"At the best" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the farthest driver in the block. While the policeman stands there in the open space, no wheel or hoof stirs, and it does not seem as if the particles of the mass could detach themselves for such separate movement as they have at the best. Softly, almost imperceptibly, he drops his arms, and lets fall the viewless barrier which he had raised with them; he remains where he was, but the immense bodies he had stayed liquefy and move in their opposite courses, and for that time ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... he had exceeded his income. Not his expenses as President, but his expenses as planter dragged him down. At first he thought that his debts would reach seven or eight thousand dollars, which must be discharged from a private estate hardly exceeding two hundred thousand dollars in value at the best of times, and rendered almost worthless by neglect and by the embargo. The sudden demand for this sum of money, coming at the moment of his political mortifications, wrung from him cries of genuine distress such as no public disaster had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... at the best, human life on this minute and perishing planet is a mere episode, and as ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... say is that he is a man who has studied all the systems, and who appears to me to have stopped at the best." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... feathery and he scarcely gave it thought at first. He had no doubt that he knew exactly in which direction camp lay, and it never entered his head that he might go wrong or lose his way as he dashed through the woods at the best speed of which he ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... of the One, of the heart, and he is entering what Mephistopheles calls the 'greater world' (for greater it appears to be from the Mephistophelean standpoint)—the world of the 'many,' of politics and ethics and art and literature and society—the world whose highest ideal is success, or, at the best, the 'greatest good of the greatest number' and the evolution of that terrible ghoul ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... days following his arrival Victor Durnovo indulged, according to his lights, in the doubtful pleasure mentioned. He purchased at the best factory the best clothes obtainable; he lived like a fighting cock in the one so-called hotel—a house chiefly affected and supported by ship-captains. He spent freely of money that was not his, and imagined himself to be leading the life ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... division, we come to something like real personalities, to men with individual characteristics—such men as Ageladas of Argos, Callon and Onatas of Aegina, and Canachus of Sicyon. Mere fragment as our information concerning these early masters is at the best, it is at least unmistakeably information about men with personal differences of temper and talent, of their motives, of what we call style. We have come to a sort of art which is no longer broadly characteristic ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... realised all it means? I'm none too amiable at the best of times"—grimly. "And my temper's not likely to improve now I'm tied by the leg. You'll have to fetch and carry, and put up with all the whims and tantrums of a very sick man. Are you ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... broke in, "in my opinion you can be so sure that the inheritance is yours that I will offer to act the part of purchaser for you. I will undertake that you shall have the land at the best possible price, and have a written engagement made out under private seal, like a contract to deliver goods. . . . I will go to the Englishman in the character of buyer. I understand that sort of thing; it was my specialty at Mantes. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... with admirable coolness," says he, rather savagely. "After all, at the best of times your love for me ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, —Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?— No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul, Or ye would heighten ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... inherited craft and cunning to keep his head upon his shoulders at the best of times. And the talk of reforms in the Ottoman Empire is an idle and ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... his country—you have made a slave of!' exclaimed AEnone, impetuously. 'He has been stripped of his family one by one, and now you would place him in the arena, to be the victim of wild beasts, or at the best, of ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... so neither am I greatly dejected and depressed by suffering the latter. Is the actor esteemed happier to whose lot it falls to play the principal part than he who plays the lowest? and yet the drama may run twenty nights together, and by consequence may outlast our lives; but, at the best, life is only a little longer drama, and the business of the great stage is consequently a little more serious than that which is performed at the Theatre-royal. But even here, the catastrophes and calamities which are represented are capable of affecting us. The wisest ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... to cover the moon, and the snow began to fall. Hitherto we had got on pretty well, for there was light enough to see the track, feeble as it was. Now, however, we had to keep a careful lookout. We pressed our horses, and they went bravely, but it was slow work at the best. It got darker and darker, for the clouds went on gathering, and the snow was coming down in huge dull flakes. Faster and thicker they came, until at length we could see nothing of the road before us, and were compelled to leave all to the wisdom of our horses. My father, having great confidence ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... now perplexed and downhearted; for now the look of the elder scarce liked her, and the children began to seem to her as images, or at the best not more to her than the rabbits or the goats; and she rued her word that she would abide there the night through. For she said to herself: I fear some trap or guile; is the witch behind this also? for the old man is yet stark, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds hath power to vex or make afraid, much less a few pine shavings and the want of a little paint. Despair is never endless; it's a short-lived emotion at the worst, a selfish one at the best. Moralizing thus, it was by some means revealed to us that people are happy in paying twenty-five dollars a week at Martha's Vineyard and Mount Desert for the blessed privilege of living in unfinished and unfurnished rooms,—breathing plenty of fresh air, typhoid malaria ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... nerves I have," he said, "and what a wretched sleeper I am at the best of times. I can't sleep to-night. The window in my room rattles every time the wind blows. I wish it was as fast as your ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... thousands of penguins that abounded, while the naturalists wandered further afield in search of specimens. In the center of Cape Adare beach the hut used by the members of Borchgrevink's party was still found to be standing in very good condition, though at the best of times deserted dwellings are far from cheerful to contemplate. Bernacchi had been a member of this small party of eight, and on the spot he recalled the past, and told of the unhappy death of Hanson—one ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... have merely visited the classic scenes of Greece and Italy, or at the best have "browsed about" the ruinous sites of Tyre and Carthage, must have a mortifying sense of the newness of such recent settlements, in reading of Mr. Porter's journey through Bashan, and sojourn in Bozrah, Salcah, Edrei, and the other cities of the Rephaim. As Chicago ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... hand, Europe must depend in the long run on her own daily labor and not on the largesse of America; but, on the other hand, she will not pinch herself in order that the fruit of her daily labor may go elsewhere. In short, I do not believe that any of these tributes will continue to be paid, at the best, for more than a very few years. They do not square with human nature or agree with the ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... all things at the best; in one rich thought unite All purest joys of sense and soul, all present love and light; Yet bind this truth upon thy brow and clasp it to thy heart, And then nor grief nor gladness here shall claim too great a part— All radiance of this lower sky is to that glory dim; Far ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... gullies about the sink-hole, and these, emptying into the cavity and sending a continuous stream over the boy, had served to chill him through and through, and he had a pretty fair chance of being drowned, or dying from cold and exhaustion. Ben pressed on to the still-house at the best speed he could make, and such of the moonshiners as were half sober came out with ropes and a barrel, which they lowered into the cavity. Thad managed to crawl into the barrel, and, after several ineffectual attempts, he was ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... see that, even at the best, the victory is doomed to be tarnished by excesses, and that then it will be the turn of the vanquished to set their minds on a frantic revenge and a just victory? Each nation desires the end of wars through its own triumph, and from one such victory to another humanity ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... Herr!" (it is that gentleman). "Och, what good fortune, that the Herr is the first person I meet in Compostella." Even Borrow could scarcely believe his eyes. Benedict had come to dig for the treasure, and in the meantime proposed to live at the best hotel and pay his score when the digging was done. Borrow gave him a dollar, which he paid to a witch for telling him where exactly the treasure lay. A third time, to his own satisfaction and Borrow's ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... up' the fortunes of a great family? I don't know I'm sure,—except that I don't feel like it! Great families don't appeal to me. I shouldn't care if there were none left. They are never interesting at the best of times,—perhaps out of several of them may come one clever man or woman,—and all the rest will be utter noodles. It isn't worth while to marry Roxmouth on such dubious grounds ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... sorts, good and bad," said Ellerey carelessly. "At the best he wants a lot of beating; at the worst, well, he wants a lot of beating that way, too. How is it you feel ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... indulge concupiscence, and the casual and unavoidable crushing of those who, perhaps, otherwise would die within the day, or at most the year, and who obtain but an inferior kind of existence and life, at the best. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... external or superficial view of the subject; at the best it is only symbolical. Mr. Edison is wasting his time in objective experiments, while we are in the deepest ignorance as to our electric personality or our personal electricity. We begin to apprehend that we are electric beings, that these outward manifestations of a subtile form are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... happy Invitation for a stammering Member, who, it seems, had but a weak Voice at the best; and having often attempted to speak in the Debate, but to no Purpose, had sat down in utter ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... Casa Mantegazza had been closed for years, and Pier Mantegazza occupied a small establishment near the Military Hospital, on the Via San Gallo. Anna Cane had arrived in Rome, without family or credentials, and unknown to the American Embassy other than by amazing deposits at the best banks. But she did have, in addition to this, a pungent charm and undeniable force and good taste. It was said that the moment she had seen Mantegazza's villa she had decided to possess it, even at the price of its sere ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... one thing!' says mother. 'Taller's taller, at the best o' times; and the few chores I do at night I can do just as well by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... that at Rhodopis' house the other night I did not drink more; for had I done so I should have lost consciousness entirely, and so have been unable to offend even the smallest insect. My confounded abstemiousness is therefore to blame, that I can no longer enjoy a place at the best table in all Egypt. I am thankful, however, to Rhodopis for past enjoyment, and in memory of her glorious roastbeef (which has bred in me the wish to buy her cook at any price) I send twelve large spits for roasting oxen,—[Rhodopis is said to have sent such a gift to Delphi. Herod.]—and beg ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... till his little patch of land, aided by the shaggy little farm-horse, which has been consorting on the Prospekt with thoroughbred trotters all winter, and helping him to eke out his cash income, scanty at the best of times; or he emigrates to a summer resort, scorning our insinuation that he is so unfashionable as to remain in town. The deserted Prospekt is torn up for repairs. The merchants, especially the goldsmiths, complain that it would be true economy ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... waitress said, appearing at the entrance to the boat-house, so they all hurried off, but two young men were already lunching at the best place, which Madame Dufour had chosen in her mind as her seat. No doubt they were the owners of the skiffs, for they were dressed in boating costume. They were stretched out, almost lying on chairs, and were sunburnt, and had on flannel trousers ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... luxuries of enormous wealth, the refined society of statesmen, and the ennobling intercourse of philosophers for the savage wastes of a rocky island and the society of boorish illiterate islanders, or at the best, of a few other political exiles, all of whom would be as miserable as himself, and some of whom would probably have ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... stray boy, with a very strange story. The two ragged boys, one of whom had a bundle of papers under his arm, and the other the outfit of a boot-black slung over his shoulder, thought that at the best he was stretching the truth to an alarming degree, even though his manner appeared to bear ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... love of the thing, then that is your affair, not mine: I'm glad to hear it, and regret my inability to join you in the luxury of giving away what it is an imperative necessity of my existence to sell at the best price I can. Do you honestly imagine, Sir, that my literary position will be one farthing's-worth improved by a memoir and a portrait of me appearing in your widely-circulated journal? If you do, I don't; and I prefer to be paid for my work, whether I dictate the material to a scribe, who ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... to meet the standing liabilities and cover the failure of two or three large operations in which Mr. Haye had ventured more upon uncertain contingencies than was his general habit in business matters. So little indeed will be left, at the best issue we can hope for, that Mrs. Haye's interest, whose whole property, I suppose you are aware, was involved, I grieve to say will amount to little or nothing. It were greatly to be wished that some settlement had in time been made for her benefit; but nothing of the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... there to not pay Carpenter for October until he received notice to do so. I then notified you of the facts in the matter. I would respectfully recommend that Carpenter be relieved from further duty and a successor be appointed. He is of no account at the best; he has no interest in the work, and should be removed. I would also recommend that he be paid for but the two days' run in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... you let His powers come uninterruptedly and continuously into your spirit and life? It is sheer folly and self-delusion to wonder that the medicine does not work as quickly as was promised, if you do not take the medicine. The slow process by which, at the best, many Christian people 'bruise Satan under their feet,' during which he hurts their heels more than they hurt his head, is mainly due to their breaking the closeness and the continuity of their communion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... remember that I could cry in those days. My father had not learned to part us then. Perhaps he was not quite sure himself, at all events the parting did not come so soon. We told him that we would wait, for ever if it must be. He may have been touched, though little touched him at the best. Then, one day, suddenly and without warning, he took me away to another city. And what of him? I asked. He told me that there was an evil fever in the city and that it had seized him—the man I loved. 'He is free to follow us if he pleases,' said my ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... major characters had been provided for, and he was able to offer her only the minor one of the Princesse Negroni. The charming deference with which she accepted the offered part attracted Hugo's attention. Such amiability is very rare in actresses who have had engagements at the best theaters. He resolved to see her again; and he did so, time after time, until he was ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... fate, Washington felt an ardent desire to befriend his family, consisting of his wife and young children. He knew that their situation, in the raging storm, must be dreadful at the best; and on the first information of their probable residence, at the close of January, 1793, he addressed the following letter to ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... them from their ground. When the victory was won at the fort, Captain Gordon re-enforced Belthorpe with twenty men while the paroling was in process; and the enemy seeing that they were outnumbered more than before, when they were driven from the hill, gave up the fight, and fled at the best speed of their horses by the way they had come. The lieutenant in command pursued them as far as the road, when the recall was sounded near the fort, and they returned to the little village. Captain Letcher was in command of the platoon, ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... creature from the top of a cliff into the dark and misty void below—of his being dashed to pieces on the protruding rocks, and of hearing his shrieks as he descended the cloud, and beheld the shagged points on which he was to alight. Then I thought of plunging a soul so abruptly into Hell, or, at the best, sending it to hover on the confines of that burning abyss—of its appearance at the bar of the Almighty to receive its sentence. And then I thought: "Will there not be a sentence pronounced against me there, by a jury of the just made perfect, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... vision and by the pressure of the individual will. These apertures, of dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the human scene that we might have expected of them a greater sameness of report than we find. They are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. But they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes, or at least with a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... and her religion. If she had been a woman of a strong mind, she would have torn her creed into shreds, she would have dared the anathema of the priest—the ostracism of its dupes—and would have clung to the man she loved so truly, in defiance of that which was, at the best, but a ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... from where it is cooked, and usually cold. They pour off the cold liquor and eat the unpalatable residue. Supper is like breakfast with the addition of a ration of minced meat and potatoes, also cold and not attractive at the best. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the United Kingdom a separate Parliament with an Executive Government responsible to that Parliament would at the best mean a danger of friction. But if we were ever engaged in a great war, and the men who controlled the Irish Government took the view in regard to that war which was taken by the same men in regard to the Boer ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... in print, his military career would not bear close scrutiny; for that reason McGregor does not propose to scrutinise it. And as for his indomitable will, he sees nothing to admire in the man's persistence, since, when he stops persisting, he'll become ungummed and, at the best, forgotten. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... himself. His love blossomed into the deeper devotion that he only had been sent to college: he was bound to share with his elder brother what he had learned. So Alister got more through Ian than he would have got at the best college in the world. For Ian was a born teacher, and found intensest delight, not in imparting knowledge—that is a comparatively poor thing—but in leading a mind up to see what it was before incapable of seeing. It was part of the same gift that ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... 1860, a law authorizing the issue of new Treasury notes for this amount, bearing interest at the rate of six per cent., and redeemable after one year; but the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to issue them, upon public notice, at the best rates of interest offered by responsible bidders. Before the close of the month negotiations were completed, after unusual effort, and it was found that the notes were issued at various rates, only $70,200 at six per cent., $5,000 at seven per cent., $24,500 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... not the even tenor of our way, so the passions of men whose world is other than his, who dwell remote from what he contemplates and loves, shake not his tranquil mind. While they threaten and pursue, his thought moves in spheres unknown to them. He knows how little life at the best can give, and is not hard to console for the loss of anything. There is no true thought which he would not gladly make his own, even though it should be the watchword of his enemies. Since morality is practical truth, he understands that increasing knowledge will make ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... good. There was no milk, of course, except the heavily sweetened sort, which I could not use: it was the old-time condensed and canned milk; the meats were beyond everything, except the poor, tough, fresh beef we had seen hoisted over the side, at Cape St. Lucas. The butter, poor at the best, began to pour like oil. Black coffee and bread, and a baked sweet potato, seemed the only things that I ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... experience the significance of the words, "We glory in tribulation, also." One has heard all one's life, perhaps, of "the ministry of sorrow," and similar phrases, and he has become a trifle impatient of them as a sort of incantation with which he has little sympathy. At the best, he relegates this order of ministry to the rank and file of humanity; to those whose lives are (to his vision) somewhat prosy and dull; and for himself he proposes to live in a world beautiful, where stars and sunsets and flames and fragrances enchant the hours, where, with his feet shod with ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... must decide about that; but I see that, at the best, it will be but few who will get through the course, though they begin philosophy and ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... think you have certainly been abused unjustly. Indeed, when I was taken prisoner the other day, I thought it quite possible I should be put to death, although I was a correspondent' (great laughter, 'Fancy that!' etc.). 'At the best I expected to be held in prison as a kind of hostage. See ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... forced upon them as a principal topic of conversation. Of course, too, it would more or less throw the whole household into confusion. And its effect upon his wife!—the progress of his thoughts was checked abruptly by this suggestion. A vision of the shock such a catastrophe might involve to her—or at the best, of the gross unpleasantness she would find in it—flashed over his mind, and then yielded to a softening, radiant consciousness of how much this meant to him. It seemed to efface everything else upon the instant. A profoundly tender desire for her happiness was in complete possession. Already ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... At the best of times there was in the nature of Mr. Edward Eggleston Murch not overmuch genuine urbanity. Urbanity of the surface he had, of course; he called on it at need in very much the same way that he called on his stenographer. But of true courtesy or consideration ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... present day, are not ruled by the fine logic which you are able to exercise. We are children compared to you. We are swayed even in the making of our laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests, desires. And at the best we are not capable of ordering our lives and our government to those just ends which we may see, some of us, are abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of that great mass of the people who have not yet won to an intellectual and discriminating judgment of ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... on. The party was to sail in a fruit steamer from New York, and would land at San Juan, where Mr. Robinson had engaged rooms at the best hotel. He expected to do considerable business there, but future ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... for the Minute Boys to follow me, as I ran at the best pace possible in that direction, for there ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... in Dawson late at night and put up at the best hotel to be found. Immediately after breakfast the search ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... be salt," he said. And sometimes he found a little. They had been on foot since Gumbinnen, because no horse would be allowed by starving men to live a day. They existed from day to day on what they found, which was, at the best, frozen horse. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... answer, in a patois, half French, half Italian, as Raoul expected, if all were right. "We are bound into la Padulella, and wish to keep in with the land to hold the breeze the longer. We are no great sailer at the best, and have a drift, because we are just now in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... indeed, it might be urged that the English play is surpassed by the French one—and that is, as a play. Berenice is still acted with success; but Antony and Cleopatra—? It is impossible to do justice to such a work on the stage; it must be mutilated, rearranged, decocted, and in the end, at the best, it will hardly do more than produce an impression of confused splendour on an audience. It is the old difficulty of getting a quart into a pint bottle. But Berenice is a pint—neither more nor less, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... painting and music were all practised in Atlantis. The music even at the best of times was crude, and the instruments of the most primitive type. All the Atlantean races were fond of colour, and brilliant hues decorated both the insides and the outsides of their houses, but painting as a fine art was never ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... that best way, and, when you came to the close of it, find you had done nothing,—hadn't even found out the way. I have always to remind myself that something, even if it be far from the best thing, is better than nothing. Perhaps the only way to arrive at the best way is to make plenty of blunders, and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... strength and accuracy of wrist, and with this the power of composition and design, purity and accuracy of outline, and good chiaroscuro. But the whole race is deficient in a sense of color. Its work is marked by crudeness and harshness, or at the best reticence—splendor without softness or inoffensiveness without charm. In cases where much is attempted in color—as in what is undoubtedly one of the best of contemporary paintings, Knille's Tannhaeuser and Venus in the Berlin Gallery—the success is by no means on a par with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... very little Dependence upon either in this Life; We too often mistake our true Happiness, and when we arrive to the Enjoyment of that which seemd to promise it to us, we find that it is all an imaginary Dream, at the best fleeting & transitory. We have an affecting Instance of this within our own Connections; Your amiable Sister Kitty was agreably married, and when in the daily Expectation of seeing the happy Pledge of conjugal Affection, cutt off without a moments Warning of the fatal Stroke of Death! Still more ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... case of necessity, as they apprehended this to be, according to Josephus, it was any such crime, I am not satisfied. In the mean time, their making their father drunk, and their solicitous concealment of what they did from him, shows that they despaired of persuading him to an action which, at the best, could not but be very suspicious and shocking to so ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... many methods used by these fiends in human form to trap girls into houses of sin, is courtship and false marriage. These men go into the country districts and, under the guise of commercial men, board at the best hotels, dress handsomely, cultivate the most captivating manners, and then look for their prey. Upon the streets they see a pretty girl and immediately lay plans to become acquainted. Then the courtship begins. In the present condition of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... sweeping claim on the South Island, 26,000,000 acres, or more than a third of the area of New Zealand, was supposed to have been gobbled up piecemeal by the land-sharks. The claims arising out of these transactions were certain at the best to cause confusion, ill-feeling, and trouble, and indeed did so. Some legally-constituted authority was clearly wanted to deal with them. Otherwise armed strife between the warlike Maoris and adventurers claiming their lands was inevitable. Before Marsden's death in 1838 ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... passers-by hurried along wet and forlorn. Mrs. Halford began to wonder a little anxiously how long the gooseberry campers would stick it out. She began to have painful visions of sore throats and bronchitis or at the best colds, caught from sitting on the wet ground. She was also fearful lest Mrs. Morton might not approve ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... feared; but we know that the prevailing Hebrew conception was, that death led the naked soul into the silent, dark, and dreary region of the under world, a doleful fate, from which they shrank with sadness at the best, guilt converting that natural melancholy into dread foreboding. In the absence of any evidence or presumption whatever to the contrary, we are authorized, nay, rather forced, to conclude that such a conception is implied in the passages ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... longer. No doubt half our words, if not all of them, were once slang. Even within our own memory we can see the whole process carried through; "cinch" once sounded funny; it is now standard American-English. But other slang is made up of descriptive phrases. At the best, these slang phrases are—at least we think they are—extremely funny. But they are funniest when newly coined, and it takes a master hand to coin them well. For a supreme example of wild vagaries of language used for humour, one might take O. Henry's ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... arm of the law we went for a little drive about town, with its wonderful shops: the shops of Bournemouth are the best I have seen in England, and are rivalled only by those of Glasgow. Then we drew up at the best hotel in town—"The Royal Bath Hotel," which, with its long low facade and its lack of upper stories looked more like a luxurious club house than a ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... hired a carriage, rented a box at the opera, had a skilled cook, and gave his mistress a lady-in-waiting. He then shewed himself at the best club, richly dressed, and covered with jewellery. He introduced himself under the name ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... capsules from flowers, the petals of which had been artificially separated, contained only thirty-two seeds. But we should remember that if bees had been permitted to visit these flowers, they would have visited them at the best time for fertilisation. The flowers, the petals of which had been artificially separated, set their capsules before those which were left undisturbed under the net. To show with what certainty the flowers are visited by bees, I may add that on one occasion all the flowers on some unprotected ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... strength and their stores. The food they carried would have been sufficient for a healthy man for perhaps a week. They could not count on reaching civilization again within that time, even with good luck. That meant half rations at the best. But if accidents came and delay even half rations would be cut down. So, that night, in camp, there was no feasting. A little tea, and a cake of dough apiece made their supper; ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... extremity of weakness to which he had sunk laid a finger upon his lips. All that Calder could do was to see him safely bestowed within the hospital at Assouan. "Will he recover?" Calder asked, and the doctors shook their heads in doubt. There was a chance perhaps, a very slight chance; but at the best, recovery would be slow. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... One might as well look for an old costume! The god of the aristocrats is not tradition, but fashion, which is the opposite of tradition. If you wanted to find an old-world Norwegian head-dress, would you look for it in the Scandinavian Smart Set? No; the aristocrats never have customs; at the best they have habits, like the animals. Only the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... length arrived at Yuma. Here the remainder of the party, including Dr. Newberry, having come across country, joined the expedition, and further preparations were made for the more difficult task above. The craft was lightened as far as possible, but at the best she still drew two and one-half feet, while the timbers bolted to the bottom were a great detriment, catching on snags and ploughing into the mud of the shoals. There were twenty-four men to be carried, besides all the baggage that ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the scale of the restaurants, the difference is not so noticeable in the prices of the same dishes, as in the substitution of cheaper varieties of food. At the best eating-houses, the Gallic traditions bear sway more or less, but in the poorer sort the cooking is done entirely by native artists, deriving their inspirations from the unsophisticated tastes of exclusively ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... their judgment. The foolish writers who insist on one's reading through their manuscript poems and stories ought to know how fatal the request is to their prospects. It provokes the reader, to begin with. The reading of manuscript is frightful work, at the best; the reading of worthless manuscript—and most of that which one is requested to read through is worthless—would add to the terrors of Tartarus, if any infernal deity were ingenious enough to suggest it as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the dust and draped with the cobwebs which had come from the walls of her hiding-place. Her face, too, was streaked with grime, and at the best she could never have been handsome, for she had the exact physical characteristics which Holmes had divined, with, in addition, a long and obstinate chin. What with her natural blindness, and what with the change from dark to light, she stood as one dazed, blinking about her to see where ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bird. "Feathers around base of bill black," said the book. I had not noticed that. But no matter; the bird was a blue grosbeak, for the sufficient reason that it could not be anything else. A black line between the almost black beak and the dark-blue head would be inconspicuous at the best, and quite naturally would escape a glimpse so hasty as mine had been. And yet, while I reasoned in this way, I foresaw plainly enough that, as time passed, doubt would get the better of assurance, as it always does, and I should never be certain that I had not been the victim of some illusion. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, —Aha, ELUCESCEBAT deg. quoth our friend? deg.99 No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! 100 Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... his taste, he will not let go, but runs off with his prize, which greatly impedes his progress. Although he might easily draw out his hand by opening it, this he does not think of doing; and thus, unable at the best to move rapidly over a level surface, is soon overtaken by the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... so, Miss Helen," she cried; "don't you go to quarrel with me for speaking the truth too plain and rude, as is a plain-spoken body at the best; and in such grief myself I scarce know what to say. But indeed, and in truth, you mustn't go and put it abroad that the ship was scuttled; if you do, you won't hurt Joe Wylie; he'll get a ship and fly the country. Who you'll hurt ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... distantly related, and while the latter never presumed on the score of this remote connection, the gambler himself tacitly admitted it by the help he now and then extended him, for Montgomery's means of subsistence were at the best precarious. If he had been called on to do so, he would have described himself as a handy-man, since he lived by the doing of odd jobs. He cleaned carpets in the spring; he cut lawns in the summer; in the fall he carried coal into the cellars of Mount Hope, ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... huntin'?' he inquired, 'Hae ye killed the fox? They're mischievous beasts at the best, but worst o' a' at this season—aye seekin' for ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... and fork, possessed by the memory. "I have grown rich since, and we've been to Europe and back to Germany, and travelled on the best ships and stayed at the best hotels, but I never enjoyed a holiday more than that day. It wasn't long afterwards I went to Mr. Durrett and told him how he could save much money. He was always ready to listen, Mr. Durrett, when an ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... exception of the rule against writing in the ladies' saloon, a visitor at these immense establishments is at perfect liberty to do as he pleases, provided he pays the moderate charge of two dollars, or 8s. a day. This includes, even at the best hotels, a splendid table-d'hte, a comfortable bedroom, lights, attendance, and society in abundance. From the servants one meets with great attention, not combined with deference of manner, still less with that obsequiousness which informs ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body; now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it! though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs, to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... recourse by the Bakufu to the fatal expedient of debasing the currency. Public respect was steadily undermined by these displays of impecuniosity, and the feudatories in the west of the empire—that is to say, the tozama daimyo, whose loyalty to the Bakufu was weak at the best—found an opportunity to assert themselves against the Yedo administration, while the appreciation of commodities rendered the burden of living constantly more severe and thus helped to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the blame really has lain, one thing is now clear, that alcoholic intoxicants are very rarely useful as a medicine; are at the best dangerous remedies; and that, other things being equal, the less they are resorted to the better for the chances of the patient's recovery, the better for body and brain, the better for physical, intellectual and moral well-being. Alcohol ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen |
