"Proverbially" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pains taken by priests to perpetuate the dominion of that ignorance which proverbially is 'the mother of devotion.' What care they for universal emancipation? Free themselves, their grand object is to rivet the chains of others. So that those they defraud of their hard earned substance be kept down, they are not ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... was followed by a long letter from Burke himself, half indignant, half argumentative, does not seem to have disturbed the temper of Francis, proverbially petulant as he was, if it did not rather raise his respect for both parties. He tells Burke, in a subsequent letter, that he has looked for his work, his Reflections on the Revolution, with great impatience, and read ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... in enabling the great pyramid to stand on the very utmost verge of its commanding hill, within the limits of the two required latitudes, as well as over the centre of the land's physical and radial formation, and at the same time on the sure and proverbially wise ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... seems mighty amusing to me; it is a man's mode of viewing correspondence. Men's letters are proverbially uninteresting and uncommunicative. I never quite knew before why they made them so. They may be right in a sense: strange chances do fall out certainly. As to my own notes, I never thought of attaching importance to them or considering their fate, till Arthur seemed to reflect ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... of clear glass, so that both sides can be inspected. The handwriting of the scrivener in the body of the instrument is quite distinct and legible, considering its antiquity. The signature of Shakespeare appears at the bottom of each sheet. The chirography of men of genius is proverbially bad, generally from its fluent facility, but the autographs of Shakespeare are clumsy, uncouth, and awkward, their disconnected and sprawling letters seeming to have been formed with difficulty by fingers unfamiliar with the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... feast-day by some extra smart touch in their attire, if it were only a pomegranate flower or orange-blossom stuck in their hats, or behind their ears. It was a mixed crowd, all of the working classes, who are proverbially called 'the common,' as if those who work, are not a hundred times more noble than those who do nothing! A few carriages, containing some wealthy ladies of the nobility, who, to atone for their social sins, were in the habit of contributing largely to the Church, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... very long. I am aware that this estimate of the queen is quite at variance with the views which have obtained the widest currency; but it is the estimate which history, carefully read, seems to require us to adopt. Catharine's plans were proverbially narrow in their scope, never extending much beyond the immediate present. After the catastrophe, which had perhaps been the result of the impulse of the moment, she was not, however, unwilling to accept the homage of those who deemed it a high ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... he is bent on doing. In animals, the fighting response is made to restraint, to being attacked, or to being interfered with in the course of feeding, or mating, or in the instinctive care of the young. The mother lioness, or dog or cat or hen, is proverbially dangerous; any interference with the young leads to an attack by the mother. The human mother is no exception to this rule. In human adults, the tendency to fight is awakened by any interference with one's enterprises, by being insulted ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... transition from private vengeance to public prosecution, of which the passing of the duel is an example, has not been completed. In fact, new forms are in some cases gradually gaining social sanction. We still have our "unwritten laws" for certain offenses. It is proverbially difficult to secure the conviction, in certain parts of the country, Chicago, for example, of a woman who kills her husband or her lover. The practice of lynching Negroes in the southern states, for offenses ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... must temper their judgment by remembering the affection that Wilkes was able to inspire in the heart of Churchill. While the scoundrels of Medmenham were ready to betray their old associate, and, with no touch of the honor proverbially attributed to thieves, to drive him into disgrace, to exile, and if possible to death, the loyal friendship of the poet was given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a man of irreproachable character, of unimpeachable morality, or of unswerving austerity. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is proverbially elaborate," I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, "but in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the really excessively select (in which must ever ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... such as Mary's first mistress, the kind-hearted Mrs. Williams, the favoured condition of the slave is still as precarious as it is rare: it is every moment at the mercy of events; and must always be held by a tenure so proverbially uncertain as that of human prosperity, or human life. Such examples, like a feeble and flickering streak of light in a gloomy picture, only serve by contrast to exhibit the depth of the prevailing shades. Like other exceptions, they only prove the general rule: the unquestionable ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... in the country, "Ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un Basque;" which is intended to express the superiority of the native of these regions over all others. It appears that the Basque is, in fact, of much finer form than the rest of the people of the Pyrenees; and the young women are proverbially handsome. I cannot speak from extensive observation; but of this often-named peculiarity of personal appearance I was by no means sensible in the few specimens I have seen—for all the people of this part of the South seemed to me extremely ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... her reputation for perspicacity. Her conclusions were seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the case of a book, what one read was not always ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... been puzzled in Venice to know why churches should keep cats, church-mice being proverbially so poor, and so little capable of sustaining a cat in good condition; yet I have repeatedly found sleek and portly cats in the churches, where they seem to be on terms of perfect understanding with the priests, and to have no quarrel ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... beast, as ill kept as its master, and it runs like a greyhound when approached. The Breton cow is very small, small as the Kerry cows of Ireland, very pretty and very productive. The Breton butter is proverbially good, and is given out most liberally, in lumps as big as loaves, at the tables-d'hote. It is brought to market in jars which the women carry upon their heads. It is to the Queen-Duchess that Brittany, and indeed all France, owes the privilege of eating ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... drew near, one of them seized the bait, and the Eskimo, jerking the line, caught the fox by the tongue. In that way the native caught six foxes before he returned to the post; but then, as everyone in the Far North knows, white foxes are proverbially ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... confessed that in this line his attempts were few and far between, and not always successful. He had seen, however, that the professor, though not exactly poking fun at him, had nevertheless intended a sly touch of irony upon his proverbially prosing character. He therefore determined to "be up to him," as the fancy have it; and having somewhere found the copy of an obsolete satirical epic which an enamored snuff-taker had once addressed to a mistress, who could reciprocate ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... economists, and statisticians; and a certain show of learning, of thoroughness, and of conscientiousness gives it at first sight the appearance of being a reliable and honest production. However, appearances are proverbially deceptive. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... then got the more aristocratic epithet of Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing what would have been his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to see Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics are proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance has the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr. Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... of sal ammoniac, until a method of manufacturing this substance was discovered at the end of the last century by Gravenhorst of Brunswick. The fields in the delta of the Nile are supplied with no other animal manures than the ashes of the burnt excrements, and yet they have been proverbially fertile from a period earlier than the first dawn of history, and that fertility continues to the present day as admirable as it was in the earliest times. These fields receive, every year, from the inundation of the Nile, a new soil, in its mud deposited over ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... phratry names Cockatoo, three names of unknown meaning, and the doubtful Kiraru—Kirarawa. Now if a racial conflict is indicated by the names eaglehawk and crow, this must be either because the contending races were already known by these names, or because the two birds in question are proverbially hostile to each other. In either case we are left without any explanation of the two cockatoo phratries. It may indeed be argued that the locality in which the eaglehawk-crow phratry names are found tells strongly in favour of the racial conflict hypothesis; for ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... long exercised by the Caribs over a great part of the continent, joined to the remembrance of their ancient greatness, has inspired them with a sentiment of dignity and national superiority which is manifest in their manners and their discourse. "We alone are a nation," say they proverbially; "the rest of mankind (oquili) are made to serve us." This contempt of the Caribs for their enemies is so strong that I saw a child of ten years of age foam with rage on being called a Cabre or Cavere; though he had never in his life seen an individual of that unfortunate race of people ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... innocent men than all the false witnesses and informers who ever disgraced courts of justice by their presence; and the slightest reflection will convince us that this shallow sophism contains even less practical truth than the general mass of proverbs and maxims, proverbially false though they be. For not only is the chance of falsehood, on the part of the witness who details the circumstances, greater,—since a false impression can be conveyed with far less risk of detection by distortion and exaggeration of a fact than by the invention of a direct ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Hotspur is proverbially a man of impatient, irascible, headstrong temper. See now how all this is reflected in the very step of his language, when he has just been chafed into a rage by what the King has said to him about ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... nursery where the child at last found peace and a bottle. But when the matron tried to coax him to stay also, he screamed and carried on so that they were glad to let him go lest he wake everybody in the building. Though proverbially Police Headquarters never sleeps, yet it does not like to be disturbed in its midnight nap, as it were. It is human with the rest of us, that ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... this trifling formality was introduced only by the Multiple Candidature Act of 1889, by which it is stipulated that no person shall be a candidate in more than one district. The French electorate is proverbially indifferent concerning the exercise of the suffrage, but the methods of campaigning which have become familiar in other countries are employed systematically, and no small measure of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... considered chief, was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," he said, "attainable by other means than this is scarcely worth the name." He pointed to the tillers of the earth—the only people who, as a class, are proverbially more happy than others—and then he instanced the high ecstasies of the fox-hunter. His second principle was the love of woman. His third was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... merit of a poem is proverbially easier than to say how and in what manner it is manifested. In a collection the task of appraisement is not so difficult. Lord Houghton has said: "There is in truth no critic of poetry but the man who enjoys it, and the amount of gratification ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... far above the level of the ordinary pursuits of men, that, even among ourselves, few have been able to transfuse it into their daily consciousness. We never looked to England for the encouragement of a popular enthusiasm,—hardly, perhaps, for a cold acquiescence. John Bull, we said, is proverbially a grumbler, proverbially indifferent to all affairs but his own; he will be annoyed by tariffs, and plagued by scarcity of cotton;—what wonder, if we are a little misunderstood? The minor contributors to his daily press ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... of David Hume, Esq., might, as bookmakers know now, be driven out to a handsome quarto. Line 1st admits of a descant upon eggs roasted, boiled or poached; 2d, a history of Carlisle Cathedral with some reasons why the choir there has been proverbially execrable; 3d, the whole history of 1745 with minute memoirs of such as mounted guard on the Scotch gate. I remember the spikes the heads stood upon; lastly, a description of Corby Castle with a plan, and the genealogy of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... replace weights. Ladies proverbially dislike figures: yet it would be easier for some society dame to weigh the Sun at the point of her pen, by writing down a few columns of figures with a little care, than to weigh a 12 kilogram case of fruit, or a dress-basket of 35 kilos, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... dawned, Vajramukut carried the princess's ornaments to the market, and entering the nearest goldsmith's shop, offered to sell them, and asked what they were worth. As your majesty well knows, gardeners, tailors, and goldsmiths are proverbially dishonest, and this man was no exception to the rule. He looked at the pupil's face and wondered, because he had brought articles whose value he did not appear to know. A thought struck him that he might make a bargain which would fill his coffers, so he offered ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... there is always the lady's point of view. The sex is proverbially fickle, you know. 'Woman, thy vows are traced in sand,' ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... by Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,—through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor thus describes the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... untrue, faithless, lacking even that honor which proverbially obtains in the society of criminals—a consideration of such a possibility was intolerable, as much so as the suspense of ignorance. He could not, would not, believe her capable of ingratitude so rank; and ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... waiting, he amused himself as he could. In the amusements of Washington, education had no part, but the simplicity of the amusements proved the simplicity of everything else, ambitions, interests, thoughts, and knowledge. Proverbially Washington was a poor place for education, and of course young diplomats avoided or disliked it, but, as a rule, diplomats disliked every place except Paris, and the world contained only one Paris. They abused London more violently than Washington; they praised no ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... sheep-shock has been sent to the assistance of the surviving mules. But while we may congratulate ourselves on the lifting of the clouds in that direction matters in West Ham give ground for the gravest anxiety. The wood-lice of West Ham are proverbially of an irritable nature, and the attitude of the Government has been calculated for some time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... than the irritating inquirers; and so long as there seemed any possibility of his father's return to sanity and his office, he felt that he could never regard his position as wholly satisfactory; on the other hand, though a sick lion may possibly be compared with a live dog, a defunct lion is proverbially out of the running. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he had been sold was an overfondness for his wife, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the moment, has stepped from within the wigwam, where he had been unperceived, there is a sudden revulsion of feeling among the savages—a return to hostility, the antipathy of all Fuegians to the African negro being proverbially bitter. Strange and unaccountable is this prejudice against the negro by a people almost the ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... in the way of protection. The authorities contain little on the subject, except that cross-examination as to credit is allowed to go very far, and that judges may in their discretion stop it when it goes too far. But judicial discretion is proverbially an uncertain thing. It varies not merely with the court, but even in the same judge it is affected by the state of his temper, his curiosity, his feeling toward the counsel who is examining, and by thousands of other things that no one can know ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... swan, which species, though proverbially rare in other parts of the world, is here by no means uncommon . . . a very noble bird, larger than the common swan, and equally beautiful in form . . . its wings were edged with white: the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... had never ceased to think about Jos from the very first day she had seen him, though, of course, her duties as a married woman were paramount—duties which she had always preserved, and would, to her dying day, or until the proverbially bad climate in which Colonel Crawley was living should release her from a yoke which his cruelty had rendered odious ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a black face. Flambeau had often heard that negroes made good cooks. But somehow something in the contrast of colour and caste increased his surprise that the hotel proprietor should answer the call of the cook, and not the cook the call of the proprietor. But he reflected that head cooks are proverbially arrogant; and, besides, the host had come back with the sherry, and ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... overhaul the pirate schooner and bring her to action before nightfall; for, with bad weather threatening, unless we could succeed in doing this, there was every likelihood of her giving us the slip during the hours of darkness. A stern-chase is proverbially a long chase, and a chase to windward is apt to be even longer, while a start of some ten miles, under such circumstances, must necessarily prove a heavy handicap to the pursuing vessel; nevertheless I was not without hope ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... he had landed in Sicily, and visited Etna; his ascent up whose side, to the crater, he graphically described, with some striking features; but as this is a subject proverbially enlarged upon by all travellers, I waive further notice, and proceed to state, that Mr. C. after leaving Sicily passed over to the south of Italy, and journeyed ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... at all!" I said testily. I felt testy, as if from a personal injury. "Only when one has a friend, it is agreeable to believe that out of sight is not immediately out of mind. But, of course, I am a woman. Women's memories are proverbially longer ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... It was proverbially dangerous to contradict him. Dr Mortimer, head of Lincoln college, happened occasionally to interrupt him, by saying, "I deny that," while Johnson was holding forth. At length he said, "Sir, sir, you must have forgotten that an author has said, (he then repeated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... every thing that her ladyship said was repeated as witty; every thing that her ladyship wore was imitated as fashionable. Female wit sometimes depends on the beauty of its possessor for its reputation; and the reign of beauty is proverbially short, and fashion often capriciously deserts her favourites, even before nature withers their charms. Lady Delacour seemed to be a fortunate exception to these general rules: long after she had lost the bloom of youth, she continued to be admired as a fashionable bel esprit; and long after she ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... his bloody hand had struck dead with the sword. Even the rude seamen shed tears for the lost and ill-fated girl; and a silence like that of the death-chamber reigned on board the little brig, as it swept noiselessly over the waters. No class of people are more proverbially light-hearted and thoughtless than seamen. The sad event of the preceding night seemed to have passed from the memories of all on board the Raker with the morning's dawn—from all save Julia. She, indeed, often thought of the unfortunate ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... other side seventeen wounds, a prison, and death in the sight of Monsieur, who remained motionless with his army. In the rapidity of the Queen's enunciation he had not time to examine whether she had employed this expression proverbially or with a direct reference; but at all events, he decided not to notice it, and was indeed prevented from doing so by the Queen, who continued, looking ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... thanked for my devotion, seemed the most natural thing in the world. She was capricious; but caprice became her. She was exacting; but her exactions were so coquettish and attractive, that one would not have wished her more reasonable. She was, at least, ten or twelve years my senior; but boys proverbially fall in love with women older than themselves, and this one was in all respects so charming, that I do not, even now, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Take it home and read it! Ned. That is if you're through telling me about my affairs," for Ned, who had formerly worked in the Shopton bank, had recently been made general financial manager of the interests of Tom and his father. The two were inventors and proverbially poor business men, though they had ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... was out of order, and yet she had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as she complained, with that kitchen-boiler gnawing at her vitals. She claimed to be set on a level with the Spartan boy, if not above him. Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound. Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who had no such ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... rather than its spiritual aspects. They do not, as officials, feel that the salvation of men from sin and the command of Christ to evangelize all nations are within their sphere. Moreover, diplomacy is proverbially and necessarily cautious. Its business is to avoid risks, and, of course, to advise others to avoid them. The political situation, too, was undeniably uncertain and delicate. The future was big with possibility of peril. In such ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... assigned to Richard and his associate. These worthies found the material a little too solid for the tools of their workmen, which, in General, were employed on a substance no harder than the white pine of the adjacent mountains, a wood so proverbially soft that it is commonly chosen by the hunters for pillows. But for this awkward dilemma, it is probable that the ambitious tastes of our two architects would have left us much more to do in the way of description. Driven from the faces of the house by ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... them was a Scotchman, who wished to make enough capital at the mines to invest in a sheep-run; and as his countrymen are proverbially fortunate in the colonies, I think it possible he may some time hence be an Australian MILLIONAIRE. Another of these was an architect, who was driven, as it were, to the diggings, because his profession, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... about not liking it. Of course some people won't like it. Some people never like any new way of doing things. Food habits are proverbially hard ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... man is proverbially merciful to his beast, and those who showed mercy to neither man nor woman had none on the dumb animals ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... impositions, actresses and ballet-girls are proverbially more tractable than actors, less exacting, more uncomplaining, more unfailingly prompt in their attendance and in the discharge of their arduous duties. Why, then, are they subjected to such grinding injustice, except because of their weakness? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... what ideas they may happen to have, to try to appear stupid, if they are not so, throwing all the burden of the conversation on the lively, vivacious, good- humored girl, or the more accomplished married woman, who may be the next neighbor. Women's wits are proverbially quick, they talk readily, they read and think more than the average young man of fashion is prone to do; the result is a quick and a ready tongue. Yet the art of keeping up a flow of agreeable and incessant small- talk, not too heavy, not pretentious or egotistical, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency, nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the social standing of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think we accepted ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... proverbially cautious, but it seemed to his visitor that his demeanour this morning exceeded all reasonable limits. For nearly a minute he answered absolutely nothing, and then he said very slowly ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... bravest and wisest gods, so that it was customary to say proverbially, "As bold as ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... trays, and is said to have counted them himself with the point of a dagger. But this punishment he believed to be still too lenient. A general massacre of the men was commanded, and no less than 20,000 women and children were made into slaves. To this day the proverbially easy morals of the Kerman women are attributed to the Afghan invasion, when the women became the concubines of soldiers and lost all respect for themselves; and so is the importation of the dreadful disease which in its most virulent form is pitifully ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... "Unless the causes of small-pox be removed (generally some impurity in the air or in the food), those causes will work mischief somehow. throw an eruptive disease back into the system is proverbially dangerous.... Moreover, what right has any physician to neglect the cures of small-pox, by which herbalists, hydropaths, and Turkish-bath keepers find it a ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... respect, to the Representative of the Grand Turk! Sir, the country from which your amiable and distinguished guest has come, was not altogether unknown to some of the early American discoverers and settlers. John Smith—do not smile too soon, Mr. President, for though the name has become proverbially generic in these latter days, it was once identified and individualized as the name of one of the most gallant navigators and captains which the world has ever known—that John Smith who first gave the cherished ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... poet. For it is well known that his was a divided nature, so variously endowed that complete integration was difficult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented that steady concentration of powers which poetry demands. She is proverbially the most jealous of mistresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance. At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as primarily a poet: but in the next fifteen years he had become a professor, had devoted long periods to study in Europe, had published ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... anything, is truth: but they are different truths. The truth of poetry is to paint the human soul truly: the truth of fiction is to give a true picture of life. The two kinds of knowledge are different, and come by different ways, come mostly to different persons. Great poets are often proverbially ignorant of life. What they know has come by observation of themselves; they have found within them one highly delicate and sensitive specimen of human nature, on which the laws of emotion are written in large characters, such ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... obtained a glimpse during his ascent. Nina Algernon was but a few paces ahead of him, scouring along at a speed only accomplished by those who feel that goad in the heart which stimulates exertion, far more effectually than the "spur in the head," proverbially supposed to be worth "two in the heels.'" Nina had overheard enough from her hiding-place to make her angry, unhappy, and anxious in the highest degree. Angry, first of all, with herself and him, to think that she could have set her affections on one who was untrue; unhappy, to ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... proverbially careless as to his habits," Herndon writes. "In a letter to a fellow lawyer in another town, apologizing for his failure to answer sooner, he explains: 'First, I have been very busy in the United States Court; second, when I received the letter, I put it in my old hat, and buying a ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... A stern chase is proverbially a long chase, but still the enemy with their skilled rowers came up fast. When we were a mile from the reeds they were within half a mile of us, and as we tired the proportion of distance lessened. When we were two hundred yards from the reeds they were not ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... of them. I have seen them lining the road on a pouring wet night, outside a town already full to overflowing with like unhappy sufferers; the while Belgian soldiers, with fixed bayonets, have prohibited any further entrance to that which promised a lodging place. Soldiers are not proverbially given to overmuch sensitiveness where human suffering is concerned, for a daily intercourse with terrible scenes cannot fail to harden a man, but I declare that I have seen strong men burst into ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... single stateroom, and I may have need of a light. I will return it to you at the end of the voyage, or buy it of you at a good price. You see, I have a little Jew in me. I will make a bargain with you. And I will pay you well, something a Jew proverbially does not like to do. But I realize the value of what I want, and that the market is not well supplied, so you may take advantage of my situation. My battery is either worn out or the light is broken. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... the grizzly had resolved in making his dinner upon the youngster who had dared to fire a shot at him. The patience of an animal is proverbially greater than that of a human being, and that of the bear certainly exceeded to a great degree that of his expected prey who crouched ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... is proverbially a dog's berth. He is neither officer nor man. The men do not respect him as an officer, and he is obliged to go aloft to reef and furl the topsails, and to put his hands into the tar and slush, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... being quite perceivable at Staines, where there passed a young fellow "with a very tolerable periwig", though, to be sure, his hat was out of fashion, and had a Ramillies cock. I would have liked to travel in those days (being of that class of travellers who are proverbially pretty easy coram latronibus) and have seen my friend with the grey mare and the black vizard. Alas! there always came a day in the life of that warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he passed—without his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... noisy promenaders of both sexes who filled the streets, and impeded traffic at all crossings, the class which had always been rowdily inclined was now far more rowdy, and that its ranks were reinforced, doubled in strength, by recruits from a class which, a few years before, had been proverbially noted for its decorous and decent reserve. And this was Sunday Night. I learned afterwards that the clergy had preached to practically empty churches. A man we met in The Times office told us of this, and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... physicians to themselves. The hart that is pursued and wounded, they say, knows an herb, which being eaten throws off the arrow: a strange kind of vomit. The dog that pursues it, though he be subject to sickness, even proverbially, knows his grass that recovers him. And it may be true, that the drugger is as near to man as to other creatures; it may be that obvious and present simples, easy to be had, would cure him; but the apothecary is not so near him, nor the physician so near him, as they two are to other creatures; ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... more generally employed as teamsters is a mystery. They are proverbially patient and enduring. Both the interests of humanity and horseflesh would be best subserved by such employment, and the ranks would not be reduced by the constant and heavy details of able-bodied men for ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... omnipotent being, and at the same time retained all his present mental infirmities, it would be difficult to say of what extravagances he would be guilty. It is proverbially affirmed that power has a tendency to corrupt the best dispositions. Then ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... drawn up along the quay to bear the passengers' luggage to its destination, but stop—do not imagine every one rushes and tears about in Finland, and that a few minutes sufficed to clear the decks and quay. Far from it; we were among a Northern people proverbially as dilatory and slow as any Southern nation, for in the extreme North as in the extreme South time is not money—nay, more than that, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... which has indeed fed upon and gained strength from their decay and decease, as at the outset it owed its existence to the success of their previous efforts, and which, in spite of constant opposition and bitterest attack, flourishes still, as though possessed of that longevity which is proverbially the attribute of the threatened. 'The Academy,' said Haydon, 'originated in the very basest intrigue.' Undoubtedly there was intrigue in connexion with its origin, but not necessarily of the 'very basest' character. Some allowance must be made for 'poor human nature.' The contest dividing ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... spirit, rises AEtna. His giant form can be seen from elevated grounds in the most remote parts of the island, and the mariner can discern his snowy crown more than a hundred miles. But Sicily abounds in luxuriant plains and charming valleys, and its soil is proverbially rich: it once bore the appellation of the Granary of Rome; and it is now said that if properly tilled it would produce more grain than any country of its size in the world. Its beauty and fertility were often celebrated by ancient bards, who described the sacred ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... recently saw an advertisement from a farmer's daughter who said in it that she had offers of plenty of mounts, but wanted some lady to give her a riding habit! Surely it would have been far better for her to have worked and earned one, instead of cadging in such a manner for her amusement? Proverbially bad as our fresh butter in the Midlands is, I fear the time is approaching when butter making will entirely cease, for, with few exceptions, farmers' daughters are not trained to do dairy work. A modern ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... enlightened Hester a little about him to watch him for half an hour where he stood behind the counter of the bank: there he was the least courteous of proverbially discourteous bank-clerks, whose manners are about of the same breed with those of hotel-clerks in America. It ought to be mentioned, however, that he treated those of his own social position in precisely the same way as less distinguished ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... are proverbially slow in their movements, and in this regard all governments seem to be great bodies. It may be that a healthy difference of opinion within a cabinet tends to cautious procedure, but that type of caution is rather trying on people whose nerves ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... first class to some distant show-lake among the hills, and he toils all day as the fishermen of old toiled all night; while Tom, his gardener's son, but a mile outside the town, with a willow wand and a bent pin, hath caught the family supper. So is it with him who is proverbially born not made. His friends say: 'O, you should go to such-and-such falls; you 'd write poetry there, if you like. We all said so'; or, 'What are you doing in here scribbling? Look through the window at the moonlight; ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... everywhere confronted him. Religion was then much more intimately blended with the life of man than it is now; and on all matters of religion, Western Europe seemed to present a united front and to be impervious to change. Appearances, however, are proverbially deceitful. Beneath this apparent uniformity and general conformity, there lurked countless forces, spiritual, intellectual, social and political, making for change. Dissent and dissatisfaction, with myriads of ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... ever to advance a loan except at an extravagant rate of interest, or without demanding far more than an adequate security. Count Timascheff, a Russian nobleman, was evidently rich; to him perhaps, for a proper consideration, a loan might be made: Captain Servadac was a Gascon, and Gascons are proverbially poor; it would never do to lend any money to him; but here was a professor, a mere man of science, with circumscribed means; did he expect to borrow? Certainly Isaac would as soon think of flying, as of lending money to him. Such were the thoughts that made him receive all ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... to do long ago. But do you know what occurs to me this moment, most taciturn?" He added, after a short pause, being moved, probably, by one of those quick and capricious changes to which both the intoxicated and insane are proverbially liable: "It strikes me, that you probably are descended from the man in the iron mask—ha—ha—ha! Or stay, was there ever such a thing in this benevolent and humane world of ours as a man with an iron heart? If so, who knows, then, but you may date your ancestry from him? Ay, right enough; ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... No. 13 Primrose Terrace a little man, wearing a gray felt hat and a red neck-tie, stood admiring himself in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Such a state of things anywhere else would have had no significance whatever; but circumstances proverbially alter cases. At 13 Primrose Terrace it approached the ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... considerable their achievement. It may not be filled in the same way, as well, as fittingly, but it will be filled, and humanity will content itself very fairly well with the substitute. This is especially true of the work of the actor. He can but live as a memory, and memory is proverbially short. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... Lawson knocked a home run, and, as there was a man on third, that two. From then on the Cardinals seemed to find themselves. They began coming back in earnest, and everyone "got the habit." Even Joe, proverbially poor hitters as pitchers are supposed to be, did his share, and, by placing a neat little drive, that eluded the shortstop, he brought in another ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... servants, have always peculiar characteristical destinations, and the ancient tragedians felt so little the want of communications between a hero and his confidant, to make us acquainted with the hero's state of mind and views, that they even introduce as a mute personage so important and proverbially famous a friend as a Pylades. But whatever ridicule was cast on the confidants, and however great the reproach of being reduced to make use of them, no attempt was ever made till the time of Alfieri to get rid ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... industry that he granted him exemption from all taxes. And so in matters in general he burdened the people as little as possible with his government, but always cultivated peace and kept them in all quietness. Hence the tyranny of Pisistratus was often spoken of proverbially as 'the age of gold'; for when his sons succeeded him the government became much harsher. But most important of all in this respect was his popular and kindly disposition. In all things he was accustomed to observe the laws, without giving himself any exceptional privileges. Once he was summoned ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... sum they proposed to solicit from him. Before attempting the collection, the list, at Colonel Burr's request, was presented for his inspection. An individual, an active partisan of wealth, but proverbially parsimonious, was assessed one hundred dollars. Burr directed that his name should be struck from the list; for, said he, you will not get the money, and from the moment the demand is made upon him, his ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... to reverse this image, but love is proverbially desperate in its figures of speech, and any thing was better than appearing to hesitate. Nevertheless, Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of diction ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... vaticination' is proverbially unsafe, and therefore to be carefully avoided by all judicious inquirers, and especially by practical statesmen, it must at the same time be admitted that some of the general laws controlling such events are well understood; and whenever all the facts of a case are known and appreciated, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... (38/1. The Royal medal was given to Sir Joseph in 1854.) I heard that it was decidedly the best speech of the evening, given "with perfect fluency, distinctness, and command of language," and that you showed great self-possession: was the latter the proverbially desperate courage of a coward? But you are a pretty fellow to be so desperately afraid and then to make the crack speech. Many such an ordeal may you have to go through! I do not know whether Sir William [Hooker] would be contented with Lord Rosse's (38/2. President of the Royal ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... theory that the leaching of superficial igneous rocks has supplied the materials filling mineral veins, are furnished by the facts observed in the districts where igneous rocks are most prevalent, viz.: (1.) Such districts are proverbially barren of useful minerals. (2.) Where these occur, the same sheet of rock may contain several systems of veins with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... thousand pounds; and beginning, as usual, at Manchester, have raised there alone, within a few days' time, upwards of L.20,000! The fact (if true) is at once ludicrous and disgusting: ludicrous for its transparency of humbug—disgusting for its palpable selfishness. Will these proverbially hard-hearted men put down their L.100, L.200, L.300, L.400, L.500, for nothing? Alas, the great sums they have expended in this crusade against the Corn-laws, will have to be wrung out of their wretched and exhausted factory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... cruel as the leanest and the worst of their neighbours. I have asked whether Henry the Eighth was an amiable character? Whether Pope Alexander the Sixth was a good man? Whether Mr. Murderer and Mrs. Murderess Manning were not both unusually stout people? Whether hired nurses, proverbially as cruel a set of women as are to be found in all England, were not, for the most part, also as fat a set of women as are to be found in all England?—and so on, through dozens of other examples, modern and ancient, native and foreign, high and low. Holding these strong ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... post were cleared away and uprooted respectively by that evening. Late summer weather is proverbially treacherous, and during dinner-time Mrs Collins sent up to ask for a little brandy, because her husband had took a nasty chill and she was afraid he would not be able to do much ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... tragic dagger, and it falls to earth a shrivelled nothing. And the reason that no melodrama can be great art is just that it is a compromise between tragedy and comedy, a mixture of tragedy with comedy and not comedy with tragedy. So in drama, the middle course, proverbially the safest, is in reality the most dangerous. Now I maintain that in Beau Austin we have an element of tragedy. The betrayal of a beautiful, pure and noble-minded woman is surely at once the basest act a man can ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... combination may be very romantic, I confess, notwithstanding that I was an unrecognised author, I was not living in a garret, nor writing my MSS. by the proverbially flaring candle, nor going without my dinner in ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... it would be great injustice to say that even these offend habitually. No laws of classification are so false as those which originate in human scurrility. Aldermen, until very lately, were by an old traditional scurrility so proverbially classed as gluttons and cormorants, hovering over dinner-tables, with no other characteristics whatever, or openings to any redeeming qualities, that men became as seriously perplexed in our days at meeting an eloquent, enlightened, and accomplished ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... arises—the thing is proverbially spoken; but may be applied to him—as if we should say in general terms, he only is secret who never was trusted; a satirical proverb upon our sex. There's another upon yours—as she is chaste, who was never asked ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... in this season of their anguish. They are treading the winepress as no other modern nation has trodden it, pressing their hearts' blood into the bitter wine of war. They grumble, of course, as they do their hard stint. The French proverbially are a nation of grumblers. Napoleon took them grumbling for fifteen years to glory. He took them grumbling to Moscow, and brought them grumbling back. They grumbled under the Second Empire and into the Republic. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... that it has become a decoction instead of an infusion. The consequence of this prolonged action of the hot water on the tea is that it brings out the bitter extractive material of the plant, and it is this which proves so particularly pernicious. Tea at sea is proverbially unpalatable, and invariably disagrees, owing chiefly to the fact that it is a boiled decoction of tea leaves ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... day of small things for Methodism in the capital of Upper Canada. But of the religious zeal of the little company of believers, we may judge from the fact that several of the members of the society came from two to eight miles, through the proverbially wretched roads of "Muddy York," to the class meeting. [Footnote: Carroll's "Case and his Cotemporaries," Vol. II., ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... doubting on account of inaccuracy in the detail of the phthisical symptoms, is a mere fetch, as the Cockneys have it, in order to make a very few little children believe that it, the Post, is not quite so stupid as a post proverbially is. It knows nearly as much about pathology as it does about English grammar—and I really hope it will not feel called upon to blush at the compliment. I represented the symptoms of M. Valdemar as "severe," to be sure. I put an extreme case; for it was necessary that I should ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... people under Romulus and long after could afford only two acres to every legionary soldier; and in the most flourishing days of the commonwealth the allowance did not exceed four. Hence the quatuor jugera, or four acres, is an expression which proverbially indicated plebeian affluence and contentment,—a full remuneration for the toils of war, and a sufficient inducement at all times to take up arms in defence ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... like the proximity of such a gentleman. They caused securer bolts to be put on their doors—for fastenings in small country places are not much thought about, people around being proverbially honest. They also had their shutters altered. The shutters to the windows, back and front, had holes in them in the form of a heart, such as you may have sometimes noticed. Before the wild-looking man—whose name came to be known as Pike—had been in possession of the shed ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... answer? Why it can't possibly be that this woman has been fool enough to refuse you? She surely can't be looking out after a bishop. But I see how it is, Mr Slope. Widows are proverbially cautious. You should have let her alone till the new hat was on your head; till you could show her the key of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... autocratic emperors of Rome went so far as to claim in some cases to be gods themselves. Even in modern Russia some of this dignity pertains to the emperor, as the supreme head of the national church. Old ideas are proverbially hard to kill. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... back my freedom," said I. "For, look you, Rosalind, marriage is proverbially a slippery business. Always there are a variety of excellent reasons for perpetrating matrimony; but the rub of it is that not any one of them insures you against to-morrow. Love, for example, we have all heard of; but I have known fine fellows to fling away their chances ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... mine, Gavin," answered Andrew, reaching for his pocketbook. When it appeared, it was fat and full, and Gavin stole a wistful glance; for, in Scotland, colonial pocketbooks are proverbially plump. "What shall it ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... keeping with their national character. A score of lights have since brought out every thought and phrase, and we now have Hamlet so clearly in our mind's eye as to wonder how our predecessors failed to comprehend his image. But what does this tragedy demand of an actor? Proverbially, that he himself shall fill it, and hold the stage from its commencement to its end. The play of "Hamlet" is the part of Hamlet. The slowness of its action, and the import of its dialogue and soliloquies, make all depend upon the central ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... relation to the various accounts of the fertilizing properties of guano, especially in these times of humbuggery, and therefore determined to subject it to the most rigid test." In view of this, on the 3d of October last, I selected two acres of land by actual measurement, proverbially poor, never having yielded in a course of ten years cultivation more than three bushels per acre, and in consequence, was called by way of derision, "Old Kentuck." To the two acres 560 lbs. of guano were applied in the most injudicious manner by strewing it on the top of the corn ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... form the letters and words, GWENNEN GWENT, or "The Bee of Gwent,"—Gwent being the ancient name of that portion of Glamorgan. The title is apt enough; for Lady Hall—that is her matter-of-fact name—is proverbially one of the busiest of her sex in all that relates to the welfare of her poorer neighbors. She is wife of Sir Benjamin Hall, member of Parliament for the largest parish in London, St. Mary-le-bone, and whose county residence is at Llanover Court, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... in speaking of Chief Justice [119] Reeves, ventures upon a smart truism which we can discuss for him, but of course not in the sense in which he has meant it. "Exceptions," our author remarks, "are supposed proverbially to prove nothing, or to prove the very opposite of what they appear to prove. When a particular phenomenon occurs rarely, the probabilities are strong against the recurrence of it." Now, is it in ignorance, or through disingenuousness, that Mr. Froude has penned this argument ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... even his peculiar word? Because, whether invented by Aeschylus or not, these signs were a canonical part of the story by the time Euripides wrote. Every one who knew the story of Orestes' return at all, knew of the hair and the footprint. Aristophanes in the Clouds (534 ff.) uses them proverbially, when he speaks of his comedy "recognising its brother's tress." It would have been frivolous to invent new ones. As a matter of fact, it seems probable that the signs are older than Aeschylus; neither they ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... thus left free to interchange with our respective "sweethearts" those phrases of delirious endearment—those glances of exquisite sweetness, that only pass between eyes illumined by the light of a mutual love. Proverbially sweet is the month after marriage; but the honeymoon, with all its joys, could not have exceeded in bliss those ante-nuptial hours spent by us in recrossing the prairies. Clear as the sky over our heads was the horoscope ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Pharmacists are proverbially neat-handed, as Mr. Martindale would say, and their habit of conducting dispensing operations which involve the dexterous manipulation of very small quantities of material fit them admirably to undertake volumetric and other rapid analytical determinations. Compared with the doctor there ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... years ago, called the Rue de l'Empire, but republics are proverbially sensitive. Once they are established they become morbidly desirous of obliterating a past wherein no republic flourished. The street is therefore dedicated to St. Gingolphe to-day. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... Argyleshire, is farther from Glasgow (the locale of this saying) than Dumbarton: proverbially applied to those who are better acquainted with circumstances than they pretend to be, but who, in their anxiety to ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... depreciate the magnitude of whatever work he does; nor is it altogether a pose or an affectation. He sees the vastness of the British Empire and the amazing strides which have been made in the last two generations, and wonders how it all came about. He knows how proverbially blundering are British diplomacy and British administration, so he puts it all down to the luck of the nation and goes grumbling contentedly on his way. There is no country in which policies have been so haphazard and unstable, or ways of administration so crude and so empirical, as in the United ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... may here add, has been well served by its Curates. "Comparisons are (proverbially) odious," we will not therefore refer to any of these in recent years; but we may take three typical cases of men whose memory is still green and redolent ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... in two years' time," she burst out—"and discover the orphan of the gallows in our house if you can! If your Asylum won't take her, some other Charity will. Ha, Mr. Governor, I deserve my disappointment! I ought to have remembered that you are only a jailer after all. And what is a jailer? Proverbially a brute. Do you hear ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... house from the fire, with which we left the alarmed Elwood and his wife contending, was, indeed, easily overcome by dashing pails of water over the roof. But scarcely had they achieved this temporary triumph in one place over an element proverbially terrible when it becomes master, before it was seen kindling into flickering blazes on the roof of the barn and the locks of hay protruding from its windows and the crevices between the logs of which it ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... portals and dimly-lighted courts, we trace the habits of caution and reserve that marked the men who led the parties of Uberti and Albizzi. The Sienese palaces are lighter and more elegant in style, as belonging to a people proverbially pleasure-loving; while a still more sumptuous and secure mode of life finds expression in the open loggie and spacious staircases of Venice. The graceful buildings which overhang the Grand Canal are exactly fitted for an oligarchy, sure of its own authority ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and complete his marriage with his cousin, or to retire into private life and three hundred a year altogether, and never see parent or brewery more. Mr. Henry Foker went away then, carrying with him that grief and care which passes free at the strictest Custom-houses, and which proverbially accompanies the exile; and with this crape over his eyes, even the Parisian Boulevard looked melancholy to him, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Soldiers on shipboard are proverbially fish out of water. We could not be called by the good old nickname of "lobsters" by the crew. Our gray jackets saved the sobriquet. But we floundered about the crowded vessel like boiling victims in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... partly dependent, for her subsistence, on her manual exertions, or an inmate in the house of a relative or friend, she may do great good by an habitual watchfulness that nothing be wasted. Servants are proverbially lavish and careless in this matter. The head of the family may be deficient in economy, or what is by no means uncommon, so engrossed with other inevitable cares, as to have little time to look after the savings, which might daily be made. But here is an individual, whose habits ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Biographical Essays. But to the philosophical student by far the most important of Treitschke's writings are his two volumes on the Science of Politics, which are, without exception, the most fascinating and the most suggestive political treatise published in this generation. Political treatises are proverbially dull and out of touch with reality. Treitschke's treatise is a solitary exception. To him politics are not, like mathematics, an abstract or a deductive science. We cannot build an ideal political structure in the air. The political thinker must be more modest ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... Arabian story of two men, one of whom hailed from the town of Hama (ancient Hamath), the other from Hums (ancient Emessa). Those towns are not far apart, but the people of the former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the latter are proverbially as stupid. (And for the proper understanding of the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb hama means to "protect" or "defend," the verb hamasa to "roast" or "toast.") These men had some business of importance ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... are proverbially ungrateful. The Honourable Hilary might have voiced this sentiment, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from her own seat to the one next her niece, and, kindly taking her hand, observed, "You should not suffer the impetuosity of your brother to affect you so much; boys, you know, are proverbially ungovernable." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... If comparisons are proverbially odious, they must be specially so if drawn out upon insufficient data. I must not, therefore, on such a flying inspection, go very deeply into my comparative analysis. And yet, under all the circumstances, the subject ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... Armitage, don't be angry with me!" he said—"You are so delightfully ignorant of the ways of our sex, and I for one heartily wish you might always remain so! But we men are proverbially selfish-and we like to consider cleverness, or 'genius' if you will, as our own exclusive property. We hate the feminine poacher on our particular preserves! We consider that women were made to charm and to amuse us—not to equal ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... something decisive was about to be done at last. Henri did not pause, but with a flying dash he sprang like a spread eagle, arms and legs extended, right into the bear's bosom. At the same moment he sent his long hunting-knife down into its heart. But Bruin is proverbially hard to kill, and although mortally wounded, he had strength enough to open his jaws and close ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne |
