"Finer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beautiful touches of the piano of the nineteenth century were those of Chopin, Thalberg, and Henselt. Apart from any consideration of other gifts, these three men—a Pole, a Hebrew, and a German—possessed touches that sang and melted in your ears, ravished your ears. Finer in a vocal sense was Thalberg's touch than Liszt's; finer Henselt's than Thalberg's, because more euphonious, and nobler in tonal texture; and more poetic than either of these two was Chopin's ethereal touch. To-day Joseffy is the nearest approach we have to Chopin, Paderewski to ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... over the Bowls of water, the goodness of the Malt is the more extracted and washed out, so that more Ale may be this way made and less small Beer, than if the wort was drawed out hastily; besides the wort has a greater opportunity of coming off finer by a slow stream than by a quicker one, which makes this Method excel all others that discharge the wort out of the Mash Tub more hastily. Also by the continual running of the Cock or Tap, the Goods ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... all the anxieties, something of the pride of the hen, who conducts her brood of ducklings to the water, sees them embark upon the flood, and must leave them to their buoyant performances, dreadful, but aware also that they are doing a finer thing than her own merits could have hoped to win them. So it is here. I did not at the outset expect a third edition in any livery; I may still fear a wreck for this cockboat of my early invention; but I hope I am too respectful ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... us that cheerful piety is the best piety. There is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that is to have an inclination to do right. There is something nobler than reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is not measured by its disagreeableness, ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... large connected with the Hall and estate. There were no finer trees anywhere in England than those sturdy oaks and elms, no more stately waving pine trees, and no more shady drooping limes than those that bordered the broad grass ride which stretched for many a mile across the estate. On the park-like lawn in front of the house—if this ancient ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... yourself, old man? My crown's getting a bit top-heavy already. You got a finer sense of balance, and your neck's stronger. Them bolts I drew on the trestle pretty near gave me a headache—not to say as near as you came to it when the boss got swinging," he added with a leer. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... may meet the cows coming from pasture to the stable. All the way we have been trampling on something very important which we will notice on our way back. In this field we find a coarse sandy soil, in the next one a soil that is finer and stiffer. The plow is turning up a reddish soil. In the garden we find the soil quite dark ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... prospect, which, when he has once enjoyed it, he can enjoy it no more; another is painting ceilings, carving wainscot, and filling his apartments with costly furniture, only that some neighbouring house may not be richer or finer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... (Gr. amiautos, undefiled), a name applied to the finer kinds of asbestos (q.v.), in consequence, it is said, of the mineral being unaffected by fire. Some of the finest amianthus, with long silky flexible fibres, occurs in the district of the Tarentaise in Savoy. According to Dr J. W. Evans, the ancient amianthus, derived mostly from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... before anybody else had thought of leaving the indubitable comfort of a feather bed for the doubtful contingency of happiness that awaited them down stairs. Fleda took in the whole length and breadth of it, half wittingly and half through some finer sense ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that to be effective the pores of the filter must be extremely minute, and therefore the rate of filtration will usually be slow. Chamberland filter candles possess finer channels than Berkefeld candles and consequently filter much more slowly. To overcome this disadvantage, either aspiration or pressure, or a combination of these two forces, may be employed to ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... that it was a shame to ask my neighbour forgiveness for petty faults, or to make restitution where I have taken from any. He said, also, that religion made a man grow strange to the great, because of a few vices, which he called by finer names; and made him own and respect the base, because of the same religious fraternity. And is not this, ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... heavy plate of the motor that had hurt Richard, so Nathan told him; not the same motor which Oliver remembered; another, much larger and built on different lines. The inventor now used twenty-four cells instead of ten, and the magnets had been wrapped with finer wire. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... No finer stage for such a spectacle could well be conceived. Upon one side stretched the great waste of waters; on the other, level plains, composed of yellow sand quickly merging into the green and brown of the prairie, while, scattered over its surface, from the near lake-shore ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... you'll find gems or semiprecious stones. Gems are the finer, more crystalline forms of minerals which are ordinarily less beautiful and spectacular. The true gems are diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires. All others are semiprecious ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... voluntary free association, the gradual dispersion of small spontaneous groupings, the preventive ban of prolonged hereditary works, the extinction of sentiments by which the individual lives beyond himself in the past or in the future. Never were finer barracks constructed, more symmetrical and more decorative in aspect, more satisfactory to superficial views, more acceptable to vulgar good sense, more suited to narrow egoism, better kept and cleaner, better adapted to the discipline of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... we carried the children into the house, and took their wet clothes off them. It was I who undressed the boy, and noted that though his garments were in rags and foul, yet they were of a finer stuff than any that I had seen, and that his linen, which was soft as silk, was marked with the letters R. M. Also I noted other things: namely, that so swollen were his little feet that the boots must be cut off them, and that he was well-nigh ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... peculiarities which make the real man repulsive, the ideal man unattractive, to us, I have said more than enough, and when we have said all this, Alfieri still remains, for all his vanity, selfishness, meanness, narrow-mindedness, a man of grander proportions, of finer materials, nay, even of nobler moral shape, than the vast majority of men superior to him in all these points. Let us look at him in those last decaying years, at those studies which have seemed to us absurd: self-important, pedantic, almost monomaniac; ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Abaza were present. As I begged Rubinstein to play something after dinner, Mme. Abaza insisted on singing his Persian songs, which seemed greatly to annoy the composer, as he knew very well that he had produced much finer work. Nevertheless both the composition and its execution gave me a very favourable opinion of the talents of both artists. Through this singer, who had originally had a professional engagement in the Grand Duchess's household, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... able to find what you would like. The difference of the dress here and at London is so great, the same sort of things are not proper for caftans and manteaus. However, I will not give over my search, but renew it again at Constantinople, though I have reason to believe there is nothing finer than what is to be found here, being the present residence of the court. The Grand Signior's eldest daughter was married some few days before I came; and upon that occasion the Turkish ladies display all their magnificence. The bride was conducted to her husband's house ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the Irish Dragoon. By Charles Lever. Complete in one large octavo volume of 324 pages. Price Fifty cents; or an edition on finer paper, bound in cloth, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... twice she stopped and hesitated, but in the end she always passed on, till she came to a youth near the end of the last row. There was nothing specially remarkable about him, the bystanders thought; nothing that was likely to take a girl's fancy. A hundred others were handsomer, and all wore finer clothes; but he met the princess's eyes frankly and with a smile, and she smiled too, ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... cried. "I don't mean that you haven't been hurt, I could kill myself when I think of how I made you suffer! But you are a finer woman now than you were then; sweeter, stronger, wiser, and more beautiful. When I found you again in Liverpool two years ago it was a revelation. Now see—I don't even ask you to forgive me! I ask you to try me again and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... yere, and day by day, Till it felle ones in a morwe of May, That Emelie, that fayrer was to sene Than is the lilie upon the stalke grene, And fressher than the May with floures newe (For with the rose colour strof hire hewe; I n'ot which was the finer of hem two) Er it was day, as she was wont to do, She was arisen, and all redy dight, For May wol have no slogardie a-night. The seson priketh every gentil herte, And maketh him out of his slepe to sterte, And sayth 'arise, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant; only thou His true Indian conquest art; And for ivy round his dart The reformed god now weaves A finer thyrsus of ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... he told his master that excellent hunting was to be had in the neighbourhood of his house, and that if it pleased him to repair thither and hunt three or four stags in the month of May, he could have no finer sport. The Lord granted the gentleman's request, as much for the affection he bore him as for the pleasure of the chase, and repaired to his house, which was as handsome and as fairly ordered as that of the richest ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... exclaimed the clown. "There never was a finer woman than your mother, Joe Strong. And as for riding—well, I wish we had a few of her kind in the show now. I don't mean to say anything against your riding, my dear," he said to Helen. "But Janet Strong did a different ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... onslaught upon our foes," said Salvator; "we couldn't have a finer opportunity than when they're returning home from the theatre." Then he imparted to Antonio the details of a plan, which, though appearing adventurous and daring, Antonio nevertheless embraced with joy, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... facts. And at other times, Muller's own warm heart gets him into trouble. He will track down his victim, driven by the power in his soul which is stronger than all volition; but when he has this victim in the net, he will sometimes discover him to be a much finer, better man than the other individual, whose wrong at this particular criminal's hand set in motion the machinery of justice. Several times that has happened to Muller, and each time his heart got the better ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... 'an excellent army—that is, considering the size of my principality. The infantry is very good indeed. In fact, I heard my late husband say, on an occasion when the infantry corps had just been furnished with new uniforms, that he never saw a finer-looking set of men. The cavalry is also in excellent condition. Of course in time of peace it is not necessary to keep these men supplied with horses, but in an agricultural country it is not difficult to obtain horses ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... might be as near the fountain-head as possible, I first of all called at St. James's, where I found the whole outward room in a buzz of politics. The speculations were but very indifferent towards the door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the room, and were so very much improved by a knot of theorists, who sat in the inner room, within the steams of the coffee-pot, that I there heard the whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbon provided for in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Man on the other side, have made this now to become a most agitated Controversie among us. There is an Agony produced in the Minds of Men, lest the Devil should sham us with Devices, of perhaps a finer Thred, than was ever yet practised upon the World. The whole business is become hereupon so Snarled, and the determination of the Question one way or another, so dismal, that our Honourable Judges have a Room for Jehoshaphat's Exclamation, We know not what to ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... old jewel that I have had reset for you. I preferred it to a diamond, because it is a finer stone than any diamond in my possession, and because of the meaning, as I said. In the description of John's vision in the Revelation, it is said "there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like to an ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... attitudes were— and I saw in a moment that Frank's attention was caught. He was silent all of a sudden, and said no more about Alice Elstree. Monimia had it all her own way; but when she saw that her bait had taken, she determined to play the trout a little longer. She cast herself into finer and more captivating attitudes than ever, threw back her bonnet till it hung at her back—her beautiful hair broke loose—and in her hurry to pull up her hook, though I am ready to declare the float had never moved, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... whether the mingling of characteristics would not end in unreality, but she was sure it would not; she said he was so much like a woman in the traits he had borrowed from himself that Salome would be all the truer for being like him; or, at any rate, she would be finer, and more ideal. She said that it was nonsense, the way people regarded women as altogether different from men; she believed they were very much alike; a girl was as much the daughter of her father as of her mother; ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... this shafting has 75 per cent. greater strength, a finer finish, and is truer to gauge, than any other in use renders it undoubtedly the most economical. We are also the sole manufacturers of the CELEBRATED COLLINS' PAT. COUPLING, and furnish Pulleys, Hangers, etc., of the most approved styles. Price ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... these flowers too rough, What canst thou say or do of charm enough To dull the nice remembrance of my home? Thou canst not ask me with thee here to roam Over these hills and vales, where no joy is,— Empty of immortality and bliss! Thou art a scholar, Lycius, and must know That finer spirits cannot breathe below 280 In human climes, and live: Alas! poor youth, What taste of purer air hast thou to soothe My essence? What serener palaces, Where I may all my many senses please, And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts appease? It cannot be—Adieu!" So said, she ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... fixed prices at that time at rates which seem purely arbitrary and are certainly incomprehensible. Thus for spinning linen or worsted, five or six skeins to the pound, the price was not to exceed sixpence per skein of fifteen knots, with finer work in proportion. Carded woollen yarn was the same per skein. Weaving plain flannel or tow or linen brought fivepence per yard; common worsted and linen, one penny a yard; and other linens ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... was carefully clipped, the flowers and lawn were given an abundance of water, vines were trained, and shrubs were trimmed, until after a month of Gyp's care, the place looked finer than ever before. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... Indian science, as well as of their literature and mythology, indicates an original source. Grecian art may have occasionally found its way into India. One or two of the sculptures in Col. Tod's account of the Jain temples, if correct, show a finer outline, and purer sense of beauty, than appears native to India, where the monstrous always predominated ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... a popper gun, A reg'lar one that shoots, And Teddy's got an engine With a whistler that toots. But I've got something finer yet— A pair of rubber boots. Oh, it's boots, boots, boots, A pair of rubber boots! I could walk from here to China In a ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... than love-making and mental correspondence. What was it? He wished he knew. Tenderness? He could give her that in full measure. Sentiment? He was no sentimentalist, but he believed that he possessed the finer quality. Fidelity? That was not worth consideration. Appreciation of the deepest and best in her, sympathetic understanding of all her mistakes and of all that she had suffered? She knew the answer as well as he did. The ability to meet her in many moods, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was there not long ago. He had a choral service. The Gregorian music carried me back to old times. He preached on the text, "I was sick, and ye visited me." It was such a fine sermon, and he had such a large congregation, that I asked why he did not go to a finer church. He said he was "carrying soup to Mrs. Ronquist." By the way, his organist was a splendid musician. She introduced herself to me. It was Scroggs's daughter. She is married, and can walk as well as I can. She had a little ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... missing an important part of the history of animal life if we fail to see that evolution implies becoming more advantageously sensitive to the environment, making more of its influences, shutting out profitless stimuli, and opening more gateways to knowledge. The bird's world is a larger and finer world than an earthworm's; the world means more to the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the stand, sped on over the brown and level grassland; two and a quarter miles done in four minutes and twenty seconds. Bay Regent was scarcely behind him; the chestnut abhorred the water, but a finer trained hunter was never sent over the Shires, and Jimmy Delmar rode like Grimshaw himself. The giant took the leap in magnificent style, and thundered on neck and neck with the "Guards' Crack." ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in wealth!" they said indignantly. "Well, she didn't get her miserly ways from her parents. THEY were real generous and neighbourly. There never was a finer gentleman than old Doctor Lloyd. He was always doing kindnesses to everybody; and he had a way of doing them that made you feel as if you was doing the favour, not him. Well, well, let Old Lady Lloyd keep herself and her money to herself ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... what a man deals in; I think it's how he deals. And I don't believe there's any sort of man finer and better ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... best to believe. If Adela were guilty of plotting with Eldon, it meant that he himself was the object of her utter hatred, a hideous thought to entertain. It threw him back upon her innocence. Egoism had to do the work of the finer moral perceptions. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... weak sense of humor, passed the joke. "It shows no signs of corruption from greed, but I can't help thinking that, fine as it is, it might have been much finer if the authors who produced it had been absolutely freed to their work, and had never felt ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... that event, and which drew forth from its despairing leader his best apology for his defeat and surrender, were, far more than is generally supposed, the fruits of the combined energy and talents of that unequalled little band of patriots and statesmen. [Footnote: A finer tribute of praise to the Green Mountain Boys could scarcely have been given, than the one involved in Burgoyne's letter to Lord Germain, written about the time of the battle of Bennington, in which he says, "The Hampshire Grants, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the postilion, 'boarding-school is vulgar, I know: I beg your pardon, I ought to have called it academy, or by some other much finer name—you were in something much greater than ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... A finer instrument of comic effect is the parody. The countless parodies of the lyric and dramatic literature of Greece are perhaps the most remarkable testimony extant to the intelligence of an Athenian audience. Did they infallibly catch the allusion when Dicaeopolis ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... resembling Scylla; and this word was corrupted to Ceylon. This island was the Taprobana of the ancients, and not Sumatra as some have imagined. Its productions are numerous and valuable: Cinnamon of greatly finer quality than in any other place; rubies, sapphires, and other precious stones; much pepper and cardamoms, Brazil wood, and other dyes, great woods of palm-trees, numbers of elephants which are more docile ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... latter purchased, after the usual amount of bargaining, clothes similar to those worn by his friend. The expense was but small, for the costume of an Arab chief differed but little from those of his followers, except that his burnoose was of finer cotton, and his silken sash of brilliant colours, richer and more showy. With this exception the whole costume was white, and although some of the Arab sheiks wore coloured burnooses, Edgar chose a white one, ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... has a certain theory in regard to something or other about their ancient civilization, but just what it is I have, at this moment, forgotten. Only I know you can thoroughly trust Professor Bumper, for a finer man never lived, though he is a bit absent-minded at times. But you ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... had taken as a prize of war from Rand the Wizard was the largest and finest vessel in the Norwegian seas at this time. The king determined to have a much larger and finer ship built, one which should surpass in splendour and equipment every vessel that had been launched in Norway or any other land throughout the ages. On the banks of the river Nid, at the place where he had built the town of Nidaros, a great forest of pine trees had been cleared, ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... strange story!" Then came forward the sixth constable and said to those present, "Hear my adventure and that which befel me, to wit, that which befel Such-an-one the Assessor, for 'tis rarer than this and finer." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... "I suppose I can't quite get over those years I stood in such awe of him," he confessed. "But," he added, "he's fine; nobody could be finer." ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... gentle Bee had a much finer, more delicate, sensitive, and susceptible nature than her cousin; she understood Ishmael better, and sympathized with him more than Claudia could. She loved and respected him as an elder brother, and indeed more than she did her elder brothers; for he ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 17, 1800, "On the continuance of the War with France," Pitt described Napoleon as the "child and champion of Jacobinism." Coleridge, who was reporting for the Morning Post, took down Pitt's words as "nursling and champion" (unpublished MS. note-book)—a finer and more original phrase, but substituted "child" for "nursling" in his "copy." (See Letters of S. T. Coleridge, 1895, i. 327, note i.) The phrase was much in vogue, e.g. "All that survives of Jacobinism in Europe looks up to him as its 'child and champion.'"-Quarterly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Emilia came he watched this house day and night till his heart came nigh to bursting. But I was going to say," he said, rousing himself, "that in case the years and the tan and the hair could be taken off, and this trapper coat changed into one of finer cut and material, and the name reversed, that Browne Edwards, the trapper, would be nearer of kin than a twin brother to ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if I shouldn't like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights we love to read about never push an advantage ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... Full of character, strong in interest, rich in capital situations, and certain to go nobly. You know how highly I thought of "Money," but I sincerely think these three acts finer. I did not think of the slight suggestions you make, but I said, en passant, that perhaps the drunken scene might do better on the stage a little concentrated. I don't believe it would require even that, with the leading-up which you propose. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... not only beautiful as individuals, but the cheerful appearance of our gardens during the autumn is much indebted to them; the great variety in colour and shade is as remarkable as it is effective. The finer sorts are known as "florists' flowers," being named. Whence they came (from which species) is not so clear, but in other respects than form and habit they are much in the way of P. paniculata. The Phlox family is a numerous one, and the species are not ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... pages. After Lamb and Pater, both of whom loved him well, Browne is the subtlest adept in the recondite mysteries of rhythmic prose who can be enjoyed in our language. Not to catch the cadences of his peculiar music is to confess oneself deaf to the finer harmonies of words. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... sea-level; there are many higher, even in the near neighbourhood, and there are some more striking. Various fanciful, and for the most part foolish, names have been applied to them, which need not here be repeated. Both here and at the finer rock of Pordenack, a little southward, the rock-formations somewhat resemble those of the Giants' Causeway in appearance. But the noblest cliff of all on this western promontory is that of Tolpedn-Penwith, to reach ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... positive pleasure in trying to obliterate from his face and manner all traces of his private discomfort. Such stoicism is a fine quality in its way, but the quality that I am in search of is an even finer one than that. My friend's efforts were ultimately based on a sort of egotism, a profound conviction that a public part suited him, and that he performed it well. What one rather desires to attain is a more ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little she could spend, but certain it was that from the time she left the carpet shop she begged for no exceptions to Mr. Robeson's rule of strict economy. She selected simple, delicate muslins for the windows, one and all, without a glance at finer draperies; bought denims and printed stuffs as if she had never heard of costlier upholsteries; and turned away from seductive pieces of Turkish and Indian embroideries offered for her inspection with a demure, "No, I don't care to look at those ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... have wanted to work in one of them." "Of course not," agreed Baird cordially. "I realized that you were a serious artist, and you came in the nick of time, just when I was wanting to be serious myself, to get away from that slap-stick stuff into something better and finer. You came when I needed you. And, look here, Merton, I signed you ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... upon the softening and extending his touch of ink by subsequent solution of it, being indeterminable, though exquisitely successful. His stupendous drawings in the British Museum (I can justly use no other term than "stupendous," of their consummately decisive power) furnish finer instances of this treatment than any at Basle; but it would be very difficult to reduce them to a definable law. Venetian outlines are rare, except preparations on canvas, often shaded before coloring;—while Raphael's, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... their mulberry trees were once properly planted they would, with good care, live to a marvelous old age—some of them even reaching the dignity of two or three hundred years. But unless snails and other destructive grubs were kept away the trees would not thrive. The finer and more carefully grafted they were the greater the damage resulting from hungry insects. In contrast the wild mulberry with its acid and bitter sap presented far less temptation and therefore lived longer than did ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... his fears, to tell him it was all a dream. And then? Well, he fumbled in his shirt and drew forth a little package tied up in a rag, and with many a fearful glance his trembling fingers undid it, and there poured forth a little cascade of magnificent diamonds far finer than anything I had ever seen before or since in German West: a fortune in fact! I sat astounded, for I had not dreamed of this. Where they came from there must be more a fortune for us all! Then I found my tongue. 'Carfax, man,' ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... Notions into which it has led some Tragick Writers. The most perfect Man has Vices enough to draw down Punishments upon his Head, and to justify Providence in regard to any Miseries that may befal him. For this reason I cannot think, but that the Instruction and Moral are much finer, where a Man who is virtuous in the main of his Character falls into Distress, and sinks under the Blows of Fortune at the End of a Tragedy, than when he is represented as Happy and Triumphant. Such an Example corrects the Insolence of Human Nature, softens ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for he was the first to point out that that part of the brain with which psychic processes are connected must be the cerebral hemispheres. He said, if we compare man with animals we find that the sensory functions of animals are much finer and more highly developed than in man; in man, on the other hand, we find intelligence much more highly developed than in animals. Upon comparing the corresponding anatomical conditions, we see, he said, that in ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... the book as a lover handles the thing he loves. The very touch of the vellum thrilled him with an almost sensual rapture. Here and there a line flashed from a chorus and lured him deeper into the text. His impulse was still to exclaim, but a finer instinct taught him to suppress his scholarly emotion. Looking up as she spoke he saw her eyes fixed on him with a curious sympathy. And as he thought of the possible destiny of the Euripides he felt guilty as of a treachery towards her in loving ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... things measured or weighed, have no plural; for in them not number, but quantity, is regarded: as, wool, wine, oil. When we speak, however, of different kinds, we use the plural: as, the coarser wools, the richer wines, the finer oils."—Murray's Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... England, though infinitely finer than our own, is more remarkable for its verdure, and for a general appearance of civilisation, than for its natural beauties. The chalky cliffs may seem bold and noble to the American, though compared to the granite piles that buttress the Mediterranean they are but mole-hills; and the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... something to do with these differences. Beef is richer than veal in the agreeably flavorous osmazome, and the flesh of the kid is destitute of the disagreeable odour of the fully-developed goat. The superiority of wild-fowl over the domesticated birds is solely owing to the finer flavor of ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... what was in his mind, but Mrs. Tallboys, with a curious tone, half pique, half triumph, said, "You acknowledge this which you call the higher nature in woman—that is to say, all the passive qualities,—and you are willing to allow her a finer spiritual essence, and yet you do not agree to her equal rights. This is the injustice of the prejudice which has depressed her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the smaller chairs appear to have their original cushions, the others have been lately re-covered by Lord de l'Isle and Dudley. The spindles of the backs of two of the chairs are of ivory: the carving, which is in solid ebony, is much finer ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... ground, open and grassy, the scenery being finer, from the picturesque grouping and character of the trees, than any we had hitherto seen. On one of these open tracts I wounded a female kangaroo at a far shot of my rifle, and the wretched animal was finally killed after a desperate fight ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... was loud applause. A finer first appearance had never been made in the lodge. Hands clapped him on the back, and the hood was plucked from his head. He stood blinking and smiling amid the congratulations of ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the work. One operates the bellows, another feeds the fire and does the heavy striking during the initial part of the work, and the other — the real blade maker, the artist — directs all the labor, and performs the finer and finishing parts of the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... his shattered ideal of Isaac Ford, and for cement he used a cunning and subtle logic. It was of the sort that is compounded in the brain laboratories of egotists, and it worked. It was incontrovertible that his father had been made of finer clay than those about him; but still, old Isaac had been only in the process of becoming, while he, Percival Ford, had become. As proof of it, he rehabilitated his father and at the same time exalted himself. His lean little ego waxed to colossal proportions. ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... life; it creates for us time, if time be realized as the succession of ideas and not of minutes; it is the "breath and finer spirit of all knowledge;" it is bound neither by time nor space, but lives in the spirit of man. What greater praise can be given than the saying that life should ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... attendants, who were ever at one's beck and call, was a Teddy dog with wagging head, which miracle of miracles one seemed to be expected to properly marvel at. The old palace, adjoining the new, is a much finer building, being mostly of marble, and is purely Oriental in its stairways, doorways, closets, balconies and delightful roof-gardens, as one's preconceived notions expect an Eastern potentate's palace to be. The ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... irresolution being the keynote of Hamlet's soliloquy, a clever player could to some extent indicate the whole thirty lines by a silent working of the jaw. But at the same time it would be idle to deny that he would miss the finer shades of the dramatist's meaning. "The insolence of office, and the spurns"—to take only one line—would tax ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... back areas; we returned shell for shell, but no infantry action took place on either side during the eight days of Norman occupation. The enemy was concentrating his man-power for a Push with the opening of finer days, and we did not have an excess of men to waste after the heavy toll ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... please his master, until his term of apprenticeship should have expired. "Then, dear George, I will go back to M——. I never shall want to stay in a big city; for although there are many fine things here, finer than I ever saw in our little village, there is more wickedness, and it is harder to be good where there is ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... episodic deliverance from encasing matter which is called death, seem to me only the first few basic steps in the sequences of an endless metamorphosis.... My father thought so. His was a very fine mind—is a finer mind still.... Will you understand me if I say that we often communicate with each other—my father ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... her mind, solved her doubts, and gave her tranquillity, strength, faith, hope and a patient and persevering love of humanity. It seems as though, with that marvellous faculty that she had for idealizing always, she manufactured a Pierre Leroux of her own, who was finer than the real one. He was needy, but poverty becomes the man who has ideas. He was awkward, but the contemplative man, on coming down from the region of thought on to our earth once more, only gropes along. He was not clear, but Voltaire ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... that may be called backward, the revolutions to the left instead of to the right. It will take a little more time than might be expected, but the result will be more satisfactory, free from danger of splitting and the interior surface of the hole be made smooth. The use of one, a degree or two finer in tooth will give enough finish. A constant look out must be kept that the tool is working properly in the centre; should it be found working a little too much to one side, it must be removed and the opposite part ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... always as old, withered, thirsting for blood, and incapable of the finer sentiments and all the softer emotions of human kind. There was a time in which she shone as the centre of a splendid and luxurious court, where minstrels sang to her and poets praised her and princes flattered her, while statesmen confessed ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... were amused and interested. Though belonging to the lower class, this poor flower-girl had certainly received some education and was endowed with a fair share of the finer feelings. Esperance felt attracted towards her, and Giovanni experienced a fascination not difficult to account for. Separated from Zuleika, filled with a lover's despair, the ardent Viscount was not averse ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... has said that true manhood and womanhood cannot exist without an ideal side; that these are the finer feelings which have no market value but which must be kept alive. Why should we endeavor to keep them alive? Simply because the world at large recognizes that this means development in the highest sense, and we claim that this is an especial need of the Negro ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... feet by twelve. If any person think this thinning excessive, let him try two similar trees, and thin one as directed, and leave the other unthinned. It will be found that the thinned tree will produce an equal weight, and fruit of much finer flavor. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... deer and buffalo and beaver, slain by the hunters, were dried in the sun, and they hung some of the finer ones on the walls of the rooms to make them look more cozy and picturesque. Mrs. Ware also put two or three on the floors, though the border women generally scorned them for such uses, thinking them in the way. Henry also helped his father make stools and chairs, the former a very simple task, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had ever done. So a M. Margat ascended sitting astride a wooden horse, and Madame Blanchard attached fireworks to her balloon, and discharged them in mid-air. At Paris, on July 6th, 1819, she meant to make a finer display than usual, and succeeded in letting off fountains of fire from a wooden platform beneath the car. But, not content with this, she hoped to surprise and delight the people of Paris still further by letting off a fresh display from the car ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, with such ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... already accepted as just and right. These changes were made and universally applied; so that, without any violent revolution, without strife or bloodshed, the better way became the accepted law. It would be hard to find in all history a finer example of wisdom and moderation, of the great and worthy ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... orders the girl to obey, for the troops are everywhere, and the peasant is alarmed. Sitting down again, the soldier drinks with the girl, tells her she shall be happy with him, and promises her a finer home than she has. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... this is one of the passages that he thought sufficiently important to describe most at length. I have tried to get it right, I have tried to disentangle it from the hints and gestures through which it came to me, but I have no doubt that it was all different from my telling and far finer and sweeter, in the soft filtered light and the subtly stirring silences of the fairy glades. The Fairy Lady asked him more about Millie, and was she very lovely, and so on—a great many times. As to Millie's ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... hast built up thy hardihood [81] With universal food, Drawn in select proportion fair From honest mould and vagabond air; From darkness of the dreadful night, And joyful light; From antique ashes, whose departed flame In thee has finer life and longer fame; From wounds and balms, From storms and calms, From potsherds and dry bones [91] And ruin-stones. Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought; Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... so apt to be liberal to others. Are they not accused of the meanest adulations? When a young writer experiences the notice of a person of some eminence, he has expressed himself in language which transcends that of mortality. A finer reason than reason itself inspires it. The sensation has been expressed with all its ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... a very fine country, Meinheer. I have been all over the world almost, and I never saw a finer." ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... lately been over all the Bernese Alps and their lakes. I think many of the scenes (some of which were not those usually frequented by the English) finer than Chamouni, which I visited some time before. I have been to Clarens again, and crossed the mountains behind it: of this tour I kept a short journal for my sister, which I sent yesterday in three letters. It is not all for perusal; but if you like to hear about the romantic part, she ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider. Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer—the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the closed circuit where they are rectified by the crystal detector and transformed into sound waves by the telephone receiver as described in connection with Set No. 1. The variable condenser shunted across the closed circuit permits finer secondary tuning to be done than is possible without it. Where you are receiving continuous waves from a wireless telephone transmitter (speech or music) you have to tune sharper than is possible with the tuning coil alone and to do this ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... you see? He goes abroad, she goes abroad. See? Same ship. See what I mean? Nothing could be finer. They—" ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... I called him muddy, said you'd find More sand than gold in what he leaves behind. And you, sir Critic, does your finer sense In Homer mark no matter for offence? Or e'en Lucilius, our good-natured friend, Sees he in Accius nought he fain would mend? Does he not laugh at Ennius' halting verse, Yet own himself no better, if not worse? And what should hinder me, as ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... her friend, 'I find you don't know Sir ——; why he is as civil a gentleman, there is not a finer man, nor a soberer, graver, modester person in the whole city; he abhors such things; there's nobody that knows him will think such a thing of him.' 'Well, well,' says my governess, 'that's none of my business; if it was, I warrant I should find there was ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... necessary for force and vigor, it may be very desirable at times to use longer and less familiar words to bring out the finer shade of meaning. A subtle distinction cannot be ignored simply because one word is shorter than another. "Donate" and "give" are frequently used as synonyms, but "give" should not be used because it is a short word when ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... unable to procure them for themselves. Added to this is a profound conviction that the common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it, that those "best results of civilization" upon which depend the finer and freer aspects of living must be incorporated into our common life and have free mobility through all elements of society if we would ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... ourselves lest we follow Rome. We must leave our children the finer things. We must teach them love of the spot called home And the lasting joy that a purpose brings. For vain are our Flag and our battles won, And vain are our lands and our stores of gold, If our ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... I can assure you that you must not conceive me to be wanting in those finer feelings which are the chief adornment of humanity. It is true that for some years, absorbed as I have been in affairs of the highest importance, I have seldom taken a pen in hand, for which I can ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... th' lake," replied Mr. Dooley, stolidly. "They was no insurance—A good avnin' to ye, Mrs. Doyle. Ye're goin' over, thin? I was there las' night, an' a finer wake I niver see. They do nawthin' be halves. How was himsilf? As natural as life? Yes, ma'am, rayqueem high mass, be ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... are composed chiefly of coarse grasses lined with finer grass, are built upon the ground or in low bushes. Those built in bushes are compact, the others are generally loosely made. The eggs number four to six, spotted and ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... weary of returning to; for they perhaps sum up the entire American soul. They are bandied about in conversation like two formulae, in which are revealed the persistence of this creature, who, born of a stern race, and feeling herself fine, wills to become finer and ever finer; who, reared amid democratic surroundings, wills to become distinguished and ever more distinguished; who, daughter of a land of enterprise, loves to excite continually in herself the sensation ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... that people,—men and women,—of the lower classes possessed physical and mental qualities similar to those possessed by himself, even in a modified form, was not only repugnant to him but incredible. They had none of the finer emotions,—such as love, for instance. He could not conceive of a labouring man loving his wife and children; it wasn't natural! He pictured the home-life of the lower classes as nothing short of indecent; there couldn't be anything fine or noble or enduring in the processes of birth, existence ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... tactical handling of the two fleets, there were certain differences of equipment which conferred tactical advantage, and are therefore worth noting. The French appear to have had finer ships, and, class for class, heavier armaments. Sir Charles Douglas, an eminent officer of active and ingenious turn of mind, who paid particular attention to gunnery details, estimated that in weight of battery the thirty-three French were superior to the thirty-six ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... him if he had seen anything finer than the White Mountains; what could he say! It seems to me just as possible for a man to love his country, and see faults in it, as it does for him to love his wife and children, without believing them to be the most perfect specimens of the human family, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... favorite resort the French artists rallied to beg M. Thiers, like the character in General Morris's ballad, to "spare those trees." And well may they petition, for the forest contains nearly thirty-five thousand acres, abounding in beautiful and picturesque scenery. It can boast finer trees than any other French forest, while its meadows, lawns and cliffs furnish specimens of almost every plant and flower to be found in France. Now, when we add that its views are exceedingly varied, its rocks, ravines, plateaus and thickets each offering some entirely different and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... said reflectively. And again he repeated the word to himself. "Nickel. Well, I don't know but what that's finer. Leastways, it's likelier. To say a silver mine, always seemed just like taking money out of the ground; but then, nickels are money too—and enough of 'em is ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... in speech, and firm in the observance of austere vows. At the appointed time he took food which consisted of fruit that had dropped from the trees. That jackal dwelt in a vast crematorium and liked to dwell there. And as it was his birth place, he never wished to change it for a finer locality. Unable to endure the purity of his behaviour, the other members of his species, endeavoured to make him alter his resolve by addressing him in the following words fraught with humility: 'Though residing in this terrible crematorium, thou desirest yet to live in such ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... consuming curiosity to understand the differences that you haughty Southerners believe to exist between 'you all' and the people of the North. Of course, I know that you consider yourselves made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a collateral branch of your ancestry; but I don't know why. I never could ...
— Options • O. Henry
... father of Michael Angelo, now became more friendly to his son, seeing that he was almost always in the society of great personages, and he dressed him in finer clothes. The youth lived with Piero some months and was much caressed by him. Piero used to say, boastingly, that he had two remarkable men in his establishment: one was Michael Angelo, and the other a certain Spanish ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... reader; but my inquiries brought me prompt knowledge of one of those charming features in which the Italian cities excel, if they are not unique. I remember too vaguely the Galleria, as they call the beautiful glazed arcade of Milan, to be sure that it is finer than the Galleria at Naples, but I am sure this is finer than that at Genoa, with which, however, I know nothing in other cities to compare. The Neapolitan gallery, wider than any avenue of the place, branching in the form of a Greek cross to four principal streets, is lighted by its roof of glass, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... ten years since, and that these gather strength as time gives them the witchery of old remembrances and associations. You enthusiastically admired Byron once, you estimate him very differently now. You once thought Festus finer than Paradise Loft, but you have swung away from that. But for a good many years you have held by Wordsworth, Shakspeare, and Tennyson, and this taste you are not likely to outgrow. It is very curious to look over a volume ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... ruined me, body and soul! All the finer instincts of my nature he sneered at. He taught me to despise everything—himself, myself! For five long years I endured this martyrdom. When we reached Paris, he added another wrong to those he had already inflicted on me. He compelled me to profane the sacred name of father, and yet I ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... sealed our friendship; for it was a pledge to my noble acquaintance of his future connection with the borough. He was much too high-bred to express his thanks in vulgar phrases (though high-breeding rarely exhibits all its finer qualities pending an election), but—a man of the world, and one of a class whose main business it is to put the suaviter in modo, as the French have it en evidence,—the reader may be sure that when we parted that night ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hostility. Our friends may be the undoing of us; in the end it is our enemies who save us. The views we hate become ridiculous because they adopt them. Their very thoroughness leads to an overwhelming reaction on whose waves we ride to victory. Even their skill calls out our greater skill and our finer achievement. At their best, at their worst, alike they help us. They are the very life-blood in ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... of the Prince were very enterprising and energetic men, and were allowed to govern the country until the Prince came of age. The capital city was a very fine city when the old king died; but the guardians thought it might be much finer, so they set to work with all their might and main to improve it. They tore down old houses and made a great many new streets; they built grand and splendid bridges over the river on which the city stood; they constructed aqueducts to bring water from streams many miles away; and they were at ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton |
