"Fineness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opposed to his singular fineness, they are calculated to do just that," said Miss Broadwood gravely, wisely ignoring Imogen's tears. "But what has been is nothing to what will be. Just wait until Flavia's black swans have flown! You ought not to try to stick it out; that would only make it harder for everyone. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any other lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, that into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone in by ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... certain. Some years ago, at nearly the same epoch, the Pere Lacordaire and our own Alexander Vinet consecrated to this noble cause, the former the attractive brilliancy of his eloquence, the latter all the fineness of his delicate analyses. The friends of Lacordaire are gathering up the vibrations of that striking utterance which proclaimed: "Liberty slays not God."[33] Let us gather up also the good words, which, uttered on the borders of our lake, have gained entrance far and near into ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... lover than he had ever been before, that she knew, and in the light of his eyes all that was not girlish and charming melted away. She forgot her heavy shoes, her rough hands and sun-tanned face, and listened with wondering joy and pride to his words, which were of a fineness such as she had never heard spoken—only books contained ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... as they had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),—his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, I suppose, than in the ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... "that I hain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed to have been put on him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion had supplied the place of our artificial breeding ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... modern Roman sculptors. Pacetti having purchased an ancient Greek statue of the best period in Pentelic marble, greatly mutilated, and wishing to repair it, could find nothing among the best products of the Carrara quarries to match the marble in purity and fineness of texture, and was therefore obliged to destroy another Greek statue of inferior merit in order to get materials for the restoration. From this combination he succeeded in producing the sleeping figure known as the Barberini Faun, whose forcible abduction by the Pontifical ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... last the greatness of his sacrifice and the fineness of his soul, and she fell into a passion of weeping and ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... heart-breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as she was, without bringing together all the extremes of feminine nature? In a word, the Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem. Her face was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle Ages. Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything about her erred, as it were, by an ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... saw the red slippers, the white shirt falling to the ankles and girdled at the waist, its bosom a capacious pocket, the white and red striped cloak over the shoulders. She marked the material of which they were made, the shirt of selected Angora wool, the cloak of camel's hair, in its fineness iridescent and soft as velvet. She saw in the girdle an empty scabbard for a yatagan elaborately covered with brilliants. She saw on the head a kerchief of mixed silk and cotton, tasselled, heavily striated red and yellow, and secured by the usual cord; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the Rueful Countenance was still very anxious to find out who the owner of the valise could be, conjecturing from the sonnet and letter, from the money in gold, and from the fineness of the shirts, that he must be some lover of distinction whom the scorn and cruelty of his lady had driven to some desperate course; but as in that uninhabited and rugged spot there was no one to be seen of whom he could inquire, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... their finikin fineness seems to hev done you! So they hain't gin you nuthin' better than their talk, hev ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... climax. The tone rapidly subsided and receded; for the composer had so cunningly scored it that groups of instruments were withdrawn without losing the thread of the musical tale. The tone, spun to a needle fineness, rushed up the fingerboard of the fiddles accompanied by the harp in a billowing glissando and—then on ragged rims of wide thunder a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching whiff of sulphur and violets, a ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... anything but a timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... to obtain a thread or yarn of sufficient fineness, it was found necessary to perform some of the attenuation of the cotton sliver as it left the drawing frame and before it reached the final spinning process. To this end, Arkwright adopted the Roving frame, in which the leading feature was again the celebrated drawing rollers. ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... if you let them sing one tune at a service, they will be putting their oar into the other tunes and bothering the choir. There is nothing more annoying to the choir than, at some moment when they have drawn out a note to exquisite fineness, thin as a split hair, to have some blundering elder to come in with a "Praise ye the Lord!" Total abstinence, I say! Let all the churches take the pledge even against the milder musical beverages; for ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... looked at them without delight. The first was soft dead black, the other glittering black, and they were perfectly matched in size, both being high and long-bodied, wide through the shoulders, with lithe, powerful legs. That they were a woman's pets showed in the gloss of skin, the fineness of mane. It showed, too, in the light of big eyes and the ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... fabric that could not give an account of itself was charged with being a nightcap till it was proved to be a dish-cloth or a cart-rope. I at length surrendered at discretion, and remembered that somewhere in my reading I had met with exquisite lace caps, and I did not that from the combined fineness and strength of their material they might answer the purpose, even if in form they should not be everything that was desirable,—and I determined to ascertain, if possible, whether such things ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... bivouac, and much noise and bustle went to its accomplishment. The young men covertly watched the Gillespie Camp. How would this ornamental party cope with such unfamiliar labors? With its combination of a feminine element which must be helpless by virtue of a rare and dainty fineness and a masculine element which could hardly be otherwise because of ill health, it would seem that all the work must devolve ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... at once discerned. She was charming, friendly, almost affectionate, yet I was conscious all the time that, in spite of herself, she was a little critical, a trifle aloof. Her perfect grooming, the very fineness of her self-possession, her high-bred gallantry of manner, and even the shining gloss on her black, beribboned hair, and her high boots, produced in me a sense of remoteness, which I found it ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... clovers also. But there may be instances in which it would be proper to give more attention to cleaning and pulverizing the soil to properly fit it for receiving the clover seed. The leading essentials in a seed-bed for clover are fineness, cleanness, moistness and firmness. Ordinarily black loam soils, sandy loam soils, sandy soils, humus soils and the volcanic ash soils of the West are made sufficiently fine without great labor. Clay soils may call for the free use of the harrow and roller used in some sort of ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... other conditions, had the effect of focussing all his power on the atoms that went to the making up of the daily record of his days. Had he kept a diary it would have been interesting from its very lack of large interest. And yet, with all this narrowing down, a certain fineness and purpose evolved that were both touching and inspiring. He never complained, not even to himself. After recognizing the power which Ledyard held in his life, he relinquished the one hope that had held him to the past. Then, for ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... estimate of our national advantages, and our civilization has tended to take on a too mechanical and material character. We need to have more time to cultivate the nobler nature, and, by Christian and scholarly associations and more intimate friendships, discover and prize the fineness and sweetness of character in others, which may enrich our own life and incite us to worthy action. It is the province of higher education to help foster those conditions of mind and heart whose flexibility and natural aptitudes lead the individual "to draw ever nearer ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... knew you would be pleased," he said in answer to Walter's exclamation at the fineness of the workmanship. "I bought this a month ago from a Jew merchant who had recently come from Italy. How he got it I know not, but I doubt if it were honestly, or he would have demanded a higher price than ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... you set about the pulverization of the soil. Then go to work with hoe and rake, and reduce it to the last possible degree of fineness, working the fertilizer you make use of into it in such a manner that both are ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... the mood changed and Dorothy felt it first, like a chill mist in the air. Neither dreamed that with the writing of the first paragraph in the book, the spell had claimed one of them for ever—that cobweb after cobweb, of gossamer fineness, should make a fabric never to be broken; that on one side of it should stand a man who had exchanged his dreams for realities and his realities for dreams, and on the other, a woman, blindly hurt, eternally straining to see ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... the young man had passed through a preliminary jungle of birch, cedar, spruce, and hemlock, it ran without a break, clear, clean, of cloud-sweeping altitude, without underbrush. Most of it was good bull-sap, which is known by the fineness of the bark, though often in the hollows it shaded gradually into the rough-skinned cork pine. In those days few people paid any attention to the Norway, and hemlock was not even thought of. With every foot of the way Thorpe became more ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... then that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in similar pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting carefully the necessary fineness of the point, and then the washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she understood nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket handkerchief ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the wildest sort of guesses as to the identity of the master mind and hand which had deceived the cashier. He must, they felt sure, have made the forgery with a camel's hair brush of unrivalled fineness. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... I admit," replied Marillac negligently; and he examined the lock submitted to this merciless criticism as if it were simply a piece of goods, of the fineness of whose texture he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and knee-breeches. In this I consider Doctor Plausible was right; the above look much more scientific than Wellington trousers; and much depends upon the exterior. He was quite a ladies' man; talked to them about their extreme sensibility, their peculiar fineness of organic structure, their delicacy of nerves; and soothed his patients more by flattery than by physic. Having discovered that Miss Laura was not inclined to give up her gingerbread, he immediately acknowledged its virtues, but recommended that it should be cut into ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... make a picture of the party, this man came to the front; and when I asked the servant to send off the half-vagrant boys and girls who stood gazing at us, this man came up and said to me in a confidential tone, 'They do not understand the sacredness of the occasion, and the fineness of the conditions.' There was something regal in his audacity, but he was none the less ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... were of the same primitive character. The tools found in the village are all of flint: knives, scrapers, saws, hammers, and heads of lances and arrows. A few vases brought from Egypt are distinguished by the fineness of the material and the purity of the design; but the pottery in common use was made on the spot from coarse clay without care, and regardless of beauty. As for jewellery, the villagers had beads ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Pitched to a really high and serious key, the precept—Be perfect in regard to what is here and now: the precept of "culture," as it is called, or of a complete education—might at least save him from the vulgarity and heaviness [146] of a generation, certainly of no general fineness of temper, though with a material well-being abundant enough. Conceded that what is secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in our experience but ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... she took Tai-yue by the hand, and they came along back to the Hsiao Hsiang Kuan; where lady Feng had indeed sent her two small catties of a new season tea, of superior quality. But Lin Tai-yue sat down, in company with Hsiang Ling, and began to converse on the merits of this tapestry and the fineness of that embroidery; and after they had also had a game at chess, and read a few sentences out of a book, Hsiang Ling took her departure. But we need not speak of either of them, but return now to Pao-yue. Having been found, and brought back home, by Hsi Jen, he discovered ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... earth vergeth towards the southern parts, by reason of the thinness and fineness that is in the south; the northern parts are more compacted, they being congealed by a rigorous cold, but those parts of the world that are opposite are enfired. Democritus, because, the southern parts of the air being the weaker, the earth as it enlarges bends towards the south; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... not very old; but he was different from young Ben. He was a pointer of the old-fashioned, stocky-built, enduring type common—and serviceable—before our bench-show experts began to breed for speed, fineness, small size—and lack of stamina. Ben proved in the event to be a good all-round dog. He combined the attributes of pointer, cocker spaniel, and retriever. In other words, he would hunt quail in the orthodox fashion; or he would rustle into the mesquite thorns ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... that not wholly one of fear. He found himself thinking of Queen Katharine and understanding a little better how it was that the refined, delicately nurtured and devout woman, so constant in her prayers, so full of the peculiar fineness of character that gentle birth and religion alone confer, could so cling to this fierce lord of hers, throw herself at his feet with tears before all the company, and entreat not to be separated from him, calling him ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... keeping of the deposit may be considered as a sort of warehouse rent; and why this warehouse rent should be so much dearer for gold than for silver, several different reasons have been assigned. The fineness of gold, it has been said, is more difficult to be ascertained than that of silver. Frauds are more easily practised, and occasion a greater loss in the most precious metal. Silver, besides, being the standard metal, the state, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... long, this otter had to be worth a good high price. Its coat, chestnut brown above and silver below, would have made one of those wonderful fur pieces so much in demand in the Russian and Chinese markets; the fineness and luster of its pelt guaranteed that it would go for at least 2,000 francs. I was full of wonderment at this unusual mammal, with its circular head adorned by short ears, its round eyes, its white whiskers like those on a ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... change in the quality of the particles deposited, but from two other causes entirely distinct, and which I conceive to be these—first, from a tendency in earthy matter, subjected to the filtering, soaking, and washing of water for a considerable period, to arrange itself according to its degree of fineness, or, perhaps, according to the specific gravity of the particles, and thus form strata; and, secondly, from a tendency in earthy matter, consolidated both by water and subsequent exsiccation, to divide, independently of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... we should be able to take the garrison of the redoubt at least partially by surprise; but the fineness and silence of the night rendered this impossible; as soon, therefore, as everything was ready, the party moved forward toward the farther end of the ravine, the soldiers leading the way, in accordance with the proviso of Major- General ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... with Aldus. From 1494, the date of his first productions, until 1501 he printed his books in folio and quarto. But in the first year of the new century he began to use his famous cursive type, now called italic. The fineness of the new type, as has been suggested, called for a smaller size of book, which was also favored by considerations of economy and convenience; and so Aldus made up his sheets in a form which the fold compels us to call octavo, but which to-day would be called ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... journey to Devonshire was a dispiriting one despite the fineness of the day. T. X. had an uncomfortable sense that something distressing had happened. The run across the moor in the fresh spring air revived ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... wishes to have its ideals confused by a vulgar display of wealth or by loud or conspicuous behaviour. Yet many a school, with ideals all that they should be, is misjudged in public places because of some thoughtless or unreliable girls. This doesn't seem like fair-play or team-play, does it? The fineness of life ought to be felt and expressed in student behaviour. Yet how often ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... typical time-killing dandy of the times. His superb proportions made him look smaller, lighter than he really was, and his lean features, which under the I.F.P. skullcap would have looked hawk-like, were sufficiently like the patrician fineness of the character part he was playing. Young men of means in the year 2159 were by no means without their good points. They indulged in athletic sports to counteract the softening influence of idleness, and ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... discriminate them." He adds of the dog of the Hare Indians, a distinct breed, that it is almost the same as the prairie wolf (Canis latrans), the skull of the dog appeared to him a little smaller, otherwise he could detect no difference in form, nor fineness of fur, nor the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... to govern himself by any religious obligation; and a certain fineness of nature gave him such an instinctive view of the extent of the requirements of Christianity, that he shrank, by anticipation, from what he felt would be the exactions of his own conscience, if he once did resolve to assume them. For, so inconsistent ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... from being built of the cedars of Lebanon, and among groves of trees. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, book 8, chapter 6, section 5, states that when the Queen of Sheba came to Judea, she was amazed at the wisdom of Solomon, and surprised at the fineness and largeness of his royal palace; 'but she was beyond measure astonished at the house which was called the forest of Lebanon.' Matthew Henry follows the opinion of Bunyan; 'I rather incline to think it was a house ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bench be of any value," the Colonel remarked in a low tone to some of his officers, "I could give you some interesting information about that scout," looking towards Annette, "and this other one as well," meaning Julie. "These boys, trust my word, are no more Crees than I am. Note the fineness of their features, and the well-bred air and the grace of the one on horseback." The remarks of the Colonel were brought to an end by the appearance of Browninge, who saluted, and announced that he was ready ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Puritanism, Franklin stands for the worldly and secular side of American character, and he illustrates the development of the New England Englishman into the modern Yankee. Clear rather than subtle, without ideality or romance or fineness of emotion or poetic lift, intensely practical and utilitarian, broad-minded, inventive, shrewd, versatile, Franklin's sturdy figure became typical of his time and his people. He was the first and the only man of letters in colonial America who acquired a cosmopolitan fame ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... fast disappearing type of gentleman, and I knew that for him this was possible through an extraordinary suppleness of mind, fineness of tact and feeling, and a philosophic ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... upon a large scale. Granted that no one can draw a clear line and define the limits within which a miracle is healthy working and beyond which it is unwholesome, any more than he can prescribe the exact degree of fineness to which we must comminute our food; granted, again, that some can do more than others, and that at all times all men sport, so to speak, and surpass themselves, still we know as a general rule near enough, and find that the strongest can do but very little at a time, and, to return to Mr. Spencer, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... whether our journey ends not here," Archie said, "seeing that these hounds, when they taste blood, seem for a time to lose their fineness of scent; ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... king favours a person, that incident (of royal favour) bringeth in all others and holdeth them together. He that performeth ablutions winneth these ten, viz., strength, beauty, a clear voice, capacity to utter all the alphabetical sounds, delicacy of touch, fineness of scent, cleanliness, gracefulness, delicacy of limbs, and beautiful women. He that eateth sparingly winneth these six, viz., health, long life, and ease; his progeny also becometh healthy, and nobody reproacheth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... wool. As they need less woollen cloth than is used anywhere else, so that which they make use of is much less costly. They use linen cloth more; but that is prepared with less labour, and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the linen, or the cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness of the thread: while in other places, four or five upper garments of woollen cloth, of different colours, and as many vests of silk, will scarce serve one man; and while those that are nicer think ten ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... 63. What is the fineness and goodness of the Ore, by which the Mine is wont to be estimated? And what are the marks and {339} characters, that distinguish one sort ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... latitude 36 degrees bordering up on the west of the province of Namking, near the city of Lucheu, the Island Ladrones, and Japan, and is called ' ChA.' Of this famous leaf there are divers sorts (though all one shape), some much better than others, the upper leaves excelling the others in fineness, a property almost in all plants; which leaves they gather every day, and drying them in the shade or in iron pans, over a gentle fire, till the humidity be exhausted, then put close up in leaden pots, preserve them for their drink, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... recognizes it in the word on which the book closes—"We shall never be again as we were." Whether they accept the situation, whether they try to patch up their old alliance—these questions are no affair of the story. With Kate's word the story is finished; the first fineness of their association is lost, nothing will restore it. Milly has made the change by being what she was, too rare an essence for vulgar uses. Those who wanted the intelligence to understand her must pay their penalty; at least they are intelligent ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... the highest quality of product. Thus he was led to originate innovations in processes, some of which have been preserved as trade secrets; but of the others there are two deserving special notice—namely, the accuracy of mixing and the fineness of grinding. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... even plants seem to revive and get new life from the touch of her small fingers, as though feeling the necessity of growing like her. Her beauty may not last. It is not of the imperious kind, nor even quite classic, but it has a wonderful fineness and delicacy. Her soft brown hair coils closely on her small, well-shaped head; her gentle, serious blue eyes look tenderly on all that lives and has being within the circle of her sight; her small mouth smiles graciously and readily, though sometimes ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... shield,—rubric and arabesque of Christian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... highest was occupied by the fine castle of Saint George, which was indeed the principal object that attracted the eye anywhere from the city. The great squares contained some magnificent edifices, noteworthy for the fineness of their pillars. The streets were narrow and winding and dirty, and indeed after the French had left the whole city was in a most desolate state; but the general view of the city and its environs from the harbour at a distance was very beautiful, the sides of the ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... it is much easier to keep the demand for them and the supply of them at a level all over the world, than it is the demand and supply of most other commodities. And this all the more as there are not different kinds of gold and silver, but only different qualities of their fineness.(726) It also contributes to the uniformity of their value in exchange, that they minister mainly only to wants of luxury. The most indispensable commodities are subject to the greatest variations in price (see ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... stopping at intervals to place the grain between the stones. As the grinding proceeds the grist is passed from one compartment to the next until, in passing through the series, it becomes of the desired fineness. This tedious and laborious method has been practiced without improvement from time immemorial, and in some of the arts the Zunyians ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... slice gives a good notion of the manner in which the components of the chalk are arranged, and of their relative proportions. But, by rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the great moral conceptions are securely established, and the only possible improvement in them must come from the increased fineness and subtlety ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... his first great sorrow fell upon Lamb. His sister Mary suddenly developed insanity, attacked a maid servant, and when the mother interfered the insane girl fatally wounded her with a knife. In this crisis Lamb showed the fineness of his nature. Instead of permitting poor Mary to be consigned to a public insane asylum, he gave bonds that he would care for her, and he did care for her during the remainder of her life. Although ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... must be content to write and to read their writing. This is true; but I have already found reason to question whether such delicate and complicated organizations of thought have a right to the name of Sermons at all. In truth, a discourse, which, from its fineness and precision of ideas, is too difficult for a preacher to deliver without such extraneous assistance, is too difficult for a hearer to follow; and, if a book be imperative for teaching, it is imperative for learning. Both parties ought to ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... command. Finally he escaped further interrogatories by snatching up the passport I had signed and departing hastily. But instead of the usual military salute at parting, he courtesied. This, when I reflected on the fineness of his speech, the fullness of his breast, his attitudes and his short steps, led me to believe the person was a woman instead of a lieutenant. Gen. Winder coming in shortly after, upon hearing my description of the stranger, said he would ascertain all ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... fine and delicate article is chiefly made from the salt springs in Cheshire, and differs from the common brine salt, usually called sea salt, not only in its whiteness and purity, but in the fineness of its grain. Some families entertain prejudices against basket salt, notwithstanding its superior delicacy, from an idea, which does not appear warranted, that pernicious articles are used in ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... for, owing to certain rock fissures, which, by acting as drains for the rainwater on the surface, would have much interfered with the durability of the inscription. The available space for the panel remains 3 feet 7 in length by 1 foot 9 inches in depth. Owing to the fineness of the grain of the stone, it may be quite possible to letter the native rock; but it has been difficult to fix on a style of lettering for the inscription that shall be at once in good taste, forcible, and plain. It was proposed that the Script type of letter which was made use of in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... feeling. Their scales were in true intervals; they had really major and minor tones; we have neither, but a confusion of both. They had both sharps and flats: we have neither, but a mere set of semitones, which serve for both. In their enharmonic scale the fineness of their ear perceived distinctions which are lost on the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... builds, or let us rather say, on this rocking harmonic fluid he sets afloat a charming melody, which is soon joined by a self-willed second part. Afterwards, this melody is dissolved into all kinds of fioriture, colorature, and other trickeries, and they are of such fineness, subtlety, loveliness, and gracefulness, that one is reminded of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... inaugural suit was made. A few Merino sheep had been imported from France, and Scholfield, obtaining the wool, and mixing it with the coarse wool of the native sheep, produced what at that time was regarded as cloth of superior fineness. The spinning ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... out a deprecatory hand. "You are wrong; no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere—in any company—without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been—what you are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the same wish to ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... mingled with the air, and the dust, and tossed up by the stampede of the horses and the combatants. And you must treat this confusion in this way: dust being an earthly thing has weight, and although owing to its fineness it is easily lifted up and mingled with the air, it nevertheless falls readily to the earth again, and it is its finest part which rises highest, therefore that part will be the least visible and will seem to be almost of the same colour as ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... arm, felt the vessel under his feet dart forward smoothly, and the deck become less slanting—the speed of the brig running off a little now, easing the overturning strain of the wind upon the distended surfaces of the sails. It was only the fineness of the little vessel's lines and the perfect shape of her hull that saved the canvas, and perhaps the spars, by enabling the ready craft to get way upon herself with such lightning-like rapidity. Lingard drew a long breath and yelled jubilantly at Shaw who was struggling up against ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Portugal. On one remarkably fine day, when the ship was stealing through the water under the influence of a gentle breeze, the people were all below at their dinners, and scarcely a person left on deck but officers, of whom the captain was one. Two little ship-boys had been induced, by the fineness of the weather, to run up from below the moment they had dined, and were at play on the spare anchor to leeward, which overhangs the side of the ship. One of them fell overboard, which was seen from the quarter-deck, and the order was given ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... gives strength and skill in the use of the body, but develops a physiological habit of surplus power that may be called quantity of energy. Life is not alone in quality, in delicacy of adjustment, in accuracy, in fineness of feeling; it is also in quantity. The poet who, with frail physique and feeble pulse, sits in his quiet retreat and puts his fine fancies into the rhythms of verse has quality. But in the stress and rivalry of life that awaits the majority of men, there is a need for quantity of energy, such ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... for the prolonged sojourn at Tahiti, and he should have remembered that time and distance are powerful solvents, and that between Portsmouth Hard and the untracked waters of the Pacific, "all Arcadia" had intervened. He was a man of imperfect sympathies, wanting in tact and fineness, but in the hour of need he behaved like a hero, and saved himself and others by submission to duty and strenuous self-control. Moreover, he "helped England" not once or twice, "in the brave days of old." (See A Narrative, etc., 1790; The Naval History of Great Britain, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Romantic poet. Hawthorne and Poe read him, and he was felt by the French to be one of the first Germans whom they understood. It was not merely that his clear reason appealed to the French, but that they saw in him one endowed as with a sixth sense. He has a fineness of observation, especially for the ridiculous sides of humanity, together with a tenderness of spirit, that was new in German literature as such men as Sainte-Beuve and Gautier saw it. The soul at war ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of ceremony, with new and elaborate toilettes for each visit; there were numberless beautiful presents, the families represented and their many connections vying with each other in the richness and fineness of their gifts. Diamonds and jewels in settings of quaint design were among them, and besides all these there were the ancestral jewels of Julie de la Riviere, the mother of Lafayette, to be received by the new bride, and by her ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... hear Marian called a flirt. It seemed so out of keeping with her letters and the womanly delicacy and fineness revealed in them. But I reflected that women sometimes find it hard to forgive another woman who absorbs more than her share of lovers, and generally take their revenge by dubbing her a flirt, whether she deserves the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Moore's opinion, was what he magniloquently calls the great robbery of an express car. Here, too, he proved the fineness of his craft. He left nothing to chance, and he foresaw, with the coolness of a practised hand, every step which his adversaries would take. His first care was to obtain the assistance of the messenger who travelled ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... since she had Marian's letters for a background. What she saw was a tall man, slender, and about him there was to Linda a strong appeal. As she looked into his eyes, she could feel the double hurt that Fate had dealt him. She thought she could fathom the fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building his chosen occupation. Instantly she liked him. With only one look deep into his eyes she was on his side. She stretched out both her hands ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... stayed behind at the camp for some purpose or other and did not afterwards come up; I am afraid he has missed the tracks as it is stony and rocky. This large hill is composed of sandstone of various degrees of fineness, quartz, pebbles, etc., principally; distance travelled six miles direct. Here the creek or river is timbered across with the narrow-leafed papery-barked tree; some short distance up the stream from here this description ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... for his parents but without success. The Viceroy finding none to claim the bright-faced baby, had given him a name and had caused him to be brought up in his own household. There was nothing in his apparel to distinguish him save the exquisite fineness and richness of the material. Thrown around his neck had been a curiously wrought silver crucifix on a silver chain, and that crucifix he had worn ever since. It lay upon his breast beneath his clothing now. It was the sole object which connected him ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he stammered; and then he said something about the fineness of the evening, and the possibility of his father coming in in time for ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of the great painter's life and works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the gallery of the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very atmosphere of these courts, wakened with high metaphysic discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty and fineness; and you attach to the prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden, and all the learning of her father—the professor. And as you lie half-wakeful and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the Doctor's ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... has therefore achieved his end. But in what imaginable circumstances can you say: "Yes, this idea is fine, but the style is not fine"? The sole medium of communication between you and the author has been the form of words. The fine idea has reached you. How? In the words, by the words. Hence the fineness must be in the words. You may say, superiorly: "He has expressed himself clumsily, but I can *see* what he means." By what light? By something in the words, in the style. That something is fine. Moreover, if the style is clumsy, are ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... It is not in these establishments that you can watch national life or discover much about the Germans, except that they are good hotel-keepers; and this you probably discovered long ago abroad or at home. If you are a woman, you may be impressed by the fineness, the whiteness, the profusion, and the embroidered monograms of the linen, whether you are in a huge caravanserai or a wayside inn. Otherwise a hotel at Cologne or Heidelberg has little to distinguish ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the use of the fuel Nature has so bountifully stored there and granted a fair measure of encouragement to transportation, those great inland tundras would be as populous as Sweden; as progressive as Germany." His glance moved to the jury; all the nobility, the fineness, the large humanity of the man was expressed in that moment in his face; a subdued emotion pervaded his voice. "We know the men who forged a way through that mighty bulwark of mountains to the interior were brave, resourceful, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the scheme himself, but for various reasons he did not venture to upset it. He had the patent prepared, and consulted Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, with regard to the objects which the Government had in view, and the weight and fineness of the coin which Wood was to supply. The halfpence and farthings were to be a little less in weight than the coin of the same kind {241} current in England. Walpole considered this necessary because of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the Hanoverian strain in his nature had not been toned to the degree of fineness needful for the kingly office in these islands. In a time of peculiar difficulty he sought to govern almost absolutely by means which ensured the temporary subservience of Parliament, and in a spirit ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... simple peace of enjoyment and natural gift of truth, in her sight and in her mind. And many pretty things are in my mind and heart about it, if my hands were not too cold to shape words for them. The book shall be kept with my Bewicks; it is in nowise inferior to them in fineness of work. The finished proof of next "Proserpina" will, I think, be sent me by Saturday's post. Much more is done, but this number was hindered by the revisal of the Dean of Christ Church, which puts me at rest about mistakes in ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... fire, as though embalmed, as though alive, as though lingering to accuse and to convict, lay the body of Greathouse, the missing man. Not merely a charred, incinerated mass, the figure lay in the full appearance of life, a cast of the actual man, moulded with fineness from the white ashes of the fire! Not a feature, not a limb, not a fragment of clothing was left undestroyed; yet none the less here, stretched across the bed of the burned-out fire, with face upturned, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... thinking of the whole five volumes so emphatically extolled by their author, one feels the necessity of some apology for this admission of inadequate sympathy. There is a vigour of feeling, an originality of character, a fineness of style which makes one understand, if not quite agree to, the audacious self-commendation. Part of the effect is due simply to the sheer quantity of good writing. Take any essay separately, and one must admit that—to speak only of his ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... room consists of one motor-driven, baby hammer crusher, which has a capacity of about 1 ton per hour and crushes to a fineness of -in. mesh; one adjustable chipmunk jaw crusher, for 5- and 10-lb. samples; one set of 4 by 7-in. rolls, crushing to 60 mesh, for small samples; one large bucking board, and several different sizes of riffle samplers for reducing ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... can hardly speak with the same authority as a breeder, generally, that I can as a feeder; yet I have been a close observer now for many years, and devoted my earnest attention to the improvement of the Aberdeen and Angus polled breed of cattle, with respect to size, symmetry, fineness of bone, strength of constitution, and disposition to accumulate fat, sparing no expense in obtaining the finest animals ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... long thin knife, and with many bows, grins, and apologies for disturbing me, begged that I would go and cut up a sheep for him. My first impulse of course was to decline the very unusual task offered me with mingled horror and amusement. Abraham, however, insisted and besought, extolled the fineness of his sheep, declared his misery at being unable to cut it as I wished, and his readiness to conform for the future to whatever patterns of mutton 'de missis would only please to give him.' Upon reflection I thought I might very well contrive to indicate upon the sheep the size and ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... early in May that Martha first began to notice the white lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery. It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to mark where darning finished and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy |
