"Innocuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paints, or sings, or writes, conveys a lesson while it pleases. On the other hand, depravity in an artist or a poet percolates through work which has in it nothing positive of evil, and a very miasma of poisonous influence may rise from the apparently innocuous creations of a tainted soul. Now Correggio is moralised in neither way—neither as a good nor as a bad man, neither as an acute thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply sensuous. On his own ground he is even very ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... latch of the van door, found it, and leaped out into the waste under the stars, just as the owner of the van rose with a clatter of coins. To pick up money is a deeply rooted human instinct. Barney Bill lit his lamp, and, uttering juicy though innocuous flowers of anathema, searched for the scattered treasure. When he had retrieved three shillings and sevenpence-halfpenny he peered out. Paul was far away. Barney Bill put the money on the shelf and looked at it in a puzzled way. Was it ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... action, productive of a certain physical effect in one subject may produce by some sympathetic correlation an analogous effect in another. An instance will make this clear. To wear a necklace is an action in itself perfectly innocuous and even beneficial, in so far as it enhances the person of the wearer, but for the Manbo man and wife such a proceeding at this particular time would produce, by some species of mystic correlation, a binding effect on the child in ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... upon a stump, and approached and gazed at by every wayfarer. The imperial bird darts round the lightning of his eyes, but he knows them to be innocuous, and his head droops ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... her way to prison. She says, "Go, lead the way. I long to see my prison." Johnson comments: "This impatience of a high spirit is very natural. It is not so dreadful to be imprisoned, as it is desirable in a state of disgrace to be sheltered from the scorn of gazers." This note may be innocuous enough, but it is worth recalling that Johnson was arrested for debt in February, 1758, when he was engaged in the edition of Shakespeare. And two years earlier, in March of 1756, he had also been arrested for debt. Friends came to his rescue both times. Curiously, there is no mention ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... lapse from grace, above related, was so innocuous that it need not be counted to his discredit. His was the case of the pugilist who slipped on a piece of peel and felt unable to rise: had the place been a ring, instead of a pavement, he would have been up and dancing within ten seconds. So with Anthony—had Fortune ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... is no longer important. Keep your eyes on that rag. It's a flimsy thing, composed of absorbent plastic and gooed up with a little unpolymerized resin, weighing about fifty grams. It is apparently floating harmlessly in space, just beyond the orbit of Uranus, looking as innocuous as a rag can look. But it is moving sunward at eight ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... fought in England. Fortunately, the crown and country triumphed over the hereditary principle in this respect; the sheriff remained an official, and when viscounts were created later, in imitation of the French nobility, they received only a meaningless and comparatively innocuous title. ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... not equally innocuous. That which is most injurious is to entertain unworthy conceptions of the nature and attributes of God; and it is this that Masonry symbolizes by ignorance of the True Word. The true word of a Mason is, not the entire, perfect, absolute truth in regard to God; but the highest and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... proceeded to swallow them with a backward throw of his head. Tabloids were Mr. Purvis's only personal indulgence. He had been recommended them for his nerves, and he had swallowed so many that had they not been perfectly innocuous he ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... deeply upon the problematical nature of a future life. It is, in essence, a reductio ad absurdum of those professors of religion who still preach a heaven of golden streets and pearly gates, of idleness and everlasting psalm-singing, of restful and innocuous bliss. Mark Twain wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the allegories and the figurative language of the Bible literally. Of course everybody called for a harp and a halo as soon as they reached heaven. They were given the harps and halos—indeed nothing harmless ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... small torpedo-boats, bound together for mutual purposes of offence and defence. Singly, they would present defects of coal-carrying capacity, sea-going qualities, and accommodation for crew which would render them comparatively helpless and innocuous; but in combination they possess all the travelling capacities of a large warship, conjoined with the deadly powers at close quarters of a number of torpedo boats, all acting closely in ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... where they found plenty to amuse them. It was a splendid headland, rising bluff four hundred feet out of the sea, and presenting magnificent reaches of rock scenery on all sides. The boys lay on the turf at the summit, and flung innocuous stones at the sea-gulls as they sailed far below them over the water, and every now and then pounced at some stray fish that came to the surface; or they watched the stately barks as they sailed by on the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... power) once possessed by the Catholic Church; when I found him relying on this spiritual authority as the only security for good government, the sole bulwark against practical oppression, and expecting that by it a system of despotism in the state and despotism in the family would be rendered innocuous and beneficial; it is not surprising, that while as logicians we were nearly at one, as sociologists we could travel together no further. M. Comte lived to carry out these doctrines to their extremest consequences, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Between these innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly taller, more commanding and distinguished in bearing, than his companions. Even from here, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... at the Rodneys', however, had brought Endymion something more valuable than an innocuous familiarity with their various and suggestive life. In the friendship of Waldershare he found a rich compensation for being withdrawn from his school and deprived of his university. The care of his father had made Endymion a good classical scholar, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... entirely disappear, or at all events be greatly reduced in intensity. Animal charcoal also absorbs gases with great avidity, and on this account it is utilized as a powerful disinfectant, for when once putrefactive gases are absorbed by it, they undergo a gradual oxidation, and are rendered innocuous, in the same way animal charcoal is a valuable agent for purifying water, for by filtering the most impure water through a bed of animal charcoal nearly the whole of the organic impurities will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... refuse is sterilized by steam under pressure, the grease and fertilizing substances being extracted at the same time; while in other systems, such as those of Weil and Porno, and of Defosse, distillation in closed vessels is practised. But the destructor system, in which the refuse is burned to an innocuous clinker in specially constructed furnaces, is that which must finally be resorted to, especially in districts which have become well built up and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... sovereignty. He shrank from nothing. Self-preservation was the guiding principle of his policy, his first object and his only excuse. Among many wicked and ingenious expedients three main methods are remarkable. First, he removed or rendered innocuous all real or potential rivals. Secondly, he pursued what Sir Alfred Milner has called 'a well-considered policy of military concentration.' Thirdly, he maintained among the desert and riverain people a balance of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... have had doubts concerning his simile of the gamekeeper; hence in his last footnote he makes the innocuous remark: "Because the house-breaking gamekeeper fired the first shot, it is not usual to draw the conclusion that the poacher had only defensive ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... necessarily thrown much upon Lady Hilda's society; and as Lady Hilda was laudably eager to instruct him in billiards, lawn tennis, and sketching, he rapidly grew to be quite an adept at those relatively moral and innocuous amusements, under her ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... of speech and of motion, but he said he could work, and I hired him. The other man whom I sent to the farm at the same time proved of no use whatever. He stayed four days, and was dismissed for innocuous desuetude. Still another man whom I tried did well for five weeks, and then broke out in a most profound spree, from which he could not be weaned. He ended up by an assault on Otto in the stable yard. The Swede was taken by surprise, and was handsomely bowled over by the first onslaught of ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... certainly, it is said, without extracting their fangs. They declare they enjoy the privilege from their founder. The creatures writhe and struggle between their teeth; but possibly, if they do bite them, the bite is innocuous." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... of that minute world, seldom descended from the Olympian heights of his poop. Below him—at his feet, so to speak—common mortals led their busy and insignificant lives. Along the main deck, Mr. Baker grunted in a manner bloodthirsty and innocuous; and kept all our noses to the grindstone, being—as he once remarked—paid for doing that very thing. The men working about the deck were healthy and contented—as most seamen are, when once well out to sea. The true peace of God begins at ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... are concerned. When a person was suspected of being involved in a conspiracy against the government he was liable at any moment to be seized and conducted to prison, where he might be detained indefinitely, until the danger was over, or he was considered innocuous. The ancient fortress at the river mouth in Santo Domingo, known as La Torre del Homenaje, bears over its entrance the sign, "Political Prison," and rarely has it been without tenants, even when the country was at peace ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... that there lurks in the supposedly innocuous amber of ginger ale an elevating something which the temperance reformers have overlooked. Wilberforce Bray had, if you remember, tucked away no fewer than three in the spot where they would do most good. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... little real significance in his own life as the American "prep" school, crushed as it is under the heel of the universities, has to American life in general. We have no Eton to create the self-consciousness of a governing class; we have, instead, clean, flaccid and innocuous ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... roasted coffee prove that it is the most powerful means, not only of rendering animal and vegetable effluvia innocuous, but of actually destroying them. A room in which meat in an advanced degree of decomposition had been kept for some time, was instantly deprived of all smell on an open coffee-roaster being carried through it, containing a pound of coffee newly roasted. In another room, exposed to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... were draining the dangerous corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter and the heats of summer. They were working their hardest to render the carrion innocuous. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... others, and found their footmarks up a lane and across a field; a loose stone wall confronted me, and I rode at it confidently; but the filly, soured by our recent encounter, reared and would have none of it. I tried yet another way round, and put her at a moderate and seemingly innocuous bank, at which, with the contrariety of her sex, she rushed at a thousand miles an hour. It looked somehow as if there might be a bit of a drop, but the filly had got her beastly blood up, and I have been in a better ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... ancient bridge so recently replaced by this structure was much more picturesque, curving across the flood and supported upon multitudinous feet, like a long-legged centipede of the innocuous kind. For three hundred years it had stood over the stream firmly and well, and it had its ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... than a horse, even a horse of genius. Krall never lays a hand on the animal; he moves all round the little table, which contains no appliances of any sort; for the most part, he stands behind the horse which is unable to see him, or comes and sits beside his guest on the innocuous corn-bin, busying himself, while lecturing his pupil, in writing up the minutes of the lesson. He also welcomes with the most serene readiness any restrictions or tests which you propose. I assure you that the thing itself is much simple, and clearer than the suspicions of the arm-chair ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... time pressing him into frantic speed. The idea was incredible, but it had to be true. He searched the micro-film files for three hours before he found it, in a "Who's Who" dating back to 1958, three years before the war with China. A simple, innocuous listing, which froze him to his seat. He read it, unbelievingly, yet knowing that it was the only possible link. Finally he ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... long-whiskered septuagenarian, is popularly known as "Papa" Kaempf. I see Liebknecht whispering quietly in Kaempf's ear. He is asking for permission to speak, probably as soon as comrade Davidssohn has finished making his innocuous suggestions of minor reforms to relieve discomforts in the trenches. Kaempf is shaking his head negatively. As the official executor of the House's wishes, the old man understands perfectly well that Liebknecht must under no circumstances have a hearing. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... deft by practise he scooped out all the sheets and tapes and put them in the box. The scanner's fingers rapidly sorted them past the eye. Hart exhaled, relieved that an innocuous drawer had been selected, and the inspector handed back the material to him. "Well, Inspector, ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... searching out a copperhead and imitating Cleopatra, or with patience and persistence devouring every toadstool, the same result could be achieved in our home-town orchard. When on the march, the army ants are as innocuous at two inches as at two miles. Had I sat where I was for days and for nights, my chief danger would have been demise from sheer chagrin at my inability to grasp the deeper significance of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... him," said Hester, having first said the sentence to herself, and having decided it was innocuous. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... champion of a romance then popular) had returned from banishment in the hope, as he was perfectly innocuous, of renewing his ancient friendship with the Scottish king; and James declared that he would again have received him into his service, but for his oath, never more to countenance a Douglas. He blamed his servants for refusing refreshment to the veteran, but did not escape censure from our own Henry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... of Messrs. Matheson and Co., by whose manager I was most hospitably and agreeably entertained. Rather an interesting incident in connection with a panther had once occurred at his house, and as this illustrates what I have previously mentioned as to the (to man) innocuous character of this animal, it may not be uninteresting to give an account of what occurred. The ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the one great subject of interest without indiscretion. He told me among other things, that if fire had to be opened on Juarez, just across the river, he understood from talk he heard that these two comparatively innocuous guns would alone be used at first. If the damage they did on the opposite side were enough to force the enemy to capitulate in haste, the other four guns would remain silent, and El Paso intact. But, said Tony (and ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms' women daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person, not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. 'Tis a throne on which patience seems to sit—the proud perch of a self-respecting humility, stooping with condescension. Thereupon ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... notably about that infernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to connect those folk with the knife that pinned Scudder to the floor, and with fell designs on the world's peace. But here were two guileless citizens taking their innocuous exercise, and soon about to go indoors to a humdrum dinner, where they would talk of market prices and the last cricket scores and the gossip of their native Surbiton. I had been making a net to catch vultures ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... make analogous trials, but have never had an opportunity, and it is not likely that you or any one would be willing to try so troublesome an experiment. Colouring or staining the fine red breast of a bullfinch with some innocuous matter into a dingy tint would be an analogous case, and then putting him and ordinary males with a female. A friend promised, but failed, to try a converse experiment with white pigeons—viz., to stain their tails and wings with magenta or other colours, and then observe what effect such ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... their life and the obtuseness of their sensibility reduced to a minimum the bad results of wounds and shocks, while their warfare, being free from the awful devices due to the devilry of modern man, was comparatively innocuous; even if very destructive, its destruction was necessarily limited by the fact that those accumulated treasures of the past which largely make civilisation had not come into existence. We may admire the beautiful humanity, the finely developed social organisation, and ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... important being the scheme of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company. In reference to this scheme the Report to the Visitors states "I may say briefly that I believe that it would be possible to render such a railway innocuous to the Observatory; it would however be under restrictions which might be felt annoying to the authorities of the Railway, but whose relaxation would almost ensure ruin to the Observatory."—"The meridional observations of Mars in the Autumn of 1862 have been compared with those made at the ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... nothing out in No Man's Land. The laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house, and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous. Liquor was prohibited. The regime was military. Soon after the bugle had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... pacify a busybody like Captain Cook who comes butting in where he isn't wanted. As a matter of fact there's uncommon little of it—they don't get a hundredweight in a generation. Then there's the red form, and that's what Johnnies have been dumping down 580 tons of at What's-its-name. It's quite innocuous, and is used for commercial purposes—tanning leather, or making spills, or something of that kind. Now may I ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Porcupine, when irritated, discharged its quills at its adversary; that these quills were poisonous, and rendered wounds inflicted by them difficult to cure: a better acquaintance with the natural history of this harmless animal has now exploded these fables. Our British porcupine, the innocuous Hedgehog, has long been the object of unceasing persecution, from the popular belief that it bites and sucks the udders of cows, an absurdity sufficiently contradicted by the smallness of its mouth. In like manner, the Goat-sucker is a persecuted bird, since, as its name ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... means' of converting sinners. If it be a truth that preaching is but comparatively a minor part of a minister's duty, it is certainly neither a Scripture nor a Shorter Catechism truth; and, lest it should be not only not a truth at all, but even not an innocuous untruth, we think all who hold it would do well to inquire how they ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... unwary guards, he strove to drive its point into his own heart. But the owner of the spear recovered himself in a flash, and, seizing the blade of the weapon in his bare hand, he twisted it upward with such strength that the slender wooden shaft snapped, leaving the head in his hand and the innocuous shaft in that of M'Bongwele. At the same instant half a dozen men flung themselves upon the king, and in a trice his hands were drawn behind him, and securely bound. Then, from somewhere, two long thongs or ropes of twisted raw-hide were produced and quickly knotted round ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... continue to spread before our households every day the details of the brawls and fights of drunken men and the horrible murders which they commit, they would discontinue advertising, without warning or dissent, side by side with the atrocities, the 'innocuous beers,' the pure malt whiskies, the genuine brandies, guaranteed to prevent and cure ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... a patient in my condition to take a little medicated sugar seemed reasonable. But from my point of view my refusal was justifiable. That innocuous sugar disc to me seemed saturated with the blood of loved ones; and so much as to touch it was to shed their blood—perhaps on the very scaffold on which I was destined to die. For myself I cared little. I was anxious to die, and ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... passions of whatever sort will lose their power to disturb us, in the precise measure in which we know that we are saved in Christ. The consciousness of salvation will tend to damp down the magazine of combustibles that we all carry within us, and the sparks that fall will be as innocuous as those that light on wet gunpowder. If our thoughts are occupied with the blessings which we possess they will be guarded against the assaults of evil. The full cup has no room for poison. The eye that is gazing on the far-off white ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... generalized, fused and transformed. If Gumplowicz is right we can still detect in any great society to-day all the primitive individual and group animosities, tempered down and held in check by laws and customs, but still existent and by no means overcome and made innocuous. ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... talking less and less about another world and taking more notice of the one we inhabit. Of course we occasionally have heresy trials, and pictures of the offender and the Fat Bishop adorn the first page, but heresy trials not accompanied by the scaffold or the faggots are innocuous and ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... six weeks. At Holyhead we carefully took our bikes aboard, and settled down to a cold voyage. We were all a trifle apprehensive at our lack of escort, for then, you will remember, it had not yet been proved how innocuous the German fleet is in ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... treated in this way, the fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to the surface, on which they float in great numbers, and allow themselves to be caught. The strangest part of it is that they are perfectly innocuous as ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... with the Luminous Nose" and Carroll's "Jabberwocky" are, respectively, bright and disguised versions of gothic terror and misery on the one hand, and medieval knightly exploit on the other, both rendered innocuous for the nursery and ridiculous for the adult. The risks of seriousness have ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... home, no man appeared to pay them for us. Had I been condemned to death I would not have expected a man to startup and take my place. Susan B. Anthony—she of the senatorial mind—will be remembered when the politicians of today have long been doomed to 'innocuous desuetude.'" Miss Willard then quoted a few familiar lines ending with the sentence, "And Susan B. Anthony has been ordained of God to lead ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... multi-millionaires, employ the very best lawyers they can obtain to pick flaws in these statutes after their passage; but they also employ a class of secret agents who seek, under the advice of experts, to render hostile legislation innocuous by making it unconstitutional, often through the insertion of what appear on their face to be drastic and sweeping provisions against the interests of the parties inspiring them; while the demagogues, the corrupt creatures who introduce blackmailing schemes to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... showing the blunt tail of a blindworm. I have heard people say that the red ones are venomous, but the grey harmless. The red are spiteful, and if you see them in the road you should always kill them. It is curious that in places where blindworms are often seen their innocuous nature should not be generally known. They are even called adders sometimes. At the farm below, the rooks have been down and destroyed the tender chickens not long hatched; they do not eat the whole of the chicken, but disembowel it for food. Rooks are very wide feeders, especially at nesting-time. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... body and drive out the poison. These various incantations are a large part of the wirreenun's education; not least valuable amongst them is the chant sung over the tracks of snakes, which renders the bites of those snakes innocuous. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... assume that Lincoln would certainly accept his Thoughts and that the simple President need not hereinafter be consulted about details. He aimed to circumvent Welles and to make sure that the Sumter expedition, whether sailing orders were issued or not, should be rendered innocuous. The warship Powhatan, which was being got ready for sea at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was intended by Welles for the Sumter expedition. One of those unread despatches signed by Lincoln, assigned it to the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the feint attack. The batteries fronting the Brakfontein ridge were withdrawn, and Wynne's brigade which, having been marched up the slope, was now marched down again, came under a heavy but almost innocuous infantry fire, which at last broke out ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... bound so as to keep in death the attitude that had marked them when at their rest in life, and there they bore their silent but impressive witness to the beneficent action of the unmoist air that had stayed decay and kept them innocuous to the living that survived them. In Peru, instances of this simple, wholesome process abound on almost every side; upon the elevated plains and heights, as also beside the sea, the dead of Inca ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... You didn't want it spoken out. You didn't want to be told you were in love. It was a thing too harsh and sweet. It frightened you to think of. You wanted us to sit for ever, like two lovers painted on a fan, fixed in an everlasting and innocuous bliss. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... militarism" England did not only mean the strength of the German army. She understood it to be a combination of a warlike spirit bent on oppressing others, and supported by the best and strongest army in the world. The first would have been innocuous without the second; and the splendid German army was in England's eyes the instrument of a domineering and conquest-loving autocrat. According to England's view, Germany was exactly the counterpart of France under Bonaparte—if for Napoleon be substituted a many-headed being called "Emperor, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... taken place during my absence at the Geysirs;— no less a catastrophe, in fact, than a mutiny among my hitherto most exemplary ship's company. I suppose they, too, had occasion to bear witness to the proverbial hospitality of Iceland; salt junk, and the innocuous cates which generally compose ship-board rations, could never have produced such an emergency. Suffice it to say, that "Dyspepsia and her fatal train" having taken hold of them, in a desperate hour they determined on a desperate deed,—and rushing aft in a body, demanded of my faithful steward, not ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... to say that no violence is required and enough is done for present purposes if the enemy is successfully observed and quietly apprehended? The first enemy to approach turned out, on arrest, to be just an innocuous cow; but this disappointment served only to make the aspect of my men even more menacing. The next arrival was a hapless scout of the attacking party: he had come to surprise, but was himself violently surprised. What advice and exhortations I had to give were lost in the hubbub. "Put up your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... her legs. So long as these throes continue, the Pompilus does not release her prey. She seems to watch the progress of the paralysis. With the tips of her mandibles she explores the Spider's mouth several times over, as though to ascertain if the poison-fangs are really innocuous. When all movement subsides, the Pompilus makes ready to drag her prey elsewhere. It is then I ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... hood, and up we went on deck. In one moment we were drenched; the deck was a running sea, and the mist drove upon us much harder than pouring rain. I went there with a cold, and if it gets no worse, shall think fresh water is as innocuous as salt. It was quite a question whether the thing was worth doing: the day was probably unfavourable, as the mist drove on us instead of the other way, but some parts were very fine. We returned to the same landing-place, as they most stupidly have none on this side; so up we went again ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... the conclusion of peace that they also terminated the war with the impression, not that they had laid the foundation of sovereignty over the states of the Mediterranean or of the so-called universal empire, but that they had rendered a dangerous rival innocuous and had given to Italy agreeable neighbours. It is true doubtless that other results of the war, the conquest of Spain in particular, little accorded with such an idea; but their very successes led them beyond their proper design, and it may in fact be affirmed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... revealing his own misprision of treason. He would be asked 'how he knew the secret.' Godfrey's lips were thus sealed; he had neither the wish nor the power to speak out, and so his knowledge of the secret, if he knew it, was innocuous to the Jesuits. 'What is it nearer?' Coleman was reported, by a ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... that scene of ampler majesty 95 Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would partake 100 From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form More graceful than her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... now than on her first arrival in the neighbourhood, less haggard, a little plumper, but as he compared her dulled and faded beauty with Toni's youthful bloom he wondered, not for the first time, if her companionship were altogether innocuous. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... from business as monarchs, and their former subjects are following the prevailing fashion of submission to democratic rule tempered by an occasional diversion in the form of an attempted local counter-revolution. These movements are generally innocuous; they sometimes add to the gaiety of nations by the sheer imbecility of their inception and attempted execution, and they appear to be welcome rather than otherwise, as a means of distracting public attention from the universal muddle and general misguidance ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... departure; and the symptoms were such that everybody in the house believed that she was sickening for scarlet fever. The doctor, however, having been hastily summoned, pronounced the disease to be an infantile complaint of a harmless and innocuous nature, which he dignified by the delusively poetical name ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... very weak voice, that if the toady would say, "he-ar, he-ar!" less frequently, perhaps they would "he-ar" much better—a suggestion which was received with a burst of laughter and a round of applause. It effectually quelled the toady and rendered him innocuous for a considerable time. ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the cause can be detected, as in toothing or worms, it should be removed. As this species of asthma is so liable to recur during sleep, like epileptic fits, as mentioned in Section XVIII. 15. there was reason to believe, that the respiration of an atmosphere mixed with hydrogen, or any other innocuous air, which might dilute the oxygen, would be useful in preventing the paroxysms by decreasing the sensibility of the system. This, I am informed by Dr. Beddoes, has been used with decided success by Dr. Ferriar. See Class ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... most innocuous way in which we may digress is by compiling one of those delectable literary hotch-potches known as 'commonplace books.' Here, with careful selection, we may garner those delightful thoughts, those gay conceits or pithy stories, that strike ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... one. But you should have seen the delight with which Miss Bezac entered upon the year of patience that I prescribed to her!—and the very (innocuous) pride that lay hid in the prescription. Do you feel disposed to punish me for ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... plumbing are: (1) to get rid of all excreta and waste water; (2) to prevent any foreign matter and gases in the sewer from entering the house through the pipes; and (3) to dilute the air in the pipes so as to make all deleterious gases therein innocuous. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... An energetic campaign for new members is the most obvious desideratum. The committee to prepare and issue a bulletin on the roadside planting of nut trees, arranged to give information for every part of the country, has been innocuous as well as useless. Perhaps this meeting will afford stimulus and material enough to get ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... the least curious about her. He didn't know that when you're a "nice common sort of a woman" to these Maine folk, you're receiving high praise from sturdy democrats. The phrase, to him, called up a good, homely creature, amiably innocuous, placidly cow-like. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... handsome, and amorous; he will infallibly fall in love with thee. Do thou submit to his caresses, he will perish miserably; thou (such is the charm) ransomed by the kiss of love, wilt become wholesome and innocuous as thy fellows, preserving only thy knowledge of poisons, always useful, in the present state of society invaluable. Thou wilt therefore next repair to the city of Constantinople, bearing recommendatory letters from me to the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... as well as John Bull. A Chinese botanist came here, and bethought him of trying his skill as a doctor. Everybody became mad to consult him; no street was ever so crowded as the one he lived in, since Berners-street on the day of the hoax. He got a barrel of flour, or some other innocuous powder, packed up in little paper parcels, and thus armed he received his patients. On entering, he felt the pulse with becoming silence and gravity; at last he said, "Great fire." He then put his hand on the ganglionic centre, from ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Another reason, I would venture to submit, in opposition to this custom is, that in the case of the blacks doing any mischief, no method of punishing them can possibly be devised equal in severity to the destruction of their weapons. A tribe is rendered more helpless and more innocuous by this than by shooting down half the males, and I am sure that if they once found that only in case of mischief was this punishment resorted to, we should hear infinitely less of cattle-spearing and ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... yere Crwafish Jim is as a den of serpents. I reckons now he has a plumb dozen mowed away in his raiment. Thar's no harm in 'em; bein' all bull-snakes, which is innocuous an' without ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... requisition to uphold the ancient rights of ownership, whenever any move is made toward their disallowance or restriction. But then, on the other hand, the movement to disallow or diminish the prerogatives of ownership is also not to take the innocuous shape of unstudied neglect. So soon, or rather so far, as the common man comes to realise that these rights of ownership and investment uniformly work to his material detriment, at the same time that he has lost the "will to believe" in any argument that does not run ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... of continual fear and trembling. The puma, too, assails them, and the jaguarundi, and the fierce coatimundi; and not unfrequently the enormous anaconda enfolds them in its deadly embrace; for the innocuous creatures can make no defence against their numerous enemies; and but for that fecundity which characterises the family to which they belong—the so called "Guinea pigs"—their race would be in ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... India herself. And many of them are defying this obsolete and debasing law of their faith. Many others are crying for a modern interpretation of the law—an interpretation which will explain away its bitterness and render it innocuous. For it is not simply or chiefly the reactionary and absurd character of this legislation which exasperates the intelligence of the land; it is the very offensive and revolting nature of the expiation which preeminently stirs up the rebellion. In former centuries ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... seem superfluous. A man scans a paper and sees that the contents are innocuous, and ignoring the stamp, he leaves the document on his desk, because he is too lazy to unlock the file. But the rules mean exactly what they say, and because their purpose is of final importance to the nation, they will be enforced. There is no surer way for an officer to blight an otherwise ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... delver among our musty volumes? Indeed, it may, if we may judge by the discoveries and investigations of only the past fifty years. During this time a surprisingly large number of plants have been proved to be not merely innocuous instead of poisonous, as they were reputed, but fit for human food ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... selected may be bad, or some one only of several may be bad, and the judgment ought to be reversed. What was the operation of the old rule? Most salutary and decorous. No public account was taken of the innocuous aims, so to speak, taken by justice, in order to hit her victim. If he fell, the public saw that it was in consequence of a blow struck by her, and concerned themselves not with several previous abortive blows. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... earth, and lined with the same glistening white fibers which covered the bottom of the disk, and hinged it in place. As I looked, there sprang from this tunnel a thing which I shall call a spider, yet which was too monstrous to be called by such an innocuous name. ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... he admitted, when I think of Gordon Atterbury and Everett Constable and a few others,—Eldon Parr,—who believe that religion ought to be kept archaic and innocuous, served in a form that won't bother anybody. By the way, Nell, do you remember the verse the Professor quoted about the Pharisees, and cleansing the outside of the cup ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... innocent and innocuous weapon, but two table knives are not, for one can be used against the other so skillfully as to form a fairly good hack saw, with which prison bars may be sawed. The sawing of steel bars was the sound that the sentry had heard ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... us the snail would still demand more. As the unaccustomed food proves to be good and satisfying, and also harmless, we may come to like it. That, however, which many good and eminent naturalists find to be healthful and reasonable, and others innocuous, a few still regard as most unreasonable and harmful. At present, we call to mind only two who not only hold to the entire fixity of species as an axiom or a confirmed principle, but also as a dogma, and who maintain, either ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... which makes the most industrious man contentedly idle. Here the nervous, irritable, fussy individual, who for years has never known what rest meant, and who has fidgeted when he could not work, finds himself relaxing, against his will, into a condition of what a celebrated statesman described as "innocuous desuetude." The balminess of the air, which is at once warm and invigorating and bracing, without being severe, brings about a natural feeling of rest. The fascination which this creates soon becomes overpowering. The longer the visitor remains the more completely and hopelessly does he give ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... kriss; a few bore spears, and about a dozen shouldered a long straight piece of bamboo. The nature of this implement the sailor could not determine at the moment. When the knowledge did come, it came so rapidly that he was saved from many earlier hours of abiding; dread, for one of those innocuous-looking weapons was fraught with more quiet deadliness than a ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... when the colonists of Massachusetts established "a Church without a bishop and a State without a king," so much of the Canon Law as relates to diocesan episcopacy also fell into what President Cleveland would call "innocuous desuetude." But they adopted the decalogue of Moses with as much reverence as did their fathers before them. They knew as well as the poet Lowell that "The Ten Commandments will not budge," but that, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... filtered through filters made of unbaked porcelain and having very fine pores which allowed only the blood fluid to pass, holding back both the blood corpuscles and the rods, and such filtered blood was found to be innocuous. It was further shown that the rods increased enormously in number in the infected animal, for the blood contained them in great numbers when but a fraction of a drop was used for inoculation. Attempts were also made with a greater or less degree of success to grow the rod shaped ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... infringe the rights and liberties of the several States—while it was clearly a statesmanlike measure from the national standpoint, tending at once to restore the public credit and cement the Union. But Jefferson read backwards into this innocuous and beneficent stroke of policy the spirit which he justly perceived to inform the later and more dubious measures which proceeded from the ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... table so that they can draw the large free outlines which best develop their skill, whenever the impulse moves them. If they have also blunt scissors for cutting all sorts of colored papers and a bottle of innocuous library paste, they will be able to amuse ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... minutes elapsed. "She's quite fed up with my valet," he told himself. He hadn't been able to contrive any fresh topic which was sufficiently innocuous, so he'd been keeping silent. They were again passing over the bridge beneath which, like a gleaming sword, lay the Thames, barriered on either bank by the little bow-windowed houses, with their shining brasses and whitened steps. They were already catching up with the throng ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another glimpse of ... He paused ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... his pipe in his hand, and contemplated the repast. It was only logical to suppose it to be innocuous, and a keen appetite hastened the issue. He sidetracked his suspicion, and made an excellent breakfast. So the first day of his ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... superior esculent, we would like to suggest to Mr. JOHNSON that this Mixture be administered to the Bug with a spoon, and not sprinkled promiscuously on the ground. We have drank Tea with a "green flavor," and found it comparatively innocuous; but Potatoes with a green flavor, (especially if flavored by the JOHNSONIAN method,) we should consider as doubtful, to say the least. It is the general impression that there is nothing Green in Paris; but your house painter knows there is such a thing as Paris Green, and that it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... frequently the case, Claudius was intoxicated at the time, and was carried off to his bed as if nothing had happened. A violent colic ensued, and it was feared that this, with a quantity of wine which he had drunk, would render the poison innocuous. But Agrippina had gone too far for retreat, and Xenophon, who knew that great crimes if frustrated are perilous, if successful are rewarded, came to her assistance. Under pretence of causing him to vomit, he ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... lesson of recent experience to heart. They thought it unscientific to destroy a real political force. Monarchy, Aristocracy, Prelacy, were things that could be made innocuous, that could be adjusted, limited and preserved. The very essence of the new Party was compromise. They saw that it is an error to ride a principle to death, to push things to an extreme, to have an eye for one thing only, to prefer abstraction to realities, to disregard ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... converging them upon others of more catholic philosophy. To the last he continued to conceal vipers beneath his flowers; or rather, speaking proportionately to the case, he continued to sheath amongst the gleaming but innocuous lightnings of his departing splendors, the thunderbolts which blasted for ever. His last appearance was his greatest. In 1742 he published the fourth book of the Dunciad; to which it has with much reason been objected, that it stands in no obvious relation to the other three, but which, taken ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... "is a great thing and applicable to almost every line of endeavor. You can kill people in a scientific manner—witness the late Madame Borgia and others. You can shoe a horse scientifically, beg scientifically or hypnotize a squalling infant into innocuous quietude by the aid of science. Marconi has signalled across the ocean; Santos-Dumont has navigated the air and Austria has proven her neutrality in the Spanish-American war by scientific means. But there is one thing ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... wandering tribes whose ventral insurrections are not periodically quelled by regular and comfortable meals. Country doctors, for the same reason, not unfrequently manifest a stronger predilection for their employers' bottles than their patients do for theirs. In the absence of innocuous and benign appliances, the deleterious are had recourse to exorcise the fiend that is raging within them. These views are explicable by the laws of physiology, but this is not the place for such disquisitions. One reason why the temperance movement has been arrested in this country is, that while ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... filtered water, is the best for invalids. Hot drinks lower the temperature of the body by evaporation; excessively cold drinks check perspiration, and endanger congestion of some vital part; but water of a moderate temperature is innocuous. Even in dangerous fevers the burning thirst of the sufferer can safely be assuaged by the frequent administration of small bits of ice. In cases of incomplete nutrition, cocoa, chocolate, and other preparations of the fruit of the cocoa-palm, ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... emporium. It is consequently pleasure of this spectacular or frivolous kind which he habitually endeavours to provide. It is Quixotic to anticipate much diminution in the supply and demand of either frivolity or spectacle, both of which may furnish quite innocuous pleasure. But each is the antithesis of dramatic art; and whatever view one holds of the methods of the American capitalist, it is irrational to look to him for the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... could only take back one hour of her life, well she knew what that hour would be! Even that shameful time with Leonard on the hill-top seemed innocuous beside the degrading remembrance of her conduct to the noble ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... began. Carton had been careful to see that none of the witnesses for the people should be "stiffened" as the process was elegantly expressed by those of Dopey Jack's class—in other words, intimidated, bribed, or otherwise rendered innocuous. One after another, Carton rammed home the facts of the case, the fraudulent registration and voting, the use of the names of dead men to pad the polling lists, the bribery of election officials at the primaries—the whole sordid, debasing story of how Dopey ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... living entirely within himself for the moment. He might have made you think of the Trojan Horse—innocuous without, but teeming with belligerent activity within. He seemed to be laughing maliciously, though without movement or noise. Then he was all frank joyousness again. "Good!" he exclaimed. He smote Harboro on the shoulder. "Good!" He stood apart, vigorously erect, childishly ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... was almost innocuous, it harassed the troops, keeping them on the alert all night. And when, with the first streaks of dawn, the dreary march began, all traces of the foe had disappeared. All the morning dragged along, till fatigue ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... melancholy glow that spread therethrough I saw that the whole room was rising and sinking in rhythmical motion; that the lights of King's Cobb had disappeared, and that in their place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water, the pursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the glass with innocuous fingers. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the habit of mind so long prevalent among practitioners of medicine; once let it be everywhere understood that the presumption is in favor of food, and not of alien substances, of innocuous, and not of unwholesome food, for the sick; that this presumption requires very strong evidence in each particular case to overcome it; but that, when such evidence is afforded, the alien substance or the unwholesome food should be given boldly, in sufficient ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a golden bottle, with cracked ice in a tall glass, with a crisp curl of lemon peel, ready for an innocuous libation, brought his nose down from the heights to look for the foot, found that it no longer barred the way, and marched on ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... form a loop round the neck or chest of the infant. If it remain in this position, it is further stated, the mother will suffer later and the fetus will either perish or be born with difficulty. If the Hippocratic writers knew that this coiling is sometimes quite innocuous, they did not in any place ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... dishonest servants to act as decoy ducks to lure the burglars on to the premises was an excellent one and had fully answered my expectations. But it had a defect which I had overlooked. The burglars themselves, when reduced to a condition suitable for exhibition in a show-case, were entirely innocuous. There was no danger of their making any indiscreet statements. But with the servants—female servants, too—it was quite otherwise. From the shelter of my roof they had gone forth to sow distrust and suspicion in quarters where ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... spear-wound close to the first; the head of the weapon was cut out, his wounds dressed, and he was put to bed. Another man had a wound from a wooden-headed spear; and most had been struck more or less by these rude and, luckily, innocuous weapons. A dozen or two of Dyak spears were left in the Malay boat, which I got. Some were well-shaped, with iron heads; but the mass simply pieces of hard wood sharp-pointed, which they hurl in great numbers. Fire-arms the Dyaks had none, and during the attack made no noise whatever; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... firmament, casting from its orb of fire the most glorious rays, so that the atmosphere was flickering with their splendour, but their fierceness was either warded off by the shadow of the trees or rendered innocuous by the refreshing coolness which rose from the waters, or by the gentle breezes which murmured at intervals over the meadows, "fanning the cheek or raising the hair" of the wanderer. The hills gradually receded, till at last we entered a plain where tall grass was waving, and mighty chestnut trees, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... leave Farnsworth told Meadows that he had not yet spoken to Millard about the matter, and he thought it not best to mention it to him before the meeting. But the one thing that rendered Meadows tolerably innocuous was that he never could co-operate with an ally, even in factious opposition, without getting up a new faction within the first, and so fomenting subdivisions as long as there were two to divide. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... was his motive, the secretary was taking a chance. (p. 347) Announcing his directive to the press transformed what could have been an innocuous, private reaffirmation of the department's pledge of equal treatment and opportunity into a public exercise in military policymaking. The Secretary of Defense in effect committed himself to a public review of the services' racial ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... infections and abscesses, etc., appear to vary under normal conditions from a type capable of producing violent and fatal blood poisoning to a type producing only a simple abscess, or even to a type that is entirely innocuous. It is this factor, doubtless, which in a large measure determines the severity of any epidemic ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... Scotland innocuous was a primary object with the Tudor King. At the time when he grasped the sceptre of England, the King of Scots, James III., was a feeble ruler surrounded by unpopular favourites, with a baronage preparing to rise against him, and there was little danger to be ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Oh, no, it's a heap bigger than that, boy. The plant itself is deadly in the green state. It exhales a poison you couldn't stand for ten seconds. Dried, its poison is killed stone dead. But it leaves behind it its priceless narcotic properties. And these are perfectly innocuous, and even health-giving. I don't need to worry you with the scientific side of it, but it'll tell you something of what it means when I say it suspends life, and you don't need to worry about the condition of the person ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... and chanted monotonously, over and over: "I COULD! I COULD, TOO! I COULD! I COULD, TOO!" But their tumult wore upon him, and he decided to avail himself of the recent decision whereby a big H was rendered innocuous and unprofane. Having used the expression once, he found it comforting, and substituted it for: "I ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... remember: that should this dignity come to you it may come as a calamity rather than a joy; for when God confers earthly honours on a child of His predilection, He sometimes deigns to render them as innocuous as misfortune; and my chief prayer for you is that you should be raised to this eminence, it may be at a moment when such advancement seems to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... duties cut him off, unrepining, from his wife's society), ordered him to remove her, silence her, beat her if necessary—and so save her from the unpleasant alternative of solitary confinement on bread and water until she could be, if not useful, innocuous. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... commercial sites that require viewers to pay in order to gain access to the site, a large number of sexually explicit sites may be accessed for free and without providing any registration information. Most importantly, some Web sites that contain sexually explicit content have innocuous domain names and therefore can be reached accidentally. A commonly cited example is http://www.whitehouse.com. Other innocent-sounding URLs that retrieve graphic, sexually explicit depictions include http://www.boys.com, http://www.girls.com, ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to the probabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who was playing opposite me—a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward—seemed to realize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me he was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable effort here. "Come on, let's play ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser |
