"Casual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the exception of a very few who are my intimate friends, and were so before they were known as authors, I have had little other acquaintance with literary characters, than what may be implied in an accidental introduction, or casual meeting in a mixed company. And as far as words and looks can be trusted, I must believe that, even in these instances, I had excited no unfriendly disposition. Neither by letter, nor in conversation, have I ever had dispute or controversy beyond the common ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... lion-like men of Moab," has furnished Mr. Etty with the subject of this picture. It is a surprising rather than a pleasing composition; but the strength of colouring is very extraordinary. The disproportions of parts of the principal figure will, however, be recognised by the most casual beholder: although as a fine display of muscular energy, this picture is truly valuable, and is a proud specimen of the powerful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... procession of men and boys, bearing teapots and billies, came and went about a huge copper, steaming over a fire, where the racing club dispensed hot water free of charge, a generosity chiefly intended to prevent the casual lighting of fires by the picnickers. All over the paddock people were hastening through the business of the midday meal; the men anxious to get it over before the real excitement of the day began with the racing, the women equally keen to feed their hungry belongings and then settle ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... is formed of a collection of small rolled pieces of limestone, and was remembered by some of our boatmen to have been formerly covered with water. For the last ten or twelve years the waters of the lake have been low, but our information did not enable us to judge whether the decrease was merely casual, or going on continually, or periodical. The distance of this island from Norway House is ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... casual person will perhaps believe that a singer's life is really not a bit of a sinecure, even when he has attained the measure of this world's approval and applause ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... general discontinued his fitful overseering. He rose early and spent his long days sitting upon the front porch, smoking an old briar pipe and reading the Richmond papers. Occasionally he would ride at a jogging pace round the fields, giving casual directions to the workers, but as his weight increased he found it difficult to mount into the saddle, and, at last, desisted from the attempt. He preferred to sit in peace in his cane rocking chair, looking down the box walk into the twilight of the cedar avenue, or gazing placidly beyond ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... semi-military organisation and called themselves the National Volunteers. Gorman and his friends did their best to suppress them and kept all mention of their existence out of the English papers as far as possible. It surprised me to hear him speak in a casual way of organising these declared enemies ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... and talented assistant in some respects never had his match. He did not, as other reporters do, take down in short-hand what the speaker or reader said, but sat and heard the passing discourse like any other casual spectator: when over he would go home to his room, write out in full all that had been said on the occasion, and that entirely from memory. On a certain occasion I hinted to him my incredulity about his ability to report ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... anyone could have nursed a lifelong hatred as old Mason did (personally I cherish the belief that hatred is too evanescent an emotion for a life-tenancy of the human mind; but I may be wrong); whether he would have bribed a casual tramp to marry and torment the reputed daughter who was the object of his loathing, or whether Day and Helen herself would actually so have played into his hands, are all rather questionable problems. Far more real, human and moving is the wild passion of Helen for Martin, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... 'of' here is probably casual, not partitive, as the Authorised Version has it; 'travail' is not to be understood in the sense of childbirth, but of toil and suffering; 'soul' is equivalent to life. This fruit of His soul's travail is further defined in the words which follow. The great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... love with her! She says, after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, "It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other poet would have thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might have happened in fact.—That which, perhaps, more than any thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all others, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... insolence, of pestilence and civil strife and all else that can war down the weak, for the weak to ask for charity was counted lawful, and to give that charity, admirable. In all other centuries, in short, the casual bad deeds of bad men could be partly patched and mended by the casual good deeds of good men. But this is now forbidden; for it would leave the tramp a last chance ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... but it is seldom that we see any mention made of the garden in the back-yard. One would naturally get the idea that the only garden worth having is the one that will attract the attention of the stranger, or the casual visitor. ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... deal of beauty. The misfortune is that he has begun to write verses without very well understanding what metre is." As Tennyson said in 1890, "So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which I could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the book without further consideration." As a rule, the said books are worthless. The number of versifiers makes it hard, indeed, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... their names. But among them was a spirit, apparently a "living one,"[83] which obstinately refused to be transmitted to the third party. It caused her great suffering, and seemed not to be of a casual nature, but a permanent hostile influence. Some imagined this to be the effect of fearful jealousy of some one who was intimately known to Genji and who had most influence over him; but the spirit gave no information to this effect. Hence some even surmised ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Any casual student of sociology can prove that marriage and the family have not always been what they are today. Lewis J. Morgan, in his ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... to be a varying aptitude to experience the sexual organism, or any voluptuous sensations before puberty. I find, on eliciting the recollections of normal persons, that in some cases there have been voluptuous sensations from casual contact with the sexual organs at a very early age; in other cases there has been occasional slight excitement from early years; in yet other cases complete sexual anaesthesia until the age of puberty. That the latter condition is not due to mere absence of peripheral irritation is shown ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and what a help her sympathy had been to him in his studies, and they had spoken of Willie and his troubles, and Archie forgot the sour face that had sent him away from the carriage, and thought only of the boy's crippled fate, so like his own. Like, and yet unlike—to the casual observer there was a vast difference between the forlorn, poverty-stricken, ragged Archie, and the petted, and pampered, and richly-clad Willie; but to the eye of the unwearied watcher who had witnessed the patience and the goodness of the sick lad, and contrasted ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... have troubled the casual observer at first to discover, in the variety of Lunette's official capacity, which was post-office and which was sand-peeps, so agreeably and informally did these two elements ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... [Forcing herself to speak in a casual voice] I happen to have a little money, Bill—I think it would be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... made themselves acquainted with the relative merit of each division, and could tell which arm of the service most contributed to the result of any particular battle. They collected information from all sources,—from accounts in newspapers, from army letters, from casual conversation with some maimed straggler fresh from the scene of war. Each boy, as he made his periodical visit to his family, brought back something to the general fund of anecdote. The fire that burned in their young ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... time there were to be found in the company's day book the names of 120 customers, nearly all of them heads of families. Of these, 25 were residents at Portland Point, 20 lived across the harbor in Conway, 45 belonged to Maugerville, 20 to other townships up the river and ten were casual ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... be days before we really get to work," said Venning, when the vastness of the Congo was forced on his attention by a casual ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... nothing of interest to a casual observer about the city except its population, and they are interesting from their strange, cosmopolitan character, and as being the most unscrupulous and keenest people for money one can well imagine. The city seems a seething nest of hard characters, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... friendless outcast as Jo in Bleak House, of the struggle of Betty Higden in Our Mutual Friend and her determination never to be given up to 'the Parish'. But, even more than the famous novels, the casual writings of Dickens in his own magazines and elsewhere throw light on his activities in this cause and on the researches which he made into the working of the system. Mr. Crotch describes visits which he paid to the workhouses in Wapping and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... I get the feeling they could switch from casual conversation to mayhem without batting ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... anomalies. 658 Specific characters occurring in other cases as casual anomalies. Papaver bracteatum monopetalum. Desmodium gyrans and monophyllous varieties. Peltate leaves and ascidia. Flowers on leaves. Leaves. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... chapter in the story of evolution—the establishment of different kinds of parasites, casual and constant, temporary and lifelong, external hangers-on and internal unpaying boarders, those that live in the food-canal and depend on the host's food and those that inhabit the blood or the tissues and find their food there. It seems clear that ichneumon grubs and the like ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... mother had not deceived her. The next instant Harry Woodburn entered the room, and, with a gloomy, abstracted air, proceeded to divest himself of his wet coat and muddy boots, without uttering a word, or bestowing any thing more than a casual glance towards the bed, to which he supposed his mother had just retired, as was usual with her, about this hour, and not suspecting that she was more indisposed than when he left her. But as he now turned and approached ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... it was decided. We made fashion to plaster up the envelope so as not to show a casual looker that it had been tampered with, and I footed it to Portree in the patched trews of the messenger, not with the lightest heart in the world. The first redcoat I met directed me to the inn where the Duke had his headquarters, and I was ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Indeed it was too aimless even to have been prompted by a conscious effort of the will. But this book is one of the least results of that momentary sweep of the eye. Another was, that Van Berg did not enjoy the symphony at all, and was soon in a very bad humor. That casual glance had revealed, not far away, a face that with his passion for beauty, at once riveted his attention. His slight start and faint exclamation, caused Ik Stanton to look around also, and then, with a mischievous and observant twinkle in his eyes, the bon vivant ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... to me to be perhaps the more modest way. The method in vogue in Japanese temples, where the worshippers jangle a bell to call the attention of the gods to their prayers or offerings, seems out of place where the god is merely the casual man in the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... meet him; banquets were given in his honor, and everything seemed gay and joyous. But Roger was low and depressed. To him the whole thing appeared a mockery. He seemed to see blood everywhere, and the fact that, as he learned from the casual remark of one of the envoys, numbers of victims were offered upon the altars on the evening before his arrival at each town, in order to please the gods and bring about favorable omens, added to his depression; and he thought that ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... probably, forty; yet, in the full and faultless perfection of her form—in her graceful and yielding motions—in her statuesque bust, rounded cheek and night-black hair, she would, to the casual observer, have indicated hardly the half of that age. Her figure was tall and dignified, yet mobile as a willow; her eyes were dark and luminous, and, in their profound depths, slept a world of melancholy meaning. Her hair was simply parted on ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... had escaped, in his revery, from Richard Avenel altogether. Even as the slightest incident in the daytime causes our dreams at night, but is itself clean forgotten, so the name, so the look of the visitor, might have sufficed but to influence a vision, as remote from its casual suggester as what we call real life is from that life much more real, that we imagine, or remember, in the haunted chambers of the brain. For what is real life? How little the things actually doing around us affect the springs of our sorrow or joy; but the life which our dulness calls romance,—the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... casual observer there is an air of romance and wild enjoyment in this journey through that magnificent land. Many things there doubtless are to give zest and enjoyment to the long march of the pioneer ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... is to become a Dissenting Minister, and adjure politics and casual literature. Preaching for hire is not right; because it must prove a strong temptation to continue to profess what I may have ceased to believe, "if ever" maturer judgment with wider and deeper reading should lessen or destroy my faith in Christianity. But though not right in itself, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... scarcely worth consideration; it cannot be an object of competition to any reasonable person; but in early education nothing must be thought beneath our attention. A child does not retain much affection, it is true, for every casual visiter by whom he is flattered and caressed. The individuals are here to-day and gone to-morrow; variety prevents the impression from sinking into the mind, it may be said; but the general impression remains, though each particular stroke is ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... anyone made a home of a tar-paper shack. To hear Mrs. Dunn's casual remarks, one would think it no more of a problem than redecorating ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... into the family circle. Perhaps, also, a vague desire to placate the "powers that be" had made him pay unusual attention to his face and nails and hair. He was very well groomed—for Teddy—and he tried to assume a perfectly casual air, as ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... distance from it he got out again, took off a wheel, left it lying on the ground, unhitched the horse, and rode away on the back of the animal. The vehicle, to a casual observer, would suggest the ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw an attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, wooden like the last, each with an ill-painted white verandah (that was his name for it) and all standing in the same casual way upon the ground. Behind, through the woods, he saw pig-stys and a rooting black sow leading a brisk, adventurous family. A wild-looking woman with sloe-black eyes and dishevelled black hair sat upon the steps of one of the houses nursing a baby, but at the sight of Bert ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... importance and of many natural attractions and fine public buildings. It is, however, a place of decided contrasts, imposing streets of residences being not far distant from as wretched a native quarter as may be seen in any other Indian city. To the casual tourist Calcutta seems a large English city (eight hundred thousand inhabitants), especially so in the life on the Maidan, the centre of attraction and fashion. Eden Park is also greatly frequented, and the race-course is the finest in ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... the fate reserved for me? Perhaps Welbeck would adopt me for his own son. Wealth has ever been capriciously distributed. The mere physical relation of birth is all that entitles us to manors and thrones. Identity itself frequently depends upon a casual likeness or an old nurse's imposture. Nations have risen in arms, as in the case of the Stuarts, in the cause of one the genuineness of whose birth has been denied and can never be proved. But if the cause be trivial and fallacious, the effects are momentous and solid. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... burdens with his usual energy and light-heartedness, but J. P. missed a familiar note of joyousness in his tone, and Archie Blair noticed that Ed did not go up the steps of his office in one leap now as he had always done, but walked up like other people. But to the casual observer, Lawyer Ed was the same. He was here, there and everywhere, making sure that this one and that was going to vote the right way. And Roderick, watching him, remembered how anxious he had been over the effect the campaign would have upon his business. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... upon the broad piazza, after the boys, by a casual look, were satisfied that no intruder was about the grounds. Belle kept close to Ed—he was the largest of the young men—but Cora and Bess showed no ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... Five years ago she had been gawky. Now ... Well, he was proud of her. She had called him great-stepuncle, thus conferring on him a sort of part-proprietorship in her; and he was proud of her. The captain of the bowling-club came along, and James Ollerenshaw gave him just such a casual nod as he might have given to a person of no account. The nod seemed to say: "Match this, if you can. It's mine, and there's nothing in the town to beat it. Mrs. Prockter herself hasn't got more style than this." (Of this Mrs. Prockter, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... is a pretty place, and what's more—for dozens of houses and gardens are pretty—it's artistic!" In front of him stretched a miniature avenue of chestnut trees, which was rendered striking, even to the most casual observer, probably, not only on account of the irregular mounds of moss-covered stones that occupied its intervening spaces, but also, by reason of the masses of wild flowers (great clumps of which were springing up in the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... fully as tall and as broad as Ivan himself, and his great arms hung below his knees. He was the personification of rugged strength and brutality. From Nicolas the lads turned their eyes to Ivan. There was scarcely a noticeable difference in the stature of the two men and from casual observation it would have been hard to choose between them in the matter of strength. But the one noticeable difference was ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... be made to speak of the quarrel with Maddox. He merely mentioned to Jewdwine in the most casual manner that he had left The Planet. As for his grounds for that abrupt departure Jewdwine was entirely in the dark. It was Lucia that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... characteristic fully appreciated by the English King. When taken to task for burning the Cathedral at Cashel, he is reported to have said that he would not have done so, only the bishop was inside. His casual announcement on a previous occasion that he could not obey the royal summons to England because the country could not get on without him was paralleled either in 1493 or 1495 —it is uncertain which—by his defence against the Bishop of Meath's charges. He said he must be represented by Counsel; ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... I could not gather whether he placed greater or less value on the suspicion of the hotel clerk. He had been making a casual examination of the body on the bed, and finding nothing he looked intently about the room as if seeking some evidence of how ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... life acquainted with business. Mr. Murray had been a loser in the mines himself, but to a comparatively slight extent, and as he was an exceedingly rich man, he only regarded the matter as one of the casual losses incurred in business. But his old friend's losses troubled him deeply, and he resolved to do everything in his power to repair the effects of his ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... visit, and to whom he had given this distinguished name,) to secure his good services,—they had only one remaining for their future resources; and it was by no means satisfactory to be thrown upon the casual generosity of the natives. It is true, they had with them some salt beef and biscuit, and it was understood, when they quitted the ship, that Captain Owen had engaged to compensate the King for ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... to put it as considerately as possible, "that a casual observer, who didn't know your father, might mistake him, at first sight, for—for some ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... with several public and social agencies has given us close acquaintance with his record during this time, and earlier. Our attention was first called to Adolf in New York, when he was a boy under arrest in the Tombs. A fine young lawyer, a casual acquaintance of Adolf's through court work, asked us to study the case because he felt that perhaps grave injustice was being done. Before his arrest the boy, who seemed to be most ambitious, had been about the court rooms looking into the ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... appeared to be asking Blizzard the rather poetical question, eyed the gruesome monument with a half smile. Bullet holes marked it here and there, testifying that many a passer-by with more marksmanship than respect had used it for a casual target. The empty sockets seemed to glare spitefully, and the shattered upper jaw grinned in mockery at the singer. It was as if the grisly relic had heard the song and laughed. Kid Wolf's smile flashed white against the copper ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... it was the old familiar act, expressed by the Evangelist by the old familiar words, that opened the disciples' eyes, and they knew Him. How simply the process of discovery is told! It was quite natural that a casual stranger upon the road should not say who He was; it was quite as natural that when He entered into the closer relationship of sitting with the disciples at the table, and sharing their hospitality, they should expect, as indeed they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... To the casual observer he was merely a picturesque old street-peddler, standing like a time-stained statue beside a carefully arrayed exhibit of his wares. This exhibit, which invariably proved more interesting than his own person, consisted of a frame ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... distance in mind and spirit which is the true isolation of the foreigner, and which even an identity of tongue and kindred cannot annul. Looking keenly into the mountaineer's half-averted, angry, excited face, he could not for his life discern how its expression might comport with the tenor of the casual conversation which had elicited it. He did not even dimly surmise that his allusion to the finances of the government could be construed as a justification of the whiskey tax, generally esteemed in the mountains a measure of tyrannous ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... looking over some sheep, Nic walked about a mile out of his way going back, and had just finished his casual inspection when he came upon Brookes, gun on shoulder, who immediately stood his piece against a bush and began to examine some of the flock, throwing so much energy into the task that Nic felt suspicious, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... ignorant of it; I desired only that which I possessed, and if I enjoyed from your looks, and words, and most innocent caresses a rapture usually excluded from the feelings of a parent towards his child, yet no uneasiness, no wish, no casual idea awoke me to a sense of guilt. I loved you as a human father might be supposed to love a daughter borne to him by a heavenly mother; as Anchises might have regarded the child of Venus if the sex had been changed; ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... for us that upon this vast and unknown sea of life, God's winds and waves are wiser and stronger than the pilots, and often bring our frail crafts into havens which we never sought! Perhaps the act which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity with which she undertook its performance. No priestess ever entered an oracle, no vestal virgin a temple, nor saint a shrine with more reverence than she felt, as she ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... address. He threw the responsibility of the failure of the measure which had been taken to adjust the financial disputes, upon Lord Ripon. Not content, he said, with advancing a claim to the appropriation of the casual and territorial revenues to the purposes of civil government without the consent of the house of assembly, that noble lord had thought fit to propose to make them over to the clergy; a step which was at once novel and preposterous, and only ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... some casual word occurr'd Which somewhat moved the lady's bile; From less to more her anger wax'd— How sheepish look'd her swain the while!— And now upon their faces twain There is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... draw a distinction between the deed and the box containing it, Sir Duncan. Or, to put it more accurately, betwixt that deed and its casual accompaniments. It happens to be among very old charters, which happen to be wanted for certain excellent antiquarian purposes. Such things are not in my line, I must confess, although so deeply interesting. But a very learned man seems ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... (Rich) I came to serve him at a time when many of his best actors had deserted him; that he might now have the refusal of me; but I could not afford to carry the compliment so far as to lessen my income by it; that I therefore expected either my casual pay to be advanced, or the payment of my former sallary made certain for as many days as we had acted the year before. No, he was not willing to alter his former method; but I might chuse whatever parts I had a mind to act of theirs who ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... self-absorbed—by being centripetal, not centrifugal. It cannot be. Now this is worth saying to you, because you know here at school what a united social life is. All girls do not know this. You do. There is distinctly here a school life, a school feeling, a house feeling. No casual visitor to your playing fields and hall can mistake this. And you know that this enlarges and draws something out of your nature that would never have been suspected had it not been for school life. ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... smuts, rusts and mildews are known to even the casual observer, because they are of evident size. Their plant-like nature can be more readily understood from their general structure and habits of life. The bacteria, however, are so small, that under ordinary ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... just parting. Suddenly, as she passed, the boy had caught the girl in his arms there on the street corner in the daylight, and had kissed her—not the quick, resounding smack of casual leave-taking, but a long, silent kiss that left ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... House. The Duke had very indiscreetly called the distress 'partial' in the Speech, and the consequence was an amendment moved by Knatchbull declaring it to be general. The result shows that Government has not the slightest command over the House of Commons, and that they have nothing but casual support to rely upon, and that of course will only be to be had 'dum se bene gesserint.' For a long time Holmes and their whippers-in thought that they should be in a minority; but Hume and a large party of Reformers supported them (contrary ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... "The Fisherman's Rest" at Dover, was a prosperous man, was of course clear to the most casual observer. The pewter on the fine old dressers, the brass above the gigantic hearth, shone like silver and gold—the red-tiled floor was as brilliant as the scarlet geranium on the window sill—this meant that his servants were good and plentiful, that the custom was constant, and of that order which ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Art. This is the great lesson of his career: not by spasmodic effort, or dalliance with moods, or fitful resolution, did he accomplish so much; but by earnestness of purpose, consistency of aim, heroic decision of character. There is nothing less vague, less casual in human experience, than true artist-life. Rome is the shrine of many a dreamer, the haunt of countless inefficient enthusiasts. But there, as elsewhere, will must intensify thought, action control imagination, or both are fruitless. Those melancholy ruins, those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... matter—and I fancy it is not exclusively characteristic of the Anarchist party—was the amount of invective and hatred, which both factions ought properly to have expended on the common enemy, but which instead they spent most of their time in levelling at one another. A casual witness of these internal strifes might have imagined that the two parties were at the antipodes in their ideas and objects, rather than comrades and participators in a common belief. Their dissensions were alone forgotten in a common hatred of government and existing society. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... a charmingly pretty busybody, outwardly just like Miss IRIS HOEY, comes to Peter Keppel's studio and hears that this casual youth has got into a deplorable habit of putting off his marriage with her friend Milly. She (Judy) will see to that! She assumes the role of a notorious Chelsea model, whom proper Peter has never seen. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... with the best spirit of ancient learning, and poetically cast, becomes of right our teacher; and commands always the profound respect, if not always the assent, of the accomplished Greek. Not unfrequently, on such casual remark of the Queen, the reading is thereupon suspended, and discussion between her and the philosopher, or conversation upon topics suggested in which we all take part, ensues. But, however this may be, all moves ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... he premised that there are many varieties of great men. Daddy LAMBERT was a great man, so was the living skeleton, yet even a casual observer could perceive the difference in their greatness. The greatness of the fleshy world is one thing; the greatness of the no-fleshy world is another. Also, strange as it may seem, a man may be great and yet not be great. HOOD was a great General, so was NAP 3, but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... small, cracked mirror, while dangling from nails driven into the warped and twisted timbering of roof and walls hung a great variety of baskets, large and small and variously shaped, of rush or bent withies, many of which seemed in course of manufacture. These and many other objects I took casual heed of as I lay, but often my gaze would rove back to the six books standing so orderly amid the pots and pans; indeed, these so stirred my interest that I began to wonder what manner of books these might be and what should bring them in such a strange and desolate place, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... different. They vanish and reaeppear at different times; they have no actual, permanent existence. The crow of a cock or the sign of the cross is enough to drive them back to their hiding-places. They shun daylight and fixed, customary spots. They generally surprise casual travelers, and upon them in lone, romantic spots, practice all their arts of enticement and seduction. There is always something of magic, of the supernatural, connected with them. The Greek sirens are not like common women; but once conceive of their physical existence, and you understand them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... approached them with a casual air as if he had drifted their way by accident. He was one of those oppressively quiet men who possess the unhappy knack of appearing wholly out of touch with all social surroundings. There was a reticence ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... one may be attained by the sacrifice of the other;—the result is a failure to arrive at either. One to whom nature has given a true sensibility, but denied the plastic imaginative power, will be a faithful painter of the real; he will adapt casual appearances, but never catch the spirit of nature. He will only reproduce to us the matter of the world, which, not being our own work, the product of our creative spirit, can never have the beneficent operation of art, of which the essence ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... their looks, and also by their childish voices, if thou lookest well upon them and if thou listenest to them. Now thou art perplexed, and in perplexity art silent; but I will loose for thee the strong bond in which thy subtile thoughts fetter thee.[6] Within the amplitude of this realm a casual point can have no place,[7] any more than sadness, or thirst, or hunger; for whatever thou seest is established by eternal law, so that here the ring answers exactly to the finger. And therefore this folk,[8] hastened to true life, is not sine causa more and less excellent ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... eager impulse to the interrupting voice. Its owner, the color scheme of his attire emphasized by the glare of the low sun, expressed in his pose and the inquiring flicker of a smile purely the element of the casual. Far from making any movement toward his own six-shooter, he seemed oblivious of any such necessity. With the first glimpse of her face, when he saw the violet flame of her anger go ruddy with surprise and relief, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the interests of Protestantism in the duchies against the infatuation of James in regard to Spain, and he was too well aware of the Spanish marriage delusion, which was the key to the King's whole policy, to put much faith in these casual outbursts of eternal friendship with the States. He contented himself therefore with cautioning Caron to pause before committing himself to any such projects. He had frequently instructed him, however, to bring the disputed questions to his Majesty's notice ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... succeeded Aunt Anne, and liking her so tumultuously, in her grown-up state, that they pelted her with arguments based on her presumable loneliness there and the silliness of carrying on the establishment really as a species of home for superannuated servants. Nan honestly liked the cousins, in a casual way, though it was as inconceivable to her that the Boston house might be given up as it would have been to Aunt Anne. There was, she felt, again in Aunt Anne's way, a certain continuity of things you didn't even think of breaking. Now she ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... lies beyond endeavour; neither prayer Nor fasting, nor much wisdom winneth there, Seeing how many prophets and wise men Have sought for it and still returned again With hope undone. But only the strange power Of unsought Beauty in some casual hour Can build a bridge of light or sound or form To lead you out of all this strife and storm; When of some beauty we are grown a part Till from its very glory's midmost heart Out leaps a sudden beam of larger light Into our souls. All things are seen aright Amid the ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... anyone who liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus it was that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man's references, he invited Travail to ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... more than that Tom. It was as if the Power above had directed it. This man Coll was one of the quartermasters, and only mentioned the Cassowary in the most casual manner to me as we were passing the place where she went ashore. 'I was in her, sir,' he said in the most simple, matter-of-fact manner, 'and me and a poor little boy about four, was the only ones ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... country on the borders of Essex and Suffolk, not ten miles in length, and but two or three in breadth, presenting to the casual observer few features more striking than are to be seen in many other parts of England, but hailed with delight by painters for its simple charm, has exercised a wider influence upon modern landscape painting than all the noble scenery of Switzerland or the glories of Italy; for ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... followed them up-street, and sat down in full view with their backs against a wall. Yet I could see quite plainly the scabbard of a bayonet projecting through a hole in the ragged cloak of the nearest of those casual wayfarers. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... appreciate milder or more civil treatment, and are inclined to despise a master or mistress who uses the Portuguese equivalent to "please," or who acknowledges a service with thanks. I am inclined to doubt this, both from my personal observation and from a casual remark made to me by the landlady of a hotel at Cintra, that her waiters and servants much preferred English to native visitors, because of the greater politeness and consideration shown to them by the former. Of course, as in all other countries, servants are described ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... them, the casual noises of the night, she gave ear anxiously, while above her the fight raged direfully and all unheard. At one time she truly saw naked Kafirs go up the hill,—the light of the fire glinted on the points of their assegais and threw a dull gleam on the muscle-rippled skin of them. Next, stones ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... constant good humour, his indomitable energy, threw a glamour about him. His happy laughter, which attested the deep peace of his heart, rang everywhere, through his home, in social meetings with his friends, in casual encounters ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... with politics at the time), attention was drawn to Lady Arthur Castletown's charming and witty romance of modern life. Alp called to Alp, and deep to deep, throughout Satan's invisible world; "Kathleen's Sweethearts" was dragged in (apparently with ten men pushing behind) for casual allusion in "Our Weekly Note-book;" Lady Arthur's smart sayings were quoted in the gossip attached to this or that monthly magazine; the correspondent of a country journal would hasten to say that it was not necessary to inform his readers that Lady Arthur Castletown ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... But while, to a casual glance, the Day-Star Mission is all out of place, it has, nevertheless, its following. On Monday and Thursday afternoons a troop of black-eyed, jet-haired Portuguese women, half of whom are named Mary Jesus, flock in to a sewing-school. On ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... their peace, and presently the two girls went off together, and the minister and his wife engaged Mrs. Ellsworth in conversation, leaving the pair of lovers free to mingle with the gay crowd of young and old strolling beneath the trees. They spoke little to the casual acquaintances they met, preferring ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... latter is striving to introduce for her countrywomen a new style of dress, in which all the garments are bifurcated, but so skillfully adjusted in generous plaits and folds, that while the wearer enjoys the utmost freedom, the casual observer is quite ignorant of the innovation. We attended one of their public meetings for the discussion of that question, at which Miss King, Mrs. Charles McLaren, and Lady Harberton appeared in the new costume. All spoke in its defense, and were very witty ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... said to be the "bare subsistence" wage for women. The wide prevalence of this wage and its independence of conditions of locality, time, nature of work, have made it generally recognised as a "customary wage," and for any casual work, or any new employment requiring ordinary feminine skill or exertion, 10s. is regarded as sufficient remuneration for a woman. The basis of this custom is the knowledge that women can always be induced to work for a bare subsistence measured at 10s. or ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... over the whole inside of the inflated hood and that of a curious forked appendage, resembling a fish-tail, which overhangs the orifice. This orifice is so concealed that it can be seen and approached only from below, as if—the casual observer might infer—to escape visitation. But dead insects of all kinds, and their decomposing remains, crowd the cavity and saturate the liquid therein contained, enticed, it is said, by a peculiar odor, as well as by the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... uncertain, wandering, unfertile way of life still left possible, and cheerily making the most of it. A genial, pious and harmonious fund of character was in her; and withal an indolent, half-unconscious force of intellect, and justness and delicacy of perception, which the casual acquaintance scarcely gave her credit for. Sterling much respected her decision in matters literary; often altering and modifying where her feeling clearly went against him; and in verses especially trusting to her ear, which was excellent, while he knew his own to be worth little. I ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... up to Ralph the next few minutes before starting time. He asked a few casual questions about the mechanisms of No. 999, and then seemed tremendously interested ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... sequence, without an eye to what went before or should come after. If something beyond or beside what he was saying occurred to him, he invited it into his page, and made it as much at home there as the nature of it would suffer him. Then, when he was through with the welcoming of this casual and unexpected guest, he would go back to the company he was entertaining, and keep on with what he had been talking about. He observed this manner in the construction of his sentences, and the arrangement of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rational man might need, but in addition there were a box of books—big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting—and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw—glass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping being them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a dilettante ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... length became a roaring torrent, passing through a narrow gorge between perpendicular cliffs, with a tremendous current. In some places the great river was pent up between rocks, which confined it to a width of about 120 yards, through such channels the rush of water was terrific, but to a casual observer approaching from the north, the volume of the Nile would have been underrated, unless calculated by the velocity ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... nephew it would be impossible to say. She had been skilled for many years in telling which way the wind was blowing; nay, more, in foreseeing from which quarter it would presently blow; so perhaps the two or three casual references to the American girls which she had gleaned from the letters which the Prince dutifully wrote her had been enough to awaken her suspicions. Or, it may be, that some one of the many persons at Weet-sur-Mer ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... that the lady from Nantucket had never referred, except in a casual way, to her past history. She had never told how she came to answer the advertisement in the Nuptial Chime, nor to explain how so matter-of-fact a person as she was had ever seen that famous sheet. As ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Railways held a special meeting at Bar. It was attended by Mr. Bailey-Hawkins, and Mr. John Conacher, Manager of the Company . . . The latter, resolved to sell his life dearly, brought in his umbrella, which gave him a quite casual hope-I-don't-intrude appearance as he stood at the Bar. Members, at first disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out, difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . . Bursts of laughter and buzz of conversation ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... examine the beginnings of punitive law. After all, even under the sway of custom, casual outbreaks are liable to occur. Some one's passions will prove too much for him, and there will be an accident. What happens then in the primitive society? Let us first consider one of the very unorganized communities at the bottom of the evolutionary scale; as, for example, the little Negritos ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... letters many proofs of this power of disposing equally the hardest and the most sensitive people to open their hearts, on very short acquaintance. Any casual rencontre, in a walk, in a steamboat, at a concert, became the prelude ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... might have received the homage to which his talents were entitled. He spent his time in study, or in working for the public welfare; his relaxations being in his fields and garden, or in the conversation of casual visitors who, uninvited, occasionally resorted to his unceremonious and hospitable roof. Ardent as he was in political discussions, prone as he was to enter into controversy, the feelings of animosity which he expressed died in their utterance. The adversary of to-day was the welcome ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper |
