"Cursorily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would only continue the talking,' she thought, 'I should be able to get away.' But Emily said not a word. She sat as if frozen in her chair; and at length Mrs. Bentley was obliged to enter, however cursorily, into the conversation. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... spend money lavishly on self. The compunctions of the rich are indicated, on the one hand, by generous donations made to all sorts of causes, and on the other hand, by the arguments which are now thought necessary to justify the selfish use of money. These arguments we may cursorily discuss. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... raised, must still admire the vast research and varied knowledge which the writer displays. It is, however, a book more talked about than read at the present day. Indeed, human life is too short to enable the general reader to do more than skim cursorily over a work of such proportions. Warburton's theory was novel and startling; and perhaps few even of the Deistical writers themselves evoked more criticism and opposition from the orthodox than this ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he spoke, and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey, drawing himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his cold eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it went, and what it saw. As it rested on one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so cat-like and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... care, whilst they were preparing for the period that decides their fate for life. Instead of pursuing this idle routine, sighing for tasteless show, and heartless state, with what dignity would the youths of both sexes form attachments in the schools that I have cursorily pointed out; in which, as life advanced, dancing, music, and drawing, might be admitted as relaxations, for at these schools young people of fortune ought to remain, more or less, till they were of age. Those, who were designed for particular professions, might attend, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... a continual ascent. The Old Testament, which we must here embrace in one general view, occupies itself but little indeed with this ever-ascending course as regards the development of material civilization, of which, however, it cursorily points out the principal stages with a good deal of exactness. It rather traces for us the picture of moral progress, and of the more and more definite development of religious truth, the apprehension of which goes on ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... In words dropped cursorily from time to time, Margaret imparted to Richard the substance of her father's speech, and it set Richard reflecting. It was not among the probabilities that Lemuel Shackford would advance a dollar to establish Richard, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... great department stores with which the question of women relates itself inevitably, I have cursorily assumed our priority in them, and the more I think of them, the more I am inclined to believe myself right. But that is a matter in which women only may be decisive; the nice psychology involved cannot be convincingly studied by the other sex. I will venture, again, however, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Assis describes cursorily the insurrection in Pampanga (there scarcely more than an attempt) and the more serious uprising in the province of Pangasinan and Zambales, and the part played by the Recollects in restoring peace. The revolt in Pampanga arises, like so many minor revolts ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... the family was revealed in the course of our conversation with Mademoiselle Heger, but the specific causes were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollection of the Brontes; her knowledge of them is derived from her parents and the teachers,—presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's letters. One of the present teachers in the pensionnat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to intermit it on account of illness. Bad news indeed, that latter clause; at the same time, it was thrown in so cursorily I would not let myself be much alarmed; and since that, various New England friends have assured me here that there was nothing of great moment in it, that the business was all well over now, and you safe at Concord again. Yet how is it that I ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to the consideration of the subject itself, it is proposed cursorily to glance at the generally known sources which supply corroborative evidence. These may be grouped into the five ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... of our party to go and see the museum on the day after their visit to Pompeii,—or rather to begin to see it; for it requires a great deal more than one day even to walk cursorily through the rooms. ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... into the dining-room, and looked cursorily at about a dozen large dingy pictures of the Italian school, which a man who knew anything about art would have condemned at a glance. Fine examples of brown varnish, all of them. Thence to the library, lined with its carved-oak ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... than cursorily familiar with the drill. The basic requirement for Interstel is five years' service with a survey team. I'd spent nine. Which is another reason for general GS enmity: the turncoat syndrome. That and the fact that prospective agents are ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... the others in any post of responsibility. Nor were his own party the only subjects of his curiosity. Until this eventful period of his life, he had seen but little of the world, "and now," observes his biographer, "he fancied himself on his travels." He therefore passed over no object of interest cursorily; at every town he visited, he inquired what were the customs of the place—what monuments of celebrated men, or other objects of antiquity were to be found there; and of these he made written notes; whilst in the council and the camp, he studied the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... constitution,—the condition and discipline of the army, which Henry greatly improved,—and the rise and progress of the royal navy, of which he was virtually the founder, many topics are either purposely avoided, or only incidentally and cursorily noticed. To one point especially (a subject in itself most animating and uplifting, and intimately interwoven with the period embraced by these Memoirs,) he would have rejoiced to devote a far greater portion of his book, had it been compatible with the immediate design ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... inn to which the sufferers were carried, was taken at once to the post. And, after all, things turned out not quite so bad as anticipated; for when the doctors came to examine the state of Lady Isabel, not cursorily, they found there would be no absolute necessity for the operation contemplated. Fond as the French surgeons are of the knife, to resort to it in this instance would have been cruel, and they proceeded to other means ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... unhinged. That point of view is a very original one, but it was not this part of your article which most interested me. I was particularly struck by an idea at the end of the article, and which, unfortunately, you have touched upon too cursorily. In a word, if you remember, you maintained that there are men in existence who can, or more accurately, who have an absolute right to commit all kinds of wicked, and criminal acts— men for whom, to a certain extent, laws do ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... at the city belle; we have cursorily glanced at the respectable old uncle and aunt. Have we a stray glance to give to the third member of this company? Can we spare him a moment's notice? We ought to distinguish him so far, reader; he has claims on us; ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... vessels of two hundred, or two hundred and fifty tons burden, lying at its quays. Here is also a custom-house, and our baggage was again opened for examination. This was done amid a great deal of noise and confusion, and yet so cursorily as to be of no real service. At Havre, landing as we did in the night, and committing all to Desiree the next day, I escaped collision with subordinates. But, not having a servant, I was now compelled to look after our effects in person. W—— ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Ovid has here cursorily taken notice of the labours of Hercules, we may observe, that it is very probable that his history is embellished with the pretended adventures of many persons who bore his name, and, perhaps, with those of others besides. Cicero, in his 'Treatise on the Nature ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... domain of science can be but cursorily touched upon. Many readers get so thorough a distaste for science in early life—mainly from the fearfully and wonderfully dry text-books in which our schools and colleges have abounded—that they never open a scientific book in later years. This is a profound mistake, since no one can afford ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... read Le Morte d'Arthur, you'd think that the chivalry boys had been in business twenty-four hours a day, slaying ogres, rescuing fair damosels, and searching for the Sangraal; but not if you read between the lines. Mallory had read "Arthur" only cursorily, but he had had a hunch all along that in the majority of cases the quest for the Sangraal had served as an out, and that the knights of the Table Round had spent more time wenching and wassailing ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... besides verifying approximately Struve's parallax of half a second of arc for 61 Cygni, he refuted, in 1811, by a sweeping search for (so-called) "large" parallaxes, certain baseless conjectures of comparative nearness to the earth, in the case of red and temporary stars.[1580] Of 450 objects thus cursorily examined, only one star of the seventh magnitude, numbered 1,618 in Groombridge's Circumpolar Catalogue, gave signs of measurable vicinity. Similarly, a reconnaissance among rapidly moving stars lately made ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... touched cursorily on certain elements in education which need either a new emphasis or an altogether new interpretation; religion, history, art, but this does not mean that the same treatment should not be accorded elsewhere. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... leave it with you, Mordecai, that you may help me to study the manuscripts. Some of them I can read easily enough—those in Spanish and Italian. Others are in Hebrew, and, I think, Arabic; but there seem to be Latin translations. I was only able to look at them cursorily while I stayed at Mainz. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Addison saw. He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tunnel of Posilipo, and wandered among the vines and almond trees of Capreae. But neither the wonders of nature, nor those of art, could so occupy his attention as to prevent him from noticing, though cursorily, the abuses of the government and the misery of the people. The great kingdom which had just descended to Philip the Fifth was in a state of paralytic dotage. Even Castile and Aragon were sunk in wretchedness. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cannot afford to do here, especially as Milton's personal defects had no small influence on his literary character. But having honestly set down his faults, let us now turn to the pleasanter side of the subject without fear of having to revert, except cursorily, to the uglier. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Cursorily he mentioned having received her letter, which was "friendly and kind;" that it had followed him to Australia, and then back to Shanghai. But his return home seemed to have been entirely without reference to ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... his eye cursorily through the chapters of the book, that he may take in at once a general view of its object and design—perhaps he makes out a brief list of the topics discussed, and thus has a distinct general idea of the whole before he enters into a minute examination of the ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... story, both because it moves his own heart and because he wishes it to move that of others, begs you, dear reader, to pardon him if he now briefly passes over a considerable space of time, only cursorily mentioning the events that marked it. He knows well that he might portray according to the rules of art, step by step, how Huldbrand's heart began to turn from Undine to Bertalda; how Bertalda more and more responded with ardent love to the young knight, and how they both ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... except one—the way of vivid and loving study, following and feeling the author's meaning all through? To suppose, as I believe some people do, that you can get the value of a great poem by studying an abstract of it in an encyclopaedia or by reading cursorily an average translation of it, argues really a kind of mental deficiency, like deafness or colour-blindness. The things that we have called eternal, the things of the spirit and the imagination, always seem to lie more in a process than in a result, and can only be reached and enjoyed ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... attached to the Romish hierarchy, as well as the most prone to superstition, felt severely, during this reign, while its patience was not yet fully exhausted, the influence of these causes, and we shall often have occasion to touch cursorily upon such incidents. But we shall not attempt to comprehend every transaction transmitted to us: and till the end of the reign, when the events become more memorable, we shall not always observe an exact chronological order in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... rigorous jurisdiction, which, to a certain extent, suppressed these barbarous disorders, and gave some assurance to social intercourse; but the very mystery which gave weight to the institution was the cause of its origin being unknown. It is only mentioned, and then cursorily, in historical documents towards the early part of the fifteenth century. This court of judicature received the name of Femgericht, or Vehmgericht, which means Vehmic tribunal. The origin of the word Fem, Vehm, or Fam, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... opened and cursorily read the original letters from General Washington, mentioned in the foregoing introductory explanation, and noticed the domestic topics which ran so largely through them, they struck me as possessing peculiar interest. ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... earlier part of the present year I was cursorily examining a brook in Cannock Chase, in Staffordshire. Unfortunately, the day was singularly inauspicious, as the sun was invisible, the atmosphere murky, and a fierce north-east wind was blowing, a wind which affects animals, etc., especially ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... Frenchman, or a German to accept hard conditions in fixing the price at which he is prepared to sell his labour or his services, none of these individuals is, in reality, a slave; and he has only to inquire very cursorily into the subject to satisfy himself that the relations between employer and employed in Portuguese West Africa differ widely from those which exist in any European country, and are in fact far more akin to what, in the general acceptance of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring |
