"Sober" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... source of the alluring smell. He pushed Tripe along in front of him, and together they backed the dog-cart into the stable-place, making a very clumsy business of it for three reasons: Tom Tripe was none too sober: the horse was nearly crazy with fear of the uncanny brutes just beyond the wall; and Dick was in too much hurry for reasons of his own. However, they got horse and cart in backward, and the door ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... time Rutli and I became firm friends, and, long after I had no further need of his services in the recaptured house, I often found myself in the little tea-arbor of his prosperous nursery. He was frugal, sober, and industrious; small wonder that in that growing town he waxed rich, and presently opened a restaurant in the main street, connected with his market-garden, which became famous. His relations to me never changed with his changed fortunes; he was always the simple market-gardener ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... she said to her husband, "that you were a sober and respected married man before she came out, and that I am installed here as your lawful and wedded wife instead of being at Ballycrogin with only an engagement ring on my finger. I know your susceptible nature; you would have ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... is runnin' over de road, I 'm sure, But if you can fin' de crossin' you 'll ketch heem at Beausejour. Sober or drunk, no matter, bring heem along you mus', For Doctor Hilaire 's de only man of ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... on, in that sober tone of decided self-satisfaction. "And I said a heap more. And didn't the boys jest laff. Will went red as a beet, and the boys laffed more. And I was real glad. I hate Will! Say, he was up here last night. Wot for? He was up here from six to nigh nine. Say, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... steam-engines. We find him described by his employers as "flying from mine to mine," putting the engines to rights. If anything went wrong, he was immediately sent for. He was active, quick-sighted, shrewd, sober, and thoroughly trustworthy. Down to the year 1780, his wages were only a pound a week; but Boulton made him a present of ten guineas, to which the owners of the United Mines added another ten, in acknowledgment of the admirable manner in ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... better," said the gay Otho, "to make my sober brother a chaplet of the rue and cypress; the rose is much too bright a flower for so serious ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Les Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs, in February, 1903, Mme. Demont-Breton exhibited the "Head of a Young Girl," which attracted much attention. Gray and sober in color, with a firmly closed mouth and serious eyes denoting great strength of character, it is admirably studied and designed and proves the unusual excellence of the art of this gifted daughter of Jules Breton. At the Exposition ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... years are halting never; Quickly gone, and gone for ever, And would teach us thence to brave The conclusion in the grave; Whether it be these that give Strength and spirit so to live, Or the conquest best be made, By a sober course and staid, I would walk in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of the Seventeenth Century, a company of very sober folk, came to the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in a trifling little vessel the "Mayflower," and brought about one hundred Immigrants from the British Isles to Plymouth Rock to build up a refuge and a home. What a mighty song ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Prophet, having escaped early from his dinner on some extravagant plea of sudden illness or second gaiety, stood in the small and sober passage of the celebrated Tintack Club and inquired ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... indeed, so obnoxious is this conduct to us, and so injurious in its consequences, that we expect and require you to show your displeasure to all such as shall transgress in this respect, contrasting it at the same time with instances of kindness towards the sober, frugal, and industrious." ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... and here his face clouded a little, "unless, indeed, you tricked us. But I have pumped you well on that point, and, drunk or sober, it ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... you are travelling, and when, and all about it; that I may meet you with open arms on the threshold of the city, if happily you bend your steps this way. You had better address me, "Poste Restante, Genoa," as the Albaro postman gets drunk, and when he has lost letters, and is sober, sheds tears—which is affecting, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... was tempting the silly boy to take more by drinking his health with fresh bottles. But while Louis Laplante gulped down his rum, becoming drunker and more communicative, the tempter threw glass after glass over his shoulder and remained sober. The Nor'-Wester motioned me to keep behind the Frenchman and I heard his drunken lips ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Democracy that the fathers of the nation were on their side as to the territorial question. Lincoln then passed to a broader view, and inquired: What can we do that will really satisfy the South? Every word is sober, temperate, well-weighed. The South, he showed, is really taking very little interest now in the Territories. It is excited about the John Brown raid, and accuses the Republican party of responsibility for that. But not a single Republican was ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... grotesquerie as this, into what did the vagaries of other men's minds take them? Confident that he was ordinarily saner than most people, he perceived that since he was capable of doing a thing like this, other men did even more idiotic things, in secret. And he had a fleeting vision of sober-looking bankers and manufacturers and lawyers, well-dressed church-going men, sound citizens—and all as queer as the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... back sober, if you possibly can," Helm added in his most genial tone, thinking it a great piece of humor to suggest sobriety to a man whose marked difference from men generally, of that time, was his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... tight, so that neither could get at the trace to gnaw it apart, but each was fastened sidelong to his neighbour's neck. That, with the freedom of hunting on their own account, must have helped to cure their madness. They were very sober. ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... break the spirit that revolts against him, and to inculcate submission, even to obscene assault, as a duty. A bishop once had the hardihood to say that he would rather see England free than England sober. Nobody has yet dared to say that he would rather see an England of ignoramuses than an England of cowards and slaves. And if anyone did, it would be necessary to point out that the antithesis is not a practical one, as we have got at present an England ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Indonesia, a vast polyglot nation, has restored financial stability and pursued sober fiscal policies since the Asian financial crisis, but many economic development problems remain, including high unemployment, a fragile banking sector, endemic corruption, inadequate infrastructure, a poor investment climate, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Celts were not in the habit of excessive drinking until a comparatively recent period. In the year 1405 we read of the death of a chieftain who died of "a surfeit in drinking;" but previous to this entry we may safely assert that the Irish were comparatively a sober race. The origin of the drink called whisky in modern parlance, is involved in considerable obscurity. Some authorities consider that the word is derived from the first part of the term usquebaugh; others suppose it to be ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... proportion of men of criminal instincts whose worst passions are unloosed by the immunity which the conditions of warfare afford. Drunkenness, moreover, may turn even a soldier who has no criminal habits into a brute, who may commit outrages at which he would himself be shocked in his sober moments, and there is evidence that intoxication was extremely prevalent among the German Army, both in Belgium and in France, for plenty of wine was to be found in the villages and country houses which were pillaged. Many of the worst outrages appear to have ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... poor and weak. If he had been rich and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond, even though complaisant bards might invent a Rajput genealogy for the bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to explain a mesalliance. The inducement really offered to the proud but poor Chandel was, in all likelihood, a large sum of money, according to the usual practice in such cases. Several indications exist of close ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... as nobly as it had begun. The facts had been slowly, quietly gathered, one by one, like pebbles from the empty channel of a brook. The style was fluent, impetuous, abundant, impatient, as it were, at times, and leaping the sober boundaries prescribed to it, like the torrent which rushes through the same channel when the rains have filled it. Thus there was matter for criticism in his use of language. He was not always careful in the construction of his sentences. He introduced expressions now and then into his ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and crippled him for life on account of a little back-talk, and got off scot-free. I had a row with him in a saloon last week; I was tight, I suppose, though there's always been bad blood between us, anyway, drunk or sober, and I didn't know much what happened, except that I refused to drink in his company and he cursed me out and I blacked an eye for him before they separated us. Well, sir, next day, here was Hector demanding that I go and apologize to Link. I said I'd as soon apologize to ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... religious tie, and therefore the pleasure we extract from it should be a sober and serious delight, and mixed with a certain kind of gravity; it should be a sort of discreet and conscientious pleasure. And seeing that the chief end of it is generation, some make a question, whether when men are out of hopes as when they are superannuated ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... purpose] 'so that for the present we drop the concealed use, and suppose the ancient fables to be vague undeterminate things formed for amusement, still the other use must remain, and can never be given up. And every man of any learning must readily allow that THIS METHOD of INSTRUCTION is grave, sober, exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding, IN ALL NEW DISCOVERIES that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion. Hence, in the first ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... insect making for its nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before an obstacle and wear out everybody's patience with their own beetle-like perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtue of poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure. He waited. Nature had given him the immense advantage of an agreeable exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but expressive face, his simple manners,—all revealed in him a laborious and resigned existence, that lofty ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... repressing thereof; which power is put forth merely in spiritual censures, as admonition, excommunication, deposition, &c. And these censures exercised, not in a lordly, domineering, prelatical way: but in an humble, sober, grave, yet authoritative way, necessary both for preservation of soundness of doctrine, and incorruptness of conversation; and for extirpation of the contrary. This is the power which belongs to synods. Thus much for clearing the right state ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... eloquent—than by the winter fireside? and as the hollow blast of wintry wind rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, whistles about the casement, and rumbles down the chimney, what can be more grateful than that feeling of sober and sheltered security, with which we look around upon the comfortable chamber, and ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... course, he warn't always a very safe man in cases where a cool head and a steady hand was needed (though folks did say he knowed a plaguey sight more, even when he was drunk, than one-half of them do when they are sober). Well, one day old Jim Reid, who was a pot-companion of his, sent him a note to come into town immediately, without the loss of one moment of time, and bring his amputating instruments with him, for there was a most shocking accident ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... small minority, is a reason for denying to the overwhelming majority of innocent persons reforms which are just in themselves and expedient in the interests of the Republic. Whatever may be said about the conduct of a few individuals, nothing can be plainer than that the sober and industrious majority refused to countenance any resort to violence, and proved their readiness to obey the law and your authority. I hope, therefore, to hear at an early date that you propose to resume discussion with ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... country village in Yorkshire, was an old established cobbler, who cracked his joke, loved his pipe and lived happy. In short, he was a sober and industrious man. His quiet, however, was disturbed by an unexpected opposition in his trade, at the same village, and to add to his misfortune, the new comer established himself directly opposite to the old cobbler's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... in the village, and another list of extravagant promises from the boys of the amazing benefits she was to derive from her outing with them. Long John had got over his first fine raptures, and was now willing to jog along the sweet country lanes at a steady and sober pace, suitable for the invalid he ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... How they ruffle the solid woodlands in their passage, and make them shudder and whiten like a single willow! There is nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods, with all its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some painters and their sober eyesight, so that, even when the rest of their picture is calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a gale. There was nothing, however, of this sort to be noticed in a country where there were no trees and hardly any shadows, save the passive shadows ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater 'catastrophe' than any of those which Lyell success fully eliminated from sober geological speculation." ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... subjected to a series of searching questions which I should not be allowed to evade. Meanwhile, on every other stage of experience I was gaining the reliance upon self and the respect for the opinion of others which come naturally to a young man of sober habits who earns his own living and lives his own life. For this kind of independence my Father had no respect or consideration, when questions of religion were introduced, although he handsomely conceded it on ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... quiet of the seaside, with my mother for companion, I recovered my proper frame of mind, and began to take sober views of ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... smile, not wishing to hurt his niece, but really thinking that it was perhaps better for her to be early married to so sober a fellow as Casaubon, since she ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... clothed itself in this graceful and expressive outline, while the affection that prompted it gave to it its lovely rose-colour, and the intellect which guided it shone forth like sunlight as its heart and central support. Thus in sober truth we may make veritable guardian angels to hover over and protect those whom we love, and many an unselfish earnest wish for good produces such a form as this, though ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... Charlotte Bronte's heroines may or may not have been, these were her own views—sober, sincere, and utterly dispassionate. Mrs. Oliphant set them aside, either in criminal carelessness, or with still more criminal deliberation, because they interfered with her theory. They are certainly not the views of a woman given to day-dreaming and window-gazing. Lucy ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... time, Dick. It's because you have so much fun in you. I am more sober. Miss Peyton seems very much amused by your ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... it did come to be better understood, and was treated as a joke, and some of the more sober men entered into the fun, and would go out on parade, and take part in the ceremony. We paraded with a band composed of men beating tin buckets, frying pans, and canteens, with sticks, and whistling military music. It made a noisy and impressive procession. It attracted much ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... "not good to travel in the evening," he said. "There at Boruca ghosts storm terribly, but they do no harm. But being jealous for the Lenczyca principality they chase away other devils into the bushes. It is only bad to meet them during the night, especially when a man is drunk, but the sober need not ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild—nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... my narrative. In the second-class compartment where I sat were two burly, loud-talking, well-informed farm proprietors, one of whom had imbibed a little too freely of the native distillation. The sober one had just finished reading a column article on the 'Great Bank Forgery' to his lively companion, who at length turned and addressed me. I answered him politely in broken French, and he then went on to give his opinion of the bank ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... I could win him with authorities, If suing thus in such a sober court; Could read him many an ancient rhym'd report Of such sad cases, tears would fill his eyes And he confess a judgment, or resort To some well-pleasing terms ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." Eph. 4: 29. Have a pure speech, made mighty by the grace of God. Be sober without gloom, be serious with cheerfulness. Have such a conversation as is suited to lift hearts to a higher plane. Your words should be such as to make better those you talk with and make them feel that there ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... has come in our own time by some strange caprice to be regarded as of positively divine origin. The Man says now to himself, "This woman is mine. Law and the Church have bestowed her on me. Mine for better, for worse; mine, drunk or sober. If she ventures to have a heart or a will of her own, woe betide her! I have tabooed her for life: let any other man touch her, let her so much as cast eyes on any other man to admire or desire him—and, knife, dagger, or law-court, they shall both of them answer for it." There you ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... Buerger's Lenore! Only you're not dead—eh? Not dead ... I am alive!' She let her force and daring have full fling. It seemed not an Amazon on a galloping horse, but a young female centaur at full speed, half-beast and half-god, and the sober, well-bred country seemed astounded, as it was trampled underfoot in ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws.... Restore Thou those who are penitent, according to Thy promises.... And grant, Oh most merciful Father, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life." ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... million and had a plausible claim to a majority of the electoral vote. At all events, four states sent in double returns, one set for Tilden and another for Hayes; and a deadlock ensued. Both parties vehemently claimed the election and the passions ran so high that sober men did not shrink from speaking of civil war again. Fortunately, in the end, the counsels of peace prevailed. Congress provided for an electoral commission of fifteen men to review the contested returns. The Democrats, inspired by Tilden's moderation, accepted the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... interest is the Church of San Biagio, placed on a fertile plateau immediately beneath the ancient acropolis. It was erected by Antonio di San Gallo in 1518, and is one of the most perfect specimens existing of the sober classical style. The Church consists of a Greek square, continued at the east end into a semicircular tribune, surmounted by a central cupola, and flanked by a detached bell-tower, ending in a pyramidal ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... abroad upon it she marvelled at a hundred differences between it and her native Midlands. It was wilder—infinitely wilder—than Warwickshire, and at the same time less unkempt; far more savage in outline, yet in detail sober almost to tidiness. It seemed to acknowledge the hand of some great unknown gardener; and this gardener was, of course, the sea-breeze now filling her lungs and bracing her strength. The shaven, landward-bending thorns and hollies, the close-trimmed hedgerow, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... khans. The recommendations of our Russian friends, the glamour of history which had bewitched us, the hope of the Western for something Oriental,—all these elements had combined to raise our expectations in a way against which our sober senses and previous experience should have warned us. It seemed to us merely a flourishing and animated Russian provincial town, whose Kremlin was eclipsed by that of Moscow, and whose university had instructed, but not graduated, Count Tolstoy, the novelist. The bazaar under ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... into the wood with the unseeing stare of apathetic indifference. The door from the hall in the room behind her is opened, and Miss Howard enters, followed by Bill Carmody, Mrs. Brennan, and Mary. Carmody's manner is unwontedly sober and subdued. This air of respectable sobriety is further enhanced by a black suit, glaringly new and stiffly pressed, a new black derby hat, and shoes polished like a mirror. His expression is full of a bitter, if suppressed, ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... sober-faced man of fifty-five, sallow and unhappy. His tone was funereal and deliberate, his eyes ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... anyone who may think, as I did, that drink has decreased, and that in consequence everyone over here is wise, sober and happy, I can only say ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... fashion in which Nash laughed at it, are among the best known things in the gossiping history of English Letters. But the coxcombry of Harvey and the felicitous impertinence of Nash have sometimes diverted attention from the actual state of the case. William Webbe (a very sober-minded person with taste enough to admire the "new poet," as he calls Spenser) makes elaborate attempts not merely at hexameters, which, though only a curiosity, are a possible curiosity in English, but at Sapphics ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... You may e'en tell him he has mair than he makes good use of; he gangs up and down drinking, roaring, and quarreling, through all the country markets, making foolish bargains in his cups, which he repents when he is sober; like a thriftless wretch, spending the goods and gear that his forefathers won with the sweat of their brows; light come, light go; he cares not a farthing. But why should I stand surety for his contracts? The little I have is free, and I ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... warns him that it must be in utter dependence upon the power of God. He must be wholly submitted to God and it must be done through a steadfastness of faith. The passages are as follows: "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (Jas. 4:7). "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith" (I Pet. 5:8, 9). And the faith principle is mentioned among the believer's armor ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... this part of the year had been turned to profit in this way. The wealthy cities used to pay large sums of money not to have to find winter quarters for the soldiers. Cyprus paid more than L48,000 on this account; and from this island—I say it without exaggeration and in sober truth—not a single coin was levied while I was in power. In return for these benefits, benefits at which they are simply astonished. I will not allow any but verbal honors to be voted to me. Statues, temples, chariots of bronze, I forbid. In nothing do I make myself ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... they do today. Harrison says that the women do far exceed the lightness of the men; "such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for light housewives only is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons." And he knows not what to say of their doublets, with pendant pieces on the breast full of jags and cuts; their "galligascons," to make their dresses stand out plumb round; their farthingales and divers colored stockings. "I have met," he says, "with some of these trulls in London ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lamps, Bob for the first time realized the true meaning of the step he had taken. Heretofore he had always possessed a home to which to go, unpleasant as it was, but now he had no place, and the contemplation of his loneliness caused him to grow very sober. ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... won a name as great as that of Alexander of Macedon. Like Alexander, he died in the flower of his age, in the height of his fame. Had he lived, he would have been King of Italy, and Lucca would have become the capital of the peninsula. Chaste, sober, and merciful—brave without rashness, and prudent without fear—Castruccio won all hearts. Lucca at least appreciated her hero. Proud alike of his personal qualities, and of those warlike exploits with which Italy already rang, she unanimously elected him dictator. When this ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... face in the bar. Some people said that Willan Blaycke was drunk when he married Jeanne, that she took him unawares by means of a base plot which her father and she had had in mind a long time. Others said that he was sober enough when he did it, only that he was like one out of his mind,—he sorrowed so for the loss of his only son, Willan, whom he had in the beginning of that year sent back to England ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his hands of Paris and London and going where he was appreciated roved the world in quiet contentment. He was young, rather scrupulously efficient within his limits, than ambitious, and of modest wants, sober habits, and of a studious disposition which his friendship with Horatio Bakkus had both awakened and stimulated. Homeless from birth he never knew the nostalgia which grips even the most deliberately vagrant of men. As his ultimate goal he had indeed a vague dream of a home with ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... put up his petition to be delivered "from lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death." Disasters seemed to crowd the roads on which he walked; so frequent were they and so tragic that life could scarcely be lived in sober earnest; it was, for Peter the comedian, a tragi-comic farce. Circumstances provided the tragedy, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... with a sudden recollection the eager little lady pulled herself up, smoothed her crooked kerchief, and shook the rebellious hair out of her eyes, and went on in her most sober tones: 'I don't know, Peter, whether I shall be able to come mushrooming much now. Of course my nephew will take up a good deal of my time, and I'm not sure whether many mushrooms are quite a good thing for children. But eggs will be very nice for his breakfast—a new-laid egg every day, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... custom or quaint observance. The revels at Yule-tide, St. Stephen's Day, New Year's Day, and Twelfth Night were not surpassed anywhere in "merrie England." Feasts, masques, and play-acting at various times greatly scandalized the more sober and staid among the benchers. Stowe tells us that the readers of his day "for upwards of three weeks kept a splendid table, feasting the nobility, judges, bishops, principal officers of state, and sometimes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... was impressive. It really did impress Edwin, as he would wait his turn among the three or four proud and respectable members that the going and coming seemed always to leave in the room. The modest blue-yellow gas, the vast table and ledgers, and the two sober heads behind; the polite murmurings, the rustle of leaves, the chink of money, the smooth sound of elegant pens: all this made something not merely impressive, but beautiful; something that had a true if narrow dignity; something ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... drunken, they did as drunkards do, revel, roar, and belch out their own shame, in the sight of them that were sober: Wherefore they cried out upon such doings, and chose rather to die, than to live with such company. And so 'tis still with them where she yet sitteth, and so will be till she shall fall into the hands of the strong Lord, who will judge her according to her ways. And that she must do, as is implied ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his promises. Rachael had not thought he would; perhaps the old lady herself had not thought he would. He was sobered at the funeral, but not sober. Six weeks later all the bills against the estate were in. Florence had some of the family jewels and the family silver, Rachael had some, some was put away for Billy; the furniture was sold, the house rented for a men's club, and a nondescript man, calling upon young Mrs. Breckenridge, notified ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... were as big a sinner as ever you clap eyes on. Me and my son was among the sawdust, spite of our three crutches, and he spreading hands at us, sober as a judge, for lumps of ungenerous iniquity. Mother Tapsy told us of it, the very next day, for it was not in our power to be ackirate when he done it, and we see everybody laffing at us round ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... philosopher; the way to systematic philosophic truth is a path too steep to be climbed by such an undisciplined spirit as his, "sworn enemy to obligation, to assiduity, to constancy";[176] and the net result of his "Apology" for Raimond Sebonde is to upset the system of that sober theologian as well as all others. Whether Shakspere, on the other hand, could or did detect all the inconsistencies of Montaigne's reasoning, is a point on which we are not entitled to more than a surmise; but ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... senses awakened so that he studied his hostess with interest. Hair which the advancing years, while bleaching to a snowy white had still been unable to rob of the curling waves of girlhood, rippled over a broad white brow, sober but scarcely wrinkled; large, serious but gentle gray eyes, and a small, firm mouth, filled with even white teeth were the salient features of a face at once resolute, refined and womanly. Long, slender hands, small feet, covered with coarse ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... knows his lawyer, and that girl will have half a million, if she don't drink herself to death before old Goldfinch takes his departure from this wicked world. She is beautiful and clever and accomplished, and all the young men are in love with her; but she cannot keep sober, and in three years' time she will have lost her youth and her health and her faculties, and in all probability will finish in a madhouse. There's Frank Lovell making fierce ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... these words in his defense, Festus cried, "Paul, you are mad! Your great learning is driving you insane!" But Paul said, "I am not insane, most noble Festus, but I am speaking the sober truth. For the King, to whom I can speak freely, knows about these things, for I am sure that nothing escaped his notice, since this has not been done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you do." But Agrippa said to Paul, "With but ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... thought of that happy twelvemonth with that bestial duke! I, sober, chaste, and clean—of all but blood, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... to Dr. Stamford, as sober as the verger of a cathedral. In a moment I had become aware that we were swine ...
— Options • O. Henry
... to see in the dark," he answered; "but I mistrust you are a gentleman, sir. McDermott of the Three Trees had a voice and a way with him like you, and Father Burk too, and he was a gentleman born if he could only remain sober." ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... ascended the seat upon the elephant, and remained there placed beside his august mother-in-law. Agelastes, on a sober- minded palfrey, which permitted him to prolong his philosophical harangues at his own pleasure, rode beside the Countess Brenhilda, whom he made the principal object of his oratory. The fair historian, though she usually travelled in a litter, preferred upon this occasion a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... stalwart troopers. "It appears Hollis is surety for the lot, but he insisted on Bessie Warner making her escape at all risks. He is a plucky fellow, Hollis, but it was the only thing to do. If they 'd been let alone all night—well, when they're sober I wouldn't trust 'em, and when they 've drunk they 're fiends incarnate. Close up, men, close up a little to the right, sergeant, and we 'll dismount before we come to ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... was of a pacific character; for the gray-bearded old men of the little settlement, in their decent russet gowns, came first after the rustic band of music, walking in ranks of three and three, supported by their staves, and regulating the motion of the whole procession by their sober and staid pace. After these fathers of the settlement came Wilkin Flammock, mounted on his mighty war-horse, and in complete armor, save his head, like a vassal prepared to do military service for his lord. After him followed, and in ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the part of leader when others were present, who might possibly be called upon as witnesses; but that when they were alone together, he, Brady, was always the most eager to press the necessity of some desperate measure. On the present occasion too Reynolds was half drunk, whereas Brady was quite sober. ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... living face! He seems to have gone wild with wrath over what he had lost and to have plunged headlong into the maddest sort of dissipation. It is known, positively known, and can be sworn to by reputable witnesses, that for the next three days he did not draw one sober breath. On the fourth, a note from him—a note which he was seen to write in a public house—was carried to Zuilika. In that note he cursed her with every conceivable term; told her that when she ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the people of the Empire as nothing, save perhaps the subsequent relief of Mafeking, has done during our generation. Even sober unemotional London found its soul for once and fluttered with joy. Men, women, and children, rich and poor, clubman and cabman, joined in the universal delight. The thought of our garrison, of their ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... drinking, took a boat off to their ship. They rowed but made no progress; and presently each began to accuse the other of not working hard enough. Lustily they plied the oars, but after another hour's work still found themselves no farther advanced. By this time they had become tolerably sober; and one of them, looking over the side, said to the other, "Why, Tom, we haven't pulled the anchor up yet." And thus it is with those who are anchored to something of which they are not conscious, perhaps, but which ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... your daughter's testimony that I was sober this afternoon, and since that time I have enjoyed nothing stronger than milk and the odor of your old-fashioned roses. If I was in a lamentable condition in the garden, Miss Warren was the cause, and so is wholly ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... had; during his first term, when his football prowess had passed, swinging through the University, been elected to the Wolves, but he had only attended one dinner and had then remained severely and unpleasantly sober. There was no other possible rival to Cardillac, to his distinction, his power of witty and malicious after-dinner speaking, his wonderful clothes, his admirable football, his haughty indifference. He would ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... Chancellor Whitelocke presented a hogshead of good Canary wine, and a sober, handsome, strong, well-paced English pad nag, and one of his richest saddles. To Wrangel he gave an English gelding; to Tott another; to Wittenberg another; to Steinberg another; to Douglas another; and to such of the great men as the Queen directed. To Lagerfeldt ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... was there a greater mistake. The shallowness and flippancy of the leaders and politicians of this last quarter of the nineteenth century show them but little more than school-boys compared with the sturdy, sober-minded, deep-principled, dignified, and grand-spirited men who discovered and opened this continent and laid the foundations of our country's greatness. And those who were most concerned in the founding of our own commonwealth suffer ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... tune a gentle lyre. Is it not lucky for swains like you that the soldiers have quite forsworn sonneting? When a man was a rake, a poet, a warrior, all in one, what chance had a peaceful minor poet like you or me, Gifted, against his charms? Sedley, when sober, must have been an invincible rival—invincible, above all, when ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... till night, from night till startled morn Peeps blushing on the revel's laughing crew, The song is heard, the rosy garland worn; Devices quaint, and frolics ever new, Tread on each other's kibes. A long adieu He bids to sober joy that here sojourns: Nought interrupts the riot, though in lieu Of true devotion monkish incense burns, And love and prayer unite, or rule the ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... again went to Up-Hill she found herself walking through a sober realm of leafless trees. The glory of autumn was gone. The hills, with their circular sheep-pens, were now brown and bare; and the plaided shepherds, descending far apart, gave only an air of loneliness to the landscape. ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... It was a sober, thoughtful Patsy that followed the road, the pilgrim staff gripped tightly in her hand. She clung to it as the one tangible thing left to her out of all the happenings and memories of her quest. The tinker had disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him, leaving ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... been in him. But this is not all, my Lord, he has committed worse Villanies than all these, for we shall prove, that he has been guilty of drinking Small-Beer; and your Lordship knows, there never was a sober Fellow but what was a Rogue. My Lord, I should have spoke much finer than I do now, but that as your Lordship knows our Rum is all out, and how should a Man speak good Law that has not drank a Dram.... However, I hope, your Lordship will order ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... repress a laugh at the tragic tone in which she said it. Yet his face was perfectly sober and he continued with his ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... come very soon," he was saying, and her face responded with a little smile that lit up its sober corners and hard lines. Suddenly it grew rigid and white, and her eyes stared beyond the doctor into the gloom of the room. Sommers turned to follow her gaze. The door moved a little. There was some one ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... into a theatre as sober as could be, They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me; They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls, But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls! For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Testament was written, will avail our Author little; for the Argument is a Fortiori: if it be unlawful to rebel against a Heathen Emperor, then much more against a Christian King. The Corollary is this, and every unbiassed sober man will subscribe to it, that since we cannot pry into the secret Decrees of God, for the knowledge of future Events, we ought to rely upon his Providence, for the Succession; without either plunging our present King into necessities, for what may never happen; ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... the point'?" he asked, and there was a gleam of fun in his eyes, though his lips were sober. But his ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... a statement which might have seemed a paradox if it had preceded this investigation, but which, coming at its close, will, if I mistake not, commend itself as a sober deduction from facts. The silence of Eusebius respecting early witnesses to the Fourth Gospel is an evidence in its favour. Its Apostolic authorship had never been questioned by any Church writer from the beginning, so far as Eusebius was aware, and therefore ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... well. The cavalry, in brilliant uniforms, presented a long front, their lances gleaming. The Texans, standing in the steps that they had cut in the earth, were in sober attire, but resolute eyes looked out from under their caps or the ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his touching them. I now saw that I had got a great prize, no less than a completely new form of the Bird of Paradise, differing most remarkably from every other known bird. The general plumage is very sober, being a pure ashy olive, with a purplish tinge on the back; the crown of the head is beautifully glossed with pale metallic violet, and the feathers of the front extend as much over the beak as inmost of the family. The neck and breast are scaled with fine metallic green, and the feathers ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... want a sober mind, A self-renouncing will, That tramples down and casts behind The baits of pleasing ill; A spirit still prepared, And armed with jealous care, Forever standing on its guard, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... take it off! I don't wonder the poor old boy has the blues with a thing like that on"; and Charlie sat looking at what seemed to him an instrument of torture, with such a sober face that Rose took it gently away, and went ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... seemingly been brought down, before their eyes, upon a cable fastened by some mysterious agency far aloft; for I suppose it behooved to be made fast in some inconceivable region of the upper air. But that a similar demonstration could have been made in a sober New England town, at noonday, could scarcely fail to "put me from my faith." It impressed me, however, as at least an extraordinary relation, coming from such a source; and happening to meet another ancient and equally reputable friend on the same day, one, too, who had ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... or three minutes thus employed one's enthusiasm wanes and one's ideas take on a less confused form. In a word, unreasoning impulses no longer fill the brain to the extent of inhibiting the entrance of sober second thought. ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... have sent me to see if Sir Wilfull be sober, and to bring him to them. My lady is resolved to have him, I think, rather than lose such a vast sum as six thousand pound. Oh, come, Mrs. Foible, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... convention added this constitutional bulwark in favor of personal security and private rights; and I am much deceived if they have not, in so doing, as faithfully consulted the genuine sentiments as the undoubted interests of their constituents. The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... co-ordination in a consistent system of the principles of the sciences of fact with those of the sciences of value. Though, after all, those who have refused to learn the lesson from the noble philosophical work of Professor James Ward, the illustrious champion of sober thought in their own University of Cambridge, are perhaps unlikely to master it in the schools of Rome ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... morning and the daffodils are waving in the borders of the grass. A robin sings in the hedge with an answer from his mate. There is wind in the tree-tops with lively invitation to adventure, but the Bishop is bent to his sober task. Carmen picks her way demurely across the puddles in the direction of the Vicarage. Her eyes turn modestly toward his window. Surely she does not see him at his desk. That dainty inch of scarlet stocking is quite by accident. It is the puddles ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... mercies visit us in every bright ray and glad thought, and call for gratitude and content; the silence of that early dawn, the hushed silence, as it were, of expectation; the holy eventide, its cooling breeze, its lengthening shadows, its falling shades, its still and sober hour; the sultry noontide and the stern and solemn midnight; and Spring-time, and chastening Autumn; and Summer, that unbars our gates, and carries us forth amidst the ever-renewed wonders of the world; and Winter, that ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... more than a few first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... estates passed June 27 was to the effect that the imperial answer to the Lutheran Confession be made "by sober and not spiteful men of learning." The Emperor's Prolog to the Confutation, accordingly, designated the confutators as "certain learned, valiant, sensible, sober, and honorable men of many nations." (C. R. 27, 189.) At the same time they were told to couch ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the State, and an evil tree cannot bring forth such fruit. It may, however, be over-stimulated, and the extravagancies of dress and manner which Broadway and Fifth Avenue, the opera, or any fashionable assembly of young people display in America, are universally and justly condemned by sober thought as falling only a few grades ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... circle round the combatants narrowed. A few discreet exclamations of admiration greeted Droulde's most successful parry. De Marny was getting more and more excited, the older man more and more sober ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... by the rabid ones, that General Sherman had given up all that we had been fighting for, had conceded every thing to Jos. Johnston, and had, as the boys say, "knocked the fat into the fire;" but sober reflection soon overruled these harsh expressions, and, with those who knew General Sherman, and appreciated him, he was still the great soldier, patriot, and gentleman. In future times this matter will be looked at more calmly and dispassionately. The bitter animosities ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... equipment for war and enjoyed absolute harmony among themselves. Whereas the majority of persons are led by unmixed good fortune to audacity but by a tremendous fear to proper behavior, they had quite a different experience at that time in those matters. The more successes they had the more sober it made them; against their enemies they displayed the kind of boldness that partakes of bravery, while toward one another they employed that right dealing which is closely connected with good order. [Footnote: The word for "good order" ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... civil indeed. She'd got quite sober by the afternoon, and the neighbours told her how near the boy was to death, and that the doctor said if it hadn't been for the wise and prompt measures taken by the Miss Seawards before he arrived, he didn't believe the boy would have lived—when they told her that, ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... loose out of hell for wood! Four hath he slain, and now well I see, That it must be my chance the fifth to be! But rather than thus shamefully to be slain, Would Christ my friends had hanged me, being but years twain! And yet, if I take good heart and be bold, Percase he woll be more sober ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley |
