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Overmuch   Listen
adverb
Overmuch  adv.  In too great a degree; too much.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Overmuch" Quotes from Famous Books



... an' forbye there's no love lost between crews an' owners, we were fond o' the auld Blind Deevil an' his dog, an' I'm thinkin' he liked us. He was worth the windy side o' twa million sterlin', an' no friend to his own blood-kin. Money's an awfu' thing—overmuch—for a lonely man. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... poor gal," said Sam; "I know it: I feel a good deal the same way myself sometimes; but it helps me along an' stren'thens me up, like, to know that Him that the visitor in jail told me about didn't have no home a good deal of the time, an' not overmuch to eat, an' yet was cheerful like, an' always on His nerve. It braces a fellow up to think somebody's who's been as bad off as himself has pulled through, an' not stole nothin', nor fit with nobody, nor got drunk, ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton

... easy for the seniors to neglect the children they have under them, and it is easy to direct them overmuch, but it is difficult to watch and yet let the children go their own way. We are apt, in arranging for others, to be too instructive; nothing is less acceptable to children or less likely to do them good than ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... subdued, by applying him to the rack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and so make a pack-horse of him. Neither should I think it good, when, by reason of a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is discovered to be overmuch addicted to his book, to nourish that humour in him; for that renders him unfit for civil conversation, and diverts him from better employments. And how many have I seen in my time totally brutified by an immoderate ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... a natural leaning to extravagance may be held accountable for Mozart's embarrassments, for he was extremely fond of dress, and had a great weakness for lace and watch-chains. But if he indulged his tastes overmuch in this particular, he was no less lavish in regard to giving where he thought help was needed. He could never turn a deaf ear to the appeal of a beggar, and his kindness was frequently imposed upon; even when monetary help was ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... guided his people wisely. He continued to exhort them not to care overmuch for riches, but to use their wealth as having it not; and in 1818, "for the purpose of promoting greater harmony and equality between the original members and those who had come in recently," a notable thing was done at Rapp's ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... mother died of the fever. Larry was very handsome, and what was better, very good, but he led rather a hard life of it at his new home. His uncle was kind, but he was a gentle, meek sort of a man—his wife ruled every thing at the cabin, and she did not like Larry overmuch. She thought it hard that he should not only eat the food and wear the clothes that her own children needed, but should be more liked and admired in the neighborhood than they. She doted on her own boy, Teddy, and thought him not only good-looking, but wonderfully clever—when, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... Why, ye be gone clean mad, magistrates and ministers and all! Send Martha to jail! Why, she must home with me this night and get supper! How think ye I am going to live and keep my house? Load Martha down with chains in jail! Martha a witch! Then, by the Lord, she keeps His company overmuch for one of her trade, for she goes to prayer forty times a day. Martha a witch! Think ye Goodwife Martha Corey gallops a broomstick to the hill of a night, with her decent petticoats flapping? Who says so? I would I had my musket, ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the child may come from hysteria in the mother. A drunken father may impel epilepsy, madness or idiocy in the child. Ungoverned passions, from love to hate, from hope to fear, when indulged in overmuch by the parents, may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of the children. "The insane may often trace their sad humiliation and utter unfitness for life's duties back through a tedious line of unrestrained passion, of prejudice, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... attending, and obliged the debate to be deferred. Lord Melbourne hopes that the resolution which Lansdowne is to move[38] is put in such a shape as to vindicate our course, and at the same time not to condemn that which has been adopted overmuch, nor to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... discussed; but their attitude to each other after the duel was criticised lightly and with caution. It was irreconcilable, and that was to be regretted. After all, they knew best what the care of their honour dictated. It was not a matter for their comrades to pry into overmuch. As to the origin of the quarrel, the general impression was that it dated from the time they were holding garrison in Strasburg. Only the musical surgeon shook his head at that. It went much farther ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... I braved him overmuch. I will tell you of it when these good folks have gone. Do not let us cast a gloom over their happiness, old master. And now ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... island for sandal-wood. We have taken many cargoes of it already, and have paid for them, too; for the savages are so numerous that we dared not try to take it by force. But our captain has tried to cheat them so often, that they're beginnin' not to like us overmuch now. Besides, the men behaved ill the last time we were here, and I wonder the captain is not afraid to venture. But he's afraid ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... would accompany me the next stage as far as the doolies, and I thought he showed some curiosity to know whither I was going; but he was a wise man in his generation, and knowing his orders, did not press me overmuch with questions. I remarked in a mild way that the saddle was the throne of the warrior, and that the air of the black mountains was the breath of freedom; but I added that the voice of the empty stomach was as the roar of the king of the forest. Whereupon ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... in writing, and a clean sweep made which should leave him perfectly free. Previously their business relations had been carried on by verbal understandings, which, as a matter of fact, did not bind the novelist overmuch, since he never sold either a first or a subsequent edition of any of his novels for more than a comparatively short period—usually a year—at the end of which he recovered his entire liberty, whether ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... and I am glad to have the one for nephew and the other for pupil. My greetings to your mother, Tiu. She is a good woman and a true, one to whom you will do well to hearken. To the lady Amada also, and bid her study her beauteous face in a mirror and not be holy overmuch, since too great holiness often thwarts itself and ends in trouble for the unholy flesh. Still she loves pearls like other women, does she not, and even the statue of Isis likes to be adorned. As for you, Bes, ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... then, O excellent by strength! And speak wise words, not out of season. You see how, by his talking overmuch, The tortoise fell into ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... principles of '89, the emancipation of the negroes, and the orators of the Left; and he even went so far as to do "Prudhomme on a Barricade," perhaps under the influence of a kind of jealousy of these rich people who had enjoyed a good dinner. The caricature did not please them overmuch. Their faces ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... the morning to the Exchequer about striking of tallys, but no good done therein, people being most out of towne. At noon T. Hater dined with me, and so at it all the afternoon. At night home and supped, and after reading a little in Cowley's poems, my head being disturbed with overmuch business ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... was aware of the fact that a man of Demming's position wouldn't have to go to overmuch effort to acquire such information, anyway. It wasn't of ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... she said, "but I have thought your friend had not quite the manners of the class to which the Delameres clearly belong. Mrs. Delamere is perhaps not anyone in particular, and she certainly talks overmuch upon subjects which probably she does not understand. The young ladies are most agreeable and lady-like, and I think Mr. Thornton has found that out. It is easy to see that objections to any engagement would be of the gravest sort—indeed, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... Shelley appears always to have labored under an essential immaturity: it is very possible that if he had lived a hundred years he would never have become a man; he was penetrated with modern ideas, but penetrated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch, and with a constant tendency to the extravagant and illogical; so that I call ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... accept this pressing invitation; on the other hand, he could not refuse it absolutely. He did not like Miss Daniels overmuch, but she was the daughter of his leading parishioner and she and her parent did seem to like him. So he dodged the issue and ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and still as he urged She adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while, Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourged ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... if he should desire you to fit your body to his doublet. There is also danger in the plausible pretence of reforming the law, except the government be first good, in which case it is a good tree, and (trouble not yourselves overmuch) brings not forth evil fruit; otherwise, if the tree be evil, you can never reform the fruit, or if a root that is naught bring forth fruit of this kind that seems to be good, take the more heed, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... call it Rottingdean). Hark, the hunt, (not the Holman Hunt) is up in Caledon (Glasgow); they have started the shy wilson steer: they have wound the hornel; the lords of the International, who love not Mordred overmuch, are galloping nearer and nearer. Sir Bedivere can see their insolent pencils waving black and white flags: and the game-keepers and beaters (critics) chant in ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... your gift of speech. Words continue to well from your lips, and they're good words, too. But I talk overmuch myself. Here is Jonathan waiting to speak to you. I told him I was coming to Albany. 'Upon what affair?' he asked. ''Tis secret,' I replied. 'Meaning you do not want to tell me of its nature,' he said. 'Yes,' I replied. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... brave writer who attempts to describe it. Kipling, who saw the structure first from the window of a train nearing Agra, called it "an opal tinted cloud on the horizon"; and after studying the building at close range he wrote, "Let those who scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and thenceforward be dumb; ... each must view it for himself with his own eyes, working out his own interpretation of the sight." Another great English writer has said, "Words are worthless in describing a building which is absolutely faultless." ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... as winds do in autumn. At present, while tarrying in Beneventum, he has the wish to go straightway to Greece, without returning to Rome. Tigellinus, however, advises him to visit the city even for a time, since the people, yearning overmuch for his person (read 'for games and bread') may revolt. So I cannot tell how it will be. Should Achaea overbalance, we may want to see Egypt. I should insist with all my might on thy coming, for I think that in thy state of mind travelling ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... it to her niece over to Meadville. She says her niece is awful womans-rightsy, 'n' can swing dumb-bells 'n' look over backward 't her own heels, 'n' that parasol 'll be nothin' but child's play to her. I ain't no sympathy with such views myself—I never was one as believed overmuch in womans' rights. My idea is to let the men have the rights, 'n' then they're satisfied to let you do 's you please. 'S far 's my observa—Lord have ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... one to ask: What were the causes of this humane system of living among a people considered as uncivilised? Now, I do not wish to claim overmuch for women. We have seen, however, that the control and distribution of the supply of food was placed in the hands of the matrons, thus their association with the giving of food must be accepted. Is not this fact sufficient to indicate the reason that made possible this communism? ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... many. My, old-maid aunt didn't like me overmuch, I believe; and I wasn't here often. My mother and I lived far down the street. A big apartment-house stands there now, I noticed as I was walking out here this afternoon—the 'Verema,' it is called, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... Decalogue, which, speaking to him, says, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,' and which means thou shalt not do it, whatever thy personal or political pique or animosity may be. The member from Richmond did me honour overmuch in an individual if not personal exhortation wherein he was pleased to run some parallel between himself and me.... Let me supplement the parallel by recalling a remark of a great Crusader when Richard ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... placid, as Providence had meant it to be. During the coming season it was her firm intention to marry her daughter, who now stood beside her as she received her guests—a blonde, sweet-featured girl, given, however, so it was said, to good works, and not at all inclined to trouble herself overmuch about a husband. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... you are yet nothing but a child. Oh! it is the most melancholy thing in the world to me, to see a person trying to get beyond their years. You must not do it, Gabriella. I wish I could make you stop thinking for one year. I do not like to see a cheek as young as yours pale with overmuch thought. Do you know you are getting very like ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... this poor rose-crown—the flames have made it pine; If blood rains on your festive gowns, wash off with Cretan wine! I like not overmuch that red—good taste says "gild a crime?" "To stifle shrieks by ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... not appear to be overmuch sense in keeping this deck watch. Only a short distance away lay the United States gunboat "Waverly," with her alert marine guard. Though there was no moon, the starlight was bright enough to enable a marine on the gunboat to see anything that might skim over the water ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... bear; A child's dear eyes are looking lovingly From underneath a thatch of tangled hair. Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch Of warm, moist fingers, folding yours so tight; You do not prize this blessing overmuch,— You almost are too tired to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... not abuse yourself overmuch. You had found Andrew long since, but for the evil mind of Ralph Lacy, who had bought yon keeper with a mighty bribe, and commanded that Andrew should be kept out of sight, if ever you made ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... halls set themselves to a piece of bizarre juggling, say, with a string of pearls, a dumb-bell and a rose-petal, they do toss and catch—don't merely let everything just drop. Mr. STEPHENS will know what I mean without caring overmuch. There's something in it all the same. Anyway, there really are in The Demi-Gods delicate shy pearls and gleams of the authentic gold of the original Crock. And after all it wasn't written for middle-aged gentlemen of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various

... with that of nature, that it is not only wonderful in the great, but opens another scene of amazement to the discoveries of the microscope. We have been charged indeed by a Foreign writer with an overmuch admiring of this Barbarian: Whether we have admired with knowledge, or have blindly followed those feelings of affection which we could not resist, I cannot tell; but certain it is, that to the labours of his ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... pool, the gray monk and the minstrel talked long and earnestly of one who knew overmuch of the affairs ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... after you get over being tired and bewildered," said Anne, who, knowing a certain thing that Leslie did not know, did not feel herself called upon to waste overmuch sympathy. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... call for Mr. Jewel. Johnny bought a morning paper, but could find no mention of his arrival in Los Angeles. Cliff Lowell, he decided, must be playing the secrecy to the limit. It did not please him overmuch, in spite of his revilings of the press that had made a joke of his troubles. Couldn't they do anything but go to extremes, for gosh sake? Here he had made a record night,—he had distinctly told that clerk the time he had made it in,—and Cliff Lowell ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... Don's pocket, "it wouldn't tax a six-footer like me overmuch to help himself to it; but, under the circumstances, it might be wiser merely to tell mine host in yonder room that an irate little manikin has taken it into his head to lock his sister, as he calls her, in the public parlor, and ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... had a pride in his promptness with copy, and you could always trust his promise. The printer's toe never galled the author's kibe in his case; he wished to have an early proof, which he corrected fastidiously, but not overmuch, and he did not keep it long. He had really done all his work in the manuscript, which came print-perfect and beautifully clear from his pen, in that flowing, graceful hand which to the last kept a suggestion of the pleasure he must have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... his steps back across the field feeling righteous and triumphant. To him the interests of the Boy Scouts of America superseded every other interest and like the true missionary he did not scruple overmuch as to ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... tired with overmuch play, the child had fallen asleep against that tree, and had wakened to hear his ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... season of the year when there was no fishing, it grew very dull loitering about the Hall, and since he did not read much, like Godwin, sitting for long hours by the fire at night watching Rosamund going to and fro upon her tasks, but not speaking with her overmuch. For notwithstanding all their pretense of forgetfulness, some sort of veil had fallen between the brethren and Rosamund, and their intercourse was not so open and familiar as of old. She could not but remember that they were no more her cousins only, but her lovers also, and that ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... here. You see we've all got to take it turn and turn about, and it's wonderful how soon a feller gets used to it. I'm rather fond of it, d'ye know? We haven't overmuch to work on in the way o' variety, to be sure, but what we have there's lots of it, an' it gives us occasion to exercise our wits to invent somethin' new. It's wonderful what can be done with fresh beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... can put him to board somewhere and leave him. Miss Vernor doesn't concern herself overmuch with the young ones. They are ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... didst, where'er thou wert, we found thee. "Behold!" we cried, "the Sergeant reappears." Let not our welcome overmuch astound thee, Whom we have missed through twelve unhappy years. Restored at length to England, home, and beauty, Sergeant-at-Arms advance, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various

... Mr. Thompson felt uneasy. There was a dignity in his client, an impressiveness in his speech, that silenced remonstrating reason and the cry of long years of comfortable respectability. Mr. Thompson went to church regularly; paid his rates and dues without overmuch, or at least more than common, grumbling. On the surface he was a good citizen, fond of his children, faithful to his wife, devoutly marching to a fair seat in heaven on a path paved by something better than a thousand a year. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the sun, immoderate A blow on the head Overmuch use of hot wines, spices, garlic, onions, hot baths, overmuch waking, &c. Idleness, solitariness, or overmuch study, vehement labour, &c. Passions, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... were none like the woman whose hand I had kissed in the courting meadow. In the throng, that day, in her Puritan dress and amid the crowd of meaner beauties, she had passed without overmuch comment, and since that day none had seen her save Rolfe and the minister, my servants and myself; and when "The Spaniard!" was cried, men thought of other things than the beauty of women; so that until this moment she had escaped any special ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... easily disposed to be pacified and reconciled, as soon as they have shown a readiness to be reconciled; and to read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch; and I am indebted to him for being acquainted with the discourses of Epictetus, which he communicated to me out ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... her a scented bath, into which, in her dazed condition, she entered without overmuch persuasion. True, she thought to find her death in so much water, and crossed herself vehemently when first it touched her back; but there might be worse deaths (she supposed) than drowning for a poor girl bought and sold, and not so very long ago a Jew had been baptized in Santa Giustina ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... predatory excursions, which occupied, for a few weeks at a time, the English forces which could be detached from New York. "We march up and down the country," said Cornwallis, not overmuch pleased, "stealing tobacco." As early as 1779, on the 8th of May, the Raisonnable, sixty-four, five smaller ships of the English navy, and a number of privateers acting as convoy to a cloud of transports, entered the Capes of the Chesapeake. The Raisonnable drew too much water ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... sounded when the queen, arising, made all the other ladies arise, and on like wise the three young men, alleging overmuch sleep to be harmful by day; and so they betook themselves to a little meadow, where the grass grew green and high nor there had the sun power on any side. There, feeling the waftings of a gentle breeze, they all, as their ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... top floor, where the least serious cases were treated, men who could be got upstairs without too much strain and suffering. On the ground floor one bed was free, as I knew, and it was into that ward I went to tell the news to the matron. Perhaps when my duty was done I did not hurry overmuch to return to my own less interesting post; and I was still in the principal ward when the canvas litter borne by four Red Cross men was carried in. Doctors and nurses pressed forward to meet it, and I flattened myself against ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... solitariness, are as it were certain rams by which the devil doth batter and work upon the strongest constitutions. Nonnulli (saith Peter Forestus) ob longas inedias, studia et meditationes coelestes, de rebus sacris et religione semper agitant, by fasting overmuch, and divine meditations, are overcome. Not that fasting is a thing of itself to be discommended, for it is an excellent means to keep the body in subjection, a preparative to devotion, the physic of the soul, by which chaste thoughts are engendered, true zeal, a divine spirit, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... breathed a sigh of relief as he sank into his seat. The dimness of the light, the quiet, the coolness all pleased him: he had not known till he sat down how tired he was. He might have sat there a quarter of an hour, his mind in that state of hopeless blank that supervenes on overmuch unsatisfactory thinking, when suddenly the tom-toms started up again with a terrific rattle, and the scarlet curtain was somewhat spasmodically jerked up, displaying a semicircle of girls seated on European chairs facing the tin lamps. Two of the seven were African girls, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... of the second may elude you for a moment. It voices the impatience of an honest Bulgar who has been worried overmuch to subscribe to what, in this England of ours, we call Church Purposes; and it runs, 'All these two-penny saints will be the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... allusions to facts and customs which are no longer known and cannot always be guessed at. Now, thanks to Rashi's commentary, a reader possessing a knowledge of the elements of the language and some slight knowledge of Jewish law, can decipher it without overmuch difficulty. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... desert you, Deirdre, while I can still thrust a spear. But you, fear overmuch without ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... corners, blown by the four winds, men rode out of the mountain-desert and drifted into Rickett to seek for a place on that posse. Twenty men, that was the goal the sheriff had set. Twenty men trained to a hair. Beside the courthouse was a shooting gallery not overmuch used except during the two annual seasons of prosperity and reckless spending, and Pete Glass secured this place to test out applicants. After, they passed this trial they were mustered into his presence, and he gave them an examination for himself. Just what he asked them or what ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the northwest, beyond the ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... slowly toward the door, muttering as he went, and Jasper's sharp command did not serve to enliven him overmuch. ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read

... her. I felt as if nobody pitied her enough—her suffering cut into me so; and when I thought the folks at the farm were too hard with her, I said I'd never be hard to anybody myself again. But feeling overmuch about her has perhaps made me unfair to you. I've known what it is in my life to repent and feel it's too late. I felt I'd been too harsh to my father when he was gone from me—I feel it now, when I think of him. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... the news,—greets Friedrich with it just alighting from that Silesian run of his own. Friedrich, not without several other things to think of, is naturally sorry at such news; sorry for his own sake even; but not overmuch. Friedrich refuses 'to despatch a party of horse,' and cut out Marechal de Belleisle. "That will never do, MON CHER!'—and even gets into FROIDES PLAISANTERIES: 'Perhaps the Marechal did it himself? ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of Wepener, was especially a Colonial triumph; there the garrison had been chiefly Cape Colonials, here the majority were Australians of Carrington's first Brigade, the rest being Rhodesians, and it would be difficult to praise overmuch the determination and fine spirit shown by these Colonials in their first opportunity of distinguishing themselves as a corps. Every soldier who saw the place afterwards expressed surprise that they could have held out so long, and it is therefore the more ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... other Faults equal to these, as where Authors, through overmuch Timerity, or too great Opinion of their own Performances, permit their Writings to pass with egregious Errors; and I take it to be equally pernicious for a Man to be too diffident of his own Performances, as it is to be presuming: There are ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe

... be an instrumental form from cal, to stuff, to fill full.[45-1] The word calam is used in the sense of excessive, overmuch. In Cakchiquel the phrase mani hu cala, not (merely) one cala, is synonymous with mani hu chuvi, not (merely) one bag or sack, both meaning a countless number.[46-1] In that dialect the specific meaning of cala is 20 loads of ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various

... be it known, now, that the division of that which I kill shall be fair. And no widow nor weak one shall cry in the night because there is no meat, when the strong men are groaning in great pain for that they have eaten overmuch. And in the days to come there shall be shame upon the strong men who have eaten overmuch. I, Keesh, ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London

... the majority were to be substituted by democratic nations, for all the different powers which checked or retarded overmuch the energy of individual minds, the evil would only have changed its symptoms. Men would not have found the means of independent life; they would simply have invented (no easy task) a new dress for servitude. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... passional bitterness Of their world-weary hearts. We of the sunrise, Joined in the breast of God, feel deep the power That urges all things onward, not to an end, But in an endless flow, mounting and mounting, Claiming not overmuch for human life, Sharing with our brothers of nerve and leaf The urgence of the one creative breath,— All in the dim twilight—say of morning, Where the florescence of the light and dew Haloes and hallows with a crown adorning The brows of life with love; herein the clue, ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... of Mr. Sleuth's cruel words to her, of his threat, did not disturb her overmuch. It had been a mistake—all a mistake. Far from betraying Mr. Sleuth, she had sheltered him—kept his awful secret as she could not have kept it had she known, or even dimly suspected, the horrible fact with which Sir John Burney's ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... "Besides, even if it were to come true, I am sorry to say I've killed lots of men in the way of business and they don't bother me overmuch." ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... be not afraid because of the holiness of God; for thine Advocate has this for his advantage, that he pleads before a judge that is just, and against an enemy that is unholy and rejected. Nor let the thoughts of the badness of thy cause terrify thee overmuch. Cause thou hast indeed to be humble, and thou dost well to cover thy face with shame; and it is no matter how base and vile thou art in thine own eyes, provided that it comes not by renewed acts of rebellion, but through a spiritual ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... days went by. Hetty could not help telling herself that Patty was a disappointment. But she was saved from reflecting on it overmuch: for Mrs. Grantham (after forty years of comfort without one) had conceived a desire to be waited on and have her hair dressed by a maid, and between Mrs. Grantham's inability to discover precisely what she wanted done by Patty, and Patty's unhandiness in doing it, and Mrs. Grantham's ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... went forth to the people and expounded to them the mystery of overproduction, and how it was that they must needs perish of thirst because there was overmuch water, and how there could not be enough because there was too much. And likewise spoke they unto the people concerning the sun spots, and also wherefore it was that these things had come upon them by reason of lack of confidence. And it was even as the soothsayers had said, for to the people ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... laws without love. In such case, laws are but a ruinous curse, making true the proverbs, "summum jus, summa injustitia," "The most strenuous right is the most strenuous wrong"; and again, Solomon's words (Ec 7, 17), "Noli nimium esse justus," "Be not righteous overmuch." Here is where we leave unperceived the beam in our own eye and proceed to remove the mote from our neighbor's eye. Laws without love make the conscience timid and fill it with unreasonable terror and despair, to the great injury ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... sleep I got that night, my body smarting with the ill usage I had suffered, and my mind in a ferment of rage and dismay. This was the third and the worst mischance that had befallen me since I left Shrewsbury, and no one would blame me overmuch, perhaps, had I given way to utter despair. Old Woodrow had told me stories about such tricks of kidnapping, but, just as when we hear a parson denouncing sin we are apt to apply it to our neighbor ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... to Heaven from the bottom of my heart for my merciful deliverance, was to obtain a sheet of paper, and write an account of what had happened and my happy acquittal to Uncle Kelson, and beg him to break the matter to my wife, for I was afraid that she would be overmuch agitated should ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... might be that she would discover something which Pine—Chaldea now thought of him as Pine—might like to know. So having arranged this in her own unscrupulous mind, the girl behind a juniper bush jealously watched the unsuspecting lady. What she saw did not please her overmuch, as Lady Agnes was rather too beautiful for her unknown rival's peace ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... language: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one to Satan."[34] The offender repented, and lest he should "be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow," the Apostle reversed sentence, and forgave the wrong done, "in the person of Christ." A clearer case of retaining and remitting ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel

... I observed that you were speaking overmuch. But let me proceed. Harwich, as you know, is a port at the mouth of the River Stour, at the extreme north-east corner of Essex. I give you this information, gentlemen, as I am not sure if any of you have travelled ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... are mixed, even by the practice of virtue and the application of knowledge. Hence even in the cultivation of righteousness the rule, Ne quid nimis, is to be implicitly followed: "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise."[109] On the other hand, wisdom is not to be despised, for it hardens us against the strokes of Fate, and renders us insensible to the insults of our fellows.[110] It also teaches us the drawbacks ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... he boasted overmuch, as young men are wont to do. He was indeed in no wise affrighted at the strange shapes that met him and sought to bar his progress. Some had heads of apes and feet of goats; some rode eagles or bestrode cranes; while the captain of all was mounted on a tortoise. They swarmed on him ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... day the practice of all the previous lessons, movements are rapidly added as soon as station is better. A brief list of them follows. When the exercises grow so numerous as to take overmuch time, the simpler ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... eloquence. She did not consider her impulse in the least, for though she felt a stronger interest in Harrington than she had ever before felt in any individual, it had not struck her that she was beginning to care overmuch for the sight of his face and the sound of his voice. She could not have believed she was beginning to love him; and if any secret voice had suggested to her conscience that it was so, she could have silenced it at once to her own satisfaction by merely remembering the coldness with which ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... to the white Queen, Macumazahn, and tell her that if she should send me to a place whence there is no return, I who do not love the world, shall not blame her overmuch, though it is true that I should have chosen to die in war. Now I ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... interpenetrating them in a given work. To discriminate schools, of art, of literature, is, of course, part of the obvious business of literary criticism: but, in the work of literary production, it is easy to be overmuch occupied concerning them. For, in truth, the legitimate contention is, not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... Pecock was a bishop of Chichester about the middle of the fifteenth century; who in his rigour against the Lollards himself incurred the charge of deism. His work which laid him open to it, "The Repressor of overmuch blaming of the Clergy," has lately been edited with an instructive preface by Mr. Churchill Babington. The work appeals to reason, but is not open to the charge of deism. In tone it may be compared ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... Concerning the Sword of Odin, and for dread of the Volsung might. Now wise is Signy my daughter and knoweth nought but sooth: Yet are there seasons and times when for longing and self-ruth The hearts of women wander, and this maybe is such; Nor for her word of Siggeir will I trow it overmuch, Nor altogether doubt it, since the woman is wrought so wise; Nor much might my heart love Siggeir for all his kingly guise. Yet, shall a king hear murder when a king's mouth blessing saith? So maybe he is bidding me honour, and maybe he is bidding me death: Let him do after ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... overmuch involved plot and diction in the writing of novels, a book like this brings a sense of refreshment, as much by the virility and directness of its style as by the interest of the story it tells.... The human interest of the book is absorbing. ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay

... mind overmuch. Earnest but imperfect men, with honest and reasonable but imperfect proposals for bettering the world, are all too apt to raise this bitter cry of popular stupidity, of the sheep-like quality of common men. An unjustifiable persuasion ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... Love a deity! Love is a madness, thrust forth from hell by some fury. He speeds across the earth in hasty flight, and they whom he visits soon discover that he brings no deity with him, but frenzy rather; yet none will he visit except those abounding overmuch in earthly felicity; for they, he knows, in their overweening conceit, are ready to afford him lodgment and shelter. This has been proven to us by many facts. Do we not see that Venus, the true, the heavenly Venus, often dwells in the humblest cot, her sole concern being the perpetuation ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio

... remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... affirmed, would soon appear. "For first, the youthhead and tender children shall be nourished and brought up in vertue in presence of their friends, by whose good attendance many inconveniences may be avoyded in which the youth commonly fall either by overmuch libertie which they have in strange and unknowne places while they cannot rule themselves, or else for lack of good attendance and of such necessaries as their tender age requires. Secondly, the exercise of children in every kirke shall be great instruction ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... his people were all gone, and there was no one on the premises to do it for him. A wine-glass had also been called for, for Miss Sophia, whose weeping had been overheard. Master Sydney had gone to his room very cross, complaining of his mother's having questioned him overmuch about his ride, and then sent him to bed half an hour before ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... too young to care overmuch—save Nan," responded Constance, looking at Anne's white troubled face. "Poor ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... young Rosin!" I remember his very words. "Come here, young Rosin! I can't get my tongue round your outlandish name, but Rosin'll do well enough for you." Well, it stuck to me, the name did, and I was never sorry, for I did not like to carry my father's name about overmuch, he misliking the dancing as he did. The young folks caught up an old song, and tagged that name on too, and called me Rosin the Bow. So it was first, Melody; but there are two songs, as you know, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... people was as strong as ever, but I had no illusions as to my power. I was but a Westerner, and it was clear that Miss Haldin would not, could not listen to my wisdom; and as to my desire of listening to her voice, it were better, I thought, not to indulge overmuch in that pleasure. No, I should not have gone to the Boulevard des Philosophes; but when at about the middle of the principal alley I saw Miss Haldin coming towards me, I was too curious, and too honest, perhaps, to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... those beasts in on compressed forage and small box-spurs, and then we started across Scotland to Applecross to hand 'em over to a horse-depot there. It was snowing cruel, and we didn't know the country overmuch. You remember the 30th—the old ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... of her great tenderness of heart which makes her suffer overmuch for those she loves, has not the strength to bear the pain of loving more than one or two so entirely, and my mother's whole heart was fixed with an anxious strain of loving care upon my stepfather and my brother. I have seen her sit hours by a window ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... partners at the ball, and on all occasions her full share of notice, the country neighbours welcoming her as her mother's daughter, but most of them saying she was far more like her Aunt Phyllis than her own mother. The dancing and excitement so late at night had, however, tired her overmuch, she had cramp all the remainder of the night, could eat no breakfast the next ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that you tell not your dream to Yolara," said the dwarf grimly. "For her I meant and her you have pictured is Lakla, the hand-maiden to the Silent Ones, and neither Yolara nor Lugur, nay, nor the Shining One, love her overmuch, stranger." ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... we may conceive of the lesser nobles, deprived of their useful function of regulating and administering the country, leading somewhat penurious and useless lives. They hunted a good deal, they slept long. Generally they did not eat overmuch, for gluttony is not a vice of their race. They grumbled at the ascendency of the court, and at the new army-regulations. They preserved in their families the noble virtues of dignity and obedience. Children asked their parents' blessing on their ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... the hardest things on earth as a mental operation is to be fair to the opposition. Now lest I have beguiled my readers overmuch by the force of my convictions even to the point of danger, I will give an estimate of the danger of fasting by one of the most eminent physicians of New York City, Dr. George F. Shrady. I quote from an interview reported in ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... me, soft Sleep. Overmuch requires The heart; and yet thou too at the last shalt fade, Oh youth, thou restless dream-pursuer! Peaceful and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... down uneasily at her dress—not from overmuch vanity, but because her hounded mind recurred instinctively from extraneous or large interests to individual and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... methodical advance of the British artillery had begun to worry the stronghold overmuch, Bapaume was a hotbed of all the anti-aircraft devilries. We therefore swerved toward the south. Archie was not to be shaken off so easily, and we began a series of erratic deviations as he ringed with black puffs first one machine, then another. The shooting ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... Ammizaduga, whom we may imagine to have been the eldest son, does not appear in the case. Perhaps he also was away. But it is remarkable that the king never does directly take part in any contract. That is probably due to his sacred character. The young princess was not treated with overmuch consideration, judging by the smallness of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... be troubled overmuch for or about me, my dearest friend; but commend me, as I do you and myself, to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... life. He fully deserved his fate. Yet he meant well and had done some good things in his day. Had he been able to rule himself, he might have ruled others with better success. Schoolboys remember with gratitude that he forbade teachers to "spank their pupils overmuch and without ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... were grave and full of awe. Yet perhaps none who knew Dinah were overmuch surprised at her words. Her life had been lived amongst the sick for many years. She had never shrunk from danger, or had spared herself when the need was pressing. Her sister Rachel, although the tears stood in her eyes, said nothing ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... not that the death he died Had overmuch of shame: For this was he who did provide Foul wrong unto his house and name: His daughter, blossom of my womb, He gave unto a deadly doom, Iphigenia, child of tears! And as he wrought, even so he fares. Nor be his vaunt too ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... looked on me with kind eyes. Her father had much land and many horses; also he was a big man among his people, and his blood was the blood of the French. He said the girl knew not her own mind, and talked overmuch with her, and became wroth that ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... peevish resentment at the man's confidence and cool poise. It was an odd reversal of their ordinary relations. For the hour the duller villain, the man who was wont to take orders and to refrain from overmuch thought or question, seemed to have become master. Sheer physical exhaustion and the constant maddening pain had had their will of Captain Stewart. A sudden shiver wrung him so that his dry fingers rattled against the wood ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... of us were actually to turn about in just that fashion. Two, I think, for to face a strange planet, even though it be a wholly civilised one, without some other familiar backing, dashes the courage overmuch. Suppose that we were indeed so translated even as we stood. You figure us upon some high pass in the Alps, and though I—being one easily made giddy by stooping—am no botanist myself, if my companion were to have a specimen ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... "Don't worry overmuch about it," I answered, railing at him. "She'll never look at you, man. My grave will be an insurmountable barrier. She will idealize my memory, think me a martyr ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... been utter'd and written on her, Henrietta the Queen: She was young in a difficult part, on a cruel and difficult scene:— Was it strange she should fail? that the King overmuch should bow down to her will? —So of old with the women, God bless them!—it was, so will ever be still! Rash in counsel and rash in courage, she aided and marr'd The shifting tides of the fight, the star of the Stuarts ill-starr'd. In her the false Florentine blood,—in him the bad strain ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... heart, as it were, and more wildly living than if it had burned like fire; trembling, and not in weakness, with something that caught her own fingers and ran like lightning to the very core and quick of her soul, hurting it overmuch with its bolt of joy and fear. It was for her that, at the first, he had been cold and silent, because he was afraid of himself, and of love, and of the least, faintest breath that might tarnish the bright shield of his spotless loyalty ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... sick. He signed the book and took the message from the salver, apparently acting against a sense of the most intense repulsion, and for all that unable to help himself. The message once in his hand he did not seem to concern himself overmuch with its possible import; presently the envelope fell from his inert fingers and fluttered down at Indiman's feet. The latter picked it up and handed it to the young man, who thanked him ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... were, because that, in the absence of their husbands, who spent the best part of their lives in the wars, their wives, whom they were obliged to leave absolute mistresses at home, took great liberties and assumed the superiority; and were treated with overmuch respect and called by the title of lady or queen. The truth is, he took in their case, also, all the care that was possible; he ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... that until I went to a day-school at the age of seven, or it may have been less, I had a fairly good time. Open air has a great deal to do with happiness in a child—open air and plenty of wholesome food, and satisfactory parents. Not that the victim cares overmuch for rice-puddings or a good mother; but these things leave their mark. As to mothers, I should say they have got more men and women into Heaven than any bishop, priest, deacon, or professional Churchman whatsoever. Personally, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... blame these men; at least we need not blame them overmuch. To say that they acted as they did is to say that they were human, were narrow-minded, and were the apostles of a lost cause. But they could not know this; they had no experience of the past to guide them; the conditions under ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... dollar, and in tricking his friends in the smallest and most underhand ways. Friends in the true sense of the word he had none; those who regarded themselves as such were of that thrifty, congealed disposition swayed largely by calculation. But if they expected to gain overmuch by their intimacy, they were generally vastly mistaken; nearly always, on the contrary, they found themselves caught in some unexpected snare, and riper in experience, but poorer in pocket, they were glad to ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... bearing helped him in his path through life. The Major, clean-shaven and philosophic; the Gunnery Lieutenant, preoccupied with his vast responsibilities, a seaman-scientist with a reputation in the football-field. The Torpedo Lieutenant, quiet, gentle-mannered, fastidious in his dress and not given to overmuch speech. The Engineer-Lieutenant, whose outlook on life alternated between moods of fierce hilarity and brooding melancholy, according to the tenour of a correspondence with a distracting Red Cross nursing sister exposed to the perils of caring for good-looking military officers ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... Daemons do not trust me overmuch," said he, as he entered the cavern; "but it is morning, now, and the mischief is done. You cannot visit the children ...
— A Kidnapped Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum

... suspense on other men, or changing with the vicissitude of their fortune,—has his life ordered for the best. He is the temperate and valiant and wise; and when his riches come and go, when his children are given and taken away, he will remember the proverb—"Neither rejoicing overmuch nor grieving overmuch," for he relies upon himself. And such we would have our parents to be—that is our word and wish, and as such we now offer ourselves, neither lamenting overmuch, nor fearing overmuch, if we are to die at this time. And we entreat ...
— Menexenus • Plato

... tells me. Perhaps the queen has mother-like fears for the safety of this only son of hers, and lets them get on her mind overmuch." ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler



Words linked to "Overmuch" :   nimiety, overabundance, too much, surplus, superabundance, teemingness, surplusage, glut, copiousness



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