"Spectator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suspicion, having no ground in fact, a mental obsession, then Iago becomes abnormal and consequently more or less irresponsible. But this suggestion of Emilia's faithlessness made in the early part of the play is never followed up by the dramatist, and the spectator is left in complete uncertainty as to whether there be any truth or not in Iago's suspicion. If Othello has played his Ancient false, that is an extenuating circumstance in the otherwise extraordinary guilt of Iago, and would no doubt be accorded to him as such, were he on trial ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... and the choir, as usual, there is a screen that half destroys the majesty of the building, by abridging the spectator of the long vista which he might otherwise have of the whole interior at a glance. We peeped through the barrier, and saw some elaborate monuments in the chancel beyond; but the doors of the screen are kept locked, so that the vergers may raise a revenue by showing strangers through ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who went on strike have now resumed work. The discovery was made by a spectator who saw one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... flower-pot about twice the size of the throne, occupied one side of the picture. To all these details Belasez paid no attention. The one thing at which she looked was the face of the fainting Queen, which was turned full towards the spectator. It was a very lovely face of a decidedly Jewish type. But what made Belasez glance from it to the brazen mirror fixed to the wall opposite? Was it Anegay of whom Bruno had been thinking when he murmured that she was so like some one? Undoubtedly ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... to rest. The phenomenon of a huge blazing fire, upon the opposite bank of the glen, again presented itself to the eye of the watchman. It was surrounded as before by figures, which, distinguished by their opaque forms, being between the spectator and the red glaring light, moved and fluctuated around it as if engaged in some mystical ceremony. George, though equally cautious, was of a bolder character than his elder brother. He resolved to examine ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... When the boss told her that I had not been seen since they had crossed the last mountains, she hung her head and looked completely heart broken. I was lying in the mess wagon at the time an interested spectator of all that took place, and seeing her looking so downhearted I could hardly restrain myself from jumping out of the wagon and taking her in my arms. After a time she slowly raised her head and looked long and wistfully up the trail. Then turning to the camp boss again she said, "Camp boss tell ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... nominally he adopted a neutral attitude toward both, but really in secret he chose the cause of Trebellius, and cooeperated with him among other ways by allowing him to obtain soldiers. From this time on he made himself a spectator and director of their contests; and they fought, seized in turn the most advantageous points in the city, and entered upon a career of killing and burning, so that on one occasion the holy vessels were carried ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... away to watch his lines and Harry remained at his station near the horses, where Dalton was compelled by the same responsibility to stay with him. It was the first time that Harry had been forced to remain a mere spectator of a battle raging around him, and while not one who sought danger for danger's sake, it was hard work to control himself and remain ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hand—seeming to take more interest therein than the patient himself, who, Indian-like, could hardly have manifested less concern in what was doing for his relief than had the wounded limb been hanging to some other man's shoulder, and he but an accidental spectator of ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... like the hero of 'Quentin Durward,' The lad's journey across France, and his hairbreadth escapes, makes up as good a narrative of the kind as we have ever read. For freshness of treatment and variety of incident Mr. Henty has surpassed himself."—Spectator. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... <Spec(t), spic(e) (look): (1) spectator, spectacle, suspect, aspect, prospect, expect, respectable, disrespect, inspection, speculate, special, especial, species, specify, specimen, spice, suspicion, conspicuous, despise, despite, spite; (2) specter, spectrum, spectroscope, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... vast number of acquittals in the seventies and the sudden dropping off in the number of witch trials in the eighties we know that there must have been many other judges who were acquitting witches or quietly ignoring the charges against them. Doubtless Kelyng, who, as a spectator at Bury, had shown his skepticism as to the accusations, had when he later became a chief justice been one of those ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... active boy, resembling his father in looks. Between these there undoubtedly existed a deep affection. During the holidays they were frequently to be met walking or riding together, and Shafto pere would so far emerge from his retirement as to be a proud spectator at cricket matches in Tremenheere Park and elsewhere. Douglas and two of the Tremenheere boys were schoolmates, and he was in continual request at their home. Unfortunately these visits were displeasing to Mrs. Shafto, as was also his intimacy with the young people at the vicarage; and ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... of your age to be merely a spectator. How lovely Eugene and Mrs. Carpenter look together! She is just about your size and dances with the verve of youth, which I admire extremely. Gravity at that age always seems far-fetched, put on as a sort of garment to hide something not quite frank or open, but it ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised that she had nothing to do with the case. She was evidently there as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a "friend at court," and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to stand ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... obeyed sulkily. She wished very much that Augusta Goold had stopped at home. It would have been a great deal pleasanter to have gone on practising hysterics with Hyacinth as a sympathetic spectator. When the door was shut Augusta ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... hung about him, as yet the initial strangeness of his being alive at all in this remote age touched everything with wonder, with a sense of the irrational, with something of the quality of a realistic dream. He was still detached, an astonished spectator, still but half involved in life. What he had seen, and especially the last crowded tumult, framed in the setting of the balcony, had a spectacular turn, like a thing witnessed from the box of a theatre. "I don't understand," he said. "What was the trouble? My mind is in a whirl. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... with all the appliances of luxury which Europe or Asia can produce. The pleasure grounds, in their artistic embellishments, are perhaps unsurpassed by any others in the world. Fountains, groves, lawns, lakes, cascades and statues, bewilder and delight the spectator. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... reader or spectator; you must not think that you have to do with men who care anything for their lives, and who therefore are making a sacrifice—no indeed! They have nothing in common with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... its charms or influenced by the spell which such a tranquil and cheerful landscape is likely to exercise upon thinking and feeling man. With both it was indifference; for the Indian views Nature with the eyes of a materially interested spectator only. But the elder brother had another reason for not noticing the beauty of the scene. He was not only troubled, he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to the inference that the child ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... distance, himself among the rest, and yet preserved their relation to himself and each other by encouraging their peculiarities, outside of that limit, and set us all agoing by placing us at the right point of view, with, in some mysterious way, the common sense of the whole party as spectator; so that we were like figures in a landscape, which, while we were looking at them, I knew, without knowing ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... desolate of belief, you sought for the permanent element of life— precisely where Pascal recognised all that was most fleeting and unsubstantial—in divertissement; in the pleasure of looking on, a spectator of the accidents of existence, an observer of the follies of mankind. Like the Gods of the Epicurean, you seem to regard our life as a play that is played, as a comedy; yet how often the tragic note comes in! What pity, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... skies, wear the light of the ideal and the abstract. The sudden flaming up of national life, the abeyance of every small and mean preoccupation, cleared the moral air as the streets had been cleared, and made the spectator feel as though he were reading a great poem on War rather than ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... more curious and remarkable publications than did this. The following articles, given as notable specimens, remind us somewhat of Addison's Memoranda for the Spectator, which the waiter at the coffee-house picked up and read aloud for the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... snare, utterly blind, because she fancied that she saw clearly. In the pride of her mysticism, she had fancied herself above so commonplace a passion as love. It was a curious feature of lower humanity, which she might investigate and analyse harmlessly as a cold scientific spectator; and, in her mingled pride and purity, she used to indulge Lancelot in metaphysical disquisitions about love and beauty, like that first one in their walk home from Minchampstead, from which a less celestially innocent soul would have shrunk. She thought, forsooth, as the old proverb ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... pair traveled about the world together. Every springtime she, as spectator, would watch him directing Wagnerian choruses in the "Mystic Abyss" at Bayreuth. Winters it was he who went into ecstasies under her tremendous "Hojotoho!"—the fierce cry of a Valkyrie afraid of the austere father Wotan; ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... delay the Tenor dived in after him, the cockleshell of a boat, half capsizing as he went over, took in water enough to sink her to the gunwale, and the whole thing happened so quickly that a spectator on the bank who had seen the boat and its occupants one moment might have looked in vain the next for any trace ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... bringing the engagement well within view of the spectators in the loft, or rather, it should be said, of the spectator; for, as soon as the landlord's daughter saw that a deadly shock was inevitable, she covered her face with her hands, stepped down from beside her father, and fell upon her knees in the straw close ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... instance, to his friend Matuszyriski, after pouring forth complaint after complaint:—"Tell my parents that I am very happy, that I am in want of nothing, that I amuse myself famously, and never feel lonely." Indeed, the Spectator's opinion that nothing discovers the true temper of a person so much as his letters, requires a good deal of limitation and qualification. Johnson's ideas on the same subject may be recommended as a corrective. He held that there was no transaction which offered stronger temptations to fallacy ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... words of the animated girl, who apparently now had recovered her spirits and strength, it was plain to the boys that she was genuinely grateful for the rescue which they had made. She was a deeply interested spectator of the work of the boys in casting off and starting their swift boat and even insisted upon being permitted to steer part of ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... renewal of health the truth had come home to him that he was as unfitted to the priesthood as he was for marriage, or nearly so. The path of his life lay between the church and the world; he must remain in the world though he never could be of the world, he could only view the world as a spectator, as a passing pageant it interested him; and with art and literature and music, for necessary distraction, and the fixed resolve to save his soul—nothing really mattered but that—he hoped to achieve ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... am lost! Somebody possesses my soul and governs it! Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no longer anything in myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified spectator of all the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He does not wish to, and so I remain, trembling and distracted, in the armchair in which he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... madness of Charles and his followers, in risking a battle on such ground, with jaded, unequal forces, half-starved, and deprived of rest the preceding night, has often been remarked, and is at one glance perceived by the spectator. The Royalist artillery and cavalry had full room to play, for not a knoll or bush was there to mar their murderous aim. Mountains and fastnesses were on the right, within a couple of hours' journey, but ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... a score of separate cantons closely resembling our States in their political organization, it is difficult to arrive at the exact situation throughout the whole country—small though it be. However, generally speaking, it may be said that the Helvetic republic has remained almost a passive spectator of the woman movement, though a few signs of progress are worthy of note. The Catholic cantons lag behind those that have adopted Protestantism, and the latter are led by Geneva. Though subject to the Napoleonic code, Geneva ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... humorist takes off the mask from himself and others, and in so far as we can detach ourselves from pride and vanity, we laugh. The one who cannot thus detach himself is "hurt" by humor; the one who somehow has become a spectator of his own strivings can laugh at himself. Thus humor, in addition to becoming a compensation and a form of entertainment, is a form of self-revelation and self-understanding carried on by a peculiar technique. On the whole this technique depends ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... as a spectator would get of what goes on in the ranks on such an occasion as today's final parade! Suppose you were where I so often wish you, at the top of the slope above the field, which in spite of certain unevennesses would look to you fairly level. You would see the band ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... gladly returning to his castle of Montaigne, where he wrote down what he had seen; "hungering for self-knowledge," inquiring, indolent, without ardor for work, an enemy of all constraint, he was at the same time frank and subtle, gentle, humane, and moderate. As an inquiring spectator, without personal ambition, he had taken for his life's motto, "Who knows? (Que sais-je?)" Amidst the wars of religion he remained without political or religious passion. "I am disgusted by novelty, whatever aspect it may assume, and with good reason," he would say, "for I have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... deepened in Cyprian's eyes as he followed his aunt; he belonged to a generation that is supposed to be over-fond of the role of mere spectator, but looking at napkins that one did not mean to buy was a pleasure beyond his comprehension. Mrs. Chemping held one or two napkins up to the light and stared fixedly at them, as though she half expected to find some revolutionary cypher written on them in scarcely visible ink; then she ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... sergeant having been present immediately after the finding of the body, his evidence was not considered necessary, and, moreover, he was known to be watching the case in the interests of the accused. Like myself, therefore, he was present as a spectator, but as a highly interested one, for he took very complete shorthand notes of the whole of the evidence and ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... the road from Naples to Rome. He had since crossed our path with that iteration of travel which brings you again and again in view of the same trunks and the same tourists in the round of Europe, and finally at Civita Vecchia he had turned up, a silent spectator of our scene with the agent of the diligence, and had gone off apparently a confirmed passenger by steamer. Perhaps a nearer view of the sailor's hornpipe, as danced by that vessel in the harbor, shook his resolution. At any rate, here he was again, and with ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... to interrupt the game, so he stood by until, by a breath-taking triple jump, Old Man Bogle sent his antagonist down to defeat. Then, and only then, did Scattergood speak to the old gentleman who had been the spectator. ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... twenty, with long locks parted in the middle falling upon his doublet, and the brow and eyes of the god Apollo, who curled his lip in scorn, and signalised himself by his stormy discontent. Here is his own description of his conduct: "I was a spectator; they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked; and to make up the Atticism, they were out and I hissed." It was the young Milton, in the year in which he wrote ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... mechanism. Dials and electrodes were adjusted, connections were established, and the beams and pencils of force began to reconstruct the great central controlling device. But this time, instead of being merely a bewildered spectator, Seaton was an active participant in the work. As each key and meter was wrought and mounted, there were indelibly impressed upon his brain the exact reason for and function of the part, and later, when the control itself was finished and the seemingly interminable task ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... to appear as a contributor to some of the leading papers. This is, with the English, a thing that always adds prestige. To be able to call oneself a "contributor" to the Times or to Punch or the Morning Post or the Spectator, is a high honour. I have met these "contributors" all over the British Empire. Some, I admit, look strange. An ancient wreck in the back bar of an Ontario tavern (ancient regime) has told me that ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... History of the Plague of London as if he had been a personal spectator, but he was only three years old at ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... repose and home happiness, of the fruits of labors past, which Collingwood, probably without good reason, fancied to be characteristic of his own temperament. Lord Exmouth, compelled to be a passive spectator, saw with consequent increased apprehension the internal political troubles of Great Britain in his later days. Though not a party man, he was strongly conservative, so that the agitations of the Reform era concealed from him the advantages ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... about her ears, tying a thick garland of red peonies, intended to decorate the picture of the original Hyde, a dreary old fellow, in bands, and grasping a Bible in one wooden hand, while a distant view of Plymouth Bay and the Mayflower tried to convince the spectator that he was transported, among other antediluvians, by that Noah's ark, to the New World. On either hand hung the little Flora's great-grandmother-in-law, and her great-grandfather accordingly, Mrs. Mehitable and Parson Job Hyde, peering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... spite of the minister's unwieldly efforts to defend himself, in rolling him down upon the floor, where he knelt upon him in triumph. "Voila! Je sais faire la boxe, moi!" Then turning to Thelma, who stood an amazed spectator of the scene, her flushed cheeks and tear-swollen eyes testifying to the misery of the hours she had passed, he said, "Run, Mademoiselle, run! The little Britta is outside, she has a pony-car—she will drive you home. I will stay here till Phil-eep comes. I shall enjoy myself! I will begin—Phil-eep ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... indicate that Mr. Hatch heard her, the most disinterested spectator would have observed a perceptible acceleration ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... stream. It was supposed that some warriors returning from a hunt, struck the Hockhocking just as the body of the drowned squaw floated past. White and the girl succeeded in reaching the Mount, where M'Clelland had been no indifferent spectator to the sudden commotion among the Indians, as the prairie warriors were seen to strike off in every direction, and before White and the girl had arrived, a party of some twenty warriors had already gained the eastern acclivity of the Mount, and were cautiously ascending, carefully keeping under ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... bouquet,—rearranged by his own fat fingers, and discord and incongruity visible in every combination of color,—he sent off by a special messenger. Then he proceeded to make his toilet,—an operation rarely graceful or picturesque in our sex, and an insult to the spectator when obesity is superadded. When he had put on a clean shirt, of which there was grossly too much, and added a white waistcoat, that seemed to accent his rotundity, he completed his attire with a black frock coat of ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... child, but also long after my student days, to those unfortunates who grow fire-red quite without reason; I needed only to hear of some shameful deed, of theft, robbery, murder, and I would get so red that a spectator might believe that I was one of the criminals. In my native city there was an old maid who had, I knew even as a boy, remained single because of unrequited love of my grandfather. She seemed to me a very ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to pronounce in haste on persons and events passing under my eyes; thirty-one months have quickly passed away since I became an attentive spectator of the extraordinary transactions, and of the extraordinary characters of the extraordinary Court and Cabinet of St. Cloud. If my talents to delineate equal my zeal to inquire and my industry to examine; if I am as able a painter ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... little time at his toilet, or he would arrange it with more taste. He seems unconscious that his features are fine, that they have a southern symmetry, clearness, regularity in their chiselling; nor does a spectator become aware of this advantage till he has examined him well, for an anxious countenance and a hollow, somewhat haggard, outline of face disturb the idea of beauty with one of care. His eyes are large, and grave, and gray; their expression ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... eyes of genius. I breathe a keener atmosphere; I have finer intuitions; the brain is no longer clogged with that part of me which is mortal; in whatever imaginary scenes I assist, whether actor or spectator, matters not; I seem to discern the underlying meaning of things—I hear the low faint beating of the hidden pulses of the world. To come back from this enchanted realm to the dull realities of everyday life is like depriving some hero of fairyland of his magic ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... privileges of his guests. By age and by education he belonged to the stout Positivist tradition, and his habit of thought had been formed in the days of the epic struggle between physics and metaphysics. But he had been, then and always, essentially a spectator, a humorous detached observer of the immense muddled variety show of life, slipping out of his seat now and then for a brief dip into the convivialities at the back of the house, but never, as far as one knew, showing the least desire to jump on the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... what the upshot of the business may be," he said. "If the Spaniards, which is likely enough, take the place, they will slaughter all they meet, and will not trouble themselves with questioning anyone whether he is a combatant or a spectator. Besides, when they have once taken the town, they will question all here, and it would be well that I should be able to say that not only did we hold ourselves neutral in the affair, but that none of my equipage ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... their responsibilities, or allow strangers to assume them, would be an occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation: though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and unconsciousness which characterize the most negligent ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... decoration of one of the scenes which consists of three pines, showing what can be conjured up in the mind of the spectator. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... of the presence of a spectator, and instantly assuming her bonnet, and drawing up her tall figure, she exclaimed, in ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had pressed into a few short years far more satisfaction than any other career could have given him. Why should he whimper because the end came early? It would be a good end to make, full of movement and colour. He knew, for he had been a spectator when others had taken that journey, and he was of more importance than they were. The whole town was ringing with his fame. Why should he have regrets? Beauty and fashion came to visit him, and one man came to thank ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... quite missed him there. For him the wedding proper had been less a ceremony than a parade. I can fancy how he resented the organist's grand outburst and the triumphal descent (undeniably effective) of the bridal party over those six or seven steps. Again he was an unregarded and negligible spectator. I presume he missed Johnny's hand in Albert's, and Johnny's pressure on Albert's shoulder—the one with the stain; and I hope he did. It was the hand of the stronger, taking possession. "My prop, my future mainstay!" said ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... the restaurant was pretty well filled, and the numerous inmates busily discussed the news, foreign and political, and affairs private and public, in their various languages and different manners. Guly looked round from his solitary table, an amused spectator of the scene. But suddenly his attention was attracted by a sound of shuffling steps upon the floor, and turning, he beheld his friend the dwarf, making his way in between the tables, with a dexterity which his ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... unfortunately, according to one's point of view, this deponent was not a spectator of the fight in the House of Commons this afternoon, having been himself previously knocked out by a catarrhal microbe possessing, as the sporting journals say, "a remarkable punch." He therefore gives the fracas ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... panegyric instead of satire. I know of no mercantile place so literary. Here I am among the Philistines, spending my mornings so pleasantly, as books, only books, can make them, and sitting at evening the silent spectator of card playing and dancing. The English here unite the spirit of commerce, with the frivolous amusements of high life. One of them who plays every night (Sundays are not excepted here) will tell you how closely he attends to profit. 'I never pay a porter for bringing a burthen till ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... chorus girls when they attempt to assume the light and airy graces of the real article. Some of the men have so deeply entered into their parts that they have attained absolute self-forgetfulness, with the result that they leap and preen about in a manner quite startling to the dispassionate spectator. My career so far has not been a personal triumph. In the middle of a number, the other night, the dancing master clapped his hands violently together, a signal he uses when he wants ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... of O'Connell drove the Confederates from Conciliation Hall, John Martin was not a silent spectator of the crisis, and in consequence of the manly sentiments he expressed with reference to the treatment to which the Young Ireland party had been subjected, he ceased to be a member of the Association. ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the General had been there, the magistrate had given no sign of life. But seated beyond the circle of light cast by the lamps, he had remained an attentive spectator of the scene, and now that he found himself once more alone with Mademoiselle Marguerite he came forward, and leaning against the mantelpiece and looking her full in the face he exclaimed: "Well, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... sitting on the veranda, had been an interested spectator of the conference in the parlor, but it was in the nature of a pantomime. He could hear nothing that was said, but he could see that Miss Fairleigh and Walthall were both laboring under some strong excitement. When, therefore, he saw Walthall pass hurriedly out, leaving Miss ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... introduction to the judge and a disposition that will not be too easily shocked at seeing conditions of life as they actually exist, the spectator may find his way past the policeman at the gate in the rail. It clicks behind him ominously and he wonders whether he will have difficulty in getting out. Finally through clerks and officials who become more kindly as they ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... and the most obviously British, losing the use of their mother tongue, swore with many gesticulatory sacres that they had no English, as indeed they had none for naval purposes. Looking at the miserable, disease-ridden crew, the uninitiated spectator was moved to tears of pity. Not so the naval officer. In France, when a prisoner of war, learning French there without a master, he had heard a saying that he now recalled to some purpose: Vin de grain est plus doux que n'est pas vin de presse—"Willing duties are sweeter ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the cud he had already found. Often, while making the circuit, he paused, and, shading his eyes with his hands, examined the desert to the extremest verge of vision; and always, when the survey was ended, his face clouded with disappointment, slight, but enough to advise a shrewd spectator that he was there expecting company, if not by appointment; at the same time, the spectator would have been conscious of a sharpening of the curiosity to learn what the business could be that required transaction in a place so far from ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... consequently declared vice-president), the next. Washington's commanding character and isolation from party, had preserved this degree of strength to the holders of his own political views. He was present as a spectator at the installation of his successor, and immediately afterward returned to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... things in the description would tell you that the scene was Oriental? What observations does the author make on the difference between East and West? As a spectator, what things would you find most interesting in the scene? Do you know why the author calls the Sultan's palace impenetrable? Why does the author think that his interview with the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... long, remained motionless, glimpsing unexpectedly something of Barbee's soul; watching a little human drama, become spectator to the battle royal of the two contending factions which made up ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... may: whether Henry of Monmouth's noviciate in arms was passed on the Scotch borders, (for in Ireland, as the companion of Richard, he had been merely a spectator,) or whether, as the evidence seems to preponderate, we consider the chroniclers to have antedated his first campaign, he was not allowed to remain long without being personally engaged in a struggle of far greater magnitude in itself, and of vastly more importance to the whole realm of England, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... rapidly away. The soldiers who had remained behind with Redwald were quiet and orderly in their demeanour, and even, in obedience to secret orders, attended the evensong at the minster church, as if moved thereto by devotion, although the curious spectator might easily discover the unaccustomed character of their service, by the difficulty with which they followed the prayers, and the uneasy impatience with which they listened to a lengthened exposition of a portion of the Anglo-Saxon version of ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... (whatever the ordinary management might do), recognising the rights of the spectator, refrained from selling any seats from which no view whatever could be obtained and behaved very well about it—as perhaps one has to do when half-a-guinea is charged for each seat; but with the border-line seats which they did sell—those on the confines of the possible area—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... such was the charitable interpretation. Harry strongly suspected that the imp had been a concealed spectator all the time, and had particularly relished the mischief of the discomfiture, which, after all, was much greater on the part of the Vicar than any one else, as he was a rather stiff, old-fashioned gentleman. Lady Merrifield only laughed, said she had been ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... showing thereby an exasperating familiarity with the room, and, seating himself comfortably before her, expressed his wonder that he had not seen her last night; he had hunted for her everywhere to join his party at supper. And now the lights were on and I a mere spectator at the play; I was having a glimpse of the stage on which I could never move. The lights burned high; they swept the dust and cobwebs from the diamond panes; they drove the flames to hiding in the ashes; their touch turned the leaves of the ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... parts, his eyes, like a drunkard's, see all double, and his fancy, like an old man's spectacles, make a great letter in a small print. He imagines every place where he comes his theatre, and not a look stirring but his spectator; and conceives men's thoughts to be very idle, that is, [only] busy about him. His walk is still in the fashion of a march, and like his opinion unaccompanied, with his eyes most fixed upon his own person, or on others with reflection to himself. If he ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of Jemappes, the first pitched battle won by the Republic, excited an outburst of revolutionary fervour in the Convention which deeply affected the relations of France to Great Britain, hitherto a neutral spectator of the war. A manifesto was published declaring that the French nation offered its alliance to all peoples who wished to recover their freedom, and charging the generals of the Republic to give their protection to all persons who might suffer in the cause ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... death, no horror to abhor. I never thought it else than but to cease to dwell Spectator, and resolve most naturally once more Into the dearly loved ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... so needful to form clear and distinct notions of what is really meant by each of these hypotheses that I will ask you to imagine what, according to each, would have been visible to a spectator of the events which constitute the history of the earth. On the first hypothesis, however far back in time that spectator might be placed, he would see a world essentially, though perhaps not in all its details, similar to that which now exists. The animals ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... the two strangers represented some exalted military and ecclesiastical authority. This was shown in their dress—a long-forgotten, half mediaeval costume, that to the imaginative spectator was perfectly in keeping with their mysterious advent, and to the more practical as startling as a masquerade. The foremost figure wore a broad-brimmed hat of soft felt, with tarnished gold lace, and a dark feather tucked in its recurved flap; a short cloak of fine black cloth thrown over ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... concentrated scorn, where Strafford first begs the king to "be good to his children," and then, with a contempt that is almost sublime, implores, "Stay, sir, do not promise, do not swear!" The whole of the second scene in the fifth act is pure genius. The reader, or spectator, knows by this time that all hope is over: that Strafford, though all unaware, is betrayed and undone. It is a subtle dramatic ruse, that of Browning's representing him sitting in his apartment in the Tower with his young children, William and Anne, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... of observing the unities of time and place arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... advantage in a landscape; but, really, Mr. D——-'s villa was such a jumble, so entirely out of all just proportion, that I could do nothing with it; and was glad to find that I could put a grove between the spectator and the building: anybody but its inmates ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... fruitless; the British infantry formed in squares, and the best of his horsemen bit the dust. Still Napoleon's cry was "Forward!" thus goading them on to destruction. Their overthrow was hastened by a charge of British cavalry, which had hitherto been very little more than a spectator of the battle. Seizing the moment favourable for the charge, Wellington called up Lord Ernest Somerset's brigade of heavy cavalry, consisting of the life-guards, the royal horse-guards, and the first dragoon-guards, and directed them to charge the already crippled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... which is now no longer visible. A thick black smoke ascends up into the clear air, where it rests like a cloud. Out of the flames, and even out of the smoke, the wind carries away large masses of fire, which, crackling and cracking, are borne on to the wood, and which fill the spectator with apprehension of their falling upon the nearest trees and burning ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... accurate and attentive spectator, observes of Heliopolis, (Geograph. l. xvii. p. 1158;) but of Memphis he notices, however, the mixture of inhabitants, and the ruin of the palaces. In the proper Egypt, Ammianus enumerates Memphis among the four cities, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... inextinguishable laughter. It is, I am told, the Italian tradition; but it is one more honoured in the breach than the observance. With the total disappearance of these damsels, with a stronger Lady Macbeth, and, if possible, with some compression of those scenes in which Salvini does not appear, and the spectator is left at the mercy of Macduffs and Duncans, the play would go twice as well, and we should be better able to follow and enjoy an admirable work ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should not take the trouble to record this history if there were no love in it. Love is the universal bond of human sympathy. But you must give people time. What we call falling in love is not half so simple an affair as you think, though it often looks simple enough to the spectator. Albert Charlton was pleased, he was full of enthusiasm, and I will not deny that he several times reflected in a general way that so clear a talker and so fine a thinker would make a charming wife for some man—some intellectual man—some man like himself, for ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... temperance in everything, he found its negative expressions as significant as its more violent phases. He had promised his wife solemnly that he would keep away from these, and he had a natural inclination to keep his promise; he had no wish to be that peaceful spectator who always gets shot when there is any firing on a mob. He interested himself in the apparent indifference of the mighty city, which kept on about its business as tranquilly as if the private war being fought out in its midst were a vague rumor of Indian ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mr. Cudmore, you are really too innocent for these people. But come—it shall never be said that youth and inexperience ever suffered from the unworthy ridicule and cold sarcasm of the base world, while Tom O'Flaherty stood by a spectator. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... man!" said the magistrate, pointing to the vague recesses into which the spectator had disappeared. An officer of the court went out hastily. Presently returning: "He is gone," said ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... lasted I do not know; but when recollection returned I found myself supported in a chair by a woman who was a spectator, and Johnson, the officer, was sprinkling me with water. It was some minutes before I could speak or stand, but, as soon as I could, I arose and earnestly entreated to have the picture restored ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... give your sympathy its widest expansion: as though at the touch of a fairy wand you will see the flimsiest of objects assume importance, and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar test? Should we not see many of them suddenly pass from grave to gay, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... petticoat showed itself in front, but did not conceal the active, well-shaped feet. There was something extraordinarily majestic in her whole bearing, especially the poise of her head, which made the spectator never perceive how small her stature actually was. Her face and complexion, too, were of the cast on which time is slow to make an impression, being always pale and fair, with keen and delicately-cut features; so that ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grave. He had no occult persuasions. He just sat in his rocker and smoked hard and imagined hard. He imagined the lives of his family not only as they might have been, but as they ought to have been. He was like a spectator at a play, mingling belief and make-belief inextricably, knowing it all untrue, yet weeping, laughing, thrilling as if it were ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... actually seen. Three years before the date of this engraving Turner had made a drawing of Ramsgate for the Southern Coast series. That drawing represents the same day, the same moment, and the same ships, from a different point of view. It supposes the spectator placed in a boat some distance out at sea, beyond the fishing-boats on the left in the present plate, and looking towards the town, or into the harbor. The brig, which is near us here, is then, of course, in the distance on the right; the schooner entering the harbor, and, in both plates, ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... day. The misty blue of the Atlantic, the silver thread of the Connecticut, Mounts Tom and Holyoke, and cloud-clapped Monadnock, the cities of Worcester and Fitchburg—all these and many other beautiful objects are spread out before the spectator. But it cannot be described—it must be seen to be appreciated; and the throngs of visitors that flit through the town every summer afford abundant evidence that the love of the beautiful and grand in nature still lives in the hearts ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... how happily two people, if there are two, can live in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think the spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralysis personal desire. You are content to become a mere spectator. The baker stands in his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by to the cafe at night; the troops drum and trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold as so many lions. It would task language to say how ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... turned aside from this course, they were given permission to do as they liked. In this way they incurred death instead of disenfranchisement, for they fought more than ever, and especially because their contests were centers of attraction, so that even Augustus became a spectator in company with ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... I expected. Having secured a spectator to wreak his gloom upon, Mr. Dod proceeded to make the most of the opportunity. He put his hat on recklessly, and thrust his hands into his pa—his trouser pockets. We were in a strange town, but he fastened his eyes moodily upon the pavement, as if nothing else were worth considering. ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... numb fingers upon his thighs, the successful champion uttered a melodious crow, which so disgusted the spectator that he was about to retire within doors, when his eyes fell upon a thinly clad, timid-looking woman who was advancing along the newly opened path, casting deprecating glances at the two boys, who from peaceful rivalry were now proceeding to open warfare, carried on with the ammunition ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of such a quest is readily conceivable. A drama with real characters, and the spectator at liberty to go behind the scenes and look upon and talk with the kings and queens between the acts; to examine the scenery, to handle the properties, to study the "make up" of the imposing personages of full-dress histories; ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... words. This was as much a muddle, Drew thought, as any battle. You never saw any action except that immediately about you—mostly you were too busy trying to keep alive to care about incidentals. Come to think of it, this was about the first time he had ever sat out a fight, watching it as a spectator. ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... accompanied by English wives and by young children who talked no language but English. As they traversed the capital, not a single shout of exultation was raised; and they were almost everywhere greeted with kindness. One rude spectator, indeed, was heard to remark that Hans made a much better figure, now that he had been living ten years on the fat of the land, than when he first came. "A pretty figure you would have made," said a Dutch soldier, "if we had not come." And ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the originators of the animal kingdom. Thus from very simple Protists the first animals and the first plants may have arisen. All were still very minute, and it is worth remembering that had there been any scientific spectator after our kind upon the earth during these long ages, he would have lamented the entire absence of life, although the seas were teeming. The simplest forms of life and the protoplasm which Huxley called the physical basis of life will ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... pleased that David had constituted himself her protector. The hours sped along; the soft June sun was never too hot; the little white clouds that crossed the sky cast shadows not needed for the busy pleasure seekers, nor even for the quiet spectator. At last Matilda heard a ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... that his revenge all this while had seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness! and while he meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered the instance of some murderer, who, seeing a murder on the stage, was by the mere force of the scene and resemblance of circumstances so affected that on the spot he confessed the crime ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Here a spectator interrupted with the remark that the deceased was never known to drink beer, but had been fond of purl, and the question was ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... introduction, and a thousand minute particulars which cannot be easily enumerated, that it is always dangerous to detach a witty saying from the group to which it belongs, and to see it before the eye of the spectator, divested of those concomitant circumstances, which gave it animation, mellowness, and relief. I ventured, however, at all hazards to put down the first instances that occurred to me, as proofs of Mr Burke's lively and brilliant fancy; but am very sensible that his numerous friends could ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... mind an idea of inanimate stillness, of that motionless torpor with which our feelings have nothing congenial; of anything, in short, but life. In the very silence there is a deadness with which a human spectator appears out of keeping. The presence of man seems an intrusion on the dreary solitude of this wintry desert, which even its native animals have for ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... had he resumed his position when another individual, equally disinterested, impassively walked down the steps, proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it, expectorated carefully on the axle, and returned slowly and pensively to the hotel. A third spectator wearily disengaged himself from one of the Ionic columns of the portico and walked to the box, remained for a moment in serious and expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then returned to his ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... no doubt the greatest authority, both on horses and horsemanship, now living in this country. Everything which he writes is lucidly expressed, and no detail is too trivial to be explained."—The Spectator. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... was the grateful spectator's silent comment. "No new money there. I wish they'd send more of them over here. But it appears that, with few exceptions, only freaks can ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... world. A Russo-Chino-Japanese alliance might on behalf of the interest or dignity of one of the members of such a group challenge this country in some form or another, and a Western Europe with whom we had refused to co-operate for a common protection might as a consequence remain an indifferent spectator ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... from sonus "sound," and for this reason, that the hollow mask necessarily produces a larger sound. The Greeks, too, call these masks [Greek: prosopa] from the fact that they are placed over the face and conceal the countenance from the spectator: [Greek: para tou pros tous opas tithesthai]. But since, as we have said, it was by the masks they put on that actors played the different characters represented in a tragedy or comedy—Hecuba or Medea or Simon or Chremes,—so also all other men who could be recognized by their several characteristics ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... Roundhead, and above the roar of the flames and the crashing of falling roofs there rose the report of guns and the clash of swords. Morgan, half stunned and like a man in a dream, was standing propped up against a tree a helpless spectator of the scene, when suddenly one of his own men rushed ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... the doctor, "all the scenes of which charity compels you to be a spectator; but you will get used to it in time, as we all do. It is the law of existence. The confessor, the magistrate, the lawyer would find life unendurable if the spirit of the State did not assert itself above the feelings of the individual. Could we live at all but for that? Is not the soldier in ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... intention by its evidence of the writer's intense love for this country. Naturally he has a rich stock of good stories, amongst which I was delighted to welcome yet once again that old favourite about the departing spectator who, on being told that two Acts remained to be performed, said briefly, "That's why I'm going!" Newer (to me) was the Dundreary tale that told how the elder SOTHERN'S triumph was actually the result of JEFFERSON'S partiality for horse-exercise. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... man. Mr. Moore was tall and of that refined spareness of shape which suggests the scholar. Yet he had not the scholar's eye. On the contrary, his regard was quick, if not alert, and while it did not convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator an uncomfortable feeling, not altogether easy to analyze. He wore his iron gray locks quite long, and to this distinguishing idiosyncrasy, as well as to his invariable custom of taking his dog with him wherever he went, was due the interest always shown in him by street urchins. On account ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the keeper's labors were over, and Caper, giving him a present for his inviting him to assist as spectator at la toilette bien bete, or beastly dressing, walked off to breakfast, evidently thinking that Art was not dead in that menagerie, whatever Rocjean might say of its state of health in the world ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... only get over a certain shy awkwardness. And indeed it was a provoking thing to Clarissa Gould, that when they went through their scenes alone together he acted in a manner that really showed great promise, but if a third person were present he was not so good, and with every additional spectator the merit of his performance diminished. There was only one scene in which he managed completely to forget himself and become the person he represented, and that was where he crosses swords with the hero, and is disarmed. He could fence a little, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Alaskan women in such public questions as affect women elsewhere is that of the spectator rather than of the worker. When legislation on housing and tenement laws, protection of factory workers, prevention of child labor and like problems becomes necessary they will not be ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various |
