"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his purpose did equal justice to both. The deepest wish of his heart was to reconcile them, not by formal treaty, but in loving and condign union. We do not, however, object to an esoteric and exoteric view of the doctrine in question; and we quite agree with Feuerbach that the phrase preetablie does not express a metaphysical determination. It is one thing to say, that God, by an arbitrary decree from everlasting, has so predisposed and predetermined every motion in the world of matter that each volition of a rational agent finds in the constant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... wheel with his long, curly tongue running in and out over his teeth. I hesitated a moment, thinking just how to phrase my attack, when ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... two great English-speaking nations of the world, it is in the power of the most foolish politician or the most irresponsible sub-editor, on either side of the Atlantic, to create an international complication with a single spoken phrase or stroke of the pen. And as both countries appear to be inhabited very largely by persons who regard newspapers as Bibles and foolish politicians as inspired prophets, it seems advisable to take steps ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... determined, and where many a fine fellow had met his fate. Our journey lay over a field of battle, through the entire extent of which the houses were not only thoroughly gutted (to use a vulgar but most expressive phrase), but for the most part were riddled with cannon-shot. Round some of the largest, indeed, there was not a wall nor a tree which did not present evident proofs of its having been converted into a temporary place of defence, whilst the deep ruts in what had once ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... precedes the adjective, the adverb, or the phrase which it modifies; precedes or follows (more frequently follows) the simple verb or the verb with its complement; and follows one or more words of the verb if the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... to the end of the canyon, but after a few miles the beaver were absent, and, having preserved none of the meat, the party began to suffer for food. They were six days without eating, and, the high precipitous walls running ever on and on, they became disheartened, or, in Western phrase, "demoralised," and proposed to cast lots to find which should make food for the others, a proposition which horrified Ashley, and he begged them to hold out longer, assuring them that the walls must soon break and enable them to escape. They ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... away? No, Lowell, no. That phrase, indeed, is scarce well chosen. We're glad, of course, to have you go More like a brother than a cousin; True, we must "speed the parting guest," If such a guest from us must sever; But what we all should like the best Would be ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... liked him when she most tried to stand out against him; he was so much the successful executive that she did not want him to despise her. His manner of sneering at what he called "parlor socialists" (though the phrase was not overwhelmingly new) had a power which made her wish to placate his company of well-fed, speed-loving administrators. When he demanded, "Would you like to associate with nothing but a lot of ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... to some other. The personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives, adverbial phrases indicating time or place, conjunctions, and such expressions as certainly, however, on the other hand, etc., are used to indicate more or less directly a relation in thought between the phrase or sentence in which they occur and some preceding one. If the reader cannot readily determine to what they refer, the meaning becomes obscure or ambiguous. The pronominal adjectives and the personal pronouns are especially likely to be used in such a way as to cause ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... recompense her for the reproaches of conscience, but I know you, and am convinced that you are the last man to render her happy. I set aside, for the moment, all rules of religion and morality in general, and speak to you (to use the cant and abused phrase) "without prejudice" as to the particular instance. Emily's nature is soft and susceptible, yours fickle and wayward in the extreme. The smallest change or caprice in you, which would not be noticed by a mind less delicate, would wound her to the heart. ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... according to the manner in which they were uttered, but to her hurt pride and sore, shamed woman-instinct, they were a promise, simply because there was a choking sound in Justin's voice and tears in Justin's eyes. "You 'll see me back when my luck turns, Nancy"; this was the phrase upon which she had lived for more than ten years. Nancy had once heard the old parson say, ages ago, that the whole purpose of life was the growth of the soul; that we eat, sleep, clothe ourselves, work, love, all to give the soul another day, month, year, in which to develop. She used to wonder ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eyes of Mrs. Leath again looked out at him. He saw the fine sweep of her brows, and the deep look beneath them as she had turned from him on their last evening in London. "This will be good-bye, then," she had said; and it occurred to him that her parting phrase had been the same as ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... with [in] the truth." Here is evidence that the preceding phrase is to be taken as having reference to malicious rejoicing at another's sin and fall. Rejoicing in the truth is simply exulting in the right-doing and integrity of another. Similarly, love is grieved at ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... group having formed on the younger side of the room, and transcendentalisms and theologies forming the topic, a number of deep things were said in abrupt conversational style, Sterling in the thick of it. For example, one sceptical figure praised the Church of England, in Hume's phrase, "as a Church tending to keep down fanaticism," and recommendable for its very indifferency; whereupon a transcendental figure urges him: "You are afraid of the horse's kicking: but will you sacrifice all qualities to being safe from that? Then get a dead horse. ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... most ridiculous presumption in criticising such a man as the Prince. You would dare—you, Captain Wilmot, and you, Charlie, and you, Mr. Hannaway," she added, turning to the third young man, "to stand there and tell us all in a lordly way that the Prince is no sportsman, as though that mysterious phrase disposed of him altogether as a creature inferior to you and your kind! If only you could realize the absolute absurdity of any of you attempting to depreciate a person so immeasurably above you! Prince Maiyo is a man, not an overgrown boy to go through life shooting ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Robertson Smith, 75 ff., passim. In the Syrian religions as in that of Mithra, the initiates regarded each other as members of the same family, and the phrase "dear brethren" as used by our preachers, was already in use among the votaries of Jupiter Dolichenus (fratres carissimos, CIL, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... practically lived all his days on the bridge of his ship, often having his meals sent up, and sleeping at night in the chart-room. And he indited there his home letters. Each of them, without exception, contained the phrase, "The weather has been very fine this trip," or some other form of a statement to that effect. And this statement, too, in its wonderful persistence, was of the same perfect accuracy as ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... brow contracted in a puzzled frown, but she waited. The young doctor tried again to phrase ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... by keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open, learned not a little of the methods which characterized the relations of his company with various Governments; and while not all that he learned could in the widest implication of the phrase he designated as morally—or, say, rather, ethically—elevating, it afforded an interesting side-light upon the ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... leaves; and I told the elder to come warn us in all haste, the moment they began their march. Let us wait till she comes; she will go in with me.... We should not have looked on them so.... I thought it would be only to knock upon the door; to go in simply, find a phrase or two, and tell.... But I have seen them live ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... possible that the insignificant deviations which we know as "individual variations" can form the beginning of a process of selection? Can they decide which is to perish and which to survive? To use a phrase of Romanes, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... was left to take? To 'form her mind'? This was a common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I resolved to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... that's the phrase of the world: well—tell him, But tell him gently too—that child and father Are names, whose earthly sense I have forsworn, And know no more: I have a heavenly spouse, Whose service doth ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... telling her he hoped her future life would be free from all care. All this, and even more, dear reader, he told her—in plain, homely words, it is true; but love's language is always sweet, be it in courtly tongue or homely phrase. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... by this time got it into his head that Olga Karacsay was in love with him. He was not a vain young man, and tried to think that her attentions were merely friendly; but she was so persistent in her invitations and—in the slang phrase—made such running with him, that he grew rather nervous of her attentions. Several times she had proposed to come on a visit to Rickwell, but hitherto he had always managed to put her off. But her letters were becoming very imperative, and he foresaw trouble. ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... days, and which has permitted our learning to go on step by step in a safe way up the heights to which it has climbed. All explanations of Nature begin with the work of the imagination. In common phrase, they all are guesses which have at first but little value, and only attain importance in proportion as they are verified by long-continued criticism, which has for its object to see whether the facts accord with the theory. It is in this effort to secure proof that modern ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the stranger's fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a phrase that is its own essential possession, and yet is dearer to the speaker of other tongues. Easily—shall I say cheaply?—spiritual, for example, was the nation that devised the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... a cigar the conviction was borne in upon him, as the phrase goes, that to travel in an opera company without a mistress would be unendurable.... Where could he get one equal to Evelyn? Nowhere. No one in the company was comparable to her; and of course he loved her, and she loved him: differently, in some strange way he feared, but still she loved ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... been said that one can hear the sighing of the north wind and the roar of the North Sea in Gudrun, but this is scarcely more than a pretty phrase. The 'dark tempestuous' sea, 'wild unfathomable' waves, the shore 'wet from the blood of the slain,' are indeed mentioned, but that ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... bands of red (top), white, and black with three green five-pointed stars in a horizontal line centered in the white band; the phrase ALLAHU AKBAR (God is Great) in green Arabic script - Allahu to the right of the middle star and Akbar to the left of the middle star - was added in January 1991 during the Persian Gulf crisis; similar to the flag of Syria, which has ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... beautiful morning, sunny, calm, inspiriting, and presently Tom began to hum. After a time Henry perceived that Tom was humming the same phrase again and again: 'Some streets are longer than others. Some ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me, with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the dead man's childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, to invent such rubbish at such a moment? But Tyeglev had evidently been pleased with the phrase: he had made ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... unconsciously repeating the phrase which was then upon the lips of all the young ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... phrase, yet apt the verse, More ponderous than nimble; For since grimed War here laid aside His Orient pomp, 'twould ill befit Overmuch to ply The ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... south-east was Laconia, with an area of about nineteen hundred square miles. It consisted mainly of the valley of the Eurotas, which lay between the lofty mountain ranges of Parnon and Taygetus. "Hollow Lacedaemon" was a phrase descriptive of its situation. Sparta, the capital, was on the Eurotas, twenty miles from the sea. It had no other important city. Argolis, projecting into the sea, eastward of Arcadia, had within it the ancient towns of Mycenae ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... upon which "doctors" do not differ is that the tone, in order to be pure, resonant, and far-reaching, must be allowed to come well to the front of the mouth. It should, as the phrase goes, be directed against the hard palate just above the front teeth. But this is an unfortunate way of putting it, as the tone fills the whole cavity of the mouth, and cannot be "directed" like a jet of water upon any given ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... fearful. Why should men rejoice, They can escape from the pure breath of heaven And the sweet franchise of their natural will, To such a prison-house? To be confined In body and in soul; to breathe the air Of dark close streets, and never use one's tongue But for some measured phrase that hath its bent Well gauged and chartered; to find ready smiles When one is sorrowful, or looks demure When one would laugh outright. Never to be Exact but when dissembling. Is this life? I dread this city. As I passed its gates My litter stumbled, and the children shrieked And clung unto ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... in brief and business-like phrase. He addressed Brigham Young as governor; stated that he would submit his letter to the commanding officer immediately on his arrival; that meanwhile the troops were there by order of the President, and that their future movements ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... take him altogether, he was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairyness; two characteristics that I disliked. It was his mind that puzzled, and yet attracted me. The doctor's phrase—an innocent—came back to me; and I was wondering if that were, after all, the true description, when the road began to go down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent. The waters thundered tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a middle-aged man, who was evidently the strong stay and staff on which the old people leaned. His wife was the housekeeper of the family, and she was emphatically the "house-mother," as the Germans phrase it. Every line of her good, but rather care-worn, face bespoke an anxious solicitude about everybody and everything except herself. It was apparent that she had inherited not a little of the "Martha" spirit, and "was careful about many things;" ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... from his pulpit, he had talked to men and women of culture and he had spent much of his time in polishing a phrase, or in rounding out a sentence. But now he spent his time in search of the clear words ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... to take me to the railway, and to accompany me as a chaperon on a visit to Sir Guy and Lady Scapegrace, who were, as usual, "entertaining a distinguished party of fashionables at their residence, Scamperley." By the way, what an odd phrase that same "entertaining" always sounds to my ear. When I learn that the Marquis of Mopes has been "entertaining" his friends, the Duke of Drearyshire, Count and Countess Crotchet, Viscount Inane, Sir Simon and Lady ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... bit she reveals herself in Tom's random diaries. As in the printing of a photograph the lights and darks come sparsely out, and unawares the delicate outline, so by a word here, a phrase elsewhere, we realise the presence of a sweet-natured, sound-minded girl, and more than that, of a girl with character. After a spell of Brompton lodgings Tom took her to Kegworth in Leicestershire, where he was to have ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... after all the lamentations of the "De Profundis" and the "Dies irae," the presence of God, who comes then upon the altar, brings consolation, and sanctions the confident and solemn pride of that melodious phrase, which then invokes Christ, without dread ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Chancellor wrote a letter to me in August confirming his very optimistic views of the situation, and defining Germany's views regarding Belgium. The phrase, "as I understand it," above alluded to in his approval of the resolution, was explained in his letter, at any rate, as to the Belgium question: "As Germany wishes to reserve to herself the right to exercise a far-reaching military and economic ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... sleeps in the cradle through it all. Beside the window, unruffled amid the uproar, sits Celestia with her needle in her hand—a little paler, a little thinner than she used to be, and a little care-worn withal. For Celestia is "ambitious," in good housewife phrase, and thereto many in Merleville and beyond it who like to visit at her ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... seek assistance, and left the dark room with the dead man lying in the pool of yellow light, and the parrot perched on the body, muttering to itself. It was a strange mingling of the horrible and grotesque, and the whole scene was hit off in the phrase applied to it by Vandeloup. It was, indeed, 'The Comedy ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... set the fashion, but the sonorous phrase of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 is the most familiar, in its declaration (Part the First, Art. XXX) that "in the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... At which I used to laugh inwardly and go away to my studio to listen to the Divine voice dictating fresh pictures to me. For five years in Italy I had studied closely and worked unremittingly, keeping myself for my art alone and existing only in it. My teachers had called me industrious. Another phrase which always must make an artist laugh when ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... of the unusual tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy, although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was worse than ever—the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand alive only to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind with a visit from a local visitor,—I am not sure he was a preacher,—who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us or write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... intellectual food Thou'lt serve: an added phrase or two Will make thee really just ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... to repeat the phrase, because with the first stroke of midnight ringing out from the big clock over the stables, came also the first intimation of the new movement. Mrs. Sturton's fly was mysteriously delayed; and I had a premonition ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... lack of clear light adds to the horror of the scene. Note the Rembrandtesque effects in such phrases: 'aux tremblantes clartes,' 'l'ombre indistincte,' 'a travers l'ombre, on voit toutes les soifs infames,' and it ends in 'le triomphe de l'ombre,' a phrase in which the literal and the figurative are subtly blended together. On the other hand, how everything sparkles and gleams in Le Mariage de Roland! Olivier's sword-point glitters like the eye of a demon, while ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... knack and enterprise were early developed among the seamen of the service; their management of boats is to this day a matter of admiration; and I find my grandfather in his diary depicting the nature of their excellence in one happily descriptive phrase, when he remarks that Captain Soutar had landed 'the small stores and nine casks of oil WITH ALL THE ACTIVITY OF A SMUGGLER.' And it was one thing to land, another to get on board again. I have here a passage from the diary, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fell asleep, she would be spared a second vision of judgement. A dressing-gong sounded in the distance, and she debated whether to abandon her letter to Eric and go down. Gerald Deganway would be simperingly sympathetic. "Your mother tells me you're not feeling very grand" (odious phrase). "Poor you!" (Damnable phrase, damnable creature—with his insecure eye-glass and plastered flaxen hair!) Johnny Carstairs would be pontifical and pretentious—"The unhappy Foreign Office comes in for all the kicks. There's a body of three-pound-a-week gentlemen in Fleet Street who'd ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... sense in which it was taken by Haig. He had begun to say, "You've got to admit that was pretty hard." But his unfortunate pause on the uncompleted sentence had justified Haig in putting the worst possible construction on the objectionable phrase. And now Huntington could not finish it as he had intended, without seeming to back down, or weaken. Nor could he afford to drop the mischievous word for another. In his desperation he took the boldest course, and made a more aggressive speech by far than any he had rehearsed for ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... for taking the unsuccessful side in a civil war. It was not until the beginning of the 16th century that any of the name assumed the arms, crest, and motto justified by their pride, property or standing. The motto taken, "Conquer Death by Virtue," is a rather meaningless phrase. It is modest enough, and indicates a religious turn of mind. Nearly every family of the name furnished a preacher. A few members of it attained the dignity of knighthood. A greater number became landed ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... had received so much kindness from the Deanes—to lay the design of winning a young man's affections away from her own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to her! Winning his affections? That was not the phrase for such a girl as Miss Tulliver; it would have been more correct to say that she had been actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and unbridled passion. There was always something questionable about her. That connection with young Wakem, which, they said, had been ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... legal phrase to designate that right which man possesses, irrespective of any law, to ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... of the young man who was to inherit this considerable fortune, was nearly completed during the reign of Louis XVIII., and shortly after Charles X. ascended the throne il commencait a faire sur droit, as they phrase it in the pays Latin. Neither during the reign of Louis XVIII., nor indeed now, unless in the exact and physical sciences, does Paris afford a very solid and substantial education. Though the Roman poets and historians are tolerably ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... the same sort, sir." And, casting about for another phrase with which to humour him, I took the first that came to my tongue; leaning my arms on the table (for I had finished eating), I said with a smile, "Well, what say you to this? This is something to know, isn't it? Je viens, tu ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... Republic seems to be an object of serious speculation ... The Papal Legations will, I am persuaded, be retained by the Emperor ... I am not yet master of the designs on Tuscany." [74] This was the sense in which Austria understood the phrase of defending the rights of Europe against French aggression. It was not, however, for this that the Czar had sent his army from beyond the Carpathians. Since the opening of the campaign Suvaroff had been in perpetual ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... his wife and children with little apprehension as to their safety. In reply to Meek's question, I stated that I had not seen Spencer's family, when he remarked, "Well, I fear that they are gone up," a phrase used in that country in early days to mean that they had been killed. I questioned him closely, to elicit further information, but no more could be obtained; for Meek, either through ignorance or the usual taciturnity ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... relate to the proper interpretation of the phrase "inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office," our organic law providing that when the President shall suffer from such inability the Presidential office shall devolve upon the Vice-President, who must himself under like circumstances give place to such officer as Congress ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... was held in 1862, and so far as decorative art was concerned there were distinct signs of improvement. 'Art manufacture' had now become a trade phrase, but manufacturers were still far from understanding what 'Art' really meant. As an instance of this, one carpet firm sent a carpet to be used as a hanging on which Napoleon III is depicted presenting a treaty of Commerce to the Queen. Particular attention had apparently been paid ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... constitution of his being, he was made to be sustained by that food which was most congenial to his animal economy; and this it must have been lawful for him to employ, unless self-destruction had been his duty. The true import of the phrase, therefore, doubtless is, that God had appointed, constituted, ordained this, as the staple article of man's diet. He had formed him with a nature to which a vegetable aliment was better suited than any other. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... rush by you, yelling from sheer delight in their lung power, and if you are rudely jostled to the wall, your toes trod upon and your hat clapped down on your ears, you console yourself with the timid phrase: ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... is meant by the phrase "specific stability;" such stability to be expected a priori, or else considerable changes at once.—Rapidly increasing difficulty of intensifying race characters; alleged causes of this phenomenon; probably an internal cause co-operates.—A certain definiteness ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... intelligence and bearing, had all the means of pleasing women; but obtained small success notwithstanding. Mademoiselle Vigean excepted, he appears to have been incapable of inspiring the tender passion, in the truest acceptation of the phrase. He went further than his sister, it seems, in the neglect of his person. It was his habit of life to be almost always badly dressed, and only appeared radiant on the field of battle. So that the Duke de Nemours was not the only rival with whom Conde had to contend for the favours ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... conquer or die. Instead of using a long-winded phrase each time the word occurs, it is better to repeat it ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... comically at the gilt and silk arm-chair which she designated, and then at her; and she smiled and coloured, divining the humour in his unspoken phrase. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was. An enormous bonfire blazed in the centre, and round it crowded the naked savages like so many black gnomes, adding whole branches of trees sacred to the seven sister-goddesses. Slowly and evenly they all jumped from one leg to another to a tune of a single monotonous musical phrase, which they repeated in chorus, accompanied by several local drums and tambourines. The hushed trill of the latter mingled with the forest echoes and the hysterical moans of two little girls, who lay under a heap of leaves ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... The way in which Marshall proceeded to do this was to treat the phrase "perform a part" as demanding "a levying of war" on the part of the performer. (Robertson, "Reports," vol. II, p. 438.) But this explanation will not hold water. For what then becomes of the phrase "scene ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... America." Who these are, it may seem strange in this place to inquire. But truly, sir, our imaginations have, of late, been so accustomed to wander after new settlements to the very ends of the earth, that it will not be time ill spent to inquire what this phrase means, and what it includes. These are not terms adopted at hazard; they have reference to a state of things existing anterior to the Constitution. When the people of the present United States began ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... friendships cooled: 't is the fate of these factitious tendernesses. With winter my second volume appeared, and Monsieur Louis Ulbach set to work again; but this time he found me merely "ingenious." It was a good deal more than I merited, and I would willingly have contented myself with this phrase. Unfortunately, I could not forget the austere counsel of Monsieur Louis Veuillot, and at this very epoch, Monsieur Louis Ulbach, who as a novelist could merit a great deal of praise, took it into his head to publish a thick volume of transcendental criticism, in which he attacked everything ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... borrowed from the Revelations; and that, calling his Church Babylon, they bade him come out of her, that he might not be a partaker of her plagues. Uncle Sandy had seen too much of the world, and read and heard too much of controversy, to be out of measure shocked by the phrase; but with a decent farmer of the parish the hard words of the proselytizers did them a mischief. The retired merchant had urged him to quit the Establishment; and the farmer had replied by asking, in his simplicity, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... third of three critical utterances of which each is summarised, as it were, in a single luminous phrase. To the Cape Dutch he spoke at Graaf Reinet, after their own manner: "Of course you are loyal!" To England, on the Uitlander's behalf, he wrote: "The case for intervention is overwhelming." And now he gathered the whole long lesson of the war into ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Trotzky, but studied his movements and gesticulation, his manner of scratching his nose, of quickly turning his head in a derby, and the nervous shrugging of his shoulders. The mob applauded him after every phrase, making his speech a series of separate sentences and thus giving him the advantage of thinking of most radical ideas, while awaiting for the listeners ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... fundamental truth. We must, however, as I have suggested already, distinguish between true and forced symbolism. The early Christians employed the fish as a symbol of Christ, because the Greek word for fish, icqus, is obtained by notariqon(1) from the phrase <gr 'Ihsous Cristos Qeou Uios, Swthr>—"JESUS CHRIST, the Son of God, the Saviour." Of course, the obvious use of such a symbol was its entire unintelligibility to those who had not yet been instructed in the mysteries of the Christian faith, since in the days of persecution some ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... certainly doesn't need the general work of college. I should think that you would prefer to have her devote herself to her music, especially her singing; for we all know that Patty's is a voice of rare promise. I don't know myself exactly what 'rare promise' means, but it's a phrase that's always ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... of 'muck-raking' in the United States a national one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making reform respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the national a slogan in a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is likely ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... doctrinal development nothing is so important as the exegesis of the New Testament statements about the Cross; and this has been done in a masterly way by Dr. Dale in his work on the Atonement. What may be called the Philosophy of the Cross (to borrow a happy phrase of McCheyne Edgar's) came late. It is usually reckoned to have commenced with Anselm; and since the Reformation every great theologian has added his contribution. Yet the work is by no means completed. Indeed, at the present day there is no ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... phrase "law business" struck oddly on British ears, as lacking in dignity. Philip thought of "doctor business," "artist business," and wondered if Americans spoke thus of all professions. Latimer changed ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... only told Walter, he knew that Walter would have sheltered him from unkindness at all hazards; but he was a thoroughly grateful child, and did not wish to get Walter into any difficulties on his account. So, in schoolboy phrase, there was nothing left for him but to "grin and bear it;" which he heroically did, earnestly longing for Walter's return to the dormitory as for some golden age. But his trials were not ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... He had a good phrase which he had been saving up for six weeks. "Dancing," he said, "is popular because it's so conspicuously innocent, and so warmly ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... would perhaps do a little violence to his own conscience in the attempt to conciliate those from whom he was constrained to differ. Luther, on the contrary, was a man of great force, decision and fearlessness, who would speak the truth in the plainest terms, without softening a phrase to conciliate either friend or foe. The Confession of Augsburg being the joint production of both Melancthon and Luther, did not exactly suit either. It was a little too uncompromising for Melancthon, a little too ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... understood that the second clause limited the first, and that men are created equal only in respect to certain rights. But the first part of the clause has been taken alone as the statement of a self-evident truth, and the attempt to make this unlimited phrase a reality has caused a great deal of misery. In connection with the neglect of the idea that the recognition of certain duties is as important as the recognition of rights in the political and social state—that is, in connection with the doctrine of laissez faire —this popular notion of equality ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was stirred, great problems presented themselves; for instance, in certain circumstances was "darling" or "little one" the better phrase? "Darling" in solitary grandeur is more pregnant of meaning than "little one," but "little" has a flavour of the patronizing which "darling" perhaps lacks. He wasted many sheets over such questions; but they were in his ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... This class was naturally recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only "a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength," to borrow Emerson's phrase, surviving to form families and the ranks of the samurai. Coming to profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of behavior, especially as they were always on ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... of animal species to suit our theorists there is nothing so convenient as the influence of environment. It is a vague, elastic phrase, which does not compromise us by compelling us to be too precise and it supplies an apparent explanation of the inexplicable. But is this influence so ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... murmured against the restraints of state and form by which she was surrounded, and when she almost blamed the timidity of her lover, who seemed resolved not to infringe them. The etiquette, to use a modern phrase, of birth and rank, had drawn around her a magical circle, beyond which Sir Kenneth might indeed bow and gaze, but within which he could no more pass than an evoked spirit can transgress the boundaries prescribed by the rod of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... loue sacke, and so do I: would you desire better simpathie? Let it suffice thee (Mistris Page) at the least if the Loue of Souldier can suffice, that I loue thee: I will not say pitty mee, 'tis not a Souldier-like phrase; but I say, loue me: By me, thine owne true Knight, by day or night: Or any kinde of light, with all his might, For thee to fight. Iohn Falstaffe. What a Herod of Iurie is this? O wicked, wicked world: One that is well-nye ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... at the conclusion of that meal that this beautiful young Japanese hostess whispered to her Mother-in-law during the dinner a phrase that sounded strangely like American slang, when she noted that her mother-in-law was not carrying on much of a conversation with the man beside her, "Start something! He can speak ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... mental prowess—has scored off his failure at cricket by the taking of prizes, and has revenged himself for a drubbing by writing a lampoon. But even this last resource was not open to Goldsmith. He was a dull boy; "a stupid, heavy blockhead," is Dr. Strean's phrase in summing up the estimate formed of young Goldsmith by his contemporaries at school. Of course, as soon as he became famous, everybody began to hunt up recollections of his having said or done this or that, in order to prove that there were signs of the coming ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... it all than any of us. I could talk a little French, John a good deal of German. When we got to Paris, we found my uncle considerably at home there. When he cared to speak, he spoke like a native, and was never at a loss for word or phrase. ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... again under discussion, the nations exhorted to a serious examination of the question—and there the matter rested. We have reached now an insufferable stage where effective action must be taken. Let us hear no more that deceptive catch phrase, "If you want peace prepare for war." When bad blood is likely to arise between individuals the very worst policy to pursue is to furnish them with weapons. And so it is with nations. Consider, if you will, the neck-and-neck race between Great Britain and the German Empire in ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... adopted. He became one of that gens for all practical, political, historical, purposes. It is only the physiologist who could deny his right to his new position. The nature of the process is well expressed by a phrase of our own law. When the nation—the word itself keeps about it the remembrance of birth as the groundwork of every thing—adopts a new citizen, that is, a new child of the state, he is said to be naturalized. That is, a legal ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... living person, for the reason that so long as a man has not ended his years, no trust may be put in him, lest he be seduced by the evil inclination. It is true, when He appeared unto Jacob at Beth-el, God called Himself "the God of Isaac." There was a reason for the unusual phrase. Being blind, Isaac led a retired life, within his tent, and the evil inclination had no power over him any more. But though God had full confidence in Isaac, yet Jacob could not venture to couple the name of God with the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... trumpets is no phrase. Indeed, Piccadilly and Holborn, and the empty sitting-room and the sitting-room with fifty people in it are liable at any moment to blow music into the air. Women perhaps are more excitable than men. It is seldom that any one says anything about it, and to see the hordes crossing Waterloo ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... it would have been useless to tear them from their places so near to our table did they grow. Other travelers pass along the highway and these very ferns and flowers may be to them "another sacred scripture," as Thoreau would phrase it, cheering them along the road of life. If one really loves these mountains with their wealth of ferns and mosses and floral beauty, few, if any, of these children of the mountains are disturbed. Out here in Nature's garden ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... exchanged shocked glances. "Dish up." What an abominable phrase! They looked covertly at their guest, but his face ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... who contend that we ought frankly to accept this development and universalise it, basing our political organisation upon what they describe (in a blessed, Mesopotamic phrase) as "functional representation." The doctrine seems to have, for some minds, a strange plausibility. But is it not plain that it could not be justly carried out? Who could define or enumerate the "functions" that ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... Brandywine, which we had met at Alexandria. We had leave to make a party and go up to Cairo and the Pyramids. As we jogged along (you went on donkeys then), some of the gentlemen (we boys called them "Dons," but the phrase was long since changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one told the system which was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. As he was almost never permitted to go on shore, even though the vessel lay in port for months, his time at the best hung heavy; and everybody was ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... voice of hushed suggestion, he told Medallion the romance of P'tite Louison. And each of the brothers at different times during the next fortnight did the same, differing scarcely at all in details, or choice of phrase or meaning, and not at all in general facts and essentials. But each, as he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
