"Set-off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hundred pounds; shop-fittings, fifty; business as it stands, say three hundred. The rent is ninety-five. Floor above the shop let to a family, who pay twenty-four shillings a week—a substantial set-off against the rent; but I should like to get rid of the people, and use the whole house for business purposes. There's three years of Denbow's lease to run, but this, he says, the landlord would ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... fairies are all dead, it is pleasant to know that Pan can be brought to life again for children by the study of Nature. Now that the wonders of the invisible world are closed, the little ones can have no better set-off than in the beauty and marvel of God's visible creation. Here also are food for the imagination and material for poetry. Whatever teaches a child to observe teaches him to think, and strengthens memory, a faculty which in fitting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... first and most sacred duty of a public man, and, above all, an author, is to keep by honest and true doctrine—never to relax—never to countenance vice—ever to hold fast by virtue. What? Are we gravely to be told, at this time of day, that a set-off may be allowed for public, and, therefore, atrocious crimes, though he admits that a common felon pleads it in vain? Gracious God, where is this to end! What horrors will it not excuse! Tiberius's great capacity, his first-rate wit, that which made him the charm of society, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... virtue, to be sincere and practical, cannot be divested entirely of the blindness and impetuosity of passion! It has been made a plea (half jest, half earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade and manufactures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities practised upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their blood and sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to sweeten their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial, as they serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... or two occasions. Nor could he save Ganking, which, after being besieged for three years, surrendered to Tseng Kwotsiuen, and thus all hope of succour from the west, or of retreat there, in the last resort, was removed from the hard-beset garrison of Nanking. As some set-off to this reverse, Chung Wang captured the ports of Ningpo and Hangchow, after a gallant defence by a small Manchu garrison. The Taepings could scarcely now hope for durable success, but their capacity for inflicting an enormous amount of injury was evidently not destroyed. Chung ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... back the money, one shall return his slave."(684) Consequently the creditor held the pledge in his possession until the loan was returned, when he had to give it back. The pledges here mentioned are antichretic, that is, such that they produce an income or return to the holder, which is a set-off against the interest of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... of the people. In the course of his speech he remarked, that the favourable appearance of our affairs in the East Indies, and of the safe arrival of our numerous commercial fleets, were matters for congratulation: evidently designing these as a kind of set-off for our reverses in the West, and as encouragements to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... will see them for yourselves. The streets of the cities in the south and some in the north are no better than mere lanes; and the crowds of people hustling through them fill them about full, and make you think the place is vastly more populous than it really is. As a set-off to this idea, you will wonder what has become of the women, for you ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... rough, uneducated man, but with a certain amount of native talent which raised him above the level of the majority of his class. I can see him now in his place Sunday after Sunday, rigged out in a suit of my father's cast-off clerical garments—a kind of "set-off" to him at the lower end of the church. In his earlier days Wren had played a flute in the village instrumental choir, and to the last he might be heard whiling away spare moments on a Sunday in the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... other; also the address of Rob the Ranter to Maggie Lauder, "My bonnie bird." Now, we would remark, upon this abundant nomenclature of kindly expressions in the Scottish dialect, that it assumes an interesting position as taken in connection with the Scottish Life and Character, and as a set-off against a frequent short and grumpy manner. It indicates how often there must be a current of tenderness and affection in the Scottish heart, which is so frequently represented to be, like its climate, "stern and wild." There could not be such ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... beautiful. The Dutch chintzes I should say were extraordinary cheap and fine; but I would be ashamed to set down what I paid for stockings to her. Altogether I spent so great a sum upon this pleasuring (as I may call it) that I was ashamed for a great while to spend more; and, by way of a set-off, I left our chambers pretty bare. If we had beds, if Catriona was a little braw, and I had light to see her by, we were richly enough ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at last of coming up cheap from Twickenham, to open my son's gallery. I found out the inn where the market-gardeners baited their horses; I made friends with one on 'em, and now, for a glass of gin a day, he brings me up in his cart on the top of the vegetables!' As a set-off to all this, we have now and then a spasmodic act of kindness: he rebukes Wilkie for talking about the fine effect of the snow falling while poor Lawrence's coffin was being lowered into the grave in the crypt of St. Paul's: he drives away the boys who injure his blackbirds: ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the heat of a political quarrel, from the head-quarters of his foes, is a curious specimen of party spleen, and may be taken as the set-off to his own:—"Here lieth the body of James Ross, printer: formerly a negro driver: who spent the remainder of his days in advocating the cause of torture, triangles, and the gallows." Then follow ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... As a set-off to this picture of moral chaos, it should be remembered that these people when called upon to die for their revolutionary faith did so with the greatest heroism. Nor is the picture true of all revolutionaries; some of the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Sumner's talk, because it opened the gravest doubts of Sumner's sanity. If war was his object, and Canada were worth it, Sumner's scheme showed genius, and Adams was ready to treat it seriously; but if he thought he could obtain Canada from England as a voluntary set-off to the Alabama Claims, he drivelled. On the point of fact, Adams was as peremptory as Sumner on the point of policy, but he could only wonder whether Mr. Fish would dare say it. When at last Mr. Fish did say it, a year later, Sumner publicly cut his acquaintance. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... adorns. (Noise heard.) Ah, that sounds like Sir JAMES HANNEN banging on the ceiling! He must be stopped, as it would be so very awkward if a Solicitor were to call. Not that there's much chance of that nowadays. (To Chancery Barrister.) Come—shall we try a "set-off"? [Exeunt. Curtain. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... Willoughby, was invited to bask for a short time on the evening of the day before the appointment of the new captain. He had been there once before when his father and mother had come over to visit him. And even with their presence as a set-off, the evening had been one of the most awful experiences of his life. But now that he was to go all alone to partake of state tea with those two, this shy awkward boy felt about as cheerful as if he had been walking helplessly into a ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... Eton or Westminster in those days; as, on the other hand, he might have profited by acquiring a livelier perception of the meaning of that virtue of fair-play, the appreciation of which is held to be a set-off against the brutalizing influences of our system of public education. As it was, Pope was condemned to a desultory education. He picked up some rudiments of learning from the family priest; he was sent to a school at Twyford, where he is said to have got into trouble for writing a lampoon ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... are double buttresses, on which are two kinds of tabernacles, both are square and occupy the breadth of the buttress, the upper one is recessed in the body of the buttress, the lower one is open on three sides, and had small pillars at the front angles rising from the set-off and carrying the projecting canopy; the tops being finished with crocketed pinnacles. The east end is not so richly ornamented as the west; the window is a very fine one but not so large as the western one, and there are no niches on the sides ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... the conclusion is drawn, that the effects of early teaching must be important in a corresponding degree. I acknowledge the fact, so far as has been explained in the chapter on Early Sentiments, but there is a considerable set-off on the other side. Those teachings that conform to the natural aptitudes of the child leave much more enduring marks than others. Now both the teachings and the natural aptitudes of the child are ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... could get 'em. He can live in the castle if he likes, or go to the devil. O, and here is Mr. Archer; and I recommend him to take him in—a friend of mine—and Mr. Archer will pay, as I wrote. And I regard that in the light of a precious good thing for Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... candidly informed his host that they were two poor painters going in search of employment, and that they had spent all their money. He, however, added that, as the sign of the Bull was a disgraceful daub for so respectable a house, he would have no objection to repaint it, as a set-off for what he and his companion had received. The landlord, who had long been wishing for a new sign (the one in question having passed through two generations), gladly accepted his terms, and Morland immediately ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... should have indulged himself in this movement of passion, since undoubtedly it broke and disturbed the else uniform stream of public indignation, by investing the original aggressor with something like the character of an injured person; and therefore with some set-off to plead against his own wantonness of malice;—his malice might now assume ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... medicaments, death which ever stared them in the face, and last, and worst of all, the risk of capture by some Christian foe, by whom they would be chained to the rowers' bench and taste of a bitterness absolutely unimaginable. As a set-off to this the man who aspired to lead must offer to his followers at least a record of success in small things; also he had to be something of an enthusiast, something of an orator, some one subtly persuasive. Against all the disagreeables of the strenuous life of the corsair he had to hold ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Philadelphia and Reading coal-burning locomotive, a Pullman car, the Westinghouse brake, Stephenson's street-cars, car-wheels from Baldwin's and Lobdell's: the latter also sends calender-rolls of remarkable quality. As a sort of set-off to the Austrian car-wheels which have run for twenty-one years, as previously mentioned, Lobdell has a pair which have run 245,000 miles on the Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska Railway. The Fairbanks scales in great variety, both of size and purpose, and of a finish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... true, as little religious as any of them. In one of the earlier replies to that curious work, "Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed," I find a nonsensical passage from one of the curate's sermons, given as a set-off against the Presbyterian nonsense adduced by the other side. "Mr. James M'Kenzie, curate of Nigg in Ross," says the writer, "describing eternity to his parishioners, told them that in that state they would be immortalized, so that nothing could hurt them: a slash of a broadsword could ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... however, and after some trouble I succeeded in rescuing the priest, who was then allowed to pass, as I believe, as a set-off against the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... submitted to this condition of dependence without a murmur. They had been accustomed, from father to son, to go in and out of the gates of Stone Farm, and do what was required of them, as dutifully as if they had been serfs of the land. As a set-off they allowed all their leaning toward the tragic, all the terrors of life and gloomy mysticism, to center round Stone Farm. They let the devil roam about there, play loo with the men for their souls, and ravish the women; and they took off their caps more respectfully to the Stone Farm people ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... never thowt to coom down to dog-steealin', but if my comrade sees how it could be done to oblige a laady like yo'-sen, I'm nut t' man to hod back, tho' it's a bad business I'm thinkin', an' three hundred rupees is a poor set-off again t' chance of them Damning Islands as ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... those debates be ready to appear critically, their effect would be decisive. I beg of you to turn this subject in your mind. The arguments against it will be personal; those in favor of it moral; and something is required from you as a set-off against the sin of your retirement. Your favor of December the 29th came to hand January the 5th; seal sound. I pray you always to examine the seals of mine to you, and the strength of the impression. The suspicions against the government on this subject are strong. I wrote ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of humor. We have no fabulist like La Fontaine, no song-writer equal to Beranger; but then we do not think of citing our fables and songs as the highest examples of English humor. It would be easy to array a list of names as a set-off against that of Mr. Besant. But this is needless. Humor, in the sense in which the word is commonly understood, may almost be said to be a distinctive quality of English literature, which is pervaded by it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... may now carry more noble arms against the enemies of their country. Our political adversaries may do what they please with that concession. They are welcome to make the most of it. I am sure of a very handsome set-off in the other branch of expense,—the amusements of a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... strictures here alluded to, were petty, coarse, and uncandid; and with this observation they are dismissed from further notice. Sir William Follett had undoubtedly his shortcomings, in common with every one of his fellow men; and, as a small set-off against his many excellences of temper and character, one or two must be glanced at by any one essaying to present to the public, however imperfectly, a just account of this very eminent person. The failing in question formed the chief subject of vituperation—vituperation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... after the French occupation, was restored to the English by an order from Paris, in accordance with the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, Dupleix at Pondicherry was bitterly disappointed at the rendition, and he formed designs for the acquisition of San Thome for France, as a set-off for the loss of Madras. The English at Fort St. George had information of his schemes, and, being in no way desirous of having aggressive Frenchmen for close neighbours, they forestalled Dupleix by persuading the Nawab to make the Company a grant of 'Mylapore, alias St. Thome,' ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... rate, they strikingly characterize them as compared with us; I think everybody, or almost everybody, will feel that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or the French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either of them may have as a set-off against this; all I want now to point out is that they have this, and that we have it in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... pounds weight,) should be diligently rubbed into the skin of the animal. This was, however, an arch trick on the part of the sultan, for he was indebted to the Landers in a considerable sum for some buttons, which he had purchased of them, and this butter affair was intended as a kind of set-off, as the sultan said he did not approve of paying for the butter out of his own pocket. On the 1st August, the sultan sent a messenger to inform them that they were at liberty to pay their respects, and take their farewell of him previously to their departure from the city, which they were assured ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... In the East Indies, Mahe de la Bourdonnais made a vigorous use of a small squadron to which no effectual resistance was offered by the British naval forces. He captured Madras (July 24-September 9, 1746), a set-off for Louisburg, for which it was exchanged at the close of the war. In the same year a British combined naval and military expedition to the coast of France—the first of a long series of similar ventures which in the end were derided as "breaking windows ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... uninclined to soar, at the set-off—though Hector didn't. The next summer began a presidential campaign, and Hector, knowing that I was chairman of my county committee, and strangely overestimating my importance, came up to see me: he asked me to use my influence with the National Committee to have him sent to make ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... listener. Ardent natures like hers may possibly be blamed for adopting so readily the maxim that "the end justifies the means," and for plunging so determinedly into what cannot be considered their own business; but let those blame them who will, the good they accomplish may well be made a set-off for any evil they unwittingly cause; and the parable of the man who "fell among thieves," and the heartless wretches who "passed by on the other side," should make us a little slow in blaming the "good Samaritans" who ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... prettier without her bonnet than she had looked in the church, he thought: the rich dark-brown hair gathered in a great knot at the back of the graceful head; the perfect throat circled by a broad black ribbon, from which there hung an old-fashioned gold cross; the youthful figure set-off by the girlish muslin dress, so becoming ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... my shift drawn over my head, so that my cap, slightly fastened, came off with it, and brought all my hair down (of which, be it again remembered without vanity, that I had a very fine head) in loose disorderly ringlets, over my neck and shoulders, to the no unfavourable set-off of my skin. ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... such useless lives. She replied that although she and all good Catholics believe in the atonement of Christ, they also believe that works of piety in excess of what may be demanded of us, even if they are done in secret, are a set-off against the sins of the world. In this form the doctrine has not much to commend itself to me, and it is assumed that the nuns' works are pious. But in a sense it is true. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." The fall of a ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... The next day my brother-in-law went to M. Morand's, and when he had disclosed his message concerning the comtesse, the good Morand began to laugh. He told the count, that the previous evening this lady had sent for him; and, on going to her house, madame de Bearn, as a set-off against the inconveniences which might result to her from being the instrument of my presentation, had stipulated for certain compensations; such, for instance, as a sum of two hundred thousand livres, a written promise of a regiment for her son, and for herself an appointment in the establishment ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... astonished at the change she had undergone. It was a total, a radical change—she was hardly to be recognized—and it was scarcely possible to believe she was the lovely woman of the last night. Not that her splendid figure was altered—in fact, an elegant morning-dress rather tended to improve and set-off her full and almost voluptuous contour, and her soft, sweet voice was equally musical; but her face—the charms of her lovely face were vanished ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... by way of an ironical set-off against his environment that Fate had dowered Hugh with his crop of ruddy hair—and with the ardent temperament which usually accompanies the type. Be that as it may, he was swept completely off his feet by the dancer's magic beauty. The habits and training of a lifetime went by the ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... forbade any part of the ships engaging with the shore, that we are unable to pronounce whether, or not, a streight intersects the continent hereabouts: though I beg leave to say, that I have been informed by a naval friend, that when the fleet was off this part of the coast, a strong set-off shore ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... the new alliance, in all sisterly freedom she gave me her hand, and did not appear to notice how long I kept it in the darkness. This was certainly a considerable set-off against the feeling of loneliness, and, if not quite content, I was at least more so. I wondered, among other things, if Irma's heart kept knocking in a choking kind of way against the bottom ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... relations with his pupils, namely, that they were not only the natural enemies of the master, but therefore of all law, theology had come in and taught him that they were in their own nature bad—with a badness for which the only set-off he knew or could introduce was blows. Independently of any remedial quality that might be in them, these blows were an embodiment of justice; for "every sin," as the catechism teaches, "deserveth ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the Blue Mountains, will always prevent the inhabitants of that part of this vast western wilderness, which is at present explored, from entering into a competition with the colonists in the immediate vicinity of Port Jackson. By way, however, of set-off against the anifest superiority, which the districts to the eastward of the mountains possess in this respect over the country to the westward of them; this latter is certainly much better adapted for all the purposes of grazing ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... great set-off to your "newness," that the nobles who are your competitors are of a such a kind that no one can venture to say that their nobility ought to stand them in greater stead than your high character. For instance, who could think of P. Galba and L. Cassius, though by birth of the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... jury was instructed to find for the plaintiffs the amount claimed by the papers given in evidence (viz, the official settlements), with interest thereon, is entirely without merit. There was no evidence to impeach the accounts stated, or to show set-off, release, or payment. The instruction was, therefore, in accordance with the legal effect of the evidence, and there were no disputed facts upon which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... annually diverts from wholesome and useful purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the Window Tax. He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions of this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable harm he does to the deserving, - dirtying the stream of true benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, with inability ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... C.). We should remember that the Pole is probably covered with sea, radiation from which is considerably less than from large land surfaces, such as the plains of North Asia. The polar region has, therefore, in all probability a marine climate with comparatively mild winters, but, by way of a set-off, with cold summers. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... measured steps, not too short and not too slow—a very effectively carried out piece of ceremony, for the principals suited their parts well. Lord Ampthill is exceptionally tall, he wore a blue Court coat, well set-off by the white knee-breeches and stockings; and Lady Ampthill is taller than other ladies and is very gracious. Perhaps you can make out in my sketch Lord Ampthill on the dais talking to some of the house party, and the tall lady on the right, talking to some of our party may stand for ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... is," said the admiral, "and you'd better tell him. The mutinous rascal! he wants all the honour he can get, as a set-off against his drunkenness and other ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... were guilty of grievous misjudgment or indecision. Once more the rapid combinations of Napoleon had rendered all the efforts of the Austrian cabinet abortive. For two months after the last day of Arcola, he remained the undisturbed master of Lombardy. All that his enemy could show, in set-off for the slaughter and discomfiture of Alvinzi's campaign, was that they retained possession of Bassano and Trent, thus interrupting Buonaparte's access to the Tyrol and Germany. This advantage was not trivial; but ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... chokes, then coughs solemnly, and finally, lowering the fan, shows himself preternaturally grave, as a set-off against ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had obviously been sent. He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. "He says he should think I would go to the Continent," Henrietta wrote; "and as he thinks of going there himself I suppose his advice is sincere. He wants to know why I don't take a view of French life; and it's a fact that I want very much to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so your own special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off against those official telegrams. 'Not a day with out a line,' so my letter will look like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box. Let me bring ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... true enough. We all know the thieving loons. But men remember the injuries they have suffered, better than those they have inflicted; and they will count Allan Baird's death as more than a set-off for a ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... now lasted several hours, and neither side had gained any material advantage. Some junks had been sunk, and a good many Chinamen killed; but as a set-off against this, there could be no doubt that the brig had lost several men. Jack, too, observed that she now only fired when the junks pressed very close round her, and he could not but suspect that she was running short ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... As a set-off to these defects, which are of less real consequence than may appear from their brief enumeration, Kingsley has been freely credited with a certain ever-pleasing vivacity and gallantry of style far too rare in literature to be overlooked. The warmest of his admirers in his own country ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... leaders of experience, the English commenced, in October, 1428, the siege of Orleans. The approaches to the place were occupied in force, and bastilles closely connected one with another were constructed around the walls. As a set-off, the most valiant warriors of France, La Hire, Dunois, Xaintrailles, and the Marshal La Fayette threw themselves into Orleans, the garrison of which amounted to scarcely twelve hundred men. Several towns, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as it is so, this handicraft ought not to be ruled by the same considerations as the fishing trade. The evils arising from long accounts in this trade and in fishing seem to point to the necessity of extending to these cases the prohibition of set-off contained in 5 of the existing Act and in 10 of the Bill now before Parliament. Another uggestion is, that a short prescription for such accounts should be introduced-say a prescription of three months, running from the date of the earliest item in the account, and accompanied by a provision ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... loosely-flapping cotton gown, confined at the waist by a belt that fairly bristled with knives and pistols, while a scarlet burnous was drawn over his head, affording a brilliant set-off to the glittering eyes, the tawny, shining skin, and ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... family name upon him, for he was as thin as the philosopher there, and as yellow as saffron. His mother, however, the night before he was born, dreamed that she was presented with a rosebud, and the name, being somewhat poetical, was adopted by himself and the family as a kind of set-off against the duck-foot color of the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... has brought to carry away his share of the molasses and sugar,' said Arthur, as the clumsy vehicle came lumbering up. ''Twas a great stroke of business to give us all the trouble, and take all the advantage to himself—our trees, our fires, nothing but the use of his oxen as a set-off.' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... last. As Willis saw his confession consigned to Mohun's pocket-book, his avarice gave him courage to try one last effort to gain something by the transaction—a salve to his bruises—a set-off against the relicta ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... interesting to herself than if they had been what they professed to be. The rapt and impassioned attention which she was observed to bestow on his utterances on such occasions all but gained her the reputation of a saint, and was accepted as a sufficient set-off against the unhallowed affection which she could not help manifesting for the memory of her father. The judicious reluctance of the Caucasian ecclesiastics to inquire over-anxiously into the creeds ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,' Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears. 'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set-off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.' O fountain Arethuse, and ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... destined that Adrian Landale should be shot on the high seas any more than he should be drowned in the rolling mud of the Vilaine—he was reserved for this day as a set-off to all the bitterness that had been meted out to him; he was to see the image of his dead love rise from the sea once more. And, meanwhile, his very despair and sullenness had been turned to his good. It would not be said, if history should take count of the fact, that while ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... issued. These demonstrations had the effect of making the Spanish Government somewhat lower their tone—at least they had the effect of making that Government seem more willing to come to terms. Long negotiations as to the amount of claim on the one side and of set-off on the other were gone into both in London and Madrid. We need not study the figures, for nothing came of the proposed arrangement. It was impossible that anything could come of it. England and Spain were quarrelling over several great international ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Herries; 'honest Joshua is one of those who, by dint of long prayers, can possess themselves of widow's houses—he will quickly repair his losses. When he sustains any mishap, he and the other canters set it down as a debt against Heaven, and, by way of set-off, practise rogueries without compunction, till the they make the balance even, or incline it to the winning side. Enough of this for the present.—I must immediately shift my quarters; for, although I do not fear the over-zeal of Mr. Justice Foxley or his clerk will lead them to any extreme ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... looked, for the stitches somebody had put into them, and the weary starching and ironing and perking out that must be done for them, beside the simple hem and the one narrow basque ruffling of Leslie's cambric morning-dress, which had its color and its set-off in itself, in the bright little carnations with brown stems that figured it. It was "trimmed in the piece"; and that was precisely what Leslie had said when she chose it. She "dodged" a great ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... weeks, and during the summer numbers of sedge-warblers have nested on and around the eyot; the cuckoo has been a regular visitor to the osier-bed in the early morning, probably with a view to laying its eggs in the sedge-warblers' nests. As a set-off to these early visits of the cuckoo, a nightjar has hunted round the islet for moths, both at dusk and during the night, when its note may often be heard. This is a fairly long list of interesting birds revisiting a portion of the ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... child is not a success. It has a rival who is rapidly beating it off the ground. This is the Parisian dog. As an implement of fashion, as a set-off to the fair sex, as the recipient of ecstatic kisses and ravishing hugs, the Parisian dog can give the child forty points in a hundred and win out. It can dress better, look more intelligent, behave better, bark better,—in fact, the child ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... As a set-off to the very handsome present, which I shall lay out in a pot of ale certainly to her health, I have paid sixpence for the mend of two button-holes of the coat now return'd. She shall not have to say, "I don't care a button ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... By way of set-off to the imposition of income tax, which it should be noted was at the time said to be "temporary," Mr. Gladstone wiped out a capital debt of four millions, but it must be pointed out that, in the fifty years which have ensued, a sum of between twenty millions and thirty millions has ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... forward, as though her eyes were following the Bastille and Place Wagram omnibus to the Pointe Saint Eustache, where it always stopped for a time. But this was only a manoeuvre to enable her to get a better view of the fish-girl, who, as a set-off against the blind, retorted by covering her head and fish with large sheets of brown paper, on the pretext of warding off the rays of the setting sun. The advantage at present was on Lisa's side, for as the time for striking the decisive blow approached she manifested the calmest serenity ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... yawned a mighty hole fringed with splintered deck-planking. The explosion had gutted after-hold, after-cabin, sail-locker, and laid all bare even to the stern-post. 'Twas a marvel the stern itself had not been blown out: but as a set-off against this mercy—and the most grievous of all, though as yet we had not discovered it—we had lost our rudder-head, and the rudder itself hung by a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... uncertainty of prices, and how utterly impossible it must ever be for any ordinary book-buyer to rely on his purchases as a representation of value. If he does not view the matter in that light, or chooses to let the instruction or pleasure derived from his acquisitions become a set-off against the outlay, it is very well; what he or his heirs get for the property is in that ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... indeed, so to do, as it will afford the reader a very fair specimen of the general policy and mode of treatment shewn to the Indians by the American Government. Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States as a set-off against 500,000 dollars, claimed by the Americans for spoliations committed on her commerce. The white population of Florida is not very numerous even now; the census of 1830 gave 18,000 whites and 16,000 slaves, independent of the Florida Indians, or Seminoles. Seminoles is a term ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... after waiting a few days in the hope that Rosecrans might retreat first, he fell back to a point near the Cumberland mountains a little in advance of Chattanooga. Thus the battle of Murfreesborough counted as a victory to the North, a slight set-off to the disaster at Fredericksburg a little while before. But it had no very striking consequences. For over six months Rosecrans proceeded no further. The Northern armies remained in more secure possession of all Tennessee west of the mountains than they had obtained in the first ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... voluntarily accept such an immense burden as a set-off against terms which, whilst they would doubtless eventually favourably affect the industry, are in their immediate effects designed to satisfy the Uitlander population in their personal rights as distinct ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... throw him inwards upon himself and his own principles with new earnestness and refreshed independence. Rousseau very soon made up his mind what the world was worth to him; and this, not as the ordinary sentimentalist or satirist does, by way of set-off against the indulgence of personal foibles, but from recognition of his own qualities, of the bounds set to our capacity of life, and of the limits of the world's power to satisfy us. "When my destiny threw me into the whirlpool of society," he wrote in his ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of this paper, in the New Monthly Magazine, is by no means novel; but the fine, cutting satire—the pleasant, lively banter on our vices and follies—which pervades every page of the article, is a set-off to the political frenzy and the literary lumber of other Magazines of the month. Each of them, it is true, has a readable paper, but one gem only contributes to a Magazine in the proportion of one swallow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... Richard Sutton, a great celebrity in the sporting world, who had the finest shooting in England, and therefore probably in the world, used to say that every pheasant he killed cost him a guinea. On some estates the sale of the game is in some degree a set-off to the cost of maintaining it, just as the sale of the fruit decreases the cost of pineries, etc. Nothing but the fact that the possession of land becomes more and more vested in those who regard it as luxury could have enabled this sacrifice of farming to sport to continue so long. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... he continued, as though washing his hands of the boy, though all the while the trouble dwelt upon his weather-beaten old face; "but I bet on Jim, an' I wish it was him had the chance ye speak of. Mebbe it is, now; an' if it was, it'd be 'most a set-off agin the other not havin' it. I ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... interest, reasonableness, and unity to the music, enabling the composer to exhaust every aspect and quality of his melodic material, and, in Beethoven's manner, to work miracles of beauty, expression and significance with the briefest phrases. As a set-off against this, it has led Wagner to indulge in repetitions that would be intolerable in a purely dramatic work. Almost the first thing that a dramatist has to learn in constructing a play is that the persons must not come on the stage in the second act and tell one ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... the French veterans would have ample scope, and where numbers would be of secondary importance. Only heads of columns could come into direct contact; and the formidable Austrian cavalry could not display its usual prowess. On these facts Bonaparte counted as a set-off to his slight ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... said?—those who talk the most on such subjects are those who know the least. For those who have entered into the secret of the King are ever the most reticent on such matters. At the same time we may welcome this recent development, if only as a set-off against the Spiritualism and occultism which have played such havoc with souls during a space of over fifty years. The human soul, "naturally Christian," as Tertullian would say, is also naturally Divine in ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... smiled deridingly. "How stupid! what a fool!" she sighed; "you have jade, and another person has gold to match with you, and if some one has 'cold' scent, haven't you any 'warm' scent as a set-off?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... oppression in their own persons, or who have themselves in their time been roughly handled. They love to see others quail before them, as they themselves would be ready to quail before those they hold in awe; and it is no small set-off against their own terrors to feel themselves in turn objects of terror to others. People of this sort are of course generally cowards and toadies, and in bullying they find the fullest gratification ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... enlightened upon the subject of the perspective which your friend enjoyed on the cars between Mantes and Pont-de-l'Arche, I will pass to another exercise, highly recommended in rhetorical treatises, and describe, by way of a set-off and contrast, the female monster that served as shadow to ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... yin!" resumed my grandfather. "A'm goin' to give ye a set-off. Your mither was always my fav'rite, for A never could agree with Aadam. A like ye fine yoursel'; there's nae noansense aboot ye; ye've a fine nayteral idee of builder's work; ye've been to France, where they tell me they're grand at the stuccy. A splendid thing for ceilin's, the stuccy! and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... calling Repolido a Tarpeian Mariner, and a Tiger of Ocana. He was also mightily edified by the expectation of Cariharta that the pains she had taken to earn the twenty-four reals would be accepted in heaven as a set-off against her sins, and was amazed to see with what security they all counted on going to heaven by means of the devotions they performed, notwithstanding the many thefts, homicides, and other offences against God and their neighbour ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... out of a slough by the aid of plough-horses. In the seventeenth century, scarcely a Quarter Session passed without presentments from the grand jury against certain districts on account of the bad state of the roads, and many were the fines which the judges imposed upon them as a set-off against their bruises and other damages ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... is almost the only hunting that I ever had—and probably ever shall have—and I am almost content that it should be so! It is so much easier and simpler to draw for Punch than to drive across country! And then, as a set-off to all this successful achievement, this pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious sport, we have the immortal and ever-beloved figure of Mr. Briggs, whom I look upon as Leech's masterpiece—the example above all others of the most humorous and good-natured satire ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... Jack of the build needful to climb the stacks of smouldering boughs, see to the fires, cord the cut wood and the burnt wood, lead the asses, cook the dinner, call the men —to be, in fact, what Jack should be. Jack he was, and Jack he should be called. Falve held out for a thrashing as a set-off; it seemed unnatural, he said, to have a belt and a boy at arms'-length. It was outvoted on account of the lateness of the hour, but only delayed. The beds were made ready, and Jack and his ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... moonlight, he fell to serious reflections. He was satisfied, and yet dissatisfied. He was pleased with an adventure which would probably give him his desire, for in the end one of the prettiest and best-dressed women in Paris would be his; but, as a set-off, he saw his hopes of fortune brought to nothing; and as soon as he realized this fact, the vague thoughts of yesterday evening began to take a more decided shape in his mind. A check is sure to reveal to us the strength of our hopes. The ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... notion. It thus shows its superiority over the understanding, as a faculty subject to the conditions of a sensuous order. When we consider of what value it is to a rational being to be independent of natural laws, we see how much man finds in the liberty of sublime objects as a set-off against the checks of his cognitive faculty. Liberty, with all its drawbacks, is everywhere vastly more attractive to a noble soul than good social order without it—than society like a flock of sheep, or a machine working like a watch. This mechanism makes of man only a product; ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his field, immediately drew his knife and cut his throat. The Serawoolli thereupon called a palaver (or in European terms, brought an action) to recover damages for the loss of his beast, on which he set a high value. The defendant confessed he had killed the ass, but pleaded a SET-OFF, insisting that the loss he had sustained by the ravage in his corn was equal to the sum demanded for the animal. To ascertain this fact was the point at issue, and the learned advocates contrived to puzzle the cause in such a manner that, after a hearing ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... minutes and rush into school. At midday, when the monitors washed their hands for dinner, similar work had to be done, and again in the evening, when they washed their hands for supper. The only set-off to all this was that each monitor had been a basonite, and each basonite had a very good chance of becoming a monitor. But it was carrying the fagging system to far too great an extent, and the practice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... as I am, and although enjoying good digestive organs, I must have only one meal every day; but I find a set-off to that privation in my delightful sleep, and in the ease which I experience in writing down my thoughts without having recourse to paradox or sophism, which would be calculated to deceive myself even more than my readers, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... relations to the public, not one among minor offenses is more sure of a prompt penalty than this. Not only justice but civility is enforced by our judges in all sorts of intercourse. No value of service is accepted as a set-off to ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... what is called the world, and the other the streets of London. Is it possible that the very social democracy which here robs the novelist of so much romance, so much costume, so much antithesis of caste, so much in short that is purely external, will give him a set-off in making it easier for him to get at that element of universal humanity which neither of the two extremes of an aristocratic system, nor the salient and picturesque points of contrast between the two, can alone lay open ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... — N. compensation, equation; commutation; indemnification; compromise &c. 774 neutralization, nullification; counteraction &c. 179; reaction; measure for measure. retaliation &c. 718 equalization &c. 27; robbing Peter to pay Paul. set-off, offset; make-weight, casting-weight; counterpoise, ballast; indemnity, equivalent, quid pro,quo; bribe, hush money; amends &c. (atonement) 952; counterbalance, counterclaim; cross-debt, cross-demand. V. make compensation; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
