"Singular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plants; and next you have the poor sands and clays of the New Forest basin, saturated with iron, and therefore carrying a moorland or peat-loving vegetation, in many respects quite different from the others. And this moorland soil, and this vegetation, with a few singular exceptions, repeats itself, as I daresay you know, in the north of the county, in the Bagshot basin, as it is called—the moors of Aldershot, Hartford Bridge, and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... had said of Cipriani de Lloseta that had he not been a Count he would have been a great musician. He had that singular facility with any instrument which is sometimes given to musical persons in recompense for voicelessness. The Count spoke like one who could sing, but his throat was delicate, and so the world lost ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... under the friendly boughs of the Christmas tree the acquaintance began, and progressed remarkably fast. It was not strange either, considering that each had been in the other's thoughts constantly for the last six weeks. They walked home in the moonlight wondering at the singular beauty that crowned the earth. The tell-tale eyes of each must have revealed the secret to the heart of the other, for the usual preliminaries, formalities, windings and turnings of modern courtship seemed ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... will never be intelligibly known to us until we discover its conformity to the common law, and recognise that it is not utterly singular and exceptional, that other scenes have been as horrible as these, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... A singular difficulty presented itself. Deerfoot relied upon entering the Assiniboine settlements or joining the raiders without rousing any suspicion of his real errand. Then he would content himself in patience and await a ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... my profession I have met with many singular persons, but I can safely declare I never met with any person so singular as ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... over the bay and Brighton is splendid; you can almost distinguish Geelong. About a quarter of a mile off is a little hamlet with a neat Swiss-looking church, built over a school-room on a rise of ground; it has a most peculiar effect, and is the more singular as the economizing the ground could not be a consideration in the colony; on the left of the church is a pretty little parsonage, whitewashed, with ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... 30 provinces (velayat, singular—velayat); Badakhshan, Badghis, Baghlan, Balkh, Bamian, Farah, Faryab, Ghazni, Ghowr, Helmand, Herat, Jowzjan, Kabol, Kandahar, Kapisa, Konar, Kondoz, Laghman, Lowgar, Nangarhar, Nimruz, Oruzgan, Paktia, Paktika, Parvan, ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Sigurd remain with Brunhild, and his bright sword lay bared between him and his bride. This singular behaviour aroused the curiosity of the maiden, wherefore Sigurd told her that the gods had bidden ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... and fought vitally, felt deep in the inner recesses of his being that all was good; the more chance for the human organism to be born and work out its day, the better. In the eyes of the woman of the newer generation this was a singular-pantheism,—incomprehensible. Unless one were born under favorable conditions, what good was there in the struggle? ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... sight of her host:—"He was dressed in white, and looked very pale, which, however, was nothing singular in India; his hair, a light brown, was raised from his forehead, which was a remarkably fine one. His features were not regular, but the expression was so luminous, so intellectual, so affectionate, so beaming with Divine charity, that no one could have looked at ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the sun without starch to cool our faces? This included the powder-bag; then I must save that beautiful lace collar; and my hair was tumbling down, so in went the tucking-comb and hair-pins with the rest; until, if there had been any one to speculate, they would have wondered a long while at the singular appearance of a girl who is considered as very slight, usually. By this time, Miriam, alarmed for me, returned to find me, though urged by Dr. Castleton not to risk her life by attempting it, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Apostle that "we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God," may account for the fondness of the Norman sculptors in representing different stages of martyrdom on the tympana of their doors. A very singular tympanum is that on the door of the church of Fordington S. George, at Dorchester, whereon is represented some incident in the life of S. George. The principal figure is on horseback with a discus round his head. The other figures are in hauberks and chausses, and generally bear, in point ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... brown legs show themselves beneath the green body in just the same way as those of the ant show themselves beneath the leaf. So that both the form and the colouring of the homopterous insect has been brought to resemble, with singular exactness, those belonging to a different order of insect, when the latter is engaged in its peculiar avocation. A glance at the figure is enough to show the means employed and the result attained. In A, an ant and its mimic are represented as about 2-1/2 times their natural size, and both ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... on the waves){170}, 'knitter' 'knitster' (a word, I am told, still alive in Devon). Add to these 'whitster' (female bleacher, Shakespeare), 'kempster' (pectrix), 'dryster' (siccatrix), 'brawdster', (I suppose embroideress){171}, and 'salster' (salinaria){172}. It is a singular example of the richness of a language in forms at the earlier stages of its existence, that not a few of the words which had, as we have just seen, a feminine termination in 'ess', had also a second in 'ster'. Thus 'daunser', beside 'daunseress', had also 'daunster' (Ecclus. ix. 4); 'wailer', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... "That's singular," said she; "it's far simpler than those you brought with you to-day. How long did it take you ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... volume, and a singular peculiarity in a collection of sermons, is the absence of commonplace. The writer's method is to bring his mind into close contact with things instead of phrases,—to think round his subject, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... there was a lull in the wind and comparative stillness. For two hours there were no signs of danger; but at a few minutes after nine o'clock, and by a singular coincidence, precisely the time at which the Chicago fire commenced, the people of the village heard a terrible roar. It was that of a tornado, crushing through the forests. Instantly the heavens were illuminated ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... adding to the number of those engaged in that vocation. Justice and sound policy, therefore, alike require that the Government should use all the means authorized by the Constitution to promote the interests and welfare of that important class of our fellow-citizens. And yet it is a singular fact that whilst the manufacturing and commercial interests have engaged the attention of Congress during a large portion of every session and our statutes abound in provisions for their protection and encouragement, little has yet been done directly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... as master of the feast for a party just from Rome—their extreme youth and inexperience appealed to my compassion—I heard a singular story. Maxentius, the consul, as you know, comes to-day to conduct a campaign against the Parthians. Of the ambitious who are to accompany him there is one, a son of the late duumvir Quintus Arrius. I had occasion to inquire about him particularly. When Arrius set out in pursuit of the pirates, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... biology, psychology, is necessary; the sociologist and the historian play into each other's hands; but the object of the former is to establish generalisations; the aim of the latter is to trace in detail a singular causal sequence. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... power of habits, which have a singular influence on the conformation of parts, and which give to the animals which have for a long time contracted certain of them, faculties not found ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... Lyon in a rather singular tone, "that this woman Pegler saw nothing for the first few days she occupied ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... at your service," responded that singular individual with a twinkle of his eye, as Mattie became confused all at once. "You see," he continued, confidentially, as she led the way rather awkwardly to her brother's study, hoping fervently that Archie would come in, "I have been making up my mind ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... which the singular case of Caspar Hauser produced a few years since in Germans is not yet forgotten. From the representations of that enigmatical personage, it was believed that those from whose custody he declared himself to have escaped, had ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... represents a gondolier returning the ring of Saint Mark to the Doge, treats of a legend, an episode of which Giorgione, as we shall see in the next hall, has also painted in a somewhat singular manner. Here is the story in a few words: One night while the gondolier was sleeping in his gondola, waiting for custom along the canal of S. Giorgio Maggiore, three mysterious individuals jumped into ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... emperours from C. Iulius Cesar (who chased Pompeie out of Italie, and was the first that obteined the Romane empire to himselfe; of whom also the princes and emperours succeeding him were called Cesars) to Octauian, Tiberius, Caligula, &c: maie easilie marke and obserue. For they were a people of singular magnanimitie, of an ambitious spirit, greedie of honour and renowme, and not vnaptlie ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the condition of his forests, and among these of the forest of Sherwood. Supposing now that the incidents detailed in the "Lytell Geste" really took place at this time, Robin Hood must have entered into the royal service before the end of the year 1353. It is a singular, and in the opinion of Mr. Hunter a very pregnant coincidence, that in certain Exchequer documents, containing accounts of expenses in the king's household, the name of Robyn Hode (or Robert Hood) is found several times, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Claiborne, as they drove away. "A solemn customer, and not cheerful enough to make a good drummer. By what singular chance did he find you in ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... and fulsome eulogy was written by that singular being who could thus flatter, and almost apotheosize, the inventor in public, while in secret he was doing everything to thwart him, and who never, as long as he lived, ceased to antagonize him, and later accused him of having claimed the credit of an invention all the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the boy, which keeps up her spirits; and her mother is so excellent a nurse to both, and we are so happy likewise in the care of a skilful physician, Dr. M. (who directs and approves of every thing the good dame does,) that it is a singular providence this malady seized them here; and affords no small comfort to the dear ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... is not singular that disagreements arose. Admiral Watson, impelled by feelings of personal dislike to Clive, often allowed himself to be carried to unwarrantable lengths. On the occasion of the capture of Calcutta, he ordered Captain Eyre Coote, who first entered it, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... was gradually added a chain of singular incidents, which at length converted the anxiety of the Protestants into utter distrust. During the Spanish persecutions in the Netherlands, several Protestant families had taken refuge in Aix-la-Chapelle, an imperial city, and attached to the Roman Catholic faith, where ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... Pleasure, blind with tears, &c. The Rev. Stopford Brooke, in an eloquent Lecture delivered to the Shelley Society in June, 1889, dwelt at some length upon the singular mythopoeic gift of the poet. These two lines are an instance in point, of a very condensed kind. Pleasure, heart-struck at the death of Adonais, has abrogated her own nature, and has become blinded with tears; her eyes can therefore serve no longer ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... of Thomas Jeffries of Earl's Croombe, secretary to the Countess of Kent, and general man of business to Sir Samuel Luke, of Cople Hoo, Bedfordshire, who, it is said, served as the model for his hero, Hudibras. The first part of this singular poem was published at the close of 1662, and met with extraordinary success. Its wit, its quaint sense and learning, its passages of sarcastic reflection on all manner of topics, and above all, its unsparing ridicule of men and things on the Puritan side, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... as high as he ever had done, or ever did thereafter. I have never agreed with Lady Louisa Stuart that 'Mr. Saddletree is not amusing,' nor that there is too much Scots law for English readers. It must be remembered that until Scott opened people's eyes, there were some very singular conventions and prejudices, even in celestial minds, about novels. Technical details were voted tedious and out of place—as, Heaven knows! M. Zola and others have shown us since, that they may very easily be made. Professional matters, the lower middle classes, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... The first brief look convinced Mr. Saltram that upon this point at least her lover had indulged in no loverlike exaggeration. There was a singular charm in the face; a higher, more penetrating loveliness than mere perfection of feature; a kind of beauty that would have been at once the delight and desperation of a painter—so fitting a subject ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... old lady's relief they courteously excused themselves, saying it would be wrong to keep the family out of their beds longer; then each head bowed in turn and uttered a friendly good night, and the singular figure moved away in the wake of Rowena's small brothers, who bore candles, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ireland. Of all the people in Europe, the Irish have suffered most from the oppression of those who, from age to age, had power in the country. Whoever fought or conquered, they were always the victims; and it is a singular fact that their sufferings are scarcely ever noticed by the contemporary annalists, even when those annalists were ecclesiastics. The extent to which they were slaughtered in the perpetual wars between the native chiefs, and in the wars between those chiefs and the English, is something awful to ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... turned from the busy harbor homeward. That morning she designed to work with a will, for the afternoon was to be spent on Gorse Point if all went well, and she already looked forward somewhat curiously to her next meeting with the singular man who had ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the den are those of each individual; for everybody (in addition to the errors common to the race of man) has his own individual den or cavern, which intercepts and corrupts the light of nature, either from his own peculiar and singular disposition, or from his education and intercourse with others, or from his reading, and the authority acquired by those whom he reverences and admires, or from the different impressions produced on the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Sovereign whom the Constitution had exempted from responsibility, on what principle was immunity to be granted to his advisers and tools, who were beyond all doubt responsible? One facetious member put this argument in a singular form. He contrived to place in the Speaker's chair a paper which, when examined, appeared to be a Bill of Indemnity for King James, with a sneering preamble about the mercy which had, since the Revolution, been extended to more heinous offenders, and about the indulgence due to a King, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... table. As he ate his soup, he glanced across the table, and a blush like that of a girl overspread his dark face. He had a vision of a high chair, and a child installed therein with the customary bib and spoon. It was a singular circumstance, but everything in life moves in sequences, and that poor Syrian child upstairs, in her dire extremity, was furnishing a sequence in the young man's life, before she went out of it. Her stimulation of his sympathy and imagination was to ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... country, at a time when 'pellegrino,' meaning properly the strange or the foreign, came to be of itself a word of praise, and equivalent to beautiful. [Footnote: Compare Florio's Ital. Diet.: 'pelegrino, excellent, noble, rare, pregnant, singular and choice.'] Far better the pride and assumption of that ancient people who called all things and persons beyond their own pale barbarous and barbarians; far better our own 'outlandish,' used with something of the same contempt. There may be a certain intolerance in our use of these; ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... lightning Grey saw all the past, and understood now what had been singular in his grandfather's manner and in his Aunt Hannah's, too; for she had been privy to the deed, and had helped to keep it from the world, and to Grey this was the bitterest thought of all, the one which made him sick, and faint and dizzy, as ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... worst, of an evil brood, laid waste the campagna, and besieged the city. St. Leo, in his double embassy to Attila and Genseric, was an unconscious prophet of the time to come, a visible picture of three hundred years as singular in their conflict and their issue as those other three hundred which had their close in the Nicene Council. During all those ages the Pope is never secure in his own city. He sees the trophy of Caesarean empire slowly perish away. The capital of the world ceases ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... 'description' I mean any phrase of the form 'a so-and-so' or 'the so-and-so'. A phrase of the form 'a so-and-so' I shall call an 'ambiguous' description; a phrase of the form 'the so-and-so' (in the singular) I shall call a 'definite' description. Thus 'a man' is an ambiguous description, and 'the man with the iron mask' is a definite description. There are various problems connected with ambiguous descriptions, but I pass them ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... undertakes his task with no personal feeling to gratify or even to consult. The character of others, now unable to be heard, is far dearer to him than his own: and while he aspires to justify, before the world, their singular career, distinguished throughout by generous and lofty passions, surpassing intellect and measureless love of their country and countrymen—a career so brilliant and instructive even in the last hours of gloom—he will endeavour to infuse into the history of their struggles ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... were acting for the best in running away from a good husband! Well, you British aristocrats are singular. You throw stones at us because our women are so free and our divorces so easy. Yet youre always scandlizing us; and now you tell me youve done it on morl grounds! Who educated you, child? And what do you ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... him,—a command that caused her to burst into tears. The agitation and distress of his wife were near proving too much for the prudence of the young husband, who was making an impetuous movement towards her, when the strong grasp of a fellow-passenger checked him in time to prevent discovery. It is singular how much is understood by trifles when the mind has a clue to the subject, and how often signs, that are palpable as day, are overlooked when suspicion is not awakened, or when the thoughts have obtained a false direction. The attorney and the officer were the only two present who had not ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... is familiarly defined, a name which is capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of each of an indefinite number of things. An individual or singular name is a name which is only capable of being truly affirmed, in the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the device JOIN OR DIE. On the way to Albany he had drawn up a plan of union which pleased the Congress, and which resembled very much the form of union afterwards adopted during the Revolution; but as Franklin observes, "Its fate was singular; the Assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it; and in England it was judged to have too much of the democratic." Instead of this scheme the London Board ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... habits of animal parasites has of late gained much attention among naturalists, and both the honey and wild bees afford good examples of the singular relation between the host and the parasites which live upon it. Among insects generally, there are certain species which devour the contents of the egg of the victim. Others, and this is the most common mode ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... a horse then, and was in the habit of riding out for exercise, almost every afternoon. He was never very artistic in his manner of dressing, and for horseback he had a long and singular fur coat, which enfolded his legs. Between Chelsea and Maida Vale, some boys were attracted by this quaint figure astride a horse. Not knowing in the least, who it was, they shouted at Carlyle; he spoke something to them in reproof and ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... mountains; because the land there was not intermixed, and was of little comparative value; and, therefore, small opposition would be made to its being appropriated by those to whose habitations it was contiguous. Hence the singular appearance which the sides of many of these mountains exhibit, intersected, as they are, almost to the summit, with stone walls. When first erected, these stone fences must have little disfigured the face of the country; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... said the prince, "that he seems to be an object of very singular interest to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... cannot be questioned, but that a rising, which originally began because the king would not yield to the absolute will of Parliament, should have ended in a despotism, in which the chief of the king's opponents should have ruled altogether without Parliaments, is strange indeed. It is singular to find that those who make most talk about the liberties of Englishmen should regard as their hero and champion the man who trod all the constitutional rights of Englishmen under foot. But if a ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... hardly criticise a judgment which had required the united forces of every church in the Colony to pronounce, that made her ignore one of the most stormy experiences of those early days, the trial and banishment of Anne Hutchinson. Her silence is the more singular, because the conflict was a purely spiritual one, and thus in her eyes deserving of record. There can be no doubt that the effect on her own spiritual and mental life must have been intense and abiding. No children had as yet come to absorb her thoughts and energies, and the events ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... unto the clergy and the people, entire peace and concord to his power; to do equal and true justice in all his judgments, and discretion in mercy and truth; to keep the laws and righteous customs which the commons of his realm should have elected [Auera estu are the rather singular words used], and to defend and enforce them, to the honour of God and to ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... will find traces of a singular superstition, not yet altogether discredited in the wilder parts of Scotland. The lykewake, or watching a dead body, in itself a melancholy office, is rendered, in the idea of the assistants, more dismally awful, by the mysterious horrors of superstition. In the interval betwixt death ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... for pronouncing AE like AI, that in the poets we occasionally find AI in the genitive singular of the first declension, appears to have little weight in view ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... Earl's valley), and therein they hid themselves. The day thereafter kept the Earl watch on the peasant host. The peasants had encompassed all the footways, though they were mostly of a mind that the Earl had made off to his ships. These were now commanded by his son Erling, a young man of singular promise. ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... Translation of the word, but in the Exposition of the Sense and Meaning thereof; for some by Gammadims understand a People of Syria, so called from the City of Gamala; some hereby understand the Cappadocians, many the Medes: and hereof Forerius hath a singular Exposition, conceiving the Watchmen of Tyre, might well be called Pygmies, the Towers of that City being so high, that unto Men below, they appeared in a Cubital Stature. Others expound it quite contrary to common Acception, that is not Men of the least, ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... Mandans. A prairie on fire, and a singular instance of preservation. Peace established between the Mandans and Ricaras. The party encamp for the winter. Indian mode of catching goats. Beautiful appearance of northern lights. Friendly character of the Indians. Some account of the Mandans. The Anahaways and the Minnetarees. The ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... what unlooked-for remark this short and silent communication, between two such singular men, might have elicited from the white man, had not his active curiosity been again drawn to other objects. A general movement among the domestics, and a low sound of gentle voices, announced the approach of those whose presence alone was ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Plato agree that God is that which is one, hath its original from its own self, is of a singular subsistence, is one only being perfectly good; all these various names signifying goodness do all centre in mind; hence God is to be understood as that mind and intellect, which is a separate idea, that is to say, pure and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects in Europe. The same superabundance of food, of which they have the disposal, enables them to give a greater quantity of it for all those singular and rare productions which nature furnishes but in very small quantities; such as the precious metals and the precious stones, the great objects of the competition of the rich. Though the mines, therefore, which supplied the Indian market, had been as abundant as those which supplied the European, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... farmers and have thus supplied themselves with good clothing and many of the comforts of life. They have resisted, too, many of the evils coming from the advance of civilization, so that one agent speaks of these Indians as presenting the singular anomaly of improving by contact with the whites. Apparently their extremely low condition in former times was due merely to that same handicap of environment which kept back the Indians ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... each other, two poles attract or repel each other, but a current and a pole exert a mutual force which is neither attraction nor repulsion. It is a rotatory force. They tend neither to approach nor to recede, they tend to revolve round each other." "A singular action this and at first sight unique" (p. 135). "The two things will revolve round each other for ever. This affords and has afforded a fine field for the perpetual motionist, and if only the current would maintain itself without a sustaining power, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... Departure from Katunga. Revolt of the Carriers. Arrival at Rumbum. Acra. Visit of the Natives. The Governor of Keeshee. Visit of the Mallams. Singular Application of an Acba Woman. Departure from Acba. Return of the Badagry Guides. African Banditti. Village of Moussa. Progress to Kiama. Meeting of the Kiama Escort. Arrival at ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating, [in the sense of supernatural origination,] yet, nevertheless, He doth accomplish and fulfil His divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, as fully and exactly by providence as He could by miracle and new creation, though His working be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating Nature, which is His own law upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with the coming of the darkness it swelled into the song which he alone heard, that playing of the breeze upon the leaves, which his supersense translated into notes and bars and harmonies. Whenever he heard it he was uplifted and exalted in a singular manner, as if the distant heralds were already blowing the trumpets of victory. He was ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the material of these antecedents he has written and published several books of singular interest and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... them a singular extravagance when, one day, a photographer was brought over from the county town and photographed them standing, all seven, in the shadow of an old apple tree with the grey lichen on the raddled trunk. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... whilst nowadays there are to be found no visitors hardy enough to endure a prolonged sojourn in the wretched hostelries of the town itself. The electric tram and the rail-road have in fact killed Pozzuoli as a winter resort, more's the pity, for it is not only a spot of singular interest in itself but its climate is certainly superior to that of Naples, for the great headland which shuts off the city from the Phlegrean Fields serves also to act as a buffer against the icy tramontana that sweeps along the Chiaja ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the History of Trinidad from which I have so often quoted, reports that the first time he heard this singular fish was on board a schooner, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... informed as another. He used to speak with the greatest gravity about our constitution as the pride and envy of the world, though he surprised you as much by the latitudinarian reforms, which he was eager to press forward, as by the most singular old Tory opinions which he advocated on other occasions. He was for having every man to vote; every poor man to labour short time and get high wages; every poor curate to be paid double or treble; every ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was the whole Court with the exciting and singular events of the day that no one noticed the absence of Rafaravavy, and, happily, the Queen did not happen to ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... for many centuries more, his ancestors lived on a small freehold at Ecton in Northamptonshire, and so far back as record or tradition ran the eldest son in each generation had been bred a blacksmith. But after the strange British fashion there was intertwined with this singular fixedness of ideas a stubborn independence in thinking, courageously exercised in times of peril. The Franklins were among the early Protestants, and held their faith unshaken by the terrors of the reign of Bloody Mary. By the end of Charles ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... here. It was a wonderful panic—a wonderful time. Persons going on to the ground immediately fell down like dead men; got up with the jerks; barked like dogs. Women went backwards and forwards, making singular gestures; their heads were bobbing with the jerks, and their long hair cracking like whips. The scene was beyond description. The whole country flocked to the place, and all were confounded with ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... character such as the times demanded, the South turned against him as one man. His biographer proves conclusively that the weak and time-serving President was opposed to secession; but as positively proves without intending to do so, that he favored it by his singular unfitness and indifference in emergencies. When secession threatened, Mr. Buchanan took the ground that he would not precipitate war by applying force to prevent a State from seceding, but that he would defend the flag and property of the United States. With this policy ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... kingdom of God." Another said to him, "Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house." Jesus replied, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."[4] An extraordinary confidence, and at times accents of singular sweetness, reversing all our ideas of him, caused these exaggerations to be easily received. "Come unto me," cried he, "all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Senor Montefalderon exhausted all he had to communicate, he was interrupted by Jack Tier with a singular proposition. Jack's great desire was to get on board the Swash; and he now begged the Mexican to let Mulford take the yawl and scull him off to the brig, and return to the islet before Spike and his companions should descend from the lantern of the light-house. The little ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... of further premeditation or contrivance of plans. That had all been traced out for them in the singular epistle signed "Ysabel," and a few whispered words from one to the other completed the understanding of it, with what was to be done. From the time this was settled out, never looked three pair of eyes more eagerly along a street than did theirs ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... (fraught, I confess, like all transcendent truths, with gravest practical dangers) was matured in my mind by friendship with one of the most singular of musicians. This person (since deceased, and by profession a clerk) suffered from nervousness so excessive that, despite a fair knowledge of music, the fact of putting his hands upon the keys produced a maddening sort of stammer, let alone a notable tendency to strike wrong ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Coleridge, like their writer, belong to another class, yet, like Byron's, they have the clear-cut stamp of individuality. Here again we have the man himself, with his intensity of feeling, his erratic moods and singular phraseology, the softness of his heart and the weakness of his will. He belongs to the rapidly diminishing class of notable men who have freely poured their real sentiments and thoughts out of their brain into their letters, who have given their best (without keeping their worst) ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... From blooming nineteen to full-blown five-and-twenty, Life beating high, and youth upon the wing, 'A six years' absence was a heavy thing!' 10 Heavy!—nay, let's describe things as they are, With sense and nature 'twas at open war— Mere affectation to be singular. Yet ere you overflow in condemnation, Think first of poor Teresa's education; 15 'Mid mountains wild, near billow-beaten rocks, Where sea-gales play'd with her dishevel'd locks, Bred in the spot where first to light she sprung, With no Academies ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... singular particulars descriptive of "lawe ore," &c., are noticed elsewhere, in the second portion of this work, containing ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... bald daylight—easier also before the bloom of reunion had been rubbed off by the prosaic trivialities of life. In her present position, too, it would be possible to avoid his gaze; and she found a singular difficulty in tampering with facts when Theo's eyes ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... and the regular monastic communities performed this function with pomp and singular apparatus in the parish church of Our Lady of the Conception. The Town-court carried the banner which had waved in the days of the Conquest, escorted by a company of the Canarian battalion and its band. These stood during the office at the church door, and saluted with ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... makes the singular remark, that he is himself the only true politician of his age. In other passages, especially in the Apology, he disclaims being a politician at all. There he is convinced that he or any other good man who attempted to resist the popular ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... of the figure, which sped on with a singular motion, something between a walk and a glide, conscious that his equanimity had been restored rather than shaken by the incident. "You wouldn't think," he reflected, "that a man like Salig Singh would ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... in order to give a more complete illustration of so singular and interesting a character as that formed by the union of the rude and bloodthirsty barbarian with the bustling trafficker. It is an exhibition of the savage mind in a new guise. We have only to add, with regard to Pomaree, that it appears by other authorities, as ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... of the bay and put on maximum magnification. Then he pointed a stubby forefinger. A singular, perfectly straight streak of black appeared, beginning a little distance inland from the bay and running up into what appeared to be higher ground. The streak ended not far from a serpentine arm of the sea which almost cut ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... back and continued his watch. While there, he thought to himself, "It is singular that I am so simple, and my grandmother so wise, and that I have neither father nor mother. I have never heard a word about them. I must ask and find out." He went home and sat down silent and dejected. At length his grandmother asked him, "Manabozho, what is the matter with you?" ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... St. John's, occurring twice a year, were of a singular description: not only in the manner of our progress, which was unexampled, in view of our relationship and condition, but in the impenetrable character of our mission and in the air of low rascality it unfailingly wore. For many days before ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... persons trained in the psychological laboratories of Europe and America, as members of anthropological expeditions. It may be noted that, in his "Letters from the South Seas," Mr. Louis Stevenson makes some curious observations, especially on a singular form of hypnotism applied to himself with fortunate results. The method, used in native medicine, was novel; and the results were entirely inexplicable to Mr. Stevenson, who had not been amenable to European hypnotic practice. But he was not a ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... neglected, and attractive only to the lover of oddities and curious old epitaphs. Occasionally you may see a strangely shaped tomb, or as in a well-known village, a knocker placed on the door of his family vault by some odd specimen of humanity. When asked the reason for doing so singular a thing, he gravely replied that "when the old gentleman should come to claim his own, the tenants might have the pleasure of saying, 'not at home,' or of fleeing out of the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... otherwise produce gentle rains; but, for just the same reason, they powerfully attract whatever long broad streams of heavy clouds are sailing through the sky, and, among the gullies and the upland glens, amass their discharged contents with amazing rapidity, and in singular largeness of volume. The rivers of the country are, in consequence, peculiarly liable to become flooded. One general and tremendous outbreak, in 1829, "afforded an awful exhibition of the peculiarities of the climate, and will long be remembered, in connexion with the boasted ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... order and command of the most Christian king of France. [Footnote: The names Verrazzana and Verrazzano in this legend are WRITTEN on the photograph by hand, with a double z, though M. Thomassey uses only the single z, which is adopted on our copy. It would be a singular circumstance, leading to some speculation, if they should really be spelt with the two z's on the original. Hieronimo, if he were the brother of Giovanni, would hardly have written his own name, as it is inscribed on the map, with ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... nearest being about two miles from its old south wall and fortifications, the other one a little over two miles further out. The last being the farthest out was the first one we came to on our journeys to the city; it was a somewhat singular- looking building with a verandah supported by pillars painted green, and it had a high turret. And near it was a large dovecot with a cloud of pigeons usually flying about it, and we came to calling it Dovecot House. The second house was plainer in form but ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... classics, ancient and modern, and from the drama, tragic and comic. In his speeches, on the contrary, he quoted but little, and only when he seemed to run upon a thought already expressed by some one else with singular force and appositeness. He was the best scholar I ever met for his years and active life, and was surpassed by very few, excepting mere book-worms. He has for many years been engaged in collecting extracts from newspapers, containing the leading facts and public documents ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... minutes after the city bells had ceased to sound for nine o'clock, the bell of her own door rang with a clear, strong stroke, Desire Ledwith thought instantly of Mr. Kirkbright with a singular recall,—that was less a change than a transfer of the same perception,—from the inward to the actual. She had no reason to suppose it,—no ordinary reason why,—but she was suddenly persuaded that the friend who in the last hour had stood spiritually ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... when a little lamp that hung above cast its sorrowful light over him, could I catch a glimpse of his pale countenance, on which the youth was not yet extinguished. His costume was singular, in two colors, yellow and red. Heavy chains weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long, hairy hands seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... refreshed. I think everyone (every woman) out here has noticed how indifferent and really "nasty" people are to each other at the front. It is one of the singular things about the war, because one always hears it said that it is deepening people's characters, purifying them, and so on. As far as my experience goes, it has shown me the reverse. I have seldom known so much quarrelling, and there is a sort of queer ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... about them"; that is, lest the enemy should set upon them on any side; but let him come where he will, behind or before, on this side or that, the angel of the Lord is there to defend them. "The angel." It may be spoken in the singular number, perhaps, to show that every one that feareth God hath his angel to attend on him, and serve him. When the church, in the Acts, was told that Peter stood at the door and knocked; at first they counted the messenger ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... each other by the platform; the whole forming a very buoyant and commodious raft, capable of being rigged, and promising to behave exceedingly well under sail in smooth and even in moderately rough water. To rig this singular-looking craft with an enormous mainsail and jib was no very difficult matter, the wreckage alongside furnishing him with the requisite spars, canvas, and rigging. Each of the rudders was then furnished with a tiller; and these two tillers being connected together with a cross-piece, were controlled ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Worse, with her arms akimbo, "you think yourself very clever, but I tell you you are as stupid as an owl, a barn-door owl, when it is anything to do with women. You ought to see it must all come right some day. I dare say Miss Rachel is a little bit singular, but she is not quite cracked. You see, it will all get straight in the end; it will still all come ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... on the survivor. Their joint efforts were at length successful. He became convalescent; and, finding his passion revive with his returning health, daily importuned the lady for her hand, to which there now remained no other equal claimant. But she gave him to understand, that feeling herself singular in misfortune, by having lost in one day three admirers of superior merit, she would not consent to bear to the bridal ceremony a heart consumed by eternal regret; and that, as a monument of her grief, she intended to compose a lay, the title of which should ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... stopped his horse at the bridge. The gate stood open and he looked down an avenue of trees into a square of which three sides were made by the high garden wall, and the fourth and innermost by the house. Thus the whole length of the house fronted him, and it struck him as very singular that neither in the lower nor the upper windows was there anywhere a spark of light, nor was there any sound but the tossing of the branches and the wail of the wind among the chimneys. Not even a dog barked ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... communicates anteriorly with the second and first, and posteriorly with the fourth compartment or true stomach. The interior arrangement of this compartment is most singular. It is divided by a number of large folds of the lining membrane between which are smaller folds. It is between these folds that the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Woman's Journal lately called attention to the statement twice made that "the effect of the amendment, if ratified, would be the same as if every State in the Union had passed a suffrage amendment." This is a most singular assertion. If every State adopted a suffrage amendment our work would be done. Again: "The passage of this resolution would have the same effect over the United States as if any other suffrage amendment had passed." Surely anyone can see that if the Anthony Amendment had been passed by Congress ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... heard," said the Ranee, "much of your devotion, courage, and unswerving integrity, which render you peculiarly fitted for an enterprise requiring singular daring and fidelity. Lehna Singh has not scrupled to say that peril of life itself will even be welcome to ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... 18, 1778. Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 104) gives one reason for Thrale's fondness for Johnson's society. 'Though entirely a man of peace, and a gentleman in his character, he had a singular amusement in hearing, instigating, and provoking a war of words, alternating triumph and overthrow, between clever and ambitious colloquial combatants, where there was nothing that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... impression was of short continuance. The rumor of the destruction of half his army was almost immediately propagated in that city, from the singular commotion produced by extraordinary events, which is known frequently to spread almost instantaneously to prodigious distances. Still, however, the language of the chiefs, the only persons who dared to speak, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... our convention would not prove our destruction? From an apprehension that it would, an opposition was formed, that included a majority of the state. Did those who composed it, think it criminal to prevent the singular ideas of a convention, from being carried into execution, against an almost general sentiment; or did they not rather conceive it safe and better for the community still to go on in the administration of governmental affairs by those temporary expedients we had been in the habits ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... model,'—that principle which impels the particular nature to leave its signature on other things,—on the state, on the world, if it can,—though it is its own end, and though it is apt, when armed with those singular powers for 'effecting its good will,' which are represented in the hero of this action, to lead to results of the kind which this piece represents,—this is the principle in man which seeks an individual immortality, and works of immortal worth for man are its natural ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... middle stature of women,' he writes, 'and well shaped, yet in that not so singular as in the beauty of her face, which was but of a little model, and yet proportionable to her body; her eyes black and full of loveliness and sweetness, her eyebrows small and even, as if drawn with a pencil, a very ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... made in respect of foreign words which retain their original form, especially those which retain their Latin plurals, the feminine singular being often confused with the neuter plural. For instance, there is the word animalcule (plural animalcules), also written animalculum (plural animalcula). Now, the plural animalcula is often supposed to be the feminine singular, ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... together in the most copious and rural harmony: nor perhaps in many parts of the world is such perfect and abject happiness to be found. Violet and Slingsby and Guy and Lionel were greatly struck with this singular and instructive settlement; and, having previously asked permission of the Blue-Bottle-Flies (which was most courteously granted), the boat was drawn up to the shore, and they proceeded to make tea in front of the bottles: but as they had no tea-leaves, they merely placed some pebbles ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... the people had obtained some great victory. Thus this bill, which was originally intended to communicate solid and lasting advantages to both countries, had the effect of rousing commercial jealousies, awakening national prejudices, and of greatly disturbing the public tranquillity; a singular fate, and one which shows the folly and the madness of the bad passions of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Henley, Orator Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, his life much interested Lord Byron Hero and Leander Hill, Aaron 'Hills of Annesley, bleak and barren.' 'HINTS FROM HORACE,' written at Athens first produced to Mr. Dallas singular preference given by the author to them See also Hippopotamus at Exeter Change Historians, list of, perused by Lord Byron at nineteen Hoare, Mr., Lord Byron's schoolfellow at Harrow Hobbes, Thomas Hobhouse, Right Hon. Henry ——, Right Hon. Sir John Cam, Bart., his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... I saluted this singular-looking pair, and was by the lady honoured with an especially gracious curtsey, whilst the gaunt old man bade me good day in an accent decidedly foreign. I patted the cat of the basket, addressing it in French, and was in a moment overwhelmed by the delights of its mistress, who ciel'd, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... his life, the unlimited dominion of the priestly idea over the minds of men, and of the priesthood over the king himself, had hitherto remained unintelligible to this singular young man. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Macaulay had an intimate acquaintance both with the imaginative literature and the history of Greece and Rome, with the literature and the history of modern Italy, of France, and of England. Whatever his special subject, he contrives to pour into it with singular dexterity a stream of rich, graphic, and telling illustrations from all these widely diversified sources. Figures from history, ancient and modern, sacred and secular; characters from plays and novels from Plautus down to Walter Scott and Jane Austen; images and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... and he who shall return with the rarest of curiosities shall be husband to the Princess Nur al-Nihar. Consent ye now to this proposal; and whatso of money ye require for travel and for the purchase of objects seld-seen and singular, take ye from the royal treasury as much as ye desire." The three Princes, who were ever submissive to their sire, consented with one voice to this proposal, and each was satisfied and confident that he would bring the King the most ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... right of it, I see it as one M; and if you tell me I have had to 'take' it twice, I reply that if I 'took' it a thousand times, I should still see it as a unit.[1] Its unity is aboriginal, just as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It comes unbroken as that M, as a singular which I encounter; they come broken, as those takings, as my plurality of operations. The unity and the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. I do not easily fathom why my opponents should find the separateness so ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... is terrific to all on this coast, I believe; nor are the ladies of St. Ruth singular ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... therefore of the south pole, we ought probably to understand the equator. As these two islands were uninhabited, the names given them must have been imposed by Magellan or his associates. Cipangue is the name given to Japan by Marco Polo, and is of course a singular blunder. The other is unintelligible, and the voyage is so vaguely expressed, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... the books of the City and District Savings Bank there are eleven thousand Irish names, mostly of the working classes, whose deposits exceed $2,000,000, the highest testimony of the industry and opportunity of the race is found. The prosperity of the Irish is not singular in this free country, but, brought out as Mr. Curran has done, it serves to exemplify the splendid field for ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various |
