"Disadvantage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Glasgow, a ship of 4,800 tons, had only two of the 6-inch weapons. It was certain that the German 8.2-inch guns, if the shooting was at all good, would be found to outrange and outclass the British. Cradock was certainly at a disadvantage in gun-power. His protective armour was weaker than that of the enemy. Nor did his speed give him any superiority. Though the Glasgow was capable of twenty-six knots, the flagship and the Monmouth could only go to twenty-three. But ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... hallway than to the tumult in the court-yard. By the sound of the steel coming nearer, and that of the footfalls changing somewhat, I presently knew that one of the fighters had sought the vantage—or disadvantage—of the staircase. But the other evidently pushed him hard, for soon both combatants had reached the landing at the turn of the stairs, as was manifest from a sudden increase of their noise in my ears. I could ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and covenants, though made to your disadvantage, though afterward you perceive you might have done better; and let not any precedent act of yours be altered by any after-accident. Let nothing make you break your promise, unless it be unlawful or impossible; that is, either out of your nature or out of your ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... [1] This disadvantage is greater on the stage, since the audience neither see nor hear more of Bourbon, and only four acts of the piece are performed. In the closet it will not be so obvious, as Bourbon returns ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... for all their cloves, at fifty dollars the bahar, of 200 cattees, in reward for having freed them from the Spanish yoke, at great expence of blood and treasure; and required therefore, that I should not excite the people to disobedience, to their great disadvantage, as the country was certainly theirs by right of conquest. He added, that the islanders were indebted in large sums to the Dutch, advanced on promise of repayment in cloves. I answered, that I had no intention to interfere in any of the concerns of the Dutch, and had only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... war, and its varying fortunes were shared with agonizing interest by the Athenian army and the citizens on the walls of Syracuse, who were able from their respective positions to overlook the whole battle and watch the manoeuvres of each ship. The Athenians were placed at a great disadvantage by having all their ships collected into one mass, where they were attacked from all sides by the lighter and more manageable vessels of the enemy. The Syracusans also used stones as missiles, which strike ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... were very much entertained during their stay in Paris, and we met them nearly every night. W. liked the general very much and found him quite talkative when he was alone with him. At the big dinners he was of course at a disadvantage, neither speaking nor understanding a word of French. W. acted as interpreter and found that very fatiguing. There is so much repartee and sous-entendu in all French conversation that even foreigners who ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... to sit as long as the deputies. I see no use in making the term of one body longer than the other, and I think it very easy to show that great injury has arisen from the practice among ourselves. Neither do I see the advantage of having a part go out periodically; but, on the contrary, a disadvantage, as it leaves a representation of old, and, perhaps, rejected opinions, to struggle with the opinions of the day. Such collisions have invariably impeded the action and disturbed the harmony of our own government. I would have every ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... kitchens, is it not true that the larger part of the mothers see in their babies, or act as if they saw, only babies? And if there are three or four or half a dozen of them, as there generally are, so much the more do they see babies whose bodies monopolize the mother's time to the disadvantage of their souls. She loves them, and she works for them day and night; but when they are ranting and ramping and quarrelling, and torturing her over-tense nerves, she forgets the infinite, and applies herself energetically to the finite, by sending Harry with a round ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of moral and economic decay, had long survived any usefulness it had ever had. The rise of the cities, the aggrandizement of the princes, and the change to a commercial from a feudal society all worked to the disadvantage of the smaller nobility and gentry. About the only means of livelihood left them was freebooting, and that was adopted without scruple and without shame. Envious of the wealthy cities, jealous of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... map, or picture, that the pupil can, at a single view, see the sentence as an organic whole made up of many parts performing various functions and standing in various relations. Without such map he must labor under the disadvantage of seeing all these things by piecemeal ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... with; and when a man enters the game protected by a previous attachment which absorbs all his nature, and the woman awakes in all her depth and strength to feel the real meaning of love and life, she finds that she has played with one stronger than she, at a terrible disadvantage. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Commander-in-Chief, who was gradually drawing near to Toulouse, beneath whose walls Soult was reorganizing his army. The position was a very strong one, and had been rendered almost impregnable by fortifications thrown upon the heights. Wellington had, too, the disadvantage of having to separate his army, as the town lay upon ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... and glared from his wife's diaphanous costume to the workman in his rough clothes and flannel shirt. As the avenue sloped abruptly he was at a disadvantage, and it was all he could do to keep from ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the Americans could see their opponents, but when a German did venture to expose himself for a moment, his slip almost invariably proved fatal, as the American rifles spoke with deadly effect. But the Americans were at a terrible disadvantage, and the sergeant in charge saw ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... consumption of vegetable foods seems to offer a slight disadvantage from the point of view of albuminoid matters, this is not the case touching hydro-carbonated matters and sugars. The vegetable kingdom constitutes the almost exclusive source of these alimentary principles. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... one asked because the answer is the quite apparent fact the speaker wants to impress upon his hearers—is an effective method of making a seemingly personal appeal to sluggish intellects or lazy wills. The interrogative form has the same disadvantage as the exclamatory. Except when its answer is perfectly plain it transfers no meaning. It would be easily possible for a speaker with no ideas at all, no knowledge of a topic, to engage time and attention by merely constructing a series of questions. At the conclusion the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the creatures had gathered in great numbers about the island and were devouring the fugitives right and left. Fully a dozen of the monsters rushed at the panther which, formidable as it was on land, was, like most of the cat tribe, at a great disadvantage in the water. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... that Miss Barfoot stood in some danger of becoming subordinate to her more vehement friend. Her little body, for all its natural dignity, put her at a disadvantage in the presence of Rhoda, who towered above her with rather imperious stateliness. Her suavity was no match for Rhoda's vigorous abruptness. But the two were very fond of each other, and by this time thought ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... known to be extant, but the story itself can be traced much further back and was evidently a prime favorite with the English rustics. The plain, often doggerel verse, and the rough, often coarse humor of this ballad make it appear at striking disadvantage among the Scottish folk-songs, essentially poetic as even the rudest of them are. Tom Thumbe, it must be confessed, is but a clumsy sort of elf, and the ballad as a whole can hardly be said to have a fairy ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... their guards as easily as he would have beat down so many osier wands, and wounded severely at every blow. It was in vain that Donald's assailants kept retiring before him, in the hope of getting him at a disadvantage—of finding an opportunity of having a cut or a thrust at him. No time was allowed them for any such exploit. Donald kept pressing on, and showering his tremendous blows on them so thickly, that not an instant was left them for aggression in turn. They were, besides, rapidly losing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... and a damp haze thickened the gloom. Stone walls and ragged thorn bushes leaped up in the glare of the lamps and faded, but one could see nothing outside the bright beam. This was a disadvantage, because Foster could not tell where he was and much depended on his reaching the station with exactly the right time to spare. He was rather anxious about it, since his plan would be spoiled at the start if the train ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... high levels; our exports and imports have steadily increased; with some exceptions our manufacturing industries have been prosperous. Nevertheless, economic changes have taken place during that time which have placed certain domestic products at a disadvantage and new industries have come into being, all of which create the necessity for some limited changes in the schedules and in the administrative clauses of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of sentiment. The Brotherhood has held that the relation between the employer and employee concerning wages, hours, conditions of labor, and settlement of difficulties should be on the basis of a written contract; that the engineer as an individual was at a manifest disadvantage in making such a contract with a railway company; that he therefore had a right to join with his fellow engineers in pressing his demands and therefore had the right to a collective contract. Though for over a decade the railways fought stubbornly against this policy, in the end ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... 'It is just the disadvantage of that kind of school that girls talk that sort of undesirable stuff. Gillian said to herself; but curiosity, or interest in the Whites, prompted her to add, 'What did ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tried very often again. And now she was in love with Jack De Baron. The worst of Guss Mildmay was that, through it all, she had a heart and would like the young men,—would like them, or perhaps dislike them, equally to her disadvantage. Old gentlemen, such as was Mr. Houghton, had been willing to condone all her faults, and all her loves, and to take her as she was. But when the moment came, she would not have her Houghton, and then she was in the market again. Now a young woman entering the world ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... butter and a pound of sugar; and sift into another pan a pound of flour. Beat six eggs very light, and stir them into the butter and sugar, alternately with the flour and a pint of rich milk or cream; if the milk is sour it will be no disadvantage. Add a glass of wine, a glass of brandy, a powdered nutmeg, and a table-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Lastly, stir in a small tea-spoonful of pearl-ash, or salaeratus, that has been melted in a little vinegar; take care not to put in ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... delivered February 9, in a debate on the army estimates, in which he took occasion to denounce, with great vehemence, the principles and conduct of the French Revolution, which he contrasted, much to its disadvantage, with the English Revolution of 1688. "The French," he said, "had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto appeared in the world." The sentiments uttered by Burke on this occasion delighted ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... able to carry another laurel plucked in Egypt to France, forgot the fault which had made so unfavourable an impression, and was inclined to efface from his memory other things that he had heard to the disadvantage of Murat; for I have good reasons for believing, though Bonaparte never told me so, that Murat's name, as well as that of Charles, escaped from the lips of Junot when he made his indiscreet communication to Bonaparte at the walls of Messoudiah. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the means for gaining the attention is nothing but sugar coating, if it results in the mere entertainment of the worker, there is every likelihood that the attention will be divided between the two. The other disadvantage is that because of the attractiveness of the means used to gain attention it may be given just so long as the incentive remains, and no longer. These difficulties may be largely overcome, however, by the application of the principles governing good incentives. This must mean that ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... form, called Life, men, made spasmodic by perpetual action, had seized on a certain moment, no more intrinsically notable than any other moment, and had called it Birth. This habit of honouring one single instant of the universal process to the disadvantage of all the other instants had done more, perhaps, than anything to obfuscate the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux. As well might such as watch the process of the green, unfolding earth, emerging from the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... alongside the blacks; and this was a consequence not of the negroes being slaves so much as of the slaves being negroes. It was a racial antipathy which when added to the experience of industrial disadvantage pressed the bulk of the newcomers northwestward beyond the confines of the Southern staple belts, and pressed even many of the native whites in the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... fortresses. During the Franco-German War the frequency of announcements of the fall of French fortresses used to be the subject of casual jeers. The jeers were misplaced. The French fortresses, labouring under every conceivable disadvantage, did not do themselves discredit. All of them were more or less obsolete. Excluding Metz and Paris, neither fortified to date, their average age was about a century and a half and few had been amended since their first construction. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... decision, since having been elected is an equal proof of the confidence the legislature of Pennsylvania reposed in me, and not being qualified, if it is so decided, cannot be imputed to me as a fault." His exclusion was by no means a disadvantage to him. It made common cause of the honor of Pennsylvania and his own; it endeared him to the Republicans of his State as a martyr to their principles. It "secured him," to use his own words, "many staunch" friends throughout the Union, and extended his reputation, hitherto local and confined, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... he was clever enough to conceal his vanity. He was hurt, but he was man enough to hide it. Under the passivity which was his by nature and practice, he had learned to think very quickly. But now he was at a disadvantage. He was unnerved by his love for Etta—by the sight of Etta before him daringly, audaciously beautiful—by the thought that she might ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Phillip. The reasons, also, are stated accurately by him.) In any case, it is indubitable, from what I have heard the Governor say—it is indubitable, I say, that such a step will soon be taken. Indeed, whatever advantage Port Jackson may possess, it suffers from a grave disadvantage in the narrowness of its entry. Two frigates could by themselves blockade the most numerous fleet within. Westernport would in certain eventualities offer an advantageous position. Moreover, the navigation of Bass Strait is ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Nothing could be farther from the truth. According to the natives of West Africa, a gorilla or chimpanzee fights a hunter by biting his face and fingers, just as an orang-utan does. I believe that no sane orang ever voluntarily left the safety of a tree top to fight at a serious disadvantage on the ground; and I am sure an orang never struck a blow with a club, unless carefully taught to ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... was not more coherent in her own wailings, and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into a momentary ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the level of the rampart: he shook the strongest battlements with his military engines, and sometimes advanced to the assault with a line of movable turrets on the backs of elephants. In the great cities of the East, the disadvantage of space, perhaps of position, was compensated by the zeal of the people, who seconded the garrison in the defence of their country and religion; and the fabulous promise of the Son of God, that Edessa should never be taken, filled the citizens ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the Japanese walnut. It has been on trial in this country for perhaps fifty or seventy-five years. It has indicated its adaptability to a wide range of the country; it succeeds on a great variety of soils and it is both hardy and early to come into bearing. It has this disadvantage, however,—the nuts are small; but in flavor the kernals can hardly be distinguished from those of the butternut. Very often it forms a most attractive tree and it should be used to a much greater extent than it ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... printers have been typical of the difficulties which women have had to face in what is called a man's trade of the highly organized class. The tragic alternative that is too often offered to women, just as it is offered to any race or class placed at an economic disadvantage, of being kept outside a skilled trade, through the short-sighted policy of the workers in possession, or of entering it by some back door, whether as mere undersellers or as actual strike-breakers, is illustrated in all its ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... those days presided over the disputations in the schools, and conducted the examinations of the Senate House, to be unrivalled in the university. Nor was the youth's proficiency in classical learning less remarkable. In one respect, indeed, he appeared to disadvantage when compared with even second-rate and third-rate men from public schools. He had never, while under Wilson's care, been in the habit of composing in the ancient languages: and he therefore never acquired that knack of versification which is sometimes possessed by clever ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I in part settled myself here; for, first of all, I married, and that not either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction, and had three children, two sons and one daughter; but my wife dying, and my nephew coming home with good success from a voyage to Spain, my inclination to go abroad, and his importunity, prevailed, and engaged me to go in his ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... out more than once in the direction where I had seen the prahus, fearing that should they discover our present defenceless condition they might attack us, for although we might fight our guns it would be at a great disadvantage. ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... them is cased in a cylindrical frock-coat, and each carries either a scroll or a dubious-looking garment over the arm that might be either a bathing-towel or a light great-coat. Each of them is in an oratorical attitude, which has all the disadvantage of being affected without even any of the advantages of being theatrical. Let no one suppose that such abortions arise merely from technical demerit. In every line of those leaden dolls is expressed the fact that they were not set up with any heat of natural enthusiasm ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... much more inducement to grant leases to many of your tenants, and you would take a step highly favourable, not to the prosperity of your tenants only, but to your own prosperity and your own honour. Now, Sir, I shall say no more upon that question except this, that I feel myself at a disadvantage in making a proposition of this nature to a House where landowners are so numerous and so powerful, but I have disarmed them in so far that they will see that I mean them no harm, and that what I propose is not contrary ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... broke in with a passionate tone, 'Don't you see, my lord, that he does not know anything to this person's disadvantage; that it is only my cousin's diplomatic reserve—that commendable caution of his order—suggests his careful conduct? Cecil knows no more of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... sister to witness, and the stories grew and grew on that foundation, till every picnic or tennis party that Gertrude had attended that summer, was transformed into a separate flirtation or supplied an anecdote to Gertrude's disadvantage. ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... from the passengers, for the sea beggars were almost as much feared by their own countrymen as by the Spaniards, the latter having spared no pains in spreading tales to their disadvantage. As soon as the ferryman had landed his passengers he rowed boldly out towards the fleet, having nothing of which he could be plundered, and being secretly well disposed towards the beggars. The first ship he hailed was that commanded by William de Blois, Lord of Treslong, ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... King's having sent 15 horsemen into Switzerland from whence the Sr de Maille, the King's resident there, had given information of the Sr Roux de Marsilly's being there negociating the bringing the Cantons into the Triple League by discourses much to the disadvantage of France, giving them very ill impressions of the French King's Government, who was BETRAYED BY A MONK THAT KEPT HIM COMPANY and intercepted by the said horsemen brought into France and is expected at the Bastille. I believe you know the man. . . . I remember ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... as we gather, at a disadvantage in any match of force with the insolent tributaries who had cast off their yoke, could not well refuse,—could not afford to give offence by refusing. The alliance was in truth a splendid one,—were it not for that old unavenged affront! Even as matters stood, the proposal ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... generals of the time; and the officers he had under him, were his brother Edward, his faithful follower the Douglas, and other brave and experienced leaders. His men had been accustomed to fight and gain victories under every disadvantage of situation and numbers. ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... right as any of them. The result of this arrangement is that each takes up as much of the best land open to him as he can put to gainful use, and what he cannot so use he leaves open for the next. Moreover, he is at no disadvantage with the rest who have come in ahead of him, for they provide for him, in proportion to their respective advantages, those public utilities which invariably arise wherever men live in communities. Of course he will in turn hold ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... life, not by didactic description, but by example, by telling you the story of one who lived this life. He was born in the lowest social station, he battled against every disadvantage, the hospital was his sick-chamber, his funeral was at the Government's expense, and everybody eminent in literature and art followed his remains to the grave, over which, after a proper interval of time, a monument was erected by public subscription to his memory. His father was a porter at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the Gentiles at all; nor are they taught openly in the hearing of Catechumens: but much that is spoken is in disguised terms, that the Faithful ([Greek: Πιστοί]), who possess the knowledge, may be still more informed, and those who are not acquainted with it, may suffer no disadvantage." ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... our disadvantage. Overmuch in action, the man of affairs may win the admiration of a surface-seeing world; may capture the benefits of strong purpose, of wealth, and of position. But he is in danger of utterly losing the fruits ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... The only disadvantage which the machine presents is the fact that it is impossible to remove the feet from the pedals while running, without dismounting; but though they must at all times follow the pedals, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... said Mr. Hawley gravely. "The cellars, you see, run five stories below ground. They had to dig down, down, down to get the room they needed. The disadvantage of this is that all materials and all the printed papers as well have to be hoisted to and from the ground floor, and air and water must be pumped from the street level. Nevertheless, that this can be done has been proved. The questions of heating and ventilation are the most serious ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... scaffold was untenanted and the great knife still. Another consideration kept him indoors. His constant presence in the streets might serve to make his face and figure familiar, and this would be a disadvantage if he were presently to help Mademoiselle St. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... breast, which indicates good marksmanship. The Indians, though skillful marksmen, did not exhibit sufficient mechanical knowledge to enable them properly to clean their guns, and thus were at some disadvantage. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... them. It is a wise economy of time and patience to prepare plenty of these; otherwise it will occasionally happen that the whole stock will be consumed and no fire made. Then the traveller must recommence the work from the very beginning, under the disadvantage of increasing darkness. I have made many experiments myself, and have seen many novices as well as old campaigners try to make fires; and have concluded that, to ensure success, the traveller should be provided with small bundles ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... she had given Harris when he bade her good evening had seemed to include himself. It galled him that he did not seem fitted by nature or breeding to cope with this kind of situation. The half consciousness of inferiority put him still more at disadvantage with himself. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... luxuries but with the necessities. A bookless house is not a home; for a home affords food and shelter for the mind as well as for the body. It is as great an offence against a child to starve his mind as to starve his body, and there is as much danger of reducing his vitality and putting him at a disadvantage in his lifework in the one as in the other form of deprivation. There was a time when it was felt that shelter, clothing, food and physical oversight comprised the whole duty of a charitable institution to dependent children; to-day no community would permit such ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the moor which is now a meadow bright with clover and renowned for butter and cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase of population necessarily deprived him of these privileges. But against this disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be set off. Of the blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring with them a large proportion is common to all ranks, and would, if withdrawn, be missed as painfully by the labourer as by the peer. The market-place which the rustic can now reach with his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has been included in this series for the greater convenience of the reader of "Grote's Greece" and other works that ask a continual reference to maps of ancient and classical geography. The disadvantage of having to turn perpetually from the text of a volume to a map at its end, or a few pages away, is often enough to prevent the effective use of the one in elucidating the other. Despite some slight variations ...
— The Atlas of Ancient and Classical Geography • Samuel Butler
... between the Roman generals, and that Sempronius was full of a presumptuous sort of ardor, and he began to think that he could contrive some plan to draw the latter out into battle under circumstances in which he would have to act at a great disadvantage. He did contrive such a plan. It succeeded admirably; and the case was one of those numerous instances which occurred in the history of Hannibal, of successful stratagem, which led the Romans to say that his leading traits of ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... watching her as he spoke, and now that he no longer stood under the disadvantage of comparison with Jack Halloway he was no mean figure of a man. One could not miss the fine, if slender, power of his long and shapely lines from broad shoulder to tapering waist. His hair curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of grace, agile ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... grammar school, known as the High School. Though he had had some lessons in Latin with a private tutor, he was behind his class in this subject, and being a high-spirited and sensitive boy, he felt rather keenly this disadvantage. Perhaps the fact that he could not be one of the leaders of his class made him careless; at any rate, he could never be depended upon to prepare his lesson, and at no time did he make a consistently good record. However, he found not a little ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... matter of fact, his father-in-law, although living under the disadvantage of being a Standard Oil magnate, neither was, nor is, a blackguard, and his son-in-law had been treated by him generously and with patience. But for the duellist and soldier of fortune it was impossible to sympathize with a man who took ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... here said is intended to convey the slightest censure on the conduct of that State. She no doubt sincerely believed herself to have been injured by the decision; and States, like individuals, acquiesce with great reluctance in determinations to their disadvantage. Those who had an opportunity of seeing the inside of the transactions which attended the progress of the controversy between this State and the district of Vermont, can vouch the opposition we experienced, as well from States not interested ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the disadvantage of being unknown, even by sight, to any of you. No previous canvass was made for me. I was put in nomination after the poll was opened. I did not appear until it was far advanced. If, under all these accumulated disadvantages, your good opinion has ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not positively prove much; yet it indicated how little he must be to her: and somehow it made him realize more clearly the great disadvantage at which he lay, compared with an admirer belonging to her own class. Hitherto his senses had always been against his reason: but now for once they co-operated with his judgment, and made him feel ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Spaniards, under La Torre, had fewer men, but occupied a very strong defensive position. This was a plain, interspersed with rocky and wooded hills, and giving abundant space for military movements, while if driven back they could retire to one strong point after another, holding the enemy at disadvantage throughout. In front there was only one defile, and their wings were well protected, the left resting upon a deep morass. A squadron of cavalry protected their right wing, and on a hill opposite the defile—through which ran the road to Valencia—was ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... Red Thrush, but hopelessly impair his organ, and you have the Cat-Bird. This accustomed visitor would seem a gifted vocalist, but for the inevitable comparison between his thinner note and the gushing melodies of the lordlier bird. Is it some hopeless consciousness of this disadvantage which leads him to pursue that peculiar habit of singing softly to himself very often, in a fancied seclusion? When other birds are cheerily out-of-doors, on some bright morning of May or June, one will often discover a solitary Cat-Bird sitting concealed in the middle of a dense bush, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ancestors had never known the danger of the Osmia-blocked vestibule. Once these facts are duly recognized, the conclusion is irresistible: it is obvious that, as the insect does not hand down the casual modification tending towards the avoidance of what is to its disadvantage, neither does it hand down the modification leading to the adoption of what is to its advantage. However lively the impression made upon the mother, the accidental leaves no trace in the offspring. Chance plays no part in the genesis of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... artillery. It is entirely destroyed, and it was undecided whether it would be best to reconstruct it with masonry, according to the project of Don Luis de Bassecourt, or to open the bar of Guaurabo by dredging it. The great disadvantage of Puerto de Casilda is the want of fresh water, which vessels have to procure at the distance of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... at a disadvantage in relating the faults of others, for he seems to himself and to his friends to be telling his own experience. We were about to speak of the superficial way in which Americans travel. One who has traveled much says that "the average company of American tourists goes through ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... who has deliberately poised advantage against disadvantage; domestic ease and comfort against the false gaieties of fashion. I can withdraw into the country. I need no honours to make my tenants happy; and my heart will teach me to make their happiness my own. With such a wife as this, children who resemble her, and fortune enough to spread ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... England and his marshals had properly divided the fleet, they hoisted their sails to have the wind on their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... even more offensive than their presence at the elections in a Territory of the Union, which was directly under the control of the National Government. On the abstract issue thus presented the Republicans were placed somewhat at a disadvantage; and yet every white man making the complaint knew that the influence of the troops was not to deprive him of a single right, but was to prevent him from depriving the colored man of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... All steam was made to put into Key West. Then some of the machinery gave way and the ship lay rolling, helplessly becalmed in the fierce heat of the Gulf, while repairs were being made. The work was done at a disadvantage, and the parts did not hold. Time and again they were obliged to lie to, in the deadly tropic heat, listening to the hopeless hammering, wondering who would be the next to be sewed up hastily in a blanket and slipped over the ship's ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... unfair about it," said the teacher, "except that Luke is placed at disadvantage in using a pair of skates he is ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... their captivating passionate eloquence. It is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you take him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against the law, clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt. Thank God that, in England, things ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his prize, and there being a nice little easterly breeze blowing, the order was given for all three craft to weigh and proceed down the creek; the captain being rather anxious lest the slavers should return and take us at a disadvantage now that our force was divided. Nothing untoward occurred, however, and in a short time we were all proceeding down the creek, with the second lieutenant in his schooner ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... perfected. There would be fewer occasions for new houses, and the new house would be less novel in style, and so two difficulties would be overcome. For novelty of style is a drawback to effect, as tending to isolate the house; and a new house is always at a disadvantage. Nature, in any case, is slow to adopt our handiwork into the landscape; sometimes the assimilation is so difficult that it must be ruined for its original purpose before it will be accepted. Sooner or later, indeed, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... made manifest, than Marlborough followed with all his forces, with the double design of raising the investment of Oudenarde, and if possible forcing the enemy to give battle, under the disadvantage of doing so in a retreat. Anxious to improve their advantage, the Allied generals pushed forward with the utmost expedition, hoping to come up with the enemy when his columns and baggage were close upon the Scheldt, or in the very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... depths of his wrath, Lone Bear regained something of his self-command, and called to mind the stories he had heard of the fleetness of the young Shawanoe. That, with the fact that there was no longer the least halt in his gait, told the disadvantage in ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... find themselves at a disadvantage in dealing with aborigines because they have no dialect like pigeon English or the Coast Malay used by the Dutch.[271] Many examples are given, from the Baltic region, of peasant dialects made in ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... young man's hospitality, and spent the two days of his sojourn in the house of a certain Malhortie, where he felt more at ease in his conferences with Lorrainers willing to proceed further to the disadvantage ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... importance. Great artist as Milton was, he seems to have confused truth of art with truth of fact. He preferred a Biblical subject because it was his belief that every statement in the Bible was literally true. This belief, except from the emotional fervour it inspired in him, was a positive disadvantage to him as a poet. It circumscribed his freedom of invention, it compelled him to argue that the action of his drama as he found it was already reasonable and probable instead of letting his imagination work upon it and make it so; it made him aim too often at producing belief ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... do not hesitate to affirm that in the field of the American Missionary Association such provision is next in importance to the preached word. Neither can take the place of the other. Either is at a disadvantage without the other. And yet there are fifty-seven of these mission stations this year, now, without such beneficent woman's ministry, waiting only for additional funds, the new money necessary ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... from which direction the bullet had come, and for that reason were at a great disadvantage. Crouched close to the ground they waited, ears strained for a sound by which they could locate the man ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... coat and laid them on the bed, and sat down and began to tell about it. "I made him realize the disadvantage you were under," he said, "being a stranger and not knowing the ground. I believe he had an idea that you tried to get his confidence on purpose to attack him. It was Mrs. Robbie, I guess—you know her fortune is all in ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... neutrality is based on the general principle of impartiality, this principle has been embodied in a fairly well-defined set of rules which may, and frequently do, in any given war, work to the advantage of one belligerent and to the disadvantage of the other. In the Great War this result was brought about by the naval superiority of Great Britain. So far as our legal obligations to Germany were concerned she had no cause for complaint. ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... must always be objects of suspicion. Giannozzo here, and I, I flatter myself, are able to overcome that suspicion; we have that power of concealment and finesse, without which a rational cultivated man, instead of having any prerogative, is really at a disadvantage compared with a wild bull or a savage. But, except yourself, I know of no one else on whom we could rely for ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and class to an aristocratic assumption of licence. Sparing Colney, she with some scorn condemned Mr. Pempton for allowing his country to be ridiculed without a word. Mr. Pempton believed that the Vegetarian movement was more progressive in England than in other lands, but he was at the disadvantage with the fair Priscilla, that eulogy of his compatriots on this account would win her coldest approval. 'Satire was never an argument,' he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is apt to be higher in the country than in the city. Parents and teachers in small towns and in rural districts will do well to take an inventory of the influences surrounding their children. It will always be impossible to give country children city diversions. One great disadvantage of country children frequently counter-acts the beneficial influence of out-of-door living; namely, isolation. The city child is practically always in or about to be in the sight of, if not in the ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... this occasion was masterly; English jurisprudence had never before witnessed so striking a combination of refined knowledge with clear arrangement and unanswerable facts. It had one disadvantage, it was overwhelmingly long; it lasted nine hours, a period, if not beyond the strength of the advocate, palpably beyond any power of attention in the jury. But even this disadvantage arose from an honourable public feeling. The judges who examined the papers declared them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... recognition of his existence—he had never received a hint or nod. Nor does any member of the Cabinet (except, no doubt, Mr. McAdoo, his son-in-law). There is no social sense nor reason in this. In fact, it works to a very decided disadvantage to the President ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Master-Card, an Event or Project to your disadvantage and regret. Influenced by the like suit, a Disgrace. By a Heart, a Quarrel. By a Diamond, a Cheat. By ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... had prayed that he might be spared the error of a vain return upon the past. It was as if all her retrospective tenderness, dreading to see him at such a disadvantage, rose up to protect him from it. But his evasiveness exasperated her, and suddenly she felt the inconsistent desire tohold him fast, face to face with his ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... been well washed by deputy: were very attractive. But, of all the many spectacles of dangerous reliance on outward observances, in themselves mere empty forms, none struck me half so much as the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw several times, but to the greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on Good Friday. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... delighted that you and Mrs. Mifflin are willing to try the experiment of taking my daughter as an apprentice. Titania is really a very charming girl, and if only we can get some of the "finishing school" nonsense out of her head she will make a fine woman. She has had (it was my fault, not hers) the disadvantage of being brought up, or rather brought down, by having every possible want and whim gratified. Out of kindness for herself and her future husband, if she should have one, I want her to learn a little about earning ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... wisdom. "Ay be reading the books, laddie. An ill-educated man feels always at a disadvantage among folk of talent. Aboard ship you can read and think more than at a university. I've got a parcel for you to take when you go again. Hakluyt's Voyages and a good Marco Polo. And the new book of Mr. Dickens, 'The Haunted Man.' And there's a great new writer you'll not want ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... disadvantage, too, from the fact that Aaron was their guest, and Mr. Rushton's brother. If they defended Teddy too strongly, it would seem to be making light of ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... such a disadvantage by-and-by with other young ladies without half your intelligence just because they know things you refuse to learn. Then you'll ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of mind suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... even at this disadvantage, the Templar sustained his high reputation; and had not the girths of his saddle burst, he might not have been unhorsed. As it chanced, however, saddle, horse, and man rolled on the ground under a cloud ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... why should we expect it to be otherwise? A national institution, though deriving its charter from a different source than the State banks, is yet constituted upon the same principles, is conducted by men equally exposed to temptation, and is liable to the same disasters, with the additional disadvantage that its magnitude occasions an extent of confusion and distress which the mismanagement of smaller institutions could not produce. It can scarcely be doubted that the recent suspension of the United State Bank of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... first generation. The condition of the second was somewhat improved; they had become accustomed to their houses and were tolerably satisfied. The third had never seen anything better, and not having the means of comparison, could not make it to their own disadvantage, and finally, as man is a creature of custom and habit, and reverence, they learned to regard a style of building that had sprung out of the necessities of their ancestors, as an evidence not only of good sense, but of good taste. The immigrants, arriving from time to time, might have disabused ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... name, being a miniature Bay of Naples,—but without its Vesuvius. It is, however, so shallow that the coasting vessels that use it are obliged to anchor at some distance from the shore, exposed to the full action of the swell. Yet in spite of this disadvantage, Cannes is for its size a busy and ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... and of Petrarch, the Italian has varied very little; and that the English of Chaucer, their contemporary, is not to be understood without the help of an old dictionary. But their Goth and Vandal had the fortune to be grafted on a Roman stock; ours has the disadvantage to be founded on the Dutch[4]. We are full of monosyllables, and those clogged with consonants, and our pronunciation is effeminate; all which are enemies to a sounding language. It is true, that to supply our ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Scotch manners, and Scotch religion" was not, Matthew Arnold insisted, a beautiful world, and it was, he held, a disadvantage to Burns that he had not a beautiful world to deal with. This famous dictum is a standing challenge to any critic who regards Burns as a creator of beauty. It is true that when Burns took this world at its apparent ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson |
