"Ordinary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their beloved. Not more than eighteen miles of shadowy woods, of lawns, and sylvan glades, divided hearts that would either have encountered death, or many deaths, for the other. These were regions of natural peace and tranquillity, that in any ordinary times should have been peopled by no worse inhabitants than the timid hare scudding homewards to its form, or the wild deer sweeping by with thunder to their distant lairs. But now from every glen or thicket armed marauders might be ready ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... generally, who are quietly operating, while prices are so abnormally low, to obtain such complete control of our valuable agricultural lands, as will enable them in the near future, by a concert of action, to raise prices to such a pitch, that practically they would then be beyond the reach of the ordinary farmer. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... daily derive from it. The Greek legend that the twang of Diana's bow suggested to Apollo the invention of the lyre, was not a mere fancy; for the first stringed instrument of which we have any trace in ancient sculpture differed from an ordinary bow only in having more than one string. A two-stringed bow was, perhaps, the first step towards the grand piano of to-day. Additional strings involved the strengthening of the bow that held them; and, accordingly, we find the Egyptian harps, discovered in the catacombs by Wilkinson, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... more fault with my husband, we condoled with each other and decided that our friend was rather hypercritical and that we were as nearly perfect as mortals need be for the wear and tear of ordinary life. Being both endowed with a good degree of self-esteem, neither the praise nor the blame of mankind was overpowering to either of us. As the voyage lasted eighteen days—for we were on a sailing vessel—we had time to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... prospective mothers in our dispensary districts might have some of the care and the kind treatment which is bestowed upon an ordinary prospective mother horse, which at least enjoys a vacation from heavy labor, and whose food is eaten with calm nerves and in the quietness of a clean stall. While the state of the mother's mind does not materially influence the child; nevertheless, the ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... to offend against those particular laws which constitute the criminal code belongs to a peculiar or atavistic type, that he is a man set apart from the rest of his fellow-men by mental or physical peculiarities. That comforting theory of the Lombroso school has been exploded, and the ordinary inmates of our prisons shown to be only in a very slight degree below the average in mental and physical fitness of the normal man, a difference easily explained by the environment and conditions in which the ordinary criminal ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... him and 'twas a notable lie, notably spoke. Martino is not like ordinary men and so it is I do most truly love him—yes—for always. So do I take him for mine now, so shall lie ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the stand was a short one. The Prince rode by in the merest canter. The mare made one wild plunge which would have unseated any ordinary person, but her rider never even moved in ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... In ordinary life it would be a distinct advantage for a man to become possessed of a spell which rendered him immune from death, pain or restraint, enabled him to pass through walls and floors and generally freed ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... in onion and grease. Pour mixture of vinegar and sugar on cabbage. Season with salt and pepper to taste and mix lightly. Quarter 1 large pared apple and place on top of cabbage. Cook 4 min. When using an ordinary pot the cooking time is 20 minutes. This ...
— Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking • Unknown
... of a cluster is no proof of excessive distance. It is unlikely that the faintest component of the cluster is farther off than the brightest (a seventh-magnitude star) in the proportion of more than about 20 to 19, while the ordinary estimate of star magnitudes, applied by Herschel, gave a proportion of 20 or 30 to 1 at least. I can no more believe that the components of this cluster are stars greatly varying in distance, but accidentally seen in nearly the same direction, (or that they form an enormously long ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... piculs of red rice, grown in the imperial grounds; fifty bushels of greenish, glutinous rice; fifty bushels of white glutinous rice; fifty bushels of pounded non-glutinous rice; fifty bushels of various kinds of corn and millet; a thousand piculs of ordinary common rice. Exclusive of a cartload of every sort of vegetables, and irrespective of two thousand five hundred taels, derived from the sale of corn and millet and every kind of domestic animals, your servant respectfully presents, for your honour's delectation, two pair ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Houston, and last but not least, Colonel "Shanghai" Pierce. The latter was possibly the most widely known cowman between the Rio Grande and the British possessions. He stood six feet four in his stockings, was gaunt and raw-boned, and the possessor of a voice which, even in ordinary conversation, could be ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... over his preternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the contrary, all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of picturesque disposition, and artistically contrasted light and shade, were made available, in order to set the apparent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to ordinary facts. In the case of the Veiled Lady, moreover, the interest of the spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of her identity, and an absurd rumor (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, and at one time very prevalent) ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... work of Achilles Tatius, on the contrary, (the plot of which is laid at a later period of time than that of its predecessor,) the characters are taken, without exception, from the class of Grecian citizens, who are represented in the ordinary routine of polished social existence, amidst their gardens of villas, and occupied by their banquets and processions, and the business of their courts of law. There are no unexpected revelations, no talismanic rings, no mysterious secret affecting the fortunes of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... was nervous and tearful, and would have made a scene, no doubt, but for Fred's admirable tact. He addressed her, as he had done the Laird, just as if they were ordinary acquaintances meeting in the most matter-of-fact, every-day kind of manner. Wrath and sentiment alike collapsed before such commonplace salutations, and both Mr. Adiesen and his sister felt they would only make themselves ridiculous ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... commissary was not discalced, although he must be so by virtue of a bull and express privilege, which he carries in order to visit this province, or to exercise an act of jurisdiction. The authorization borne by him was very extraordinary and had a great excess of the ordinary warrants. There was added a very forcible argument of administration, which is that twenty or more of the leading friars had been sworn witnesses in the present contention, while the commissary had given testimony contrary to theirs, so that no good administration ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... yourself to correct other people in matter or manner, unless it should be absolutely necessary to protect some one else. Under all ordinary circumstances do not betray a confidential communication made you by a friend. Set the seal of the confessional upon it. If it should be sorrowful in its nature, do not mention it even to the friend who has confided it to your keeping unless ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... slip through his fingers with so much reluctance. He saw that the captain's companion was not the miller, while the disguise was too complete to enable him to distinguish the person or face. In that day, the different classes of society were strongly distinguished from each other, by their ordinary attire; and, accustomed to see major Willoughby only in the dress that belonged to his station, he would not be likely to recognise him in his present guise, had he even known of or suspected his visit. As it was, he was completely at fault; satisfied it was not his ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Thomas Carlyle. His life until that time had been a good deal more than the life of an ordinary country-man. Many persons represent him as a peasant; but he was descended from the ancient lords of a Scottish manor. There was something in his eye, and in the dominance of his nature, that made his lordly ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... battle continued with great fury. At last Captain Gardner, one of the English commanders, "judging that the enemy (if he checkt them not) would be in with (the) merchant ships riding in James river ... tacked alone upon them with Extra ordinary courage, and for at least one houre fought them all.... But, having all his greate maste and his fore topmast desperately wounded, and most of his rigging shot", he was at last forced to retire. "With as much ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... kept the public fully enlightened regarding every incident worth regarding along the route, almost as soon as it happened. He was enabled to do this by means of a portable telegraphic machine of new and most ingenious construction. Though its motive power was electricity, it could dispense with the ordinary instruments and even with wires altogether, yet it managed to transmit messages to most parts of the world with an accuracy that, considering how seldom it failed, is almost miraculous. The principle actuating it, though guessed ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... misrepresenting the people with respect to those measures which did not require popular ratification. The tendency was to diminish the power of the legislature by including in the constitution itself much that might have taken the form of ordinary statutory legislation, as well as by requiring that some of the more important acts passed by the legislature should receive the direct assent of the voters. This merely gave to the people a partial negative. It enabled them ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... Dolly Pettingill, were two eight year-olds. Dolly stuttered badly, but was gradually getting over it, for no one was allowed to mock him and Mr. Bhaer tried to cure it, by making him talk slowly. Dolly was a good little lad, quite uninteresting and ordinary, but he flourished here, and went through his daily duties and pleasures with ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... led him to speak of them as his Cottonian library; or, nearer to us, in that of Sir Edward Sullivan, who devotes himself to the finishing stages of any volumes belonging to friends or otherwise, when the article has been "forwarded" in an ordinary workshop. Sir Edward tools, gilds, decorates, and letters, and subscribes or inscribes himself E. S. Aurifex. Specimens of his handicraft occur fairly often in the market; as to their merit, opinions differ. But after all, there is a soupcon of gratification in having ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... reasons for feeling secure, the chief officer of the Condor paces her decks with a brow clouded, as the heavens over his head; while the glance of his eye betrays anxiety of no ordinary kind. It cannot be from any apprehension about the weather. He does not regard the sky, nor the sea, nor the sails. On the contrary, he moves about, not with bold, manlike step, as one having command of a vessel, but stealthily, now and then stopping and standing in crouched attitude, within the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... stepped across to where the portrait hung. There was nothing very startling about the picture. It showed just a very ordinary face with straight closed lips, of a man seated in an embossed chair, with the familiar white cap, cassock, and embroidered stole ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... state of our knowledge, but in case their presence is determined or suspected in connection with the summer sores noted later, tartar emetic is recommended. At least one of these worms has an intermediate stage in the ordinary housefly, the fly becoming infested while it is a larva developing in horse manure. Obviously, therefore, any measures looking toward the eradication of the fly or the proper disposal of manure will aid in the control and eradication of this worm. The United States Bureau of Entomology ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... entered the block house and with one grim nod to me proceeded with his work among the sick. He seemed under no apprehension, though he must have known that his life, among these treacherous demons, depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his patients as if he were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet English family. His manner, I suppose, reacted on the men, for they behaved to him as if nothing had occurred, as if he were still ship's doctor and they still faithful hands ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inquiries. I found indeed a derangement of currency and a stagnation of business. But did I find, think you, that Christians were destitute of the ordinary comforts of life? that they were in a distressing emergency for food and clothing? that their retrenchments had been made first in personal expenditures, and last in efforts to save souls? Alas! it was evident that the principal ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... characters introduced are very clearly and well drawn; one is a quite unusual type and reveals a good deal of power in the author. It is a live story of more than ordinary ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... external soreness from head to foot, that I almost dreaded to walk or stir, and when I did, it was as slow as my feet could move; after continuing so for some days, I was much urged to dine with Lord MOUNTGARRET, on St. Patrick's day; I did so, and by drinking a little more than ordinary, set nature to work, who, without any other Doctor, did the business, by two or three nights' copious sweats. I would not have mentioned this circumstance, but it may be the mal du pais, and ought to be mentioned for the ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... Delaware, the Catholics of Maryland, the Presbyterians of the upper counties of Virginia and of the Carolinas, and the Huguenots, brought with them the exaggeration of their peculiar sects, it was an exaggeration that tended to correct most of their ordinary practices. Still the English Provinces were not permitted, altogether, to escape from the moral dependency that seems nearly inseparable from colonial government, or to be entirely exempt from the wide contamination ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... accomplishment of this object, as African slavery in the Southern States. They have talked about negro slavery—negro oppression, and the negroe's woes, until they have really induced some to believe that they are persons of more than ordinary benevolence—that they are really humane, generous and just. But it is mere affectation—it is all hypocrisy. Facts prove it. England boasts of her philanthropy—talks about American oppression, and at the same time makes no effort to elevate her own miserable tenantry, whose ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... honest eyes, and a cheery, gracious manner such as is apt to captivate discerning men. She was one of those wholesome spirits, earnest and refined, yet prone to laughter, which do not remain long unmated in the ordinary course of human experience. But her conscience did not permit her to dwell on this advantage to the detriment of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... becoming, or express it, or even perceive it, we hardly do anything else than set going a kind of cinematograph inside us. We may therefore sum up what we have been saying in the conclusion that the mechanism of our ordinary knowledge is ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... suffering soul covers its pains with subtle disguises; yet even when we do not know them, we can divine them. We are certain, for example, that Watteau's gay pictured visions were the projection—and confession—of his own disappointed dreams. The great advantage of art over ordinary expression, in this respect, is its universality. Art is the confessional of the race. The artist provides a medium through which all men can confess themselves and heal their souls. In making the artist's ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be, in the first rays of the sun which gilded the dew-drops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of ordinary experience. The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of the barren city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot of lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It would serve, he said to himself, as ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Louis' absence from the house had lasted an intolerable age, but the doctor had followed closely on the messenger, and already the symptoms had become a little less acute. The doctor had diagnosed with rapidity. Supervening upon her ordinary cardiac attack after supper, Mrs. Maldon had had, in the night, an embolus in one artery of the brain. The way in which the doctor announced the fact showed to Rachel that nothing could easily have been more serious. And yet the mere naming of the affliction eased her, although ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Gurû Gorakhnâth—The ordinary deux ex machinâ of modern folk-tales. He is now supposed to be the reliever of all troubles, and possessed of most miraculous powers, especially over snakes. In life he seems to have been the Brâhmanical opponent of the mediæval reformers of the fifteenth century ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... where the Chateau des Anglais is to be seen, are the remains of an entrenched camp, upon the origin of which it is almost idle to speculate. In the same neighbourhood is a cavern situated high up in the face of a perpendicular rock. It is inaccessible by ordinary means; but a beam fixed at the entrance, and worn into a deep groove by a rope, shows that it was used as a refuge. A tradition says that Waifre hid ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... that my work may prove intelligible, temperate and satisfactory, and also of some service to ordinary pianists. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... after it was swept away,—yet now at last it had grossly failed to keep alive among the common people true devotion, or to give access to the sources at which the flame might have been rekindled; it had failed to provide educated men for its ordinary cures, to raise the masses from the rudeness and ignorance in which they were still involved, and even to maintain that hearty sympathy with them and that kindly interest in their temporal welfare which its best men in its earlier days had shown. It continued to have ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... sip and another, and thoughtfully cropping the heads of the forced asparagus when he was tired of the venison. For a long time he and Rex said little to each other at their meals, and the physician was inclined to suppose that his companion was a man of merely ordinary intelligence. One day, however, as Greif grew no better, Rex determined to startle the good man, by ascertaining what he knew. In order to lead the conversation he threw out a careless remark about an ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... agitation which was raging in his breast, he took up the rake, smoothed the ground, so as to leave it on his retiring in the same state as he had found it, and, quite abashed and rueful, walked back to the door, affecting the unconcerned air of an ordinary visitor ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... noses and propitious names; but his son's nose was crushed, and his name, which should have been Trismegistus ("the most propitious"), was changed in christening to Tristram ("the most unlucky"). If much learning can make man mad, Walter Shandy was certainly mad in all the affairs of ordinary life. His wife was a blank sheet, and he himself a sheet so written on and crossed and rewritten that no one could decipher the manuscript.—L. Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... flowery land of China. This statement, on the part of the writer to whom we refer, is altogether untenable. Moreover, it is an error so glaring as to cast, in the estimation of all careful readers of his work, no ordinary degree of discredit upon many of his most positive assertions. The person, whose idol is so rashly described as being that of Marco Polo, was named Shien-Tchu. He was a native of one of the northern provinces of India, and, for his zeal as an apostle ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent—those sensations which soften, and allure, and vulgarise—were unknown to him; no domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... would be no championship game the coming Saturday for Scranton High the town settled back into its ordinary condition, so far as the young people went. There were afternoons for practice, of course, when the full team was expected to be on deck, and renew their acquaintance with the many intricacies of the game as taught by ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... confining the radiators to the basement, to which cold air from outside is constantly admitted in such a way that it circulates over the radiators and becomes strongly heated. This warm fresh air then passes through ordinary flues ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... subject of experiment was a healthy young man whose stomach was doing a slight excess of work, the amount of combined chlorin being nearly fifty per cent. above normal, although the amount of free hydrochloric acid was normal in quantity. Four ounces of claret with the ordinary test meal reduced the free hydrochloric acid from 28 milligrams per 100 c. c. of stomach fluid to zero, and the combined chlorin from .270 to .125. In the same case the administration of two ounces of brandy with the ordinary test meal reduced ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... and simple, but that she had not been able to concur with them, thinking that it would be better to open an industrial school. Douglass was opposed both to the establishment of such a college as was suggested, and to that of an ordinary industrial school where pupils should merely "earn the means of obtaining an education in books." He desired what we now call the vocational school, "a series of workshops where colored men could learn some of the handicrafts, learn to work in iron, wood, and leather, ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... be expected that a ryot can grow indigo at a loss to himself, or at a lower rate of profit than that which the cultivation of his other ordinary crops would give him, without at least some compensating advantages. With all his poverty and supposed stupidity, he is keenly alive to his own interests, quite able to hold his own in matters affecting his pocket. I have no hesitation in saying that the steady efforts which have been ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... were ordinary affairs, built of driftwood. But as they rounded a corner of rock, they were confronted by a very different scene. Beyond them stretched the broad, low roof of what appeared to be a vast greenhouse. And indeed that was exactly what it was. That another such greenhouse did not exist anywhere in the ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... celebrated soldiers that he owns are all accomplished in fight. Stationed on the side of the Pandavas and devoted to what is agreeable and beneficial to them, that hero will, for the sake of his sister's sons achieve extra-ordinary feats. That prince of Rakshasas (Ghatotkacha), O king, born of Bhima and Hidimva, and endued with ample powers of illusion, is, in my judgment, a leader of the leaders of car-divisions. Fond of battle, and endued with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... found in it no particular justification for any special issue, and, as a fact, the probability is the appearance of this edition was merely a device to increase circulation, suggested mainly by the fact that the ordinary issue had been delayed by the East Anglian telegraphic breakdown. Regarding this, I found the following item ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... before, but perhaps in a manner too lengthy, too exact, too pedantic to be popular. The aim has been to get in everything. Everything great or small has been narrated, and so the real points of value have been lost in the multiplicity of lesser facts, about which no ordinary reader cares or needs to care. After all, what we want to know and remember are the Great Events, the ones which have really changed and influenced humanity. How many of us do really know about them? ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... bunch of keys from his pocket, singled out by the candle- light the key he wanted, and then, with a candle in his hand, went to a bureau or escritoire, unlocked it, touched the spring of a little secret drawer, and took from it an ordinary ring-case made for a single ring. With this in his hand, he returned to his chair. As he held it up for the young man to ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... time, were very differently arranged to what they are now, when every attention is paid to the comfort and convenience of the patients. At that time, even in the best regulated, were sights, smells, and sounds, trying to the sensibilities even of ordinary persons, but especially so to those of a young lady brought up in the quiet and retirement of a rural village; but Mary Gerrard, who now entered the Portsmouth hospital, escorted by Devereux, had at that moment but one feeling, one thought—an earnest desire to reach the bedside of her brave ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... the ordinary duties of life were performed only at great risk. But the determination in the hearts of the hardy people to defend their new homes in the wonderful region strengthened with every ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... most successful translator is the one who fails least: unlike Horace, when he quits the local and the temporary, he generally quits also the language of persiflage, and abandons himself unrestrainedly to feeling. Persiflage, I suppose, even in ordinary life, is much less easy to practise with perfect success than a graver and less artificial mode of speaking, though, perhaps for that very reason, it is apt to be more sought after: the persiflage of a writer of another nation and of a past age ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... was an ordinary villager, a sister of charity in a coarse style, who had entered the service of God as one enters any other service. She was a nun as other women are cooks. This type is not so very rare. The monastic orders gladly ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... he is more likely, as you call it, than any other young man," Maria returned, pitilessly. "I should call him a very ordinary young man." ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... absorption in ordinary reform movements is general in the international movement outside of Great Britain. Eugene V. Debs, three times presidential candidate of the American Socialist Party, is as totally opposed to "reformism" as are any of the Europeans. "The revolutionary character of our party and of our ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... I began to hope that pride was glutted with persecution, when Prospero desired that I would give the servant leave to adjust the cover of my chair, which was slipt a little aside, to shew the damask; he informed me that he had bespoke ordinary chairs for common use, but had been disappointed by his tradesman. I put the chair aside with my foot, and drew another so hastily, that I was entreated not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... to this portion of his dress. A huge cloak strapped over the saddle, completes our portrait, which, at the time of which we write, was that of most travellers along our southern frontiers. We must not omit to state that a cap of fur, rather than a fashionable beaver, was also the ordinary covering of the head—that of our traveller was of a finely-dressed fur, very far superior to the common fox skin cap worn by the plain backwoodsmen. It declared, somewhat for the superior social condition of the wearer, even if his general air and carriage ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Convention assembled without the sanction of an enabling act, and was intrusted to George A. Smith and John Taylor, two of the Twelve Apostles of the Church, for presentation to Congress. These men, both of them of more than ordinary ability, helped to present the Mormon side of the question to the country through the newspapers, during the winter of 1856-7. The essence of their vindication was, that the character of some of the Federal officers who had been sent to Utah was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... told her. It was the story of her life—a simple tale of ordinary things, such as wring the quiet hearts and train the unnoticed saints of this world. In her first youth, when Charles Harden was for a time doing some divinity lecturing in his Oxford college, Mary had gone ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... again and looked into the room. He was leaning back in his chair; his plaything was on the floor, and he was looking vacantly at the light that came in through the window. I found Mrs. Tenbruggen at the other end of the room, in the act of ringing the bell. Nothing in the least out of the ordinary way seemed to have happened. When the attendant had answered the bell, we left the room together. Mr. Gracedieu ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... ponder. He did not waste much time in reflection. Springing to his feet he vanished down one of the dark recesses of the mountain-side and was gone about an hour. When he returned he picked up an armful of the ivory—a load that would have staggered three ordinary men—and, hefting it easily in his arms, vanished with it into the dark shadows. For two hours he worked steadily and at the close of that period there was not enough ivory left about the cache to make a watch-charm of. Old Sikaso had found a new hiding place for the stuff the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 'if we meet we must do so as ordinary acquaintances—for Mabel's sake. But there are no appearances to keep up here. Can't you see I want to be left to myself?' he asked, with a sudden burst of ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... me to count them," answered Peter, carelessly, "considering I only saw some of their ships; but there are probably some five thousand in all, more or less; but they are desperate fellows, and equal to twice the number of ordinary mortals." ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... The ordinary cloth "binding" of the trade, is better described as casing. The methods being different, it is convenient to distinguish between casing and binding. In binding, the slips are firmly attached to the boards before covering; in casing, the boards are covered separately, and afterwards glued ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... has been collected hitherto, has entered into this royal treasury, and has never been reckoned with the situado. The same will have to be done with this two per cent, for it is all needed for the ordinary support, unless that your Majesty should be better ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... faintness that came creeping over her at sight of the bandaged faces, ghastly under the brown, of the torn flesh and nerveless limbs. Gradually, however, she began to gain strength. The rough brown hand moved so easily, so lightly; it laid hold of those terrible bandages as if they were mere ordinary bits of linen. Surely now, she, Rita, could do that too. As Dolores took a cloth from her husband's head, the girl's hand was outstretched, took it quietly, and handed a fresh one to the nurse. The cloth she took was covered with red stains. For a moment Rita's ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... arose, desperation in his eyes, and moved toward the door. A few days before that miserable night he had been one of the leaders in the statecraft of the world. Now he was being marched to a prison like any ordinary criminal. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... inevitable. If I had my way these maneuvers would take place in a score of different parts of the country every year. It isn't asking much to ask the militia to turn out for one week of the fifty-two, and a week of this sort of thing is worth a year of ordinary drill and theory work in armories. I don't mean that the drill isn't useful; it is. But it isn't everything, as we've seemed inclined to think. This sort of work, and constant practice at the ranges is what makes soldiers. These fellows, if they ever go to a real war, won't ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... proportion as the nature and composition of the grist is varied with a greater or less proportion of pale malt. To convert old hock into brown stout, it will take three pounds of essentia bina of middling or ordinary kind, and but two pounds of the best made from Muscovado raw sugar as directed, it should weigh ten pounds to the gallon. The essentia bina should be mixed with some finings, and roused into the tun soon after the yesty head gathers pretty strong, in order ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... which there was always a supply at hand, were used. The coal consumption averaged one hundred pounds a day, approximately, this being reduced at a later date to seventy-five pounds by employing a special damper for the chimney. The damper designed for ordinary climates allowed too much draught to be sucked through during the high ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... letters, and the arts, it was society, not the world, which made the sphere and end of his existence. Yet was he no vulgar and commonplace epicurean: he lived for enjoyment; but that enjoyment was mainly formed from elements wearisome to more ordinary natures. Reverie, contemplation, loneliness, were at times dearer to him than the softer and more Aristippean delights. His energies were called forth in society, but he was scarcely social. Trained from his early ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sure I never could understand it all," sighed Mrs. Davidson. "Why don't they have just plain soldiers and captains, and put the captains in a different color of uniform? Then ordinary people could comprehend something about the Army. But in describing that young soldier's uniform, I forgot something, Mr. Prescott. That young soldier, or officer, or whatever he was, beside the two yellow V's, had a white stripe near the hem of ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... mass of brickwork, rather higher than an ordinary table. Several holes, a few inches deep, were scattered about over this. In some of these small charcoal fires were burning, and pots were placed over them. There were small openings from the front, leading to these tiny fireplaces; and a Spanish girl was ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... rejoined Socrates, "does it not strike even you, Meletus, as wonderful when in all ordinary concerns the best people should obtain, I do not say only an equal share, but an exclusive preference; but in my case, simply because I am selected by certain people as an adept in respect of the greatest treasure men possess—education, I am on that account to be prosecuted ...
— The Apology • Xenophon
... Georgia presbytery, in 1834, speaking of the slave's allowance of food, says:—"The quantity allowed by custom is a peck of corn a week." The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser of May 30, 1788, says, "a single peck of corn a week, or the like measure of rice, is the ordinary quantity of provision for a hard-working slave; to which a small quantity of meat is occasionally, though ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... there is between a true Christian and a natural man, even taking him in with all his common endowments and excellencies, the one is a man, the other a beast, the one is after the flesh, the other is after the Spirit. It is the ordinary compellation of the Holy Ghost, "Man being in honour, and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish," Psal. xlix. 20, and xciv. 8, "Understand, ye brutish among the people," &c., and Psal xcii. 6, "The brutish man understands not this," and Eccles. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... each other, and laughed. In truth, neither looked particularly representative of the rank and aristocracy of their native land. The back blocks are very effectual levellers, and each saw in the other a very ordinary bushman, riding a horse so poor, the wonder was he was deemed worth mounting at all. Both were dusty and dirty, for the drought held the land in iron grip, and the fierce north wind, driving the dust in little whirls and columns before it, blew over plains bare of grass and other vegetation ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... sexual organs to be diminished in size, and in no civilized country has the artist ever chosen to give an erect organ to his representations of ideal masculine beauty. It is mainly because the unaesthetic character of a woman's sexual region is almost imperceptible in any ordinary and normal position of the nude body that the feminine form is a more aesthetically beautiful object of contemplation than the masculine. Apart from this character we are probably bound, from a strictly aesthetic point of view, to regard the male form as more aesthetically beautiful.[139] ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... help me God, I will be discontented with no person or thing, save only with myself; and I will be discontented with myself, not when I have left undone something extraordinary, which I know I could not have done, but only when I have left undone something ordinary, some plain duty which I know I could have done, had I asked God to help me to do it. Then in that soldier would be fulfilled—has been fulfilled, thank God, a thousand times, by men who lie in this abbey, and by men, too, of whom we never heard, "whose graves are scattered ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... his Chaplain. The King granted it most willingly, and gave the Bishop charge to hasten it, for he longed to discourse with a man that had dedicated his studies to that useful part of learning. The Bishop forgot not the King's desire, and Mr. Sanderson was made his Chaplain in Ordinary in November following, 1631. And when they became known to each other, the King did put many Cases of Conscience to him, and received from him such deliberate, safe, and clear solutions, as gave him great content ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... meet. This book tells the wonderful secret—all the ancients ever knew, and all that has been discovered since. It teaches how to wonderfully improve the person in loveliness. The real secret of changing an ordinary looking person into one of great beauty makes this book of great value. Nature does something for us, but art must make the perfect man ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... am asked what we are fighting for, I reply in two sentences. In the first place to fulfil a solemn international obligation, an obligation which, if it had been entered into between private persons in the ordinary concerns of life, would have been regarded as an obligation not only of law but of honour, which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle,—which in these days when force, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... made several very ingenious pitfalls for catching the wild-hogs. We took some fish among the rocks with much labour, and got one pheasant and two wood-Pigeons, which last were as large in the body as ordinary hens. Some of our company staid all night ashore to look for the wild-hogs coming into the traps, and some very large ones were seen on the 24th, but none were caught. This morning, about half past seven, the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... Eastern philosophy of the Magi; and Egypt seems to have been as much its native soil as India. The name of Gnostic, says Weber, was generally given to those who distinguished between belief on authority and gnosis, i.e., between the ordinary comprehension and a higher knowledge only granted to a few gifted or chosen ones. They were split up into different sects, according as they approached more nearly the Eastern theosophy or the platonic philosophy; but in general the Eastern conception, with its symbols and unlimited fantasy, remained ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... "Ordinary intelligence and common honesty," commented the Honorable Archer Converse when Mr. Breed had departed. "They are such new elements in running politics in this state that they seem to the crowd to be a brand-new variety of political astuteness, Thornton! I'm not going to be quite as frank ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... la Peyrade; "that is to say, Monsieur de Montyon founded 'prizes for virtue,' which are frequently given to zealous and exemplary domestic servants. But ordinary good conduct is not sufficient; there must be some act or acts of great devotion, and ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... no theatre, concert-room, or newspaper office at Kiachta, and the citizens rely upon cards, wine, and gossip for amusement. They play much and win or lose large sums with perfect nonchalance. Visitors are rare, and the advent of a stranger of ordinary consequence is ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... making a very strong decoction. Add this to the cordial while still boiling, in proportion of one to four. Then mix in the spirits. A quart of cordial can be thus treated medicinally, and the rest kept for ordinary uses. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... time mankind were more profligate than usual, or whether there was a more than ordinary demand for men in his majesty's colonies, cannot by us be determined. Mr. Carew was not, as is most commonly the case, deserted by his friends in adversity, for he was visited during the time of his imprisonment by many gentlemen, who were exceedingly liberal to him; and no sooner did ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... marrow, Georgiana is waiting at the yard gate to meet me, so hooded and shawled and ringed about with petticoats—like a tree within its layers of bark—that she looks like the most thick-set of ordinary sized women; for there is a heavenly but very human secret hiding in this household now, and she is ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... that these observations have a bearing upon our preaching of the doctrine of God. There is a certain illogicality, something humorous, in going into a church, of all places in the world, to be told how like we are to Him. The dull and average personality, the ordinary and not very valuable man, can probably listen indifferently and with a slow-growing hardness and dim resentment to that sort of preaching for a number of years. But the valuable, the highly personalized people, the saints and the sinners, the great rebels and the great ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... fortress had been formally taken into possession by the invaders in the name of their king, previously proclaimed at Dublin by the title of Edward the Sixth. The youth was crowned there with a diadem taken from an image of the Virgin, priests and nobles espousing his cause with more than ordinary enthusiasm; and Henry, in the second year of his reign, was threatened, from a source as unexpected as it was deemed contemptible, with the loss ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... But if ordinary men in power repay you with incapacity or with princely vices? But those who come to the front in monarchies are frequently mere mean mischief-makers, commonplace knaves, petty intriguers, whose small wits, which in courts reach large places, serve only to display their ineptitude ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... work of its wonderful author."—New York World. "We touch regions and attain altitudes which it is not given to the ordinary novelist even to approach."—London Times. "In no other story has Mrs. Ward approached the brilliancy and vivacity of Lady Rose's ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... can be educated through the inside or by calling out the spirit, by drawing out their powers of originality from the first, but they argue that with common pupils this process should not be allowed. They are not worthy of it. That is to say, the more ordinary men are and the more they need brains, the less they shall ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... when I missed them I should get out and hunt for them in the station. To counter that I ran up and down the train, in and out of the carriages, questing like a hound, searching everywhere. So eager was I that I neglected the ordinary warnings that the train was about to start; the guard's fertig ("ready"), the sounding horn, the answering engine whistle, I overlooked them all, and we moved on before I could descend. I made as though to jump off hastily, but ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... for several minutes all was silent on board the "Sister Sue." Harriet could not imagine what was going on there. After a time there were further evidences of activity on board; noises, faint, it is true, which indicated that something out of the ordinary was taking place on the boat. Harriet wondered if she had not better call Miss Elting and have her listen, too. Upon second thought, however, she decided not to do so. In the first place she could see and hear ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... Eastern, as well as the Western tale-teller describes his scoundrels and villains whilst his good men and women are mostly colourless and unpicturesque. So Satan is the true hero of Paradise-Lost and by his side God and man are very ordinary; and Mephistopheles is much better society ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... ideal, was "the organ of our collective best self," our first duty was to cultivate, each man for himself, what in himself was best—in short, Perfection. "We find no basis for a firm State-power in our ordinary selves; culture suggests one to us in our best self." And so we come back to the governing idea of the book before us, that Culture ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... by the quiet family of the owner. Although the space was small, the architect had made the most of it. He had divided it into four small rooms, separated by a corridor; and the kitchen looked out upon a little garden about four times as large as an ordinary sheet. The furniture which Pascal had purchased was more than plain; but it was well suited to this humble abode. It had just been brought in, but any one would have supposed it had been in its place ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... its results aid greatly the cause of human advancement. Most of the information embodied in this volume has heretofore existed only in the memories of the eminent mechanical engineers from whom it has been collected. Facts are here placed on record which would, in the ordinary course of things, have passed into oblivion. All honor to the brave, patient, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... tints of electric lights, which make every face in a room look ghastly, will affect quite as disastrously every soft color in the furnishings. In ordinary gaslight a pair of white gloves looks yellow, and we have seen Welsbach lamps which threw out a violet-blue illumination, depressing in the extreme. Under a yellow glow, blues, greens, violets and purples are greatly changed. Under a violet glow, yellows and ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... St. Budock. Though the word occurs in the expression tîz pleu, people of [his] parish, in the tale of John of Chy-an-Hur, the three parishes mentioned there, St. Levan, St. Hillary, and Buryan, are called by their ordinary English names. The prefix lan, originally an enclosure (cf. the English lawn), but later used to signify a church with its churchyard, is still frequently found, with occasional variants of la, lam, and land, ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... of gambling houses dared to fly at such high game as the person of the Lord Chancellor, there is no wonder that the safety of his Majesty's ordinary lieges was of small account. "Robbery," writes Horace Walpole, a few weeks before the date of the above letter, "is the only thing which goes on with any vivacity." And at the close of the year a Royal Proclamation was actually published, promising L100 ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... out of the case transient rumours. Upon the first publication of an extraordinary account, or even of an article of ordinary intelligence, no one who is not personally acquainted with the transaction can know whether it be true or false, because any man may publish any story. It is in the future confirmation, or contradiction, of the account; ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... Chancellor, who turned the leaves over until he found the page desired. As his eye fell upon the long line of Mowbrays, his face changed and the bristling brows came together in a grizzled line. Apparently the women were not adventuresses, at least in the ordinary ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... motive in coming to places like this convent, whence Bruno, with vows broken, or for him obsolete, presently departed. A sonnet, expressive of the joy with which he returned to so much more than the liberty of ordinary men, does not suggest that he was driven from it. Though he must have seemed to those who surely had loved so loveable a creature there to be departing, like the "prodigal" of the Gospel, into the farthest of possible far countries, there is no proof of harsh ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... hadn't posted the letter until nearly four o'clock. But I was all nervous and upset, and as I couldn't face my wife or settle to anything until I knew the police had got the letter and found the body, I—though a strictly temperate man in the ordinary course of life, sir—sat down in one of the little compartments of the place and ordered a glass of wine to pass the time till the first editions of the evening papers came out—they are usually out here ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... mountains abound in forests of magnificent walnut and box, where the enthusiastic sportsman will find the bear, hyena, and wolf, and plenty of smaller game, with seldom a roof to cover him other than the vault of heaven; but the ordinary traveller is likely to encounter difficulties and delays that he would prefer to avoid. Christianity was here introduced by Justinian, who constructed many churches that would have been notable specimens of Byzantine architecture, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... of coffee and tobacco. The coffee is served in very small cups, not larger than egg-cups, grounds and all, without cream or sugar, and so black, thick, and bitter that it has been aptly compared to "stewed soot". Besides the ordinary chibouk for tobacco, there is another implement, called narghillai, used for smoking in a caffinet, of a more elaborate construction. It consists of a glass vase, filled with water, and often scented with distilled rose or other flowers. This is surmounted with a silver or brazen head, from which ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... beautiful, and that quick intuition which is like second-sight in its sensitiveness to apprehend and respond to external stimulus. But it is not the purely imaginative poems in this volume that most deeply interest us. We come upon experience of life in these pages; not in the ordinary sense, however, of outward activity and movement, but in the hidden undercurrent of being. "The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts, but in the silent thoughts by the wayside as we walk." This is the motto, drawn ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... lying wholly within the forested region, is three hundred miles long, and its width at one point exceeds sixty miles. At every place on its banks where the fur-traders have their stations ordinary farm-crops are grown. Barley sown at Fort Resolution in mid-May reaches maturity in a hundred days; potatoes planted at the same time are dug in mid-September. The gardens of Fort Rae on the North Arm of the Lake produce beets, peas, cabbages, onions, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Heraldry is of a mixed character, in part technical and peculiar to itself, and in part the same that is in common use. Thus, many of the figures and devices of Heraldry have their peculiar heraldic names and titles, while still more bear their ordinary designations. Descriptive terms, whether expressed in English or in French (Anglo-Norman), are generally employed with a special heraldic intention and significance. In the earliest Roll of Arms known to be now in existence, which was compiled ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... accordingly, they impute it," quoth Wilkin Flammock, "that so soon as ever my lady stirs beyond the portal of her castle, De Lacy is in the saddle with a party of his cavalry, though they are positively certain that he has received no messenger, letter, or other ordinary notice of her purpose; nor have they ever, on such occasions, scoured the passes long, ere they have seen or heard of my Lady Eveline's ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of the most No such ceremony as St. James gives this ordinary duties of a that of anointing the instruction: "Is any Catholic Priest is to sick is practised by man sick among you, let anoint the sick in the any Protestant him bring in the Sacrament of Extreme denomination, priests of the Church, Unction. If a man is notwithstanding ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... strange descent—from the region of poetry and closest intercourse with the strong and gracious and vital simplicities of Nature, human and other, to the rich commonplaces, amongst them not a few fashionable vulgarities, of an ordinary well-appointed house, and ordinary well-appointed people; but, however bedizened, humanity was there; and he who does not love human more than any other nature has not life in himself, does not carry his poetry in him, as Gibbie did, therefore cannot find it except ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... at first the second influence was gaining daily in power. As he became convinced that Marian was not an ordinary girl, ready for a summer flirtation with a wealthy stranger, he began to give her more serious thought, to study her character, and acknowledge to himself her superiority. With every interview the spell of her fascination grew stronger, until at last he reached the conclusion ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... cell connectors and terminals as usual. Insert the proper size Freeing Tool (or reamer), furnished with the outfit, in an ordinary hand-power drill press or bit-and-brace. With this reamer remove the ring of metal or flange on the post, thereby releasing the cell cover. Fig. 249. The Freeing Tool should not be used in a power-driven press, as slow speed is essential ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... preparation week all the female part of my grandmother's household, as I have before remarked, were at a height above any ordinary state of mind; they moved about the house rapt in a species of prophetic frenzy. It seemed to be considered a necessary feature of such festivals that everybody should be in a hurry, and everything in the house should be turned bottom upwards with enthusiasm—so at least we children ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... too, he has an insinuating manner; he can purr quite admirably in luxurious surroundings, and, on the whole, he prefers to attain his objects by a circuitous method rather than by the bluff and uncompromising directness which is employed by dogs and ordinary honest folk of the canine sort. Moreover, he likes a home, but—here comes the difference—the homes of others seem to attract and retain him more strongly than his own. And if it were useful to set out the points of difference ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... "Ordinary women have always excited my disgust," said the young officer, simply; "and until this day I have never seen a woman who resembled ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... was an artist. But the artistic temperament was far from explaining him; there was something else about him that was not definable, but which some even felt to be dangerous. Despite his dreaminess, he would sometimes surprise his friends with arts and even sports apart from his ordinary life, like memories of some previous existence. On this occasion, nevertheless, he hastened to disclaim any authority ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... cannot help saying that I think the preface a great mistake. The work that follows it is quite inadequate, and there seems little use in heralding a dawn that rose long ago, and proclaiming a Renaissance whose first-fruits, if we are to judge them by any high standard of perfection, are of so ordinary a character. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Listening to her, I could well believe in the far-famed Orpheus lute. It was enough to bewilder any man. She had a sweet, rich voice, a contralto of no ordinary merit, and the way in which she used it was something ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... ordinary peasant, came to town by the advice of his two cousins, who placed him in their uncle's house, in the hope that, as much by his silly tricks and his clumsiness, his want of brain, and his ignorance, he would be displeasing to the canon, who would kick him out of his will. Now this poor ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... insolence deserved, my father was satisfied with telling him he had other thoughts in relation to me. The youth was incensed at this refusal; he resented the contempt, as if he had asked some maid of ordinary extraction, or as if his birth had been equal to mine. Nor did he stop here, but resolved to be revenged on the sultan, and with unparalleled ingratitude conspired against him. In short, he murdered him, and ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... and reason, and then drinks to drunkenness? If either is a sinner, can there be any doubt as to which is the greatest sinner? A far greater number, die from steady drinking than from drunkenness; they die from an inability to withstand the ordinary causes of disease, or to resist diseased action when attacked, and vast multitudes die from diseases caused by so-called temperate drinking, short of drunkenness. The statistics of insurance companies show that the average duration ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... emerge. From this step there is no return. The throbbing heart, which neither cowls nor veils can still, finds in the taper-lighted cell its living tomb, till it sleeps in death. No one with even an ordinary share of sensibility can witness a ceremony involving such consequences without the deepest emotion. The scene produced an effect upon the spirit of Jane which was never effaced. The wreath of flowers which crowned the beautiful victim; the veil enveloping her person; the solemn and dirge-like ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... with little benches carved out of solid wood. His church tapers were made of real wax, procured from a special house which catered exclusively to houses of worship, for Des Esseintes professed a sincere repugnance to gas, oil and ordinary candles, to all modern forms of illumination, so ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... grain. The log meeting-house was deserted, but the court-house was the centre of such a swirling crowd as I had often seen at Harrodstown. Now there are brawls and brawls, and I should have thought with shame of my Kentucky bringing-up had I not perceived that this was no ordinary court day, and that an unusual excitement ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... vegetation and drawn moisture from everything. In an air so rarified, and an atmosphere so dry, it was hardly to be expected that any experiment upon it would be attended with its usual results, or that the particles of moisture so far separated, could be condensed by ordinary methods. The mean of the thermometer for the months of December, January, and February, had been 101 degrees, 104 degrees, and 101 degrees respectively in the shade. Under its effects every screw in our boxes had been drawn, and the horn handles of our instruments, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... responsible cabinet to exist under him. My contention is that there is no one within my knowledge, who commands respect enough and is capable of taking over the responsibilities of President Yuan. For who can replace the Great President in coping with our numerous difficulties? If we select an ordinary man and make him bear the great burdens, we will find that in addition to his lack of ability rendering him unequal to the occasion, his lack of dominating influence will disqualify him from exercising authority. It was for the purpose of meeting the requirements of the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale |
