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Inner circle   /ˈɪnər sˈərkəl/   Listen
Inner circle

noun
1.
An exclusive circle of people with a common purpose.  Synonyms: camp, clique, coterie, ingroup, pack.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Inner circle" Quotes from Famous Books



... and perturbed me. It was pleasing to be hailed as one of the inner circle of a fellow like Tempest; but it made me suspect that I should not be taken into the fold at my own valuation, but that of my betters, which in a public school is a very different thing. The little ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... not speak. He took the urn from her over to the window and carefully examined the inner circle through a microscope. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... some temperaments variety will appeal; whilst others revel in monotony. The latter are like a District Railway train, going perpetually round and round the same Inner Circle. As far as my experience goes, the former are the more ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... parishioners in France, then, was not made up of the inner circle—we were lucky if we found three or four in a unit—but of the ill-instructed fringe, and the totally ignorant multitudes. The horror and boredom of war, the personal insecurity, the difficulty of understanding the ways of God, made all friendly to ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... of her severe maternal care. Once a year in town and once during the summer in Menlo Park, Magdalena had a luncheon party, the guests chosen from the very inner circle of Mrs. Yorba's acquaintance. The youngsters loathed this function, but were forced to attend by their distinguished parents. Magdalena sat at one end of the table and never uttered a word. The only ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... at Clerkenwell Green—a large triangular space which merits the name of Green as much as the Strand—he found a considerable gathering already assembled about the cart from which he was to speak. The inner circle consisted of his friends—some fifty who remained staunch in their faith. Prominent among them was the man Redgrave, he who had presented the address when Mutimer took leave of his New Wanley workpeople. He had come to London at the same ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... cast. All that we have now to do is to regulate the future progress and conduct of affairs as circumstances may permit. I only wish that others would regulate their conduct by mine. But even in our own inner circle we have great difficulties and great conflicts. Pity me: I assure you that it requires more courage to support the condition in which I am placed than to encounter a pitched battle. And the more so that I do not deceive myself, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... education of the State University. All these august victims of family despotism associated as little as possible with the common rabble of their fellow-students, and accepted invitations only from such faculty families as were recognized by the inner circle of the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... do, Miss Du Plessis, judging them that are without; Mr. Coristine pertains to my inner circle, and shall know my opinion of his shameful conduct before the sun rises ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... brain with metaphysical processes of self-annihilation. And yet, when one reads her "Spiritual Letters," the conviction of an enormous spiritual pride in the writer can hardly be repressed. She aspired to that inner circle of the faithful, that aristocracy of devotion, which, while the common herd of Christians are busied with the duties of life, eschews the visible and the present, and claims to live only for God. In her strong maternal affection she saw a lure to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... have known the true secret and have given the true password. Their keen sense and scriptural estimate of the supreme evil of sin first made them correspondents of Rutherford's; and as that sense and estimate grew in them they passed on into an inner and a still more inner circle of those Scottish saints and martyrs who corresponded with Rutherford, and closed, with so much honour and love, around him. And the two Guthries, James and William, as we shall see, were famous even in that day for their praying and ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... and here again the President contrived to kill two birds with one stone, the expression of his gratitude being by no means unprofitable. After so bitter a struggle and the resort to such extreme measures as he had been obliged to use, he anticipated no little opposition even within the inner circle, and, in any case, he as usual deemed it wise to provide against all contingencies. Dr. Leyds' vote he knew he could count on, the interests of the party which the State Secretary represents being such that they are obliged ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... responsible organization of wage earners was indicated by the career of the Molly Maguires. The Molly Maguires constituted an inner circle of Irish Catholics who controlled the activities of the branches of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in the hard-coal counties of eastern Pennsylvania. During the war and immediately after it the group gained a little power ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... intended solely for the man of moderate means, who could afford to marry if he loved himself less and some woman more. Five hundred a year, for instance, is a comfortable income for a bachelor not in the inner circle of Society. On this sum a middle-class man can do himself well, provided he has no particularly expensive vices or hobbies—but it certainly means self-denial when stretched to provide for a wife and two or three children. It means a small house in one of the cheaper suburbs, instead of a bachelor ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... was a second cipher in the return messages sent from Switzerland, different from the one that the Gussiter lot used in England. He got this cipher, but though he could read it he couldn't make anything out of it. He concluded that it was a very secret means of communication between the inner circle of the Wild Birds, and that Ivery must be at the back of it ... But he was still a long way from finding out anything ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... captives approached they were horror-struck at the sight of the heads which adorned the posts of the inner circle. Lady Helena and Mary Grant turned away their eyes more with disgust than with terror. These heads were those of hostile chiefs who had fallen in battle, and whose bodies had served to feed the conquerors. The geographer recognized that it was so, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... of this church can be attained, and that in the subsequent reform of this reform, which we shall have to record below, a backward step has been taken. For Debendran[a]th changed the essential character of the Sam[a]j from pantheistic theism to pure deism. The inner circle of the society had a narrower declaration of faith, but in his Br[a]hma Dharma, published about 1850, Debendran[a]th formulated four articles of faith, to subscribe to which admitted any one into the Sam[a]j. These articles read as ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... theatres. He figures with equal regularity as a large element in the society gossip of weekly journals. He is a delicate eater and never drinks too much out of the Venetian glasses, which his butler ruthlessly breaks after the manner of domestics. There is amongst the inner circle of the Dilettanti a jargon, both of voice and of gesture, which passes muster as humour, but is unintelligible to the outer world of burly Philistines. They dangle hands rather than shake them, and emphasise their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... strong man's brain pitted against the combined craft of the wilderness. In the midst of a stretch of waving grass was a table, and a young man of six-and-twenty sat there alone. Around him were ringed the gathered tribes, each chief in the order of his importance squatted in the inner circle, their blankets making patches of bright color against the green. Behind the tribes was the little group of hunting shirts, the men leaning on the barrels of their long rifles, indolent but watchful. Here and there a gay uniform of a Spanish or Creole officer, and behind these all ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... ten of us in the "Syndicate," dubbed by Jim "The Crew," among whom were Tolliver, Macdonald, and Will Lattimore. But the inner circle, now drawing closer and closer together, were Elkins, our ruling spirit; Hinckley, our great force in the banking world; and myself. Soon, I was given to understand, Mr. Cornish was to take his place as one of us. He and Jim had long known each other, and Mr. Elkins had the utmost confidence ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... fancied that he had caught the gist of the difficulty, and with a nod he moved on; and so he missed the warning which the other had it in his mind to give. A moment and he reached the inner circle, and there halted, disconcerted, nay taken aback. For as soon as he showed his face, the King, who was pacing to and fro like a caged beast, before a table at which three clerks knelt on cushions, espied him, and stood still. With a glare ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... "The Inner Circle learnt of this from one of our spies in the Russian London police, and——, well, Ainsworth was found dead with the mark of the Terror upon his forehead before he had time to put his treachery into action. He was executed by two of the Brotherhood, who are members of the Metropolitan police ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly white, thin hands. He was dining on filet mignon, dry toast and apollinaris. That man was Cortlandt Van Duyckink, a man worth eighty millions, who inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive inner circle of society. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... forms are two others, shaped like a horseshoe. The first consisted of the five large "Trilithons," huge pylons of stone, comprising two uprights and an impost; standing separate, while in front of them is the remnant of a horseshoe of small upright stones, similar to those which comprise the inner circle of ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... a while; then, with a fortitude and a self-control which never fails men of his type in times of public stress and difficulty, he roused himself to discuss the political situation which had arisen—so far, at least, as was necessary and fitting in the case of a man not in the inner circle. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... prosperous, modern, sophisticated, with the right kind of woodwork in every room that showed, with the latest, most unobtrusively artistic effects in decoration, represented their culminating well-earned position in the inner circle of the ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... to stretch. She had been bidden to watch Alexander Quisante, to admire his great moments, to see a future for him, and to applaud the discerning eye which had seen that future first. But who had bidden her make a friend of the man, take him into the inner circle, treat him as one who belonged to the group of her intimates, to the company of her equals and of those with whom she had grown up? Almost passionately Dick disclaimed the responsibility for this; with no less heat his wife forced ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... the king has one hundred and fifty advisers, half of them women, who meet about once a month. Lylda is one of these women. He also has an inner circle of closer, more intimate counselors consisting of four men and four women. One of these women is the queen; another is Lylda. I am ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... crag, snow and glacier—stood out with faultless definition. Pleasant thoughts of happy days in bygone years came up unbidden as we recognised the old familiar forms. All were revealed, not one of the principal peaks of the Alps was hidden. I see them clearly now, the great inner circle of giants, backed by the ranges, chains, and massifs.... Ten thousand feet beneath us were the green fields of Zermatt, dotted with chalets, from which blue smoke rose lazily. Eight thousand feet below, on the other side, were the pastures of Breuil. There were black and gloomy forests; bright ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... the last sitting. On the following evening, Mrs. Taine was giving a dinner at the house on Fairlands Heights, at which the artist was to meet some people who would be—as she said—useful to him. Eastern people they were; from the accredited center of art and literature; members of the inner circle of the elect. They happened to be spending the season on the Coast, and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to advance the painter's interests. It was very fortunate that her portrait was to be finished in time ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... desire in all seriousness should reach the ears of my fellow artists is that my object in attacking the Royal Academy ("Royal Academy Antics," 1890), was a thoroughly unselfish one. "It was published for the sake of those who, for one reason or another, are not within the inner circle. I was prompted to call the discriminating attention of the public to the evil the Academy works and permits to exist," by appeals from artists outside—heartbroken men and women smarting under unfair treatment; I received letters recording ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... was the Colonel's inner circle, gathered by telephone at twenty-four hours' notice, as they so often were. No course that the chef had contributed to the rather too elaborate menu was new to them. The Pol Roger which the big English butler was just starting on his second round was of the vintage year usually to ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... these extreme lengths. We never, of course, could really have worked together; and, his maladies increasing, he became more and more a wanderer, living at Bournemouth, at Davos, in the Grisons, finally, as all know, in Samoa. Thus, though we corresponded, not unfrequently, I never was of the inner circle of his friends. Among men there were school or college companions, or companions of Paris or Fontainebleau, cousins, like Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, or a stray senior, like Mr. Sidney Colvin. From some of them, or from Mr. Stevenson himself, I have heard tales of "the wild Prince and Poins." That he ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... whom he was wont to speak or whisper of as partner when discussing what they had ferreted out or left undiscovered. This man, fat, florid, and fifty, had been a central office detective for many years. After a time, being exceedingly useful in a political sense, he had been admitted to the inner circle at Tammany Hall and was at present one of the leading geniuses in that hallowed body of ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... hands and the Washington Post, in speaking of this matter, said: "The delegates feel like lost sheep without Mrs. Spofford's hospitality at the Riggs House, which has always been headquarters for suffragist and all women's conventions. Probably no one but those in the inner circle will ever know just how much Mrs. Spofford has done for the advancement of women in every direction. Whatever was hers was at the disposal of the leaders, and in the absence of so much assistance it is appreciated more nearly ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... across the ferry, to do a little shopping in the rue de Paris, are things of the past. Curiously enough while I was looking over my notes the other day, I had a visit from an old friend, the Duc de M., who was one of the inner circle of the imperial household of the Emperor Napoleon III, and took an active part in all that went on at court. He had just been hearing from a friend of the very brilliant season at Deauville this year, and the streams of gold that flowed into the ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... a recent addition to Maud's inner circle. She had interested herself in him some two months back in much the same spirit as the prisoner in his dungeon cell tames and pets the conventional mouse. To educate Albert, to raise him above his groove ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... town that day, another worshiper and her devoted mother had been talking over plans for the future. Both were "climbers," at least they thought it was climbing. They had social ambitions and it was whispered by their enemies that they intended, at whatever cost to enter the inner circle of those who worshiped the idols. Last year the young girl who wanted to go to college had "come out." It had been a wonderful season but it had left her with a pale face and dark circles under her lovely eyes. The rest ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... too, is a most distressing thing in monarchies, that we fear not only enemies (like other people) but also our friends. Many more rulers have been plotted against by such persons than by those who had nothing to do with them. This is to be expected, since the inner circle is with the potentate day and night, exercising and eating, and he has to take food and drink that they have prepared. Moreover, against acknowledged enemies you can array these very men, but against the latter themselves there is no one else to employ as an ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... embraced the women (except, of course, the queen elect), it included the babies, and as most of these were self-assertive and well-developed in chest and throat, it was found necessary to relegate them and the women to an outer circle, while the men in an inner circle tackled ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... and repeaters at the polls. The tribute that they pay amounts to millions; and it is shared from the lowest to the highest in the organization... from the ward man on the street and the police captain, up to the inner circle of the chiefs of Tammany Hall... yes, even to your friend, Mr. Robert Grimes, himself! A thousand times, sir, has the truth about this monstrous infamy been put before the people of your city; and that they have not long ago risen in their wrath and driven its agents from their midst is due to ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair

... they did not get on, and were seldom any further advanced into her good graces to-day than yesterday. By some subtile quality, she kept people at a distance, without so much as letting them know that they were excluded from her inner circle. She resembled one of those images of light, which conjurers evoke and cause to shine before us, in apparent tangibility, only an arm's length beyond our grasp: we make a step in advance, expecting to seize the illusion, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... entertainment as a right, have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less to-day, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... that is not exactly the word; for there is not the remotest trace of snobbishness in Henry James. It is rather that he indicates to a small inner circle of intellectually detached persons, his recognition of their fastidiousness and their prejudices, and his sly humorous consciousness of the gulf between their classical mode of speech and the casual lapses ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... are regarded with suspicion. Lifelong friendships are not contracted in a day. The East Anglian is shrewd, and requires to know something about those whom he admits to the sacred inner circle of his friendship. Borrow was well-known in the Mattishall district, and was looked upon with more than usual suspicion. He was unquestionably a strange man, in speech, in appearance, in habits. He could and would ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... luxurious feasts. Although the form of these has changed, they are alive to the same sentiments which move us. They like fun and jokes and amusement as much as we. They abhor the same class of defects which disgust us,—hypocrisies, shams, lies. The inner circle of their friendship is the same as ours to-day, based on sincerity and admiration. There is the same infinite variety in character, and yet the same uniformity. The human heart beats to the same sentiments that it does under all civilizations and conditions of life. No people can live without friendship ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... eyes. Casting his mind back over the sources of his information, he then remembered that intimation of the connection between the two men had come to him when he had been looked on as a member of the inner circle, so that all things were talked of openly before him; that since Plant's day Oldham had in fact never appeared ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... that Rose was to be promoted to this select inner circle, didn't, as it first came to her, give her any pleasure. Somehow, as Larson told her about it, she could fairly see the knowing greasy grin that would have been Dave's comment on this prophecy. And in the same flash, she interpreted the Larson girl's look, half ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... hard struggle with myself, and have, since you left me, thought over from every point of view what I ought to do. On the one hand, I should have to tell you things known only to an inner circle, things which were it known I had whispered to any one my life would be forfeited. On the other hand, if I keep silent I should doom you to a life of misery. I have resolved to take the former alternative. ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... perfectly concentric with the circle of the water; and, I believe, there is nothing of which the naked eye can judge with so much precision as the concentricity of two circles, provided the circles be neither very nearly equal, nor the inner circle very small in proportion to ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... round the centre of interest, and the comparatively slack business being done at other tables, proved its truth. None of the newcomers, even the tallest, could see, but they could hear, and they could feel the thrill from the inner circle. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... The inner circle of "Spirituals" which we are now engaged in investigating was never numerically large or impressive, nor was it in the public mind well differentiated within the larger circle of seething ideas and revolutionary propaganda. The men themselves, however, who composed it had a very sure grasp ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... till one dark, rainy Sunday night, walking round and round the inner circle of the square, Tom expressed his feelings. At first, in somewhat high flown and poetical phrases, then melting into the one, eternally old and eternally new, "Do you love me?" followed by a long, long kiss, given ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... a house-to-house visit in Riseholme, and tearing the veil from off the features of the Guru. Georgie was far too upright of purpose to dream of making his sisters drunk, but he was willing to make great sacrifices in order to render them kind. What the inner circle would do about this cook he had no idea; he must talk to Lucia about it, before the advanced class tomorrow morning. But anything was better than letting Hermy and Ursy loose in Riseholme with their rude laughs and discreditable ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... classes. In the first class he placed the ordinary members—i.e., those who had been confirmed or who had been received from other Churches; and all belonging to this class were allowed to attend Communion once a quarter. His second class was a sacred "Inner Circle." It consisted of those, and only those, who made a special religious profession. No one could be admitted to this "Inner Circle" without the sanction of the Lot; and none but those belonging to the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... and yet, when they are compared, find a natural explanation in their being the work of the same mind. The imitator might copy the turns of style—he might repeat images or illustrations, but he could not enter into the inner circle of Platonic philosophy. He would understand that part of it which became popular in the next generation, as for example, the doctrine of ideas or of numbers: he might approve of communism. But the higher flights of Plato about ...
— Laws • Plato

... Every anecdote that he heard he adapted to the years and supposed circumstances of "Master Crane." The close relations which existed between Field and the Cranes—for he included Mrs. Crane within the inner circle of his good-fellowship—may be judged from ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... in age, he does not seem to have progressed in grace. By the respectable citizens of Grimstad—and even Grimstad had its little inner circle of impenetrable aristocracy—he regarded as "not quite nice." The apothecary's assistant was a bold young man, who did not seem to realize his menial position. He was certainly intelligent, and Grimstad ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... Mary," "the Twa Dogs," and the like, but in "the Jolly Beggars," "Rigs of Barley," "Scotch Drink," "the Epistle to John Rankine," "Holy Willie's Prayer," and in "Halloween," (to say nothing of a certain cluster, known still to a small inner circle in Scotland, but, for good reasons, not published anywhere.) In these compositions, especially the first, there is much indelicacy (some editions flatly leave it out,) but the composer reigns alone, with handling free and broad and true, and is an ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... us to "the other shore" last night. We were all there—her "inner circle" as she used to call us—all except you, and she seemed to miss you so. I never knew her to grow fond of any one in so short a time, but she took you right into her heart from the first. If I had not loved you so much I should have ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black

... with the Old Masters," serving punch from her own cut-glass punch bowl instead of renting the hand-painted crockery bowl of the queensware store, the old dull pain came back into the hearts of the dwellers in the inner circle. Then just in the nick of time Mrs. Conklin went to Kansas City and was operated on for appendicitis. She came back pale and interesting, and gave her club a paper called "Hospital Days," fragrant with iodoform and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... he announced. "The remaining bearers will repeat their sections of the scout law after me as I read. The twelve will then form an inner circle around us, and all other scouts will make strong our defenses with an outer circle as we give ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... his place in the line of battle, that the battle had gone against him thrice from the north. Then he addressed his bodyguard, even the inner circle of the Red Branch: "Hold ye here a while, ye men!" cried he; "even in the line [4]of battle[4] where I am, that I may go and learn by whom the battle has been thus forced against us thrice from the north." Then said his household: "We will hold out," said they, [5]"in the ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... till late in middle life, always found a warm corner beside his friend's hearth. From the earliest days of the household in the little house at Waverley Place he was admitted to the inner circle of a lively friendship by Mrs. Huxley also, that keen judge of character, and to the children ranked as a kind of unofficial uncle. On New Year's Day he was chief among the two or three intimates who were bidden here, having no domestic ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... find herself generally accepted because of her association with Emily Saunders. She had always appreciated the difficulty of entering the inner circle of society with insufficient credentials. Now she learned how simple the whole thing was when the right person or persons assumed the responsibility. Girls whom years ago she had rather fancied to be "snobs" and "stuck-up" proved very gracious, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... certainly was quite right; for it would have become her very badly, as the cousin of Joan Cockscroft (half removed, and upon the mother's side), and therefore kindly received at Flamborough, and admitted into the inner circle, and allowed to buy fish at wholesale prices, if she had turned round upon all these benefits, and described all the holes to be found in the place, for the teaching of a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... for want of breath. Bold Bywater, who was sure to find his tongue before anybody else, elbowed his way to the inner circle, and flourished about there, in complete disregard of the sad state of dilapidation he was in behind; a large portion of a very necessary article of attire having been, in some unaccountable manner, torn away by his ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... These ladies spend enormous sums on their toilette, and are perpetually inventing some merry and brilliant nonsense for the amusement of the Empress. Among the persons from the "outside" most in favor just now, in the inner circle of the court, is a very handsome and accomplished American lady, the youthful wife of a millionaire, possessing a magnificent voice, a very amiable temper, and wonderfully splendid hair. After a very small and very merry party ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... care less! If y' want to get anywhere, ye don't set out to turn back! Dante's inner circle was ice! A've had that! Now, A'll take a nip of his outer circle and try your ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... crab has quietly stolen himself rich, and now forsooth would tack on a Sir Hugh before his name. Ah! The jewels! I must delicately hint to him that I am in the inner circle ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... And we read the text again and we find his name was Thomas. That is a very familiar name. Oh, yes; we remember Thomas quite well. It was Thomas who was missing. Now, Thomas was expected, for he was a member of the little band of disciples. He was one of the Twelve. He belonged to the Inner Circle. His fellow Christians had a right therefore to expect him. Yet Thomas ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... how he had circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming to life again, and how footmen are sent out to inquire into its success. He made a hit by writing a sham account of Prior's mission to Paris supposed to come from a French valet. The inner circle chuckled over such performances, which would be impossible when their monopoly of information had been broken up. A similar satisfaction was given by the various burlesques and more or less ingenious fables which were to be fully appreciated by the inner ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... who is neither entirely a rogue nor entirely honest; but who, after all, reaches relative tranquillity and competency more through accident than purpose. The piece was not performed in its author's life-time; but friends were acquainted with it already in 1840, when Gautier and the rest of the inner circle were summoned to Les Jardies to hear the hermit read it, differing considerably then from the arrangement that was ultimately played. Balzac read it well, with all the inflections peculiar to each character and suitable to every change of circumstance. He had in him, says Gautier, the stuff ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... to decide who should shoot first at the turkey was begun. Every detail was watched with increasing interest. A piece of white paper marked with two concentric circles was placed sixty yards away, and Raines won with a bullet in the inner circle. The girl had missed both, and the mountaineer offered her two more shots to accustom herself to the gun. She accepted, and smiled a little triumphantly as she touched the outer circle with one bullet and placed ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... upon his return to London that Bok learned, through the confidence of a member of the British "inner circle," the amazing news that the war was practically over: that Bulgaria had capitulated and was suing for peace; that two of the Central Power provinces had indicated their strong desire that the war should ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... comes along an angled line—two lines meeting at an angle—and the point of that angle is in some christian heart. The message He sends out to the outer circle passes through some one within the inner circle. To make it direct and personal: He needs to use you to touch those whom ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... other by lines 5 degrees apart. The diameter of the circle obviously makes no difference in the number of decrees contained in any portion of it. Thus, in the quarter from 0 to 90, there are 90 degrees, as marked; but suppose the diameter of the circle were that of inner circle d, and one-quarter of it would still ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... difficult. Yet she realized soon enough that the Prices, prominent as they were, had never belonged to the heart of the constellation. It remained for her to penetrate there, under the guidance of the same Nannie Lawton whom as a girl she had rather despised. For every constellation has its inner circle, the members of which touch telepathically all other inner circles. The fact that Nannie Lawton called her by her first name would help her socially more, than the Colonel's record as a citizen or her husband's position in the railroad or their ample means. Before her second winter of married ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... Gallery, or South Kensington Museum, and to the public or private art exhibitions. We also paid calls, and on one of these occasions I was introduced to George Eliot and to Mr. Lewes; the latter sat by us on a sofa outside of the inner circle (the room was full), and talked with wonderful vivacity and great discrimination of the state of French literature. He judged of it like a Frenchman; his conversation was extremely interesting and suggestive, and he appeared to derive great pleasure from a rapid exchange ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... to be swept away by the first gust of political change. The last twenty years, indeed, have seen thirteen chief secretaries come and go! With or against his will he is a close prisoner of the irresponsible coterie which forms the inner circle of Irish administration. Even a change of Government in England is not a change of Government in Ireland. The Chief Secretary goes, but the permanent officials remain. The case of the clock is changed, but the mechanism continues as before.... The Irish oligarchy has retained its supremacy ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... Whatever Mr. Ticknor has occasion to say is said with good taste and good feeling, and he has shown a fine judgment in making his portraiture of his friend so life-like and so true in detail, and yet in never overstepping the line of that inner circle into which the public has no right to enter. We have in these pages a record of Mr. Prescott's life from his cradle to his grave, sufficiently minute to show what manner of man he was, and what influences went to make up his mind and character; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... goes on gently. "To come from riches to poverty is one of the worst things the word offers; but to be very rich is not well, Tita. It clogs the mind; it takes one away from the very meaning of life. Money hardens the soul; it keeps one away from touch with the inner circle of humanity—from the misery, the sorrow, the vice! It is bad to be ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... I are likely to mention it. I only referred to it to show the advantages of marrying a man of high lineage like Alfred Lindsay. I have money, but I have never been able to get into the inner circle to which the Lindsays belong. Money will buy much, but it won't buy that. I hope yon will do your best to bring the ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger

... circumference of a circle is six times the radius). Place a point of the compass at one intersection of the circumference and the diameter, and divide the circle into six equal parts. With a radius of two inches, describe an inner circle parallel to the outer one. Connect opposite points of the outer circle by drawing two more diameters. This will divide the inner circle into six equal parts. Connect by straight lines the adjacent points of the inner circle, as ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw

... bad guy. Copies still circulate of a poster printed by Mt. Xinu showing a starscape with a space fighter labeled 4.2 BSD streaking away from a broken AT&T logo wreathed in flames. 2. AT&T's internal magazine, "Focus", uses 'death star' to describe an incorrectly done AT&T logo in which the inner circle in the top left is dark instead of light — a frequent result of dark-on-light ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... oftenest are not always those that we admire the most; we choose and we revisit them for many and various reasons, as we choose and revisit human friends. One or two of Scott's novels, Shakespeare, Moliere, Montaigne, "The Egoist," and the "Vicomte de Bragelonne," form the inner circle of my intimates. Behind these comes a good troop of dear acquaintances; "The Pilgrim's Progress" in the front rank, "The Bible in Spain" not far behind. There are besides a certain number that look ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... any other way decide on the order of play. After winding up his peg, the first player, with his left foot toeing the outer ring, strikes for the tops in the center. If he misses and fails to spin, or if he strikes outside the inner circle, he must put another top within the circle and await his turn. If he strikes the tops with the big end of his plugger, it is a miss, and he must replace any top knocked out; but if the peg of the plugger hits ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... filled up a part of the moat—the barbarians had broken down the bridges in advance—and got across, since in the downpour neither archery nor fire could harm him. Immediately he captured nearly everything, for the inner circle was not very strong by reason of the confidence felt in the outer works beyond it. Among those that fled to the acropolis, whom he subsequently caused to capitulate, was the brother of Tigranes. He also obtained considerable money and ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... longer dangerous, and he considers France altogether unprepared for war. This being so, it is the general opinion in diplomatic circles that the Kaiser's purpose in sending Servia impossible conditions is intended to arouse hostilities. Only to-day I had a chat with a man who moves in the inner circle of things, and he told me, that if Russia defends Servia, as he hopes she will, and that if France prepares to help Russia, as she is sure to do, Austria can keep Servia and Russia busy, while Germany fulfils her long-held determination to bring France to her knees, and ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... of one age is often mere weariness to the next; and farcical comedy is, of all the forms of literature, perhaps the least adapted for permanence. It would be affectation to claim that Plautus is nowadays widely read outside of the inner circle of scholars; and there he is read almost wholly on account of his unusual fertility and interest as a field of linguistic study. Yet he must always remain one of the great outstanding influences in literary history. The strange fate which has left nothing but inconsiderable fragments out of ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... Bronson's inner circle, which included the Principessa Montenegro, the mother of Queen Elena, and other notable figures, was the Contessa Marcello, whom both the poet and his sister greatly liked; and one radiant day they all accepted an invitation to visit the Contessa at her villa at Mogliano, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... signifying "excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner circle. The Druidic religion was astronomical, and purely deistical, and rendered reverence to the sun, moon, and stars as the visible representatives of the otherwise unseen Divinity who created man and nature. "The Druids used no images," says the Reverend Doctor Alexander in his excellent ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... semicircle. From same centre and oh for radius describe the inner semicircle. Divide outer circle into a convenient number of parts, 1, 2, 3, &c., to which draw radii from centre O. From each division drop perpendiculars. Where the radii intersect the inner circle, as at gkmo, draw horizontals op, mn, kj, &c., and through their intersections with the perpendiculars f, j, n, p, draw the curve of the flattened arch. Transfer this to the lower figure, and proceed to draw the tunnel. Note how the vanishing scale ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey

... indeed than when he had first come. He had enough practice to keep him in good health and spirits. But his patients were along the side streets and in the smaller houses and out in the country. He was not called, except in a chance emergency, to the big houses with the white pillars. The inner circle had not yet ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... started by Burke, so that Burke himself had said little upon them, the reply of Burke is well known, "Oh, no; it is enough for me to have rung the bell to him." Such words from such a man are final and unanswerable. And they are confirmed by every other member of his {233} inner circle, and indeed by almost every person who knew him and has left any opinion on the subject. Not the least significant tribute is that of those—including men no less great than Gibbon and Fox—who had ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... me two months to do it, but I did it. And that's no beaver dream. Round and round I ran him, me travelling on the inner circle, eating jerked meat and salmon berries on the run, and snatching winks of sleep between. Of course, he'd get desperate at times and turn. Then I'd head for soft ground where the creek spread out, and lay anathema upon him and his ancestry, and dare him to come on. But he was too wise to bog ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered. And there was no reason why it should matter now. His England was a land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed; for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push. That refuge had its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather heavily decorous; so that he could let the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... beneath his feet, and his influence beginning to drop from his hand. Coldness in place of enthusiasm; critical aloofness in place of affection; readiness to forget and omit him in matters where he had always hitherto belonged to the inner circle and the trusted few—these bitter ghosts, with their hard, unfamiliar looks, had risen of late in his world of idealist effort and joy, and had brought with them darkness and chill. He could not give way, for he had a singular unity of soul—it had been the source of his power—and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... least, the decision of the Government had been wise, for it speedily became evident that a notable coterie of wealthy buyers would be congregated in Paris on the thirteenth (unlucky day for me!) when the sale was to take place. But we of the inner circle were made aware of another result somewhat more disquieting, which was that the most expert criminals in the world were also gathering like vultures upon the fair city. The honour of France was at stake. Whoever bought that necklace must be assured ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... became louder, so did the motion become more violent, till the whole body heaved backwards and forwards with the regularity of a pendulum and the voice of a steam-engine. As the excitement became strong, the head of the dervishes walked along the inner circle, exciting those to more violence who already seemed the most violent. This he did, standing for a few minutes before each such man, bowing his own head rapidly and groaning deeply; and as he did so, the man before whom he stood would groan and swing himself with terrible ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... me active but love and affection." So Bacon described his position with questionable accuracy—for his estate was not "free from difficulties"—in the new time coming. He was still kept out of the inner circle of the Council; but from the moment of Salisbury's death he became a much more important person. He still sued for advancement, and still met with disappointment; the "mean men" still rose above him. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... fires are always kindled upon certain definite hills, which are hence known as Easter or Paschal Mountains. The whole community assembles about the fire. Fathers of families form an inner circle round it. An outer circle is composed of the young men and maidens, who, singing Easter hymns, march round and round the fire in the direction of the sun, till the blaze dies down. Then the girls jump over the fire in a line, one after the other, each supported by two young ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... necessarily become the study of consciousness and the occult powers of the human mind. In the centre a handful of fearless scientists: Crookes, Wallace, Richet, Flammarion, Morselli, Baraduc, Myers, Lombroso, Lodge, and Barrett; in the inner circle a number of academic investigators, disdaining alike the premature proclamation of phenomenal results and the obstinate denial of facts; in the outer circle an ever-growing mass of souls clamouring for the crumbs of evidence, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... an inner circle of bookmakers who take care either to bet on figures alone, or on perfectly accurate and secret information; we have another circle of sharp owners and backers, who, by means of modified (or unmodified) false pretences, succeed at times in beating the bookmakers; we ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... Colvin in "Notes and Introductions" to R. L. S.'s "Letters to His Family and Friends." I can but contribute the personal views of one who knew, loved, and esteemed his junior that is already a classic; but who never was of the inner circle of his intimates. We shared, however, a common appreciation of his genius, for he was not so dull as to suppose, or so absurd as to pretend to suppose, that much of his work was not excellent. His tale "Thrawn Janet" "is good," he says in a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which the cadence of the drum increased gradually. Now the great bull that had replied to the distant call leaped from the inner circle to dance alone between the drummers and the other bulls. He leaped and crouched and leaped again, now growling and barking, again stopping to raise his hideous face to Goro, the moon, and, beating upon his shaggy breast, ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Bookham in Surrey and godfather to Jane, had married a daughter of the Master of Balliol (Theophilus Leigh), and their three children, Theophilus, Mary, and George, belonged, like the Coopers, to an inner circle of relations on both sides (Leigh Perrots, Coopers, Cookes, Walters, and Hancocks), who made up—in addition to the outer-circle of country neighbours—the world in which ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... nervous eyes, and a cigar which was always chewed and never lighted. This man had come, as Ham had come, from the hardness of some barren farm and had obdurately hammered his path by the sheer insistence of his brain into the inner circle of an oligarchy. These two greatest of America's money barons ignored the gesture with which the younger Warwick invited them to be seated. In the brief silence that followed upon their entrance was the portent of a brewing tempest. At last Malone ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck



Words linked to "Inner circle" :   cabal, maffia, bohemia, sect, brain trust, kitchen cabinet, galere, band, mafia, camp, lot, camarilla, clique, circle, junta, coterie, set, Bloomsbury Group, rogue's gallery, military junta, loop, faction, hard core, junto



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