and interesting edition of Froissart—an edition full of quaint engravings, and printed in the obsolete spelling of two hundred years ago. The book is both a treasure and a bargain, being marked up at five and twenty francs. Only those who haunt book-stalls and luxuriate in old editions can appreciate the satisfaction with which ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... thought I might as well fill it out and make a book of it. It is the last thing of the kind I ever expect to do. In it I condense my recollections of a bygone era, that in which I was brought up, the ways and manners of which are now as nearly obsolete as the Old England of ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... of corruption. This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out to both Houses; while an idle and inoperative Act of Parliament, estimating the dignity of the Crown at 800,000 pounds, and confining it to that sum, adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of libraries without any sort of advantage to ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... he who would fail must avoid simplicity like a sunken reef, and must earnestly seek either the commonplace or the bizarre, the slipshod or the affected, the newfangled or the obsolete, the flippant or the sepulchral. I need not specially recommend you to write in "Wardour-street English," the sham archaic, a lingo never spoken by mortal man, and composed of patches borrowed from authors between Piers Plowman and Gabriel Harvey. A few literal translations of Icelandic ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... have been an ancient practice for an Indian to avoid eating or sitting down in the presence of the father-in-law. We received no account of the origin of this custom, and it is now almost obsolete amongst the Cumberland House Crees, though still partially observed ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... catalogues! There are some old ones which do not now correspond to the present classification of documents, and which cannot be used without reference-tables; there are new ones which are equally based on obsolete systems, too detailed or too summary; some are printed, others in manuscript, on registers or slips; some are carefully executed and clear, many are scamped, inadequate, and provisional. Taking printed catalogues alone, it requires a whole apprenticeship ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just the one central necessary word obsolete and changed into a mysterious proper name? The world is full of proper names which have lost their meaning—Athene, Achilles, Artemis, and so on but we need proof that poetical sayings, or riddles, survive and are intelligible ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... tone should not be built up of a lot of meaningless strokes. Each line ought, sensibly and directly, to contribute to the ultimate result. The old mechanical process of constructing tones by cross-hatching is now almost obsolete. It is still employed by modern pen draughtsmen, but it is only one of many resources, and is used with nice discrimination. At times a cross-hatch is very desirable and very effective,—as, for example, in affording a subdued background for figures ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... the consul demanded their dispersion, on which he was cut down by a zealous Gracchian. On this, a tumult arose. Gracchus in vain sought to be heard, and even interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking, which was against an obsolete law. This offense furnished a pretense for the Senate and the citizens to arm. Gracchus retired to the temple of Castor, and passed the night, while the capitol was filled with armed men. The next day, he fled beyond the Tiber, but the Senate placed a price upon his head, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... century is the culmination of the Protestant movement in its decisive proclamation by Luther. For nearly three hundred years already the power of the Church had been declining, and its function as a civilizing agency had been growing more and more obsolete. The first great blow at its supremacy had been directed with partial success in the thirteenth century by the Emperor Frederick II. Coincident with this attack from without, we find a reformation begun ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... lines; steady improvement is taking place with the recent admission of private and private-public investors, but demand for communication services is also growing rapidly domestic: local service is provided by microwave radio relay and coaxial cable, with open wire and obsolete electromechanical and manual switchboard systems still in use in rural areas; starting in the 1980s, a substantial amount of digital switch gear has been introduced for local and long-distance service; long-distance traffic is carried mostly by coaxial cable and low-capacity microwave ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... earnest of them, to make themselves of use to him on the ground of a common manhood, if any means of doing good are pointed out to them; and that it is in any wise degrading to "associate with low fellows," is an opinion utterly obsolete, save perhaps among a few sons of squireens in remote provinces, or of parvenus who cannot afford to recognize the class from whence they themselves have risen. In the army, thanks to the purifying effect of the Crimean and Indian wars, the same altered tone is patent. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... always be learned by people who want to learn them; and people will always want to learn them as long as they are of any importance in life: indeed the want will survive their importance: superstition is nowhere stronger than in the field of obsolete acquirements. And they will never be learnt fruitfully by people who do not want to learn them either for their own sake or for use in necessary work. There is no harder schoolmaster than experience; ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... civilized world. New Holland seems to be the only uncivilized part of this watery ball, but New Holland holds out no temptations to the missionary; the inhabitants are a little too cannibally given, and martyrdom is altogether obsolete; besides, it is doubted by our soundest theologians whether Christianity was ever intended for a people ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Telephone system: domestic: obsolete wire system; no longer provides a telephone for every village; in 1992, following the fall of the communist government, peasants cut the wire to about 1,000 villages and used it to build fences international: inadequate; international traffic carried by microwave ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to Sir E.E. COOPER, is much better than it used to be. Fish porters invariably say "Excuse me" before throwing a length of obsolete eel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... terrific gulfs a-top of pianos; while accompanying him in his vertiginous flight were other pianos, square, upright and grand; pianos of sinister and menacing expression; pianos with cruel grinning teeth; pianos of obsolete and anonymous shapes; pianos that leered at him, sneered at him with screaming dissonances. The din was infernal, the clangor terrific; and as the pianist, hemmed in and riding this whirlwind of splintered sounding-boards, jangling ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... exactly what degree of precision he imagined it possible to attain in discerning them, or to what extent their names were merely convenient handles for certain types which he had chosen aesthetically. To us to-day this classification is merely a trace of an obsolete pedantry, which it would be a vain curiosity to attempt to follow with the object of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore |
