"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... really great, magnificent without touching the heart, proudly but not harmoniously ordered. The one redeeming feature in the structure is the cupola; and that is the one thing which Michelangelo bequeathed to the intelligence of his successors. The curve which it describes finds no phrase of language to express its grace. It is neither ellipse nor parabola nor section of the circle, but an inspiration of creative fancy. It outsoars in vital force, in elegance of form, the dome of the Pantheon and the dome of Brunelleschi, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... judgment?" cried Rae Malgregor. The phrase was like a red rag to her. "With my judgment? Great Heavens! That's the whole trouble! I haven't got any judgment! I've never been allowed to have any judgment! All I've ever been allowed to have is the judgment of some flirty young medical student—or the House ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... declaration to the man in the shop that he was going out because he "needed air." If that was his object, then it was clear that he had miserably failed. With downcast eyes and lowered head he made an effort to pick up the strangled phrase. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... term Mound-Builders will recur many times throughout this paper, and as the phrase has been objected to by some archaeologists on account of its indefiniteness, it may be well to state that it is employed here with its commonly accepted signification, viz: as applied to the people ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... stir and commotion in the South Barracks, where "lay" the Royal Picts—to use a soldier's phrase. The few words let drop by General Wilders, and overheard by Sergeant McKay, had been verified. "The route had come," and the regiment was under orders to join the expeditionary army in ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... not come out after five in the morning. This irritated Constable Plimmer. You talk of a man 'going home with the milk' when you mean that he sneaks in in the small hours of the morning. If all milkmen were like Alf Brooks the phrase was meaningless. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... watch—close watch to remember. He opened his heart to the terror of poor Bill Bull; he sought to feel, though the effort was not conscious, what the atheist endured in the presence of the wrath to come. He watched; he memorized every phrase of the torture, as it expressed itself in the changing lines of Bill Bull's countenance, that he ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... speak so lightly," he said. "You use a common phrase and a very objectionable phrase, young man. Do you rate your soul so low that you would surrender it for the satisfaction of a morbid craving? For that is all this amounts to. Not to such an inquirer will my son's death reveal ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... stout little wrist, she dropped me, and a streak went up our road. Nothing so amazing and so important ever had happened to me. It was an occasion that demanded something unusual. To cry, "Praise the Lord!" was only to repeat an hourly phrase at our house; this demanded something out of the ordinary, so I said just exactly as father did the day the brown mare balked with the last load of seed clover, when a ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... his own phrase for it, on an earlier train than Eleanor had expected, and marched up to the Hilton House with a jaunty air of perfect ease and assurance. But really, he confided to Eleanor, he was in a "blooming blue ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... a clear and definite stand against the new learning which, seems fatal to its fundamental doctrines. For many years past, liberal divines in the Protestant Churches have been doing what the Modernists are doing. The phrase "Divinity of Christ" is used, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous birth. The Resurrection is preached, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous bodily resurrection. The Bible is said to be an inspired book, ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... instrument had a remarkable compass; melody followed melody—"The Harp that Once through Tara's Hall," "She is Far from the Land," "In Death I shall Calm Recline," and other popular pieces. When Straws missed a note he went back to find it; when he erred in a phrase, he patiently repeated it. The cadence in the last mournful selection, "Bid her not shed a tear of sorrow," was, on his first attempt, fraught with exceeding discord, and he was preparing once more to assault ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... horizontal 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 that has two stars but no script and the flag of Yemen that has a plain ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a tune, every breath is a boon; 'Tis poem enough to be living; Why fumble for phrase while magnificent June Her matchless recital is giving? Why not to the music and picturing come, And just with the manifest marvel sit dumb In ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... nieces, totalling nine in all—but two of them, being still, in Sir WALTER'S phrase, composed of "that species of pink dough which is called a fine infant" do not count—I think that my favourites are Enid and Hannah. Enid being the daughter of a brother of mine, and Hannah of a sister, they are cousins. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and, as soon as we mounted our horses, exclaimed, 'Where, in the name of goodness, did you pick up your acquaintance and the language of these extraordinary people?' 'Some years ago, in Moultan,' he ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Conkling, although unable to reply effectively, demeaned himself with great dignity. His manners were placid and his reply was in measured terms. It was in striking contrast to what Mr. Blaine said. To use a phrase graphic if inelegant, he jumped on Conkling with both feet and literally tore him to pieces without any attempt at dignity. This controversy with Conkling probably caused the defeat of Mr. Blaine for the nomination—first, in conventions prior to 1884, and ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... no such thing as conversation. Now and then one hears a caustic or witty phrase, but nothing more. The tone of good society everywhere is to be pleasant without being prominent. In every other European country, however, able men are encouraged to talk; in England alone they are discouraged. People in society use a debased ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... a faint clue to the mystery of Mrs. Purling's tardy reception at Compton Revel. Intrigue—not necessarily base, but covered by the harmless phrase, "It would be so very nice"—was at work to bring about a match between Miss Fanshawe and Harold Purling. She was one of a large family of girls and her father was an impoverished peer. Besides, her ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... foundation for the philosophy of philosophasters and for the moralizing of sentimentalists. But the Stoics were, at bottom, not merely noble, but sane, men; and if we look closely into what they really meant by this ill-used phrase, it will be found to present no justification for the mischievous conclusions that ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and high were my spirits at the prospect of a sojourn in the hallowed land of Burns. To use a well-turned phrase, it had been the height of my ambition to reach the birth-place of a genius second to none in his way—Bobby Burns, the patriotic bard and ploughboy. For twelve months I stayed in the quaint old town. Scores of times ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... my tongue's end, for my own part, a phrase or two about the right word at the right time; but later on I was glad not to have spoken, for when on our return we clustered at tea I perceived Lady Jane, who had not been out with us, brandishing The Middle with her longest arm. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Philistus appear a trifler and a novice, pushes on in his descriptions, through all the battles, sea-fights, and public speeches, in recording which they have been most successful, without meriting so much as to be compared in Pindar's phrase, to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... crowded with a throng of people whose shouts and songs told me that the colonel's hospitality was being fully appreciated. There was dancing going on to the strains of the military band, and every sign showed that our good citizens intended, in familiar phrase, to ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... took on a quizzical expression. "How do you mean? I was about to agree with you until you tacked that last phrase on. What does point of view ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ready to suspend his story for a lengthy disquisition on any subject, person or place that interests him. This puts him peculiarly at the mercy of his transliterator, who has a positive genius for choosing the wrong word and depriving any comment of its subtlety, any well-made phrase of its distinction. Even plain narrative such as the following is none too attractive:—"The voluminous documents would become covered with dust on his table and Don Esteban would have to saddle himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... cannot be decent, except it be in rare cases; but to praise a man's office or profession, he may do it with good grace, and with a kind of magnanimity. The cardinals of Rome, which are theologues, and friars, and Schoolmen, have a phrase of notable contempt and scorn towards civil business: for they call all temporal business of wars, embassages, judicature, and other employments, sbirrerie, which is under-sheriffries; as if they were but matters, for under-sheriffs and catchpoles: though many times those under-sheriffries do more ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... quickly; the faint aroma of happiness which her sleep had brought her, and which amounted to cheerfulness, stayed with her. She remembered how Miss Abercrombie had once said to her: "Oh, you are a Browningite," and smiled at the phrase, repeating to herself another verse of the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... mistaken for he proposed no other end to himself than plundering her of those presents she received from gallants, so that whenever evening drew on, he was very assiduous for her to turn out (as they phrase it), that is to go upon the street-walking account picking pockets. She had not followed this trade long before she became so uneasy under it that one night meeting with her old companion Standford, she persuaded her to ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... almost every family owns a pericos, kept as American children keep canary birds. The pericos is about the size and color of a Crow, but has a hard white hood that entirely covers its head. The people teach it but one phrase, which it repeats continually, parrot fashion. The words are, "Comusta pari? Pericos tao." (How are you, father? Parrot-man.) "Pari" means padre or priest. The people address the pericos as "pari" because its white head, ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... As Violet dropped the last page from her hand, she recalled a certain phrase in her employer's letter. "If at the end you come upon a perfectly blank wall—" Well, she had come upon this wall. Did he expect her to make an opening in it? Or had he already done so himself, and was merely testing her ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... claimed to be the "scientific" view of history. It was tersely expressed by Alexander von Humboldt in the phrase: "The history of the world is the mere expression of a ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... greatly admire their secular enterprise. They afford a fine illustration of the idea conveyed in their own indigenous phrase, "Go a-head." ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... moment that the phrase reparation des dommages was included in the armistice treaty as a claim that could be urged, it became impossible to ask for a fixed sum. What was to be asked for was neither more nor less than the amount of the damages. Hence a special commission ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... Let me say that I can exchange my personality. The Jews used to say that men of certain mentality were possessed of a devil. I only say that I was a student in India. One phrase is good as another. The Swami Hamadata ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Except for a slinking figure here and there in the distance the street about us was deserted. Even our footfalls echoed and Garrick warned us to tread softly. I longed for the big stick, that went with the other half of the phrase. ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... road, because Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he is proprietor of the horses for this part of the journey. "But won't I flog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?" said the young Cantab. "And sarve 'em right, Master Jack," said the guard. When I comprehended the meaning of this phrase, and that Master Jack intended to drive the rest of the way, and revenge himself on Sir Pitt's horses, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was the first to figure and describe it, got, as the vulgar phrase hath it, the wrong pig by the lug, as he translates it Sand-bear. McMaster also speaks of those he saw as being in deep ravines on the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... sea!" How many a story has been written in that phrase! How could this anxious watcher face the parents of those boys and tell them news such as this? At least for a time he was spared this, for no boat would go back to Valdez within a month, and those who awaited news were Alaska mothers and knew the delays ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... slender but exquisitely formed woman from a frail, awkward child. She had posed for me during the last three years, and among all my models she was my favourite. It would have troubled me very much indeed had she become "tough" or "fly," as the phrase goes, but I never noticed any deterioration of her manner, and felt at heart that she was all right. She and I never discussed morals at all, and I had no intention of doing so, partly because I had none myself, and partly because I knew ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... say, "Stop the war for their sakes!" If we say this of ourselves, shall we have more pity for the rebellious, for slavery seeking to blacken a continent with its awful evil, desecrating the social phrase, "National Independence," by seeking only an independence that shall enable them to treat four millions of human beings as chattels? Shall we be tenderer over them than over ourselves? Standing by my cradle, standing by my hearth, standing by the altar of the church, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... in the Pepysian Library, edited for the Villon Society by Mr. G.L. Gomme. Mr. Nutt, who kindly abridged it for me, writes, "Nothing in the shape of incident has been omitted, and there has been no rewriting beyond a phrase here and there rendered necessary by the process of abridgment. But I have in one case altered the sequence of events putting the fight with ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... think I must be discontented with my lot, when—in a certain sense—I'm not at all so. I don't pretend that I prefer working for a living to having money of my own; but I've found this"—she hesitated, as if thinking out her phrase—"I've found that life grows richer as it goes on, in whatever way one has to live it. It's as if the streams that fed it became more numerous the farther ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... conducting, the leader sets the tempo,—and is imitated by the musicians under him; he feels a certain emotional thrill in response to the composer's message,—and arouses a similar thrill in the performers; lifts his shoulders as though taking breath,—and causes the singers to phrase properly, often without either the conductor or the singers being aware of how the direction was conveyed. It is at least partly because we instinctively imitate the mental state or the emotional attitude of the pianist or the vocalist that we are capable of being thrilled ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... that the Gray Badger was a great hunter, as Malachi was more than forty years ago; so they imagine as his hair was gray then, he must have been a very old man at that time back, and so to them he appears to live forever, and they consider him as charmed, and to use their phrase, 'great medicine.' I've heard some Indians declare that Malachi had seen one hundred and fifty winters, and they really believe it. I never contradicted them, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... her existence, she was content simply because she knew no better one. She had not realised before in what a very different fashion other girls were brought up. But now her eyes were open. That simple phrase, "She does not know, poor child, what she is missing," had told her more than many ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... from a chronological rather than a genealogical standpoint, and, strange to say, the familiar phrase had never been heard by ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... precisely defined, enacted by law, and enforced by legal authority. Yet we virtually recognize a broader meaning of the word, whenever we place law and justice in opposition to each other, as when we speak of an unjust law. In this phrase we imply that there is a supreme and universal justice, of whose requirements human law is but a partial and imperfect transcript. This justice must embrace all rights and dues of all beings, human and Divine; and it is in this sense that we may regard whatever any ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... me not more a gallant soldier and a generous spirit than a cultivated and accomplished gentleman; he, indeed, shows higher culture than any other character in the tragedy, as well as finer natural tastes; and I have thought that into the scope of this phrase, "daily beauty," Shakespeare took not only the honorable and lovely traits of moral nature, to which you, and perhaps the rest of the world with you, seem to limit it, but all the outward belongings and surroundings of the personage to whom it is applied. For these, indeed, were a part ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... suggested to the raven his old phrase, "Never say die!" But he stopped short in the middle of it as if he lacked the heart to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... himself into a kneeling position, and commenced repeating the sublime prayer of the Christian. The rough sailor knelt alongside of him, and with hands crossed over his breast in a supplicating attitude, listened attentively, now and then joining in the words of the prayer, whenever some phrase recurred to ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... nothing. His ignorance of the sister kingdom cannot be described; it can only be illustrated by anecdote. I once travelled with a man of plausible manners and good intelligence - a University man, as the phrase goes - a man, besides, who had taken his degree in life and knew a thing or two about the age we live in. We were deep in talk, whirling between Peterborough and London; among other things, he began to describe some piece of legal injustice he had recently encountered, and I observed ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... certain phrase of words on each cylinder which I want recorded this way. Can all three be taken parallel with each ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... slums of Marseilles. It began to be said of him that his presence made death easy, that the touch of his hand steadied those who were about to die. Feverish, terrified, reluctant, they became suddenly calm, wistful, and passed quietly as one falls asleep. "Send for Pierre Pilleux" became a familiar phrase in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... cwadle," Frank was accustomed to relate, with an abused sniff to punctuate each phrase, "and he chopped it wif the hatchet all in little bits ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... you," he threw to the cabman, in the proper phrase (which he was proud to recall from his youth), as though the cabman had been something which he ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... little phrase may at first thought appear superfluous. After the historian has said, "All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years," what seems to be the use of his adding the few words, "and he died"? ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... esteem to sink much lower; and therefore, if her requiring money to discharge debts of honour exposed her yet more to his contempt, it was not of much consequence; besides if it were, she could not help it, a phrase with which Lady Helen ever contrived to silence the rebukes of conscience when they troubled her, which, however, was ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... pondering deeply and drops down in a chair). What did she say?... Lived my life?... A soothing phrase! A cradle-song! No more pain, no more care! All over!... Lived my life! (Supports ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... etc. emplearse, to be employed, to be used espalda, shoulder (back) explicar to explain explanar to explain falta de aceptacion, non-acceptance falta de pago, non-payment la frase, the phrase, sentence ganancias y perdidas, profits and losses el gerente, the manager *gobernar, to govern *haber, there to be[75] hay, there is[75] hay, there are el hecho, the fact la ley, the law llamar, to call mas adelante, later on la mente, the mind los negocios, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... Certainly, if we take an infirmity of language to be the equivalent of a necessity of existence, not otherwise. When I say that we cannot know a four-sided triangle I do not affirm by implication that a four-sided triangle exists. I am asserting that the phrase, a four-sided triangle, involves conceptions that cannot be brought together in consciousness, and so dismiss it as ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... a pensive attraction in the words "the good old days"; and even to-day the phrase brings a tear to the eye of the French Canadian as his mind dwells on the time before the Conquest; for while conscious of his growth in freedom and wealth, the sentiment for past days and vanished glory obscures in his mind the thought of these material blessings. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... quickly, coming closer, as if she understood and would not let him use the reckless, common phrase which sometimes means despair. "I thought you might be feeling like that—that's why I came early. Not that I can say anything to cheer you, Doctor Burns—I know you care too much for that. But there's one thing you must realize—you must say it over and ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... 8. As if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak. 'To stem a loss' is a very lax phrase—and more especially 'to stem a loss with another loss.' 'To stem a torrent—or, the current of a river,' is a well-known expression, indicating one sort of material force in opposition to another. Hence we come to the figurative expression, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... your passage goes to my heart through my stomach. What a pity I was not there on board to present that green-visaged, but sweet-tempered and uncomplaining spectacle of imbecility, at which I am so expert under stormy circumstances, in the poet's phrase: ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Alfred and the Chronicle. Ohthere's North Sea Voyage and Wulfstan's Baltic Voyage is the sort of thing which is sent in every day, one may say, to the Geographical or Ethnological Society, in the whole style and turn of phrase ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... testimony to the lovable character of the man whose life-story we are now considering. It will impress us more and more as East and West, Boston and San Francisco, in varying phrase tell again and again, of "the beaming eyes, the winning smile, and the earnest desire of always wanting to do what was just ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... Unfortunately, there are very few who estimate life at its true value, until they are confronted with the grim destroyer, Death. No one can fully appreciate the priceless blessings of health, until they feel that it has slipped from their grasp. The oft quoted phrase, "Health is Wealth," is truly a concrete expression of wisdom, for without the former, the latter is well nigh an impossibility. But its interference with the activities of life is one of the least evils ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... other. The style is that of a man unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness, the purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is no attempt at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have been wholly unknown. He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that his work was ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... is the only animal who, in the familiar scriptural phrase, 'knoweth the right hand from the left.' This fact in his economy goes closely together with the other facts, that he is the only animal on this sublunary planet who habitually uses a knife and fork, articulate language, the art of cookery, the common pump, and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... as to Mr. KING'S latest performance. Some hold his complaint, that the Government had introduced detectives into the precincts of the House, to have been perfectly genuine, and point to his phrase, "I speak from conviction," as a proof that he was trying to revenge himself for personal inconvenience suffered at the hands of the minions of the law. Others contend that he knew all the time the real reason for their presence—the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... need of maintaining the perfect fitness and rhetorical felicity of every phrase and every word used by him in his interview with Lord Clarendon. It is not to be expected that a minister, when about to hold a conversation with a representative of the government to which he is accredited, will commit his instructions to memory and recite them, like a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... England in the interest of Austria: he did not know how grave had been Napoleon's coquetry in a similar suit. He was as much bent on the emancipation of Russian commerce from English tyranny as Napoleon on the "freedom of the seas," the revolutionary phrase for British humiliation. The conversation may well have taken place literally as reported: even though the Czar hoped to postpone the rupture for some months, he may have given his complete confidence under four eyes. Who can measure ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lived. One can recall no plot that moves naturally in these versions; the transformation of the story into dialogue was mechanical, done by men to whom hack-work was the easiest thing in the world. Comparing the Kerr play with the Burke revision of it, when the text is strained for richness of phrase it might contain, only one line results, and is worth remembering; it is Burke's original contribution,—"Are we so soon forgot when ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... from the age of four and a half till I was thirteen and a half, was a born teacher in advance of her own times. In fact. like my own dear mother, Sarah Phin was a New Woman without knowing it. The phrase was not ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... The phrase, "Everything is fair in love and war," covers a multitude of sins in both departments. We had a unique way of finding out whether the wells in the desert were poisoned. We led up to each well a small detachment ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... for the degree of attention which the student has shown, it is better that he subscribes nothing at all than an indifferent report; because, in the former case, the student can fill it up to his own satisfaction. He usually prefers the phrase—"with unremitting diligence." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... look at the moonlight long. The young man perched on the rail of the veranda, and Irene took one of the red-painted rocking-chairs where she could conveniently look at him and at her sister, who sat leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase is. That low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, glimpsed now and then in the moonlight as she turned it or lifted it a little, had a fascination which kept his eye. Her talk was very unliterary, and its effect seemed hardly conscious. She was far from epigram ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sufferings of its heroes cluster, are constantly shifting in the Assyrian nomenclature; both men and gods being designated, not by a word composed of certain fixed sounds or signs, but by all the various expressions equivalent to it in meaning, whether consisting of a synonym or a phrase. Hence we find that the names furnished by classic authors generally have little or no analogy with the Assyrian, as the Greeks generally construed the proper names of other countries according to the genius of their own language, and not unfrequently translated the original name into it. Herodotus, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 1895 I was staying at Eastbourne, and jotted down several fragments of talk as nearly as I could recollect them. Conversation not immediately noted down I hardly dare venture upon, save perhaps such an unforgettable phrase as this, which I remember his using one day as we walked on the hills near Great Hampden]:—"It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... seems to have gone up with the cost of living," remarked Miss Kendall, as the waiter disappeared as silently as he had responded to the bell. It was a phrase that stuck in my head, so apt was it in describing the anomalous state of things we found as ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... which Cousin Pussy had so ardently described. She wanted passionately all the things that other girls had, and her only quarrel, indeed, with the sheltered life was that she couldn't afford it. In the expressive phrase of Cousin Jimmy, the sheltered life "cost money," and to cost money was to be beyond the eager grasp ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... she said, in the negrofied phrase natural to her latitude, "I wish it was no sin ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... intently, but the ringing had stopped, and I settled back to the delights of a nervous chill, when again the deathly silence of the night—the wind had quieted in time to allow me the use of this faithful, overworked phrase—was broken by the tintinnabulation of the bell. This time I recognized it as the electric bell operated by a push-button upon the right side of my front door. To rise and rush to the door was the work of a moment. It always is. In another instant I had flung it wide. This operation ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... John the Baptist. Having been nurtured in the traditions of the romanticism of Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Jean Paul, he was one of the first to experience the artistic charm and possibilities of unidealized reality and to respond to its call. It was he who seems to have coined the phrase, even if he was not first to formulate the principle, of that restrained or "artistic realism" that tries to set its standards half-way between subjectively idealistic and objectively naturalistic art. Even his extravagant admiration for Shakespeare ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of a row suddenly struck a high note, beginning a few words from a hymn, or an improvisation. She sang through a phrase, and then others joined in, singly or in pairs or in tens, without any apparent rule except close harmony. These voices burst in from any point, a perfect glee chorus, some high, some low, some singing words, and others merely humming resonantly, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... facts and that of abstract reasoning, between the language spoken by the people and that of the learned; the one was a counterpart of the other; there was no term in any of Plato's dialogues which a youth, leaving his gymnasia, could not comprehend; there is not a phrase in any of Demosthenes' harangues which did not readily find a lodging-place in the brain of an Athenian peasant or blacksmith. Attempt to translate into Greek one of Pitt's or Mirabeau's discourses, or an extract ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... would presently separate into half a hundred fragments, through the action of heat on their frosted pores; or that milk drawn from a cow within sight of my breakfast-table would be sheeted with ice on its passage thither; or that a momentary pause, for the choice of a fitting phrase in writing a letter, would load the nib of my pen with a black icicle? If I did not cry over my numerous breakages and other disasters, it was under the apprehension of tears freezing on my eyelids; and truly they might have done so, for my fingers ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... in London, of a large and bright nursery, of a smiling mother who took constant notice of her, of games, little friends, and birthday parties. What had led to the complete disappearance of this earliest "set," to use a theatrical phrase, from the scenery of her childhood, Marcella did not yet adequately know, though she had some theories and many suspicions in the background of her mind. But at any rate this first image of memory was succeeded by another precise as the first was vague—the image of a tall white house, set ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... acronym is an abbreviation coined from the initial letter of each successive word in a term or phrase. In general, an acronym made up solely from the first letter of the major words in the expanded form is rendered in all capital letters (NATO from North Atlantic Treaty Organization; an exception would be ASEAN for Association ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... morning the Doctor made his appearance at the Swan Inn, and acquainted the stranger gentleman, that he wished him joy of being the father of a healthy boy, and that the mother was, in the usual phrase, as well ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... good consequences might arise from its adoption. It was opposed by Mr. Burke, Mr. Charles Fox, and Colonel Barre, the latter of whom reprobated the violence of both houses. "In the lords," said he, "the phrase is, 'We have passed the Rubicon!'—in the commons, 'Delenda est Carthago!'" But opposition was of no avail. The bill was carried by an overwhelming majority in the lower house; and when it was taken into the upper house, though it was severely ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of Sainte-Marguerite. To speak badly means to speak badly of the people. What has Reveillon said? Nobody knows, but popular imagination with its terrible powers of invention and precision, readily fabricates or welcomes a murderous phrase. He said that "a working-man with a wife and children could live on fifteen sous a day." Such a man is a traitor, and must be disposed of at once; "all his belongings must be put to fire and sword." The rumor, it ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... imitative worship, delighting in the unconscious fashion in which the sonorous phrases of convention rolled off from her son's baby lips. And then, one day, Scott's memory failed him in his invocation. There came a familiar phrase or two, and then a babble of meaningless syllables, ending in a long-drawn and relieved Amen. An instant later, Scott lifted ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the catalog has been silently regularized. Inconsistent spacing in the phrase "earthen( ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... and Rosy stop that racket?" queried Mr. Snawdor, plaintively. The twins had been named at a time when Mrs. Snawdor's loyalty was wavering between the President and another distinguished statesman with whom she associated the promising phrase, "free silver." The arrival of two babies made a choice unnecessary, and, notwithstanding the fact that one of them was a girl, she named them William J. and Roosevelt, reluctantly abbreviating ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Indian refinement) of a delicate affidavit. This affidavit of Mr. Hastings we shall show to your Lordships is not entitled to the description of a good affidavit, however it might be entitled, in the opinion of those judges, to the description of a delicate affidavit,—a phrase by which they appear to have meant that he had furnished all the proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately avoided to declare him expressly deposed. The judges drew, however, this indelicate conclusion; the conclusion they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... and wisemen Sick. There is a Decency, or shall I rather say a Chastity in Writing or Thinking on such exalted Subjects, that great Minds are apt to Cherish, which keeps them Cautious and Diffident, where weak Men are as bold and as rash (to use an homely Phrase) as a blind Mare in a Mire. I have known many silly Preachers, and paperscull'd Writers in my Time, that were troubled with the Divinity Squirt, and were forc'd to print, or to be tormented with the Cholick, or foul themselves; ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... and motioned them to change their dresses of leather, for such as his people wore; for if they did not, his master would be displeased. It was on this occasion that the elder first understood a few words of the language. The first phrase he comprehended was La que notte, and from one word to another he was soon able ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... which would have become Augustus. It appeared to be quite true that a boy was dead. It was the little boy who, sent to get a loaf for his mother, had complained before the shop was opened of his fainting energies. He had fallen in the fray, and it was thought, to use the phrase of the comely dame who tried to rescue him, "that he was ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... and for music. It invented the crinoline and the operetta. At the Elysee a certain ugliness was considered as elegance; that which makes the countenance noble was there scoffed at, as was that which makes the soul great; the phrase, "human face divine" was ridiculed at the Elysee, and it was there that for twenty years every baseness was brought into ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... us first be sure what the words mean. There is no use talking about a word till we have got at its meaning. We may use it as a cant phrase, as a party cry on platforms; we may even hate and persecute our fellow-men for the sake of it: but till we have clearly settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do for fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... new kind of lens holder, and I point out that the interior of the holder may be coated if desired with a plasticized synthetic resin coating. My, I don't know what the Office is coming to. The Patent Office is the only institution in the world that does not know the meaning of the phrase 'room temperature'. Some day.... What's ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... the endeavour to find in Twentieth Century English a precise equivalent for a Greek word, phrase, or sentence there are two dangers to be guarded against. There are a Scylla and a Charybdis. On the one hand there is the English of Society, on the other hand that of the utterly uneducated, each of these patois having also its own special, ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... the language of writers to call the Himalayas a "chain of mountains." Spanish geographers would call them a "sierra" (saw)—a phrase which they have applied to the Andes of America. Either term is inappropriate, when speaking of the Himalayas: for the vast tract occupied by these mountains—over 200,000 square miles, or three times the size of Great Britain—in shape bears no resemblance to a chain. Its ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... aggravation that were altogether wanting in the policy of the mother country. This is not a tax for revenue, which is not needed; but a tax to "choke off" the landlords, to use a common American phrase. It is clearly taxing nothing, or it is taxing the same property twice. It is done to conciliate three or four thousand voters, who are now in the market, at the expense of three or four hundred who, it is known, are not to be bought. It is unjust in its motives, its means and ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... wings of the angel with the phrase of a marriage-broker. An heiress! the idea of a beautiful woman, full of poetry and love, inseparately linked to pounds, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Thompson, and quite a stranger to me. The father was much distressed by his son's death, we find. Mr Thompson has since been to see him and given him the message. He (Mr Rich, senior) considers the episode very extraordinary and inexplicable, except by fraud of some kind. The phrase, 'Thank you a thousand times,' he asserts to be characteristic, and he admits a recent slight dizziness. Mr Rich did not know what his son means by a black case. The only person who could give any information about it was at the time in Germany. But it was reported that Dr Rich talked constantly ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... treated like so many loose pebbles cast into void space; and he wondered as he thought of it; and from wondering at the wordy, noisy world in which he found himself, he went on to wonder at the greater silence that was so much more powerful than words. "The value of mystery," was the phrase that presented itself ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page had a header consisting of the page number, the volume title, and the chapter number. The odd-numbered page header consisted of the year of the diary entry, a subject phrase, and the page number. In this set of e-books, the year is included as part of the date (which in the original volume were in the form reproduced here, minus the year). The subject phrase has been converted ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a soldier I beg of you not to turn from it. Read it again and again till its words become part of your consciousness. It was written by a man for mankind's sake, that 'that which is humane' might no more be an empty phrase, that the words of Blake might ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... Sam, using a phrase which presumably has a rational meaning, as it is so often employed by reasonable people. "It doesn't pay to be squeamish. The squeamish men don't make good soldiers. I've seen enough to learn that. They hesitate to obey orders, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... Questions this afternoon he showed no signs of failing powers. When Mr. BILLING accused him of breaking his pledge that there should be no more secret diplomacy he modestly replied that that was not his but President WILSON'S phrase; and a little later he informed the same cocksure questioner that a certain problem was "not so simple as my hon. friend imagines ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... than a bird is like a bear," said Morgan, thinking aloud, racing mentally the next moment to snatch back his words and shape them in more conventional phrase. But too late; their joint laughter drowned his attempt to set it right, and the world lost a compliment that might have graced a courtier's tongue, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Richard days, he saw that the forests were disappearing, and that there would be a need for the people to practice economy in the use of fuel. The fireplaces in the chimneys were great consumers of wood, and in many of them, to use the housewife's phrase, "the heat all went up the chimney." But that was not all; many of the chimneys of the good people smoked, and in making a fire rooms would be filled with smoke, or, to use again the housewife's term, "the smoke would all come out into ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... precocious manner of the Jewish child, inquired with another elaborate bow if Wilhelmine would care to hear his voice. She begged him to let her hear the seraphim sing. The boy caught the note of irony in her phrase; flushing deeply, he laid aside his guitar and would have run away had not Wilhelmine, with her easy self-indulgent kindness of heart to those who did not get in her way, called him back and propitiated him with smiling reassurances. The boy ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Congress on the state of the Union, for through you, the chosen legislative representatives, our citizens everywhere may fairly judge the progress of our governing. I am confident that today, in the light of the events of the past two years, you do not consider it merely a trite phrase when I tell you that I am truly glad to greet you and that I look forward to common counsel, to useful cooperation, and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being. A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and source of every good thing. As a man without forethought scarce deserves the name of man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... later Jo was gazing at her as one gazes at some marvelous performer, but his awe and admiration were expressed in a simple but effective phrase: ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... is really a self-contradictory phrase, for man is not mortal, "neither indeed can be;" man is im- 479:1 mortal. If a child is the offspring of physical sense and not of Soul, the child must have a material, not a spirit- 479:3 ual ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... pardonable confusion between the symptoms and its cause Ranny's mother had hit upon a phrase that made it possible for them to discuss his father's affliction without the smallest, most shadowy reference to its essential nature. For Ranny's mother, such reference would have been the last ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... subsequently. What sort of life she was really looking forward to upon the island for which we were about to search I do not believe that even she herself could have explained. Probably her philosophy might have been expressed in the phrase: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof". She soon discovered, however, that the future would not permit itself to be shelved in this offhand fashion; there were certain problems that persisted in thrusting themselves upon her notice with increasing frequency, and one of them was—marriage! ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... little 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
... of thee a poet, my Father," Caterina said, smiling at the turn of phrase so unusual from ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of Kentucky was appointed. The Free State preponderance among settlers constantly increased. Nearly all the clearing, plowing, and planting was done by Free State men. All manner of irregularities constantly thinned the ranks of volunteers from the South. Kansas, according to Greeley's expressive phrase, "was steadily hardening into the bone and sinew of ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... all. When we examine what the Achilles of Homer means by the fine phrase "every man loves his bedfellow as I love mine," we come across a grotesque parody even of sensual infatuation, not to speak of romantic love. If Achilles had been animated by the strong individual preference which sometimes ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... fruit at dessert, you sometimes set your affections upon one particular peach or nectarine, watch it with some anxiety as it comes round the table, and feel quite a sensible disappointment when it is taken by some one else. I have used the phrase "high passion." Well, I should say this was about as high a passion as generally leads to marriage. One husband hears after marriage that some poor fellow is dying of his wife's love. "What a pity!" he exclaims; "you know I could so easily have got another!" ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an admirable illustration of the affection which a sailor will lavish on a ship's boy, whom he takes a fancy to, and makes his "chicken," as the phrase is. The United States sloop "Water Witch" had recently been captured in Ossabaw Sound, and her crew brought into prison. One of her boys—a bright, handsome little fellow of about fifteen—had lost one of his arms in the fight. He was brought into the Hospital, and the old fellow whose ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... German Naval Attache, and he communicated with Dr. Albert, the financial representative in New York, for the establishment of these factories would have countered the German policy of bringing political pressure by refusing dye shipments. Dr. Albert's reply to Boy-Ed contains the following phrase: "With regard to the dyes, I got into touch with local experts in order to determine what truth there is in the news. According to my knowledge of things, the matter is a fake, inasmuch as *our factories ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... movements, slight coughing, little sounds like minute whispers from the crowd. Now and then there was applause. Alston Lake was applauded strongly once after a phrase which showed off his magnificent voice, and Charmian looked quickly round at Claude with cheeks flushing, and shining eyes, which said plainly, "It is coming! Listen! The triumph is on the way!" Then the widespread silence ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... yourself and seven fools, and wake up with your first torturing headache and your first humiliating apology. Americans (with the unfortunate exception of us who make a business of it) are the greatest phrase-makers the world has ever known. Larkin's judgment was good; he was a modest young fellow of very decent instincts, he was neither a born gambler nor a born drinker; but, in the American phrase, "he was ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Roumanie, dont la situation est indeterminee au point de vue de la nationalite. Le Comte de Launay, dans le but de prevenir tout malentendu, a propose, au cours de la discussion, l'insertion de la phrase suivante: "Les Israelites de Roumanie, pour autant qu'ils n'appartiennent pas a une nationalite etrangere, acquierent, de plein ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... made him recognize the true meaning of that phrase. He had heard it so many times before from men who were planning some shady trick. He answered decisively: "I've the right to hear from Miss Verney herself what she said to you this afternoon, and I'm going to hear it. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... will be soon described. His elegies have, therefore, too much resemblance of each other. The lines are sometimes, such as Elegy requires, smooth and easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant; his diction is often harsh, improper, and affected, his words ill-coined or ill-chosen, and his phrase unskilfully inverted. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... at that, my dear Boswell," said I. "But you are, of course, familiar with the phrase 'Stone walls do ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... at the kitchen table. At the words they turned and automatically gasped the one phrase that always sprang to their ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... friendship developed into an engagement of marriage, we both of us regarded the step in a purely reasonable light; we did not try to deceive ourselves, and, less still, to deceive each other. But a man cannot always gauge his nature. To use the common phrase, I did not think I should ever fall in love; yet that happened to me, suddenly, unmistakably. What course had I to follow? Obviously I must act on my own principles; I must be straightforward, simple, candid. As soon as my mind was made up, I ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... used it. The stillness awed him. There had not been a shell all night. He put his head up over the parapet and waited. Nobody fired at him. He felt that the night was waiting for him. He heard voices going along the trench: some one said it was a black night: the voices died away. A mere phrase; the night wasn't black at all, it was grey. Dick Cheeser was staring at it, and the night was staring back at him, and seemed to be threatening him; it was grey, grey as an old cat that they used to have at home, and as artful. Yes, thought Dick Cheeser, it was an artful night; that was what ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... rest of the hands were away chopping and hauling. Long after she had forgotten to fret, she would have little "cryin' spells" at night, remembering her father's good-night kiss. But a baby's sorrow, happily, is shorter than its remembrance; and Rosy-Lilly soon learned to repeat her phrase: "Poor Daddy had to go 'way-'way-off," without the quivering lip and wistful look which made the big woodsmen's hearts tighten so painfully beneath their homespun shirts. Conroy's Camp was a spacious, oblong cabin of "chinked" logs, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... conducted it with mastery and brilliance. But your father's enemies were numerous, some of them hidden and unknown. False witnesses abounded, and their calumnies, which under other circumstances would have melted away before a sarcastic phrase from the defense, here assumed shape and substance. If the lawyer succeeded in destroying the force of their testimony by making them contradict each other and even perjure themselves, new charges were at once ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal |
