"Rarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and, though it would have been easy to reach the next one before night, I was obliged to stay, as my men wanted to return and others could not possibly go on with me without the preliminary talking. Besides, a white man was too great a rarity to be allowed to escape them, and their wives would never have forgiven them if, when they returned from the fields, they found that such a curiosity had not been kept for them to see. On entering ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Christian to exercise the virtue of love. Considering the evident rarity of love among men, this admonition is necessary. He particularly warns Christians not to wonder at the world's hatred and desire for their death. Such was the hate of Cain for his brother, of which the apostle has just spoken. The world's hate, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... four o'clock I dined with the landlord, in company with a commercial traveller. The dinner was good, though plain, consisting of boiled mackerel—rather a rarity in those parts at that time—with fennel sauce, a prime baron of roast beef after the mackerel, then a tart and noble Cheshire cheese; we had prime sherry at dinner, and whilst eating the cheese prime porter, that of Barclay, the only ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... receptions—the fashionable classes, who are far more loyal to England for the most part than the English themselves, their fringe, and then the wealthier of the tradespeople. It is proven every day that a democracy is the happiest hunting ground for a man with a title. The very rarity of the distinction makes it more precious to those who value it, and the titled governors of one of our great colonies occupies a position which is vastly higher in public esteem than that of his fellow-noblemen at home. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... seems to me to underrate the rarity of this peculiar gift in his brilliant essay on Defoe's Novels in Hours ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the transits of the planet should occur with corresponding frequency. This is not the case; the transit of Venus is an exceedingly rare occurrence, and a hundred years or more will often elapse without a single one taking place. The rarity of these phenomena arises from the fact that the path of the planet is inclined to the plane of the earth's orbit; so that for half of its path Venus is above the plane of the earth's orbit, and in ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Delphi, of which we possess an extremely detailed account in the pages of Pausanias, depicted the sack of Troy and the descent of Odysseus into Hades. But it is worth remarking, in view of the extreme rarity of historical subjects in Greek relief- sculpture, that in the Stoa Poicile (Painted Portico) of Athens, alongside of a Sack of Troy by Polygnotus and a Battle of Greeks and Amazons by his contemporary, Micon, there were two historical scenes, a Battle of Marathon and a Battle of OEnoe. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... becoming so varied, that a number of women of natural ability and character are realizing some definite aim in a perfect way. But these are sporadic cases, representing usually some definite interest rather than a full intellectual life, and resembling also in their nature and rarity the elevation of a peasant to a position of eminence in Europe. Nowhere in the world do women as a class lead a perfectly free intellectual life in common with the men of the group, unless it be in restricted and artificial groups like ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... similitude of tiny fish can be vouched for by people far more careful of their facts than Hamed—fish which have intruded themselves on the oysters and have been encased in nacre. Probably the rarity which fell into Hamed's hands was the pearly presentment of a crustacean, for marine frogs are infinitely rarer than pearls. Several molluscs admit tenants, one particular species a rotund crab; but in ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... to see me!" exclaimed the astonished baron. "You must be either romancing or mad, my good Pierre! There is no gentleman in the world who can have anything to say to me. However, for the rarity of the thing, you may bring in this extraordinary mortal—if such there really be, and you are not dreaming, as I shrewdly suspect. But tell me his name first, or hasn't he ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Alas! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun! Oh! it was pitiful! Near a whole city full, Home ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... yet,' I interrupted, not desiring the invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; 'and I fear there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity and value of the library—if the other rooms should turn out as rich ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... rhyme follows in construction the rules laid down for the single rhyme. The accents must be alike; the preceding consonants must differ and the vowels and the remaining syllables of the words be identical. "Double" goes perfectly with "trouble" and "bubble," while "charity," "clarity" and "rarity" all rhyme. ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... from judicial bribery has been gradual in most of the European countries. In France it received an impulse in the 16th century from the high-minded chancellor, Michel de L'Hopital. In England judicial corruption has been a crime of remarkable rarity. Indeed, with the exception of a statute of 1384 (repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1881) there has been no legislation relating to judicial bribery. The earliest recorded case was that of Sir William Thorpe, who in 1351 was fined and removed from office ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... would have as fine clothes, if your mothers had to spin all the cloth? She knit, too, O, so fast! as well in the dark as the light. I have known her to knit a coarse stocking easily of an evening—her fingers flew along the needles! Cotton cloth was a great rarity among us. I remember once my mother had a cotton gown, and it ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... place indeed—this schloss. The deeper we penetrated into it, the more absorbed and interested did I become. Such piled-up, profusely scattered treasures of art it had never before fallen to my lot to behold. The abundance was prodigal; the judgment, cultivation, high perception of truth, rarity and beauty, seemed almost faultless. Gems of pictures—treasures of sculpture, bronze, china, carvings, glass, coins, curiosities which it would have taken a life-time properly to learn. Here I saw for the first ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... a man who was, or who seemed to be, taller than he; a slim man, having but one thing in common with the detective: his black morning-coat fitted him as perfectly as the dress-coat had fitted the inspector. An irreproachably attired man is a greater rarity than most people realise; and Zoe Oppner wondered why, even in that moment of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... exclaimed the Count. "A pretty villa, embowered by trees! a rarity in these regions. I wonder whether the inhabitants are as attractive as their residence: so lovely a spot may be the abode of the most graceful of sylphs. Even at this distance we can see what pretty creepers adorn its trellised ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... which had previously reigned was made to contribute to the beauty of his achievement. The unique and delicate perfume of surprise with which his genius issued from its crevice still haunts his romances. A quality of homeliness dwells in their very strangeness and rarity which endears them to us unspeakably, and captivates the foreign sense as well; so that one of Hawthorne's chief and most enduring charms is in a measure due to that very barrenness of his native earth ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... men a sense of quality, a power of divination in regard to value which, on occasions when they are confronted by a stranger whose worth they do not know, informs them immediately of the comparative rarity or commonness of his type. This sense may at first be baffled by the delusive disguises in which men sometimes present themselves, but as a rule a chance word, an artless gesture, or even a glance, quickly corrects the initial error of the eye, and in a moment ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... I, too, went out to stretch my limbs, which were stiff and bruised from four hours' jolting in a springless carriage, always on the point of overturning. We should have done better to have come on horseback in the usual way; but Rashid, having chanced upon the carriage, a great rarity, had decided on that way of going as more fashionable, forgetful of the fact that there was ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Luckily for his reputation, he exceeded the general standard of imperial splendor not less as the patron of the amphitheatre than in his more important functions. It is recorded of him—that in one missio he sent forward on the arena a hundred lions. Nor was he less distinguished by the rarity of the wild animals which he exhibited than by their number. There were elephants, there were crocodiles, there were hippopotami at one time upon the stage: there was also the rhinoceros, and the still rarer crocuta or corocotta, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... appealed to him, and her other qualities—her reserved graciousness with its tinge of dignity, her insight and her comprehension—had also had their effect; but they had only awakened admiration and respect. He desired her as one desires an object for its rarity and preciousness; but this, as she had told him, was not enough. Behind her physical and mental attributes, and half revealed by them, there was something deeper: the real personality of the girl. It was elusive, mystic, with a spark of immaterial ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... has so truly interpreted the Indian mind—no one, transcribing Indian thought into our literature, has retained so high and serious a level, and quite apart from the rarity of themes ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... in crossing the higher parts of the Andes not one of the party suffered from the rarity of the air. Many travellers experience sickness, giddiness, and extreme exhaustion from this cause in those regions. Some have even died of the effects experienced at the greater heights, yet neither Manuela, nor Lawrence, nor Quashy was affected in the slightest degree. We can assign no reason ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wicliffe wrote in Latin, and his words were of great rarity, it may excite inquiry how poor Bunyan was conversant with is opinions. This is easily solved. Foxe gives a translation of Wicliffe's doctrines in his Martyrology, the favourite ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she had been helped to was too delicate to be given up even for the greater rarity. But the word "shell-oysters" had been overheard; and there was a perceptible crowding movement towards their newly ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fitted up with things that match. Everything is in bronze—inkstand, paper-weight, match-box, etc.—and there is always a lighted candle standing on it by which he and the gentlemen can light their cigars. There is a carpet on the floor, a rarity in Germany, and Liszt generally walks about and smokes and mutters, and calls upon one or the other of us to play. From time to time he will sit down and himself play where a passage does not suit him, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... him, saying, "We have sent you abundance of myrrh and frankincense, that for the future you may not be stingy to the gods." Among the treasures and other booty that was taken from Darius, there was a very precious casket, which being brought to Alexander for a great rarity, he asked those about him what they thought fittest to be laid up in it; and when they had delivered their various opinions, he told them he should keep Homer's Iliad in it. This is attested by many credible authors, and if what those ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to emphasise the novelty and rarity of his literary adventures. But his attitude to Jamieson is very strange. As early as 1806 Robert Jamieson (1780-1844) had published a volume of Popular Ballads, in which he had translated several of the kjaempeviser and had pointed out their value in relation to the ancient Scottish poems of ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... not characterise the immediate parents, and therefore cannot have been derived from them, frequently appearing in the offspring of two breeds when crossed, which peculiarities never appear, or appear with extreme rarity, in these same breeds, as long as they are {40} precluded from crossing. As this conclusion seems to me highly curious and novel, I will ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... Doddiscombsleigh, whose chief feature is its church. The chancel is early Decorated, the nave and north aisle Perpendicular, and in the windows of this aisle, and more especially in the east window, is some good stained glass—a rarity in the churches in this neighbourhood. The subject, a rather uncommon one in England, is the Seven Sacraments, and, as the old glass was no longer intact, the window has ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... often with parsimony of writing: but you may discover by the extent of my paper, that I design to recompence rarity by length. A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation;—a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something. Yet it must be remembered, that he who continues the same ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... inferred from the legal decisions, but these are only where the penalty had already been commuted from death or punishment to payment or restitution. They are better taken as examples of civil law. But this distinction is not the cause of their rarity or absence. When a man had to be put to death, scourged, or exiled, there was no need for a written bond. Hence the only references which we have outside the Code and the phrase-books, are the penalties set down in marriage-contracts for conjugal infidelity, or for breach of contract voluntarily ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... colour of the lower parts, which are a blackish-grey. The upper parts are sometimes as black as a mole, sometimes grizzled with brown" ('Mammiferes,' p. 284). The brown specimen with the dark belly is evidently a rarity. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of the cougar's occasionally itself making the attack, and dogging to his death some unfortunate wayfarer. Many others laugh such tales to scorn. It is certain that if such attacks occur they are altogether exceptional, being indeed of such extreme rarity that they may be entirely disregarded in practice. I should have no more hesitation in sleeping out in a wood where there were cougars, or walking through it after nightfall, than I should have ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... how to profit by these terrible diamonds, in her way. He pointed out to her that her farm lay right in the road to the diamonds, yet the traffic all shunned her, passing twenty miles to the westward. Said he, "You should profit by all your resources. You have wood, a great rarity in Africa; order a portable forge; run up a building where miners can sleep, another where they can feed; the grain you have so wisely refused to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Russia. Glaciation of Scotland. Mammoth in Scotch Till. Marine Shells in Scotch Glacial Drift. Their Arctic Character. Rarity of Organic Remains in Glacial Deposits. Contorted Strata in Drift. Glaciation of Wales, England, and Ireland. Marine Shells of Moel Tryfaen. Erratics near Chichester. Glacial Formations of North America. Many Species of Testacea and Quadrupeds survived ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... biographically, perhaps also historically, than otherwise. It is true, we hear now and then of some virtuoso playing the Variations, Op. 2, or the Fantasia on Polish airs, Op. 13, nay, we may hear even of the performance of the Trio, Op. 8; but such occurrences are of the rarest rarity, and, considering how rich musical literature is in unexceptionable concert-pieces and chamber compositions, one feels on the whole pleased that these enterprising soloists and trio-players find neither much encouragement nor many imitators. While ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... consider here. The absence, or rather the rarity, of mother-right survivals in some civilisations cannot be counted as proof that the maternal system never existed. As I have shown in the earlier chapters of this book, the mother-age was a transitional stage, between the very early brute-conditions of the family and the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... in the book called, 'Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar school, chap. 8.'" Notwithstanding a title so pretentious, it contains a translation of no more than the first 567 lines of the first Book, executed in a fanciful and pedantic manner; and its rarity is now the only merit of the volume. A literal interlinear translation of the first Book "on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke," was published in 1839, which had been already preceded by "a selection from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, adapted to the Hamiltonian system, by a literal and interlineal ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the exception, where the people itself is only the army in mufti. In its mere aspect to the eye it was something like an invasion by a strange race. The English professional soldier of our youth had been conspicuous not only by his red coat but by his rarity. When rare things become common they do not become commonplace. The memory of their singularity is still strong enough to give them rather the appearance of a prodigy, as anyone can realise by imagining an army of hunchbacks or a city of one-eyed ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... rule, sons are more desired than daughters, as they increase a man's power and authority, and because they alone can keep up the superstitious rites which are deemed necessary for the salvation of the father's selfish old soul. Now the non-existence or extreme rarity of conjugal attachment—not to speak of affection—is painfully indicated by the circumstance that wives were, among many races, valued (apart from grossly utilitarian and sensual motives) as mothers only, and that the men had a right, of which they commonly ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Clement, there are two sorts of rarity in books; the one absolute, the other conditional or contingent. There are rare editions of very common books. There are books of almost common occurrence in public libraries, which are rarely seen in ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... and glinted down Upon the world they shadowed: some have lived And cleft their times with such a whistling swoop That plodding minds seemed reeling 'tother way— Men who had suffering-purified their souls To angel rarity, that they might scan, Like old Elijah, e'en the throne of ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... in a neat little wooden mansion approached by a courtyard. I gained admittance by ringing a bell (then a rarity in Moscow), and was received by a mincing, smartly-attired page. He either could not or made no attempt to inform me whether there was any one at home, but, leaving me alone in the dark hall, ran off down a still darker corridor. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... experience of Lucetta—all that it was, and all that it was not. There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has pronounced it no rarity—even the reverse, indeed, and without them the band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfrae was not of those. It was inevitable that the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature should take him out of the dead blank which his loss ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Acropolis, a perfectly bare wall (the one on the left as you go up to the Propylaea). Well! I wonder if a book independently of what it says, cannot produce the same effect! In the exactness of its assembling, the rarity of its elements, the polish of its surface, the harmony of its ensemble, is there not an intrinsic virtue, a sort of divine force, something eternal as a principle? (I speak as a Platonist.) Thus, why is a relation ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... loveliness—its envelope of associations, of memories and recurrences, had no great destiny. She packed it up and took it away with her quite as if she had been a woman who had come to sell a set of laces. The laces were as wonderful as ever when taken out of the box, but to admire again their rarity you had to send for the woman. What was above all remarkable for our young man was that Miriam Rooth fetched a fellow, vulgarly speaking, very much less than Julia at the times when, being on the spot, Julia did fetch. He could paint Miriam day after day without any agitating blur ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... regard to the Procrustes. Baxter making no objection, the subscribers who might wish their copies delivered sealed were directed to notify the author. I sent in my name. A fine book, after all, was an investment, and if there was any way of enhancing its rarity, and therefore its value, I was quite willing to enjoy ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and the Emperor said to him, "At least say something, Marshal." There had been for some time a little coolness between him and the Emperor, and his Majesty reproached him with the rarity of his visits, but he could not dissipate the cloud which darkened every brow; for the Emperor's secret had not been as well kept as he had hoped. After supper the Emperor ordered Prince Eugene to read the twenty-ninth bulletin, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Indios del Peru), by the brother Domingo de San Thomas, published in Valladolid in 1560, and republished in the same year with an appendix, being a Vocabulary of the Quichua. The demand for the first edition appears to have been considerable; or, what is more likely, from the extreme rarity of the work, the careful author {195} suppressed or called in the first edition, in order to add, for the benefit of his purchasers, the vocabulary which he had found time to prepare ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... brotherhood, a peculiar preciousness. These books are esteemed for curiosity, for beauty of type, paper, binding, and illustrations, for some connection they may have with famous people of the past, or for their rarity. It is about these books, the method of preserving them, their enemies, the places in which to hunt for them, that the following pages are to treat. It is a subject more closely connected with the taste for curiosities than with art, strictly so called. We are to be occupied, not ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... barred by a strip of clear white moonlight. They agreed that these were most unusual-looking creatures. How unusual any naturalist would have been glad to tell them; for these were that great and prized rarity, the Evening Grosbeak. So, too, in the pine woods they were showered by bits of cones, and looked aloft to make out a distant little bird busily engaged in tearing the cones to pieces. They laughed at his industry, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... Rodd. This sale, which will occupy eleven days, will close on Friday next: and on Saturday they will sell the last portion of Mr. Rodd's, books, which will consist entirely of works relating to Ireland, including several of great curiosity and rarity. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... great, because their beauty, which consists in their luster and their sonorous ring,(722) gives them great value in use; and because, at the same time, their rarity in nature makes the supply of them relatively small,(723) and not susceptible of increase at pleasure.(724) As they contain so large a value in so small a volume, they are adapted to transportation ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... that she had measured him rather scantily the year before, that he was as much in love as the feebler passions of the age permitted (for though Miss Chancellor believed in the amelioration of humanity, she thought there was too much water in the blood of all of us), that he prized Verena for her rarity, which was her genius, her gift, and would therefore have an interest in promoting it, and that he was of so soft and fine a paste that his wife might do what she liked with him. Of course there would be the mother-in-law to count with; but unless she was perjuring herself ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... of my invisible quality, I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge, no appliances, no human being in the world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have given me away—made a mere show and rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was half-minded to accost some passer-by and throw myself upon his mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... copies of the 6th Decade were destroyed by fire, and the few that are to be met with are generally, if not always, deficient in some leaves. The title-page to this copy (as in Mr. Grenville's) is supplied by the title to the 4th Decade, and a few leaves are wanting. For the rarity of this work, see Bibliotheca Grenvilliana, ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... is almost the reverse of this: we value a gift in proportion to its rarity, its distinctive character, separating its possessor from the rest of his fellow-men; whereas, in truth, those gifts which leave us in lonely majesty apart from our species, useless to them, benefiting ourselves alone, are not the most godlike, but the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... has the further advantage of throwing light on the special sanctity ascribed to mistletoe which grows on an oak. The mere rarity of such a growth on an oak hardly suffices to explain the extent and the persistence of the superstition. A hint of its real origin is possibly furnished by the statement of Pliny that the Druids worshipped the plant because they believed it to have fallen from heaven and to be a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... native evergreens, and none of cultured, save a stunted cedar, that grew, or, rather, refused to grow, in our front yard at home; and thus they have ever attracted me exceedingly—the charm of rarity and novelty being added for me ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... generally commoner than the males.) The small size of the males in comparison with the females (a peculiarity which is sometimes carried to an extreme degree), and their widely different appearance, may account in some instances for their rarity in collections. (92. See, on this subject, Mr. O.P. Cambridge, as quoted in 'Quarterly Journal of Science,' ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... mentions five reappearances, only one of which was to any considerable number of people. According also to the gospel writers, the reappearances were few; they were without preparation, and nothing seems to have been known of where he resided between each visit; this rarity and mysteriousness of the reappearances of Christ (whether dictated by fear of his enemies or by policy) would heighten their effect, and prevent the Apostles from knowing much more about their master than the simple ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... 'tis the greatest Affront imaginable to call a Woman Mistress, though but a retail Brandy-monger. Adieu.—One thing more, to morrow is our Country-Court, pray do not fail to be there, for the rarity of the Entertainment: but I shall see you anon at Surelove's, where I'll salute thee as my first meeting, and as an old Acquaintance in England—here's Company, farewel. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... who in 1597 first gave the world a specimen of Rommany in his curious book "De Literis et Lingua Getarum" (which specimen, by the way, on account of its rarity, I propose to republish in another work), believed that the Gipsies were Nubians; and others, following in his track, supposed they were really Cophtic Christians (Pott, "Die Zigeuner," &c., Halle, 1844, p. 5). And I must confess ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... in many facets, and clear set in massive gold. This precious stone, said to be a chrysoprasus, had been given to the Bishop by a Russian prince, in acknowledgment of a great service rendered him when he came on pilgrimage to Rome. The rarity of these gems arose partly from the fact that the sovereigns of Russia had decreed that they should be held exclusively for royal ornament, forbidding their use or purchase by ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... documents discovered in the Tarim basin[922] date from this period. The absence in them of Buddhist personal names and the rarity of direct references to Buddhism indicate that though known in Tibet it was not yet predominant. Buddhist priests (ban-de) are occasionally mentioned but the title Lama has not been found. The usages of the Bonpo religion seem familiar to the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... water carries a road, often a hard causeway. A considerable system of railways takes advantage of the same natural narrow issues; but even to those familiar with the country, the complexity of these narrow dry gates or defiles, and their comparative rarity (contrasted with the vast extent of waterlogged soil or of open pool), render an advance against any opposition perilous, and even an unopposed advance slow, and dependent upon very careful Staff work. Columns in their progress are for hours out of touch one with the other, and an unexpected ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... beagles. Stoats, foumarts, polecats, et id genus omne, are becoming scarcer every year; although the writer was recently told of a marten-cat—probably the Pine-marten (martes abietum)—being killed in a tree, and sold for 10s. as a rarity. I was a witness of the following:—Walking, in the small hours of the morning, in a parish contiguous to Woodhall, on my way to a stream where I was going to fish, I saw a hare in a field adjoining the road, which was leaping about in a most extraordinary fashion, starting ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... had a hand in it. And yet, had these coincidences then been observed, they would certainly—now that strong suspicions had been directed to the man from the extraordinary character of his nocturnal precautions—not have passed without investigation. But the remoteness of Bristol, and the rarity of newspapers in those days, caused these indications to pass unnoticed. Bristol knew of no such Knutsford highwayman—Knutsford knew of no such Bristol murder. It is singular enough that these earlier grounds of suspicion against X were not viewed as such ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... undisturbed unity, readiness, and practical energy of every branch of the public service; the devotion of each one in his own sphere to the common end; the general co-operation in the means by which that end was to be reached; the remarkable rarity of treason, even of self-seeking; the steadfast exercise, amid the comfortlessness of camps and the temptations of the council-hall of the ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... passion is no rarity to-day, yet scarcely since the date of Philip Bourke Marston's 'Song Tide' has such an arresting and whole-hearted example of this class of poetry been issued by any English author as the volume which Mr William Luther ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... our undertaking—"the rarity to run mad without a cause, without the least constraint or necessity," the exercise of that "refined and exquisite passion"—stamped me a disciple of Don Quixote, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the high notes in some voices exceptionally endowed by nature, it seems as though all singers, no matter what their natural range, have made it the one object of their training to strive after a vocal attainment whose rarity appears to be almost its only justification to be considered as an artistic merit. Why should these ever vanishing "top notes" be so much craved and striven for? Can it be said that, as regards each individual voice, these notes are higher in a scale of excellence than the rest? What ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... worthy of that noble constituency, and is a very pretty piece of composition. In electing him, he says, they have covered themselves with glory, and England has been true to herself. (In his preliminary address he had remarked, in a poetical quotation of great rarity, that nought could make us rue, if England to herself ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... generally wages, salaries, remunerations of all kinds, are in pretty exact relation to the value of the services performed—this value being of course determined, in a great degree, by the easiness or difficulty of the work, the commonness or rarity of the faculties and skill required for it, the risk of non-success in the profession, and so forth. Many a good fellow who feels that his income is inconveniently small, and wonders why it is not greater, might have the mystery ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... summer parlour, or LANAI, as they call it here, roofed, but practically open. There you will find the lamps burning and the family sitting about the table, dinner just done: my mother, my wife, Lloyd, Belle, my wife's daughter, Austin her child, and to-night (by way of rarity) a guest. All about the walls our South Sea curiosities, war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes, etc.; and the walls are only a small part of a lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed windows, or mere open space. You will see there no sign ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sanctuary, the wonder being accepted as proof of a ghostly presence. For example, in the forest near Olevuga a man planted some coco-nut and almond trees and died not long afterwards. Then there appeared among the trees a great rarity in the shape of a white cuscus. The people took it for granted that the animal was the dead man's ghost, and therefore they called it by his name. The place became a sanctuary; no one would gather the coco-nuts and almonds that grew there, till two Christian converts set the ghost at defiance ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... me a delightfully warm welcome. They were not of the folk we meet in fashionable drawing-rooms who conceal all such feelings as they may chance to possess beneath the impenetrable mask of a conventional placidity. 'The Man with the Iron Mask' was, no doubt, a rarity and a marvel in his own age: in modern London no one would turn his head to give him a second look! No, these were real people. When they looked pleased, it meant that they were pleased: and when Lady Muriel said, with a bright smile, ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... olivine) was regarded in Shakespeare's time and earlier as of exceptional rarity. The fine peridots of the Chapel of the Three Kings in Cologne Cathedral were believed to be emeralds of extraordinary size and were once valued at $15,000,000, although they are really worth barely ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... answered. "I'm going back to weave my basket. There is nothing to surpass the orchids in rarity and wondrous beauty." ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... man," he suddenly began, in a dry, sharp, snuffling voice.—"That is a rarity nowadays. Allow me to congratulate you. You have ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... pocket scale conveyed by pilgrims and reverenced by the Arabs, but the body of any Faky who in lifetime was considered unusually holy is brought from a great distance to be interred in some particular spot. In countries where a tree is a rarity, a plank for a coffin is unknown; thus the reverend Faky, who may have died of typhus, is wrapped in cloths and packed in a mat. In this form he is transported, perhaps some hundred miles, slung upon a camel, with the thermometer above 130 degrees ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... the intellectual tendencies of capital I speak generally. Not only individual capitalists, but great corporations, exist, who are noble examples of law-abiding and intelligent citizenship. Their rarity, however, and their conspicuousness, seem to ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... very laconic, indeed almost pantomimic; and they walked up and down by the long pink frames with true diplomatic strides. The display was really extraordinarily beautiful: and the particular forms and colors of the different flowers, the advantages of one over the other, and their rarity, gave at last occasion to a sort of conversation which appeared to get quite friendly; at which we others rejoiced the more because we saw the most precious old Rhine wine in cut decanters, fine fruits, and other good things spread upon a table in a neighboring bower. But ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... crisp, tender, very juicy, sugary and highly aromatic—a first-rate dessert apple, in use from December to February." In my opinion it comes next, though longo intervallo, to Cox's Orange Pippin, but it wants good land to make the best of it. It may with confidence be produced as a rarity across the walnuts and the wine to the connossieur ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... an enviable one. Once upon a time, when a red lamp had been a novelty, and the power to write "M. D." after his ordinary signature a delicious dignity, a patient had been to him a prodigy, something precious for its rarity, even if it called him away from his dinner or ruthlessly rang him up in the middle of the night. But that was a long time ago, in the days of his impecunious youth; and now, in his prosperous middle-age, he would often have willingly bartered a good ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... grows "cooler," has a much larger bloom, varies in hue from purest white to deepest red, and flowers in May or June. The most glorious of these things, however, is O. vex. superbum, a plant of the greatest rarity, conspicuous for its blotch of deep purple in the centre of the lip, and its little dot of the same on each wing. Doubtless this is a natural hybrid betwixt the Antioquia form and Odontoglossum Roezlii, which is its neighbour. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... would on the psychical side involve an accentuated individualism and hence a greater possibility of genius. This view has been supported by John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and others. Ellis, in the chapter on "The Artistic Impulse" in Man and Woman, says, "The rarity of women artists of the first rank is largely due to the greater variational tendency of men." Now, this biological fact is certainly of great importance, if it can be proved. But can it? It has recently been contested by ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... orchis, is this far more chaste showy lady's slipper which Dr. Gray has called "the most beautiful of the genus." Because the plants live in inaccessible swampy places, where only the most zealous flower lover penetrates, they have a reputation for rarity at which one who knows a dozen places to find colonies of the stately exquisites during a morning's walk, must smile with superiority. Wine appears to overflow the large white cup and trickle down its sides. Sometimes unstained, pure white chalices are found. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... L11 11s.; and Mr. Willock, a bookseller, bought the magnificently illuminated Pliny by Jenson of 1472, for L18 18s.: of which Maittaire has said so many fine things. The French books, and all the works upon the Fine Arts, were of the first rarity, and value, and bound in a sumptuous manner. Winstanley's Prospects of Audley End brought L50. An amusing account of some of the pictures will be found in Mr. Beloe's "Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books," vol. i. 166. 71. But consult also Nichol's Anecdotes ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... directions of a will first allowed to regulate the devolution of authority over the household, and consequently the posthumous distribution of property. The difficulty of deciding the point arises from the rarity of Testamentary power in archaic communities. It is doubtful whether a true power of testation was known to any original society except the Roman. Rudimentary forms of it occur here and there, but ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... prime fun," replied the mischievous boy, "but it's no rarity to me. I 'm used to it, you know. But you would delight in it, especially with bare feet. That way it is jolly, better than wading in a brook. Suppose you try ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... hand, the best men, if known, are not left in the cold shade of official disfavor. "Post nubila Phoebus," was the expression of Nelson, astonished for a rarity into Latin by the suddenness with which the sun now burst upon him through the clouds. "The Admiralty so smile upon me, that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned." On the 6th of January, 1793, the First Lord, with many apologies for previous neglect, promised to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... front. Now and again an outburst of raucous humor echoed above the babble of cockney tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad desarted 'er" failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in their cups are not a rarity in Walthamstow. In side streets, lads in khaki, many of them fresh from fields of slaughter "somewhere in Flanders," sported boisterously with their factory-girl sweethearts or spooned in the shadows. Everywhere ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... has too long prevailed. I hear that I am accused of rating my books at too high a price, at a price which no other person would demand. To answer this accusation, it is necessary to inquire what those who urge it, mean by a high price. The price of things, valuable for their rarity, is entirely arbitrary, and depends upon the variable taste of mankind, and the casual fluctuation of the fashion, and can never be ascertained, like that of things only estimable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... literature! How thoroughly is the non-development of a permanent literature the exception rather than the rule! And, even when records come into existence, how numerous are the chances against their preservation. Destruction is the common law: continuance a happy rarity. For extraordinary phenomena we must have ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... before the emperor," was the universal cry; and the morrice dancer was placed before a slight, but easy and handsome, figure of a young man, splendidly attired, having a cincture and tiara of peacock's feathers, then brought from the East as a marvellous rarity; a short jacket and under dress of leopard's skin fitted closely the rest of his person, which was attired in flesh coloured silk, so as to resemble the ordinary idea of an Indian prince. He wore sandals, fastened on with ribands of scarlet silk, and held in his hand a sort of fan, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... network. Network traffic reflects the joint contributions of a larger population of users and increasing use per user. Today one sees serious applications involving moving images across the network—a rarity ten years ago. LARSEN recalled and concurred with BESSER's main point that the interesting problems occur at the ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... society)—love, but especially unfortunate love, is regarded with a sanctity of interest and pity such as they give to religion or to the memory of the dead. In this point women of the lowest rank (as a body) are much more worthy of respect and admiration than those above them, in proportion to the rarity of the temptations which beset them for diverting the natural course of their own affections—and to the less worldly tone of the society[1] in which they move. Women however of all classes manifest a purity and elevation of sentiment on this subject to which the coarseness of ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... It stands on a hill without the city, has a rock for its foundation, and is surrounded with walls of a vast height and solidity. You go up to the castle by a way hewn out of the rock, and which is so easy of ascent, that loaded horses and camels get up without difficulty. The greatest rarity in this castle is Joseph's well, so called, either because the Egyptians are pleased with ascribing what is most remarkable among them to that great man, or because such a tradition has been preserved in the country. This is a proof, at least, that the work in question is very ancient; ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... on as much as she would, till the storm exhausted itself, and she settled into the trust that Giles would soon grow weary and return. The good man felt bound to show her all hospitality, and the civilities to country cousins were in proportion to the rarity of their visits. So Mrs Headley stayed on after Tiptoff's return to Salisbury, and had the best view feasible of all the pageants and diversions of autumn. She saw some magnificent processions of clergy, she was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... modern free thought to assimilate some elements from the old faith A wide breach still remains Heresy, however, no longer traced to depravity Tolerance not necessarily acquiescence in scepticism Object of the foregoing digression The rarity of plain-speaking a reason why it is painful Conformity in the relationship between child and parent Between husband and wife In the education of children The case of an unbelieving priest The case of one who fears to lose his influence Conformity ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... ample warrant that no just pretense 50 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55 Which Claus of Innsbruck ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... says:—"A nest was once brought me which was declared to belong to this species; it was a very small neat fabric, of ordinary shape, made with moss and grass, and contained three small pure white eggs. The rarity of the bird makes me doubt if the nest really belonged ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... lavender water. These pucheros are very pleasing to the eye, on account of the tasteful arrangement of the flowers; but their powerful fragrance affects the nerves. They vary in price, according to the rarity of the fruits and flowers of which they are composed. Some cost as much as six or eight dollars. A puchero de flores is one of the most acceptable presents that can be offered to ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... dragon, who eats the sun, and leaves us in the dark until the blazing orb has been mended. Numerous instances are ready to the memory of any one of us, in illustration of the tendency existing among men to ascribe to supernatural, fantastic causes, events wonderful only by their rarity. All that we daily see differs from these things no more than inasmuch as it is at the same time marvellous and common. We know very well that the moon, seen once by all, would be regarded as an awful spectre: open only to the occasional vision ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... preferment in the Church. On the death of his father he inherited a fortune of about three thousand pounds a year, which enabled him to acquire a library of not less than four thousand five hundred volumes, remarkable for their rarity and beauty; seven portfolios of drawings by the great masters, and a hundred portfolios of prints, many of which were almost priceless; and in addition to these a splendid collection of coins and gems, and a ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... profession, even that of the actor, which we know that he practised for many years; but that, on the contrary, although he uses other technical language correctly, he avails himself of that of any single art of occupation with great rarity, and only upon special occasions. Lord Campbell remarks, as to the correctness with which Shakespeare uses legal phrases,—and this is a point upon which his Lordship speaks with authority,—that he is amazed "by the accuracy and propriety with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... competing minstrels. Bermondsey and Walworth alone occupied the nails. Scarcely any bets were made. They seemed an impecunious assemblage, gathered for mere sport. One gentleman did, indeed, offer to stake "that 'ere blowsy bob," as though a shilling in his possession were a rarity of which his friends must be certainly aware. What was the occult meaning of the epithet "Blowsy" I could not fathom, but there were no takers; and, after the windows had been opened for a few minutes to clear the atmosphere, they were closed again; the door locked; the two markers ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... witness how much, as a father, I regard you, with what singular devotion I have always followed you in thought, and how I feared to trouble you with my writings. In sooth, I make it my first care, that since there is nothing else to commend my letters, that their rarity may commend them. Next, as out of that most vehement desire after you which I feel, I always fancy you with me, and speak to you, and beheld you as if you were present, and so, as always happens in love, soothe my grief by a certain vain imagination of your presence, it is, in truth, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... at the Executive Mansion may have been at later dates, those owned and used by President Jefferson were the best the world produced—vintages of rarity, selected as could have been done only by one of the nicest taste. Rumor had it that none other than Senor Yrujo, minister from Spain, recipient of many casks of the best vintages of his country that he might entertain with proper dignity, had seen fit to do a bit of merchandizing ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... King: he meant what he said to-day. Who shall vouch for his to-morrows? One word further. Doth not the fewness of anything make the fulness of it in estimation? Is not virtue prized mainly for its rarity and great baseness loathed as an exception: for were all, my lord, as noble as yourself, who would look up to you? and were all as base as—who shall I say—Fitzurse and his following—who would look down upon them? My lord, you have put so many of the King's household out of communion, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... is owing to the rarity of the atmosphere that southern nations, with their keen intelligence due to the heat, are very free and swift in the devising of schemes, while northern nations, being enveloped in a dense atmosphere, and chilled by ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... so—except to the historian. But your real collector values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night—old Jefferson ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Greek scholar when he opens one of his ancient poets feels at once the presence of something lofty and rare—something like the atmosphere of Paradise Lost. But the language of Paradise Lost is elaborately twisted and embellished into loftiness and rarity; the language of the Greek poem is simple and direct. What does ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... other birds are, so to say, never out of our eyes; they let themselves be seen of us continually; but a vulture is a very rare sight, and you can seldom meet with a man that has seen their young; their rarity and infrequency has raised a strange opinion in some, that they come to us from some other world; as soothsayers ascribe a divine origination to all things not produced either of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... hermetic to bar the poison, yet admit some oxygen; or else, the place may have been absolutely air-tight at the time of the cloud, and some crack, which I have not seen, opened to admit oxygen after the poison was dispersed: in any case—the all-but-infinite rarity of the chance! ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... its own excrement, and does no little injury." Again, "I have often observed the caterpillar of a little moth that takes its station in damp old books, and there commits great ravages, and many a black-letter rarity, which in these days of bibliomania would have been valued at its weight in gold, has been snatched by these ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... this disapproval, and perfectly genuine distrust, did not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old Jolyon's invitation. An 'At Home' at Stanhope Gate was a great rarity; none had been held for twelve years, not indeed, since old ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the oldest rocks in the Catoctin Belt and occupy most of its area. They are also prominent from their unusual character and rarity. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... have found it so—than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness; we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... that I am alone in my room, and journalizing, it behooves me to gather up and record some of those words, precious from their rarity. Flora and I, in our merry nonsense, had a mock dispute, and referred the matter to Miss Etty ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... by John Grot's house are found many small pleasant buckies and shells, beautified by diverse colours, which some use to put upon a string as beads, and account much of their rarity. It is also observed of these shells that not one of them can be found altogether like another, and upon the review of the parcel I had I discovered some difference among them which variety renders them ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... intimate friend of the Circourts, a man, Reeve wrote, 'of great wit and discernment.' In 1873 he had printed, for private circulation, a small volume of Pensees, Maximes et Reflexions, a copy of which he gave Reeve, who 'highly valued it for its intrinsic merit and its rarity.'] Back to London ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... people; character,—high, spotless, saintly character,—is a far rarer thing in this world than talent or even genius. Character is an infinitely better thing than either of these, and it is of corresponding rarity. And yet so true is it that the world loves its own, that all men worship talent, and even bodily strength and bodily beauty, while only one here and one there either understands or values or pursues moral character, though it is the strength and the beauty and the sweetness ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... only brings it forth when the discussion has begun to wane. Or a proposal may be made at the very first by one member of the Staff that is accepted at once with acclamation—an event, however, of the utmost rarity; or again, as is usually the case, the final decision may be gradually and almost painfully evolved from this symposium of professional wits and literary politicians. This is the time when the men are apt to ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... which he lives or the sunset which he has just seen. If he seriously tries to comply with your request, you will probably be surprised both by the difficulty he has in his attempt, and the little that he really can say upon these familiar subjects. The interesting story teller is a rarity, which is only another way of saying that the ability to narrate and describe needs cultivation. There is no better opportunity possible than that of the ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to destroy it. All dainty (as distinguished from nourishing) food, and means of producing it; all scents not needed for health; substances valued only for their appearance and rarity (as gold and jewels); flowers of difficult culture; animals used for delight (as horses for racing), and such like, form property of this class; to which the term 'luxury,' or 'luxuries,' ought exclusively ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... the ardent sun embrowns the children of the soil, fair locks and eyes of azure are prized in proportion to their rarity. No wonder, then, that Federico found favour in the sight of the dark-browed and inflammable Madrilenas. Many were the tender glances darted at him from beneath veil and mantilla, as he took his evening stroll upon the Prado; oftentimes, when he passed along the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... undisturbed—began to bully me, I, observing that my wife, in the most perfect contrast to him, was most kind and amiable towards me who had neglected her so much, the idea occurred to me of becoming a model husband—a rarity, a curiosity, at the court; and I had an idea of getting very ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... languages, and kinds, upon all subjects, and in all sorts of trims; from those which are displayed in 'Peacock Place,' to the ragged inhabitants of 'Duck Row.' The room in which I am now writing contains two thousand four hundred volumes, all in good apparel; many of them of singular rarity and value. I have another room full, and a passage full; book-cases in both landing places, and from six to seven hundred volumes in my bed-room. You have never seen a more cheerful room than my study; this workshop, from which so ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... I have known as much as L10 asked for a copy; but a first edition (a rarity) may be purchased sometimes of a respectable ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... what might be their tempter's motive, the pair thought primarily of the white slave's well-preserved beauty and the rarity of women in the far West. With that came a stinging remembrance of her glaring Hayle likeness and then of their father's old scheme—averted by their mother—to sell the girl forever out of sight and reach. And then came the pleasanter ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... sir. Now and then a poor artist stops here, and sometimes tourists wander this way; but it is a life-time rarity to meet with a rich cosmopolitan like yourself, who is willing to help us along ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... answered him in a pleasant way, that I had spoken the truth. Happily an Englishman, it seems, is a rarity ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... time. He dined on bread and potatoes. He had sold the last of his furniture, then all duplicates of his bedding, his clothing and his blankets, then his herbariums and prints; but he still retained his most precious books, many of which were of the greatest rarity, among others, Les Quadrins Historiques de la Bible, edition of 1560; La Concordance des Bibles, by Pierre de Besse; Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, of Jean de La Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of Navarre; the book de la Charge et Dignite de l'Ambassadeur, by the Sieur de Villiers ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... be," said I. "But they are not nearly so highly appreciated. I suppose it is because poetry is not so much a rarity now. We have so many mediocre poets, that our taste is more exigent. I dare say, if a very bright, particular star should arise, we would honour him; but we have no bright particular star; and, thus, we learn to read poetry without reflection. Forty years ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ailments; while his rations and everything about him were continually saturated; and to make up the catalogue of his troubles, he, on more than one occasion, lost himself in the bush. Now, however, he said, he had got used to all these inconveniences; which, after all (from the rarity of their occurrence), he considered slight; and as to the wet, since he had been put up to the dodge of keeping his bed dry, it did not concern him in the least. He liked the independence of his life, though it was a little dull; and his wages being good, ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... winter, toward which he had looked forward with joyful anticipation, which became the way of the cross for him, where each stopping-place meant the end of a love and loyalty. Florie's best quality, his rarity, was of course gone; from now on he was always on hand, after all, and more than that, he was no longer the bringer of joy, the messenger of the thawing breeze, as ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... and more convinced, that in our eagerness, for novelties, we daily lose plants by far more ornamental than the new ones we introduce; the present, a most charming spring plant, with which the Gardens abounded in the time of PARKINSON, is now a great rarity; its blossoms, which are uncommonly brilliant, come forth in April, and, like those of many other plants, appear to advantage only when ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... rule, we may say that, while the apsidal chancel is foreign to no part of England, and occurs in unexpected places, as in the chapel of Old Bewick, Northumberland, it is never general in any single region. Its rarity is an important fact. Were our parish churches the work of masons sent out from the larger churches and monasteries, we should expect to find it a common feature; for in those buildings the apsidal plan prevailed. But, in the hands of local masons, its ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... and, on the afternoon of the 15th of February, swept round an intervening cape, and came in sight of the infant settlement of Astoria. After eleven months wandering in the wilderness, a great part of the time over trackless wastes, where the sight of a savage wigwam was a rarity, we may imagine the delight of the poor weatherbeaten travellers, at beholding the embryo establishment, with its magazines, habitations, and picketed bulwarks, seated on a high point of land, dominating a beautiful little bay, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... into the kaleidoscopic divergencies of adult standards was given Sylvia during the visits of her Aunt Victoria. These visits were angelic in their extreme rarity, and for Sylvia were always a mixture of the beatific and the distressing. Only to look at Aunt Victoria was a bright revelation of elegance and grace. And yet the talk around table and hearth on the two or three occasions when the beautiful young widow ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield |
