"Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was over, and he was tired, infinitely tired. A rub-down refreshed his muscles, but his spirit remained weary. For a month he had thought of nothing but that race—even Cynthia had become strangely insignificant in comparison with it—and now that the race had been run and lost, his ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... isn't the kind of man to be disciplined; so, not having enough money to build a cannery, he took his scanty capital and started a saltery on his own account. That suited Marsh exactly; he broke George in a year, absolutely ruined him, utterly wiped him out, just as he intends to wipe out insignificant me! Thinking to bide his time and recoup his fallen fortunes George came back into camp; but he owns a valuable trap site which Marsh and his colleagues want; and before they would give him work, they ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Protestants thereby became outlaws and their ministers subject to the death penalty. Even liberal-minded Catholics, like the kindly writer of fables, La Fontaine, and the charming letter writer, Madame de Svign, hailed the restablishment of "religious unity" with delight. They believed that only an insignificant and seditious remnant still clung to the beliefs of Calvin. But there could have been no more serious mistake. Thousands of the Huguenots succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the royal officials and fled, some to England, some to Prussia, some to America, carrying with them their skill and industry ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... into the dust heap our hope that humanity will some day reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will appear but an insignificant speck on earth, well and good! Then let us be patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics; but we ought, at least, not to clothe ourselves in the mantel of Faust, in our pretentious sweep through space. We ought at least declare openly that the life ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... vividly, Beethoven's method of composing: slow, cautious, but invincible in its final effect; an idea frequently being altered as many as twenty times. At the age of twenty-two he was chiefly known as a pianist with wonderful facility in improvisation; his compositions had been insignificant. The next eight years—up to 1800, when Beethoven was thirty—were spent in acquainting himself with the Viennese aristocracy and in building up a public clientele. Then follows the marvellous period until 1815 in which ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... shot concocted this morning in my berth: I had always before been trying it in English, which insisted on being either insignificant or fulsome: I cannot think of a better word than COMES, there being not the shadow of a Latin book on board; yet sure there is some other. Then VIATOR (though it SOUNDS all right) is doubtful; it has too much, perhaps, the sense of wayfarer? ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... important movements were caused or checked by economic influence. He uses his imagination to prove that the importance of an event cannot be decided from the extant remains of its place of origin, for if only the ruins of both Sparta and Athens were left, Sparta would be thought to be insignificant and Athens would appear twice as powerful as she really is. Poetical exaggeration is easy and misleading, and ancient history is difficult to ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... friends, but our sons and grandsons will. They may not like us any better, but they will take care to hide their feelings. Strong resentment sometimes drove him into taking up positions he would not in his cooler moments have maintained. "As one citizen of the republic," he wrote, "however insignificant, I have no notion of being blackguarded and vituperated half a century and then cajoled (p. 096) into forgetfulness at the suggestion of fear and expediency, as circumstances render our good-will of importance." Not one of these slights and insults would he have the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... not distinguish himself especially in this line. His distinction lies in the fact that he was the father of Johann Sebastian, and this is quite enough for any one man, even if Gail Hamilton did once protest that the office of male parent was insignificant and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... literal as a translation into prose; this disadvantage I have used my best pains to minimize. I hope it may be said that nothing of real moment has been omitted from the verses; and where lack of metrical skill has compelled expansion, I have striven to make the additions as insignificant as possible. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... which tends, in the most distant manner, to illustrate an obscure passage in the history of our country, cannot we presume, while it affords great pleasure and satisfaction to the student attentively employed in such researches, be deemed either insignificant or uninteresting by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... the comma bacillus. It is certainly an insignificant microbe to be raising so much trouble. Got hold of a report from the Board of Health, saying that, if the epidemic grew worse, the public school buildings should be converted into hospitals. Took it over to the Deputy Division Superintendent to protest. Schoolhouses are scarce ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... event, every one who had any sense of what was due to his or her own dignity, hastened to show this august couple the respect which all republicans who have a large income derived from business, feel for English royalty. New York gave a dinner, at which the most insignificant person present was worth at least a million dollars, and where the gentlemen who sat by the Princess entertained her for an hour or two by a calculation of the aggregate capital represented. New York ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to the practically recognized constitution of cognitive consciousness. We may therefore pass it by without further notice here.] It is to be feared that the reader may consider this formula rather insignificant and obvious, and hardly worth the labor of so many pages, especially when he considers that the only cases to which it applies are percepts, and that the whole field of symbolic or conceptual thinking seems to elude its grasp. Where the reality is either a material thing or act, or a state ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... vent with but little restraint. Agnes might have been the wife of a traitor, but he was out of Edward's way; the daughter of a traitress, but she was equally powerless; linked with treason, but too much crashed by her own misery to be sensible of aught else. Surely she was too insignificant for him to persevere in wrath, and alienate by unmerited severity yet more the hearts which at such moments he felt he valued, despite his every effort to ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... pursuit of knowledge, endowments began to arise which soon enhanced the splendour of universities though they lessened their mobility and their freedom. The mendicant convents at Paris and Oxford prepared the way for secular foundations, at first small and insignificant, like that which, in the days of Henry III., John Balliol established at Oxford for the maintenance of poor scholars, but soon increasing in magnitude and distinction. The great college set up by St. Louis' confessor at Paris for the endowment of scholars, desirous of studying ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... and continued to dictate a letter. When he had finished, he sent his clerk out of the room and, motioning Mr. Jacks to take a seat by his side, leaned back in his own chair with the air of one prepared to relax for a moment. He was a man of somewhat insignificant presence, but he had keen gray eyes, half the time concealed under thick eyebrows, and flashing out upon you now and then at least ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again in a few days. This explosion completely destroyed the slight roof, as well as the wood and glass front, but did scarcely any other damage to the mill, and had no action on the other mills further than drenching their beds with water. The other two explosions were insignificant. ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... from one mode of life to another perfectly different has ever seemed to me a great trial of a man's moral courage; besides that the fact of quitting for ever any thing, no matter how insignificant or valueless, is always attended with painful misgivings. My bachelor life had its share of annoyances and disappointments, it is true; but, upon the whole it was a most happy one—and now I was about to surrender it for ever, not yielding ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... circumstances—when we had been discussing marriage, and he suddenly leaned forward and exclaimed: 'I was married once myself'—we were able to detach him from his classification and regard him for a moment as an unique being, a soul, however insignificant, with a history of its own, once for all. It is these moments which we prize, and which alone are revealing. For any vital truth is incapable of being applied to another case: the essential is unique. Perhaps that is why it is so neglected: because it ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... no idea of even a battle with Alexander, and as to defeat, he did not contemplate the remotest possibility of it. He regarded Alexander as a mere boy—energetic and daring it is true, and at the head of a desperate band of adventurers; but he considered his whole force as altogether too insignificant to make any stand against such a vast military power as he was bringing against him. He presumed that he would retreat as fast as possible before the Persian army came near him. The idea of such a boy coming down at break of day, from narrow defiles of the mountains, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cutting, and the canvas, heavy with water, tried my strength severely; but I succeeded before nightfall in getting it all spread out on the beach to dry. We were both very tired when we knocked off for supper, and we had done good work, too, though to the eye it appeared insignificant. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... may regard the things I have presented to their view as ugly or insignificant, because they lack the higher qualities of sentiment; others may over-value them for precisely the same reason. They seem to me noteworthy as the first unmistakable sign of a change in modern Europe which was inevitable and ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively insignificant. It may have been but a broken column, a lonely pool with a star-beam on its quiet surface,—yet it awes us. We remember it when phantasmal pictures of bright Damascus, or of colossal pyramids, of bazaars in Stamboul, or lengthened caravans that defile slow amidst ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Bel, "soon became sadly bewildered, for there were so many people all talking at once, and they pushed against and jostled her as if she were very small and insignificant indeed, and she began to think that her mother was right, and that she was only a child; and she grew frightened and wished herself at home again. But she kept fast hold of the hand of her brother whom the saints loved, and felt that as long ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... uncontrollably. Gratton whipped back and stared at her; Summerling and Jarrold were mystified. She looked so little like laughter! And, as both had cause to regard the situation, there was so little call for laughter. But they could have no clue to Gloria's thoughts. Her wedding! With that insignificant little grey man in his cheap wrinkled clothes to officiate; with that unshaven, leering, dirty man to witness! Holy matrimony! Gloria Gaynor's wedding! She was near madness with the hideous, cruel travesty of such weddings as ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... no more comparison between her and my son, than between anything in the world; however, if it is so, it is so, and I mean to say no more about it, and to be sure he's as contented to think so as if he was as mere an insignificant animal as could be." ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... in the palm of his hand. Taken alone, each one was insignificant, proved nothing whatever. Taken all together, they assumed vast proportions, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... did not dare. Then I was too poor a man, too insignificant to dare to lay bare to you the thoughts, the fears, the ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... serious handicap than that imposed upon it by shipping rings and railway companies, which exploit the Imperial needs of transport for their own purposes, which hamper the ready flow of Imperial trade, and, for an insignificant percentage, turn the British seamen off the water in favour ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Jack Benson, by some strange chance, happened to remember that slight metallic sound of something falling to the floor while Millard was speaking. Now, Jack bent over, holding the candle to aid him in his hunt. Ah! There it was! Yet how utterly insignificant—nothing ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... beginning to be old enough to feel the impulse of that insatiable and reckless ambition which seemed to form such an essential element in the character of every son and daughter in the whole Ptolemaic line. She was insignificant and powerless where she was, but at the head of the army she ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... battle gained, Abdel-Rhaman took Bordeaux by assault and delivered it over to his army. The plunder, to believe the historians of the conquerors, surpassed all that had been preconceived of the wealth of the vanquished: "The most insignificant soldier," say they, "had for his share plenty of topazes, jacinths, and emeralds, to say nothing of gold, a somewhat vulgar article under the circumstances." What appears certain is that, at their departure from Bordeaux, the Arabs were so laden with booty that their march became less rapid and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... selfishness there are in the home life! Every day brings the choice between selfishness and self-sacrifice. Shall I take for myself the choicest apple? or shall I share in that which is not so agreeable? These may appear to be very insignificant questions. But, boys and girls, do you know that the habitual decisions at which you arrive in childhood, determine largely whether or not you will live by principle later on? "As the twig is bent, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... left in all its solitary sublimity. Amidst the awful roaring of the impetuous torrents, the noise of human instruments and the bustle of workmen, even the blowing up of the rocks when grand masses trembled in the darkened air, only resembled the insignificant ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Est, whichever name rightly belonged to it, was in itself so insignificant as a 'benefice,' that its present rector, vicar, priest and patron had bought it for himself, through the good offices of a friend, in the days when such purchases were possible, and for some ten ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the positive statement that this was the promised Son. By what guessing or critical legerdemain one who claims loyalty to the word of God and ordinary intelligence can attempt to sweep away these definite and determinate statements, and crowd some insignificant worm of the dust into the place given to him who was in the beginning, who was with God and who was God, we ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... was greatly increased by this new cabal, as the Regent instantly perceived the necessity of opposing their authority to the probable pretensions of the Princes, neither of whom attempted to disguise their discontent at the insignificant position to which they had been reduced at Court. To Jeannin, in particular, the Queen expressed in unmeasured terms the confidence which she placed in his zeal and loyalty; she called him her friend, her arm, and her head, and assured him that she ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... sigh, Heselton leaned back to gaze at the stars and contemplate the vastness of the universe, compared to which even Big Joe was an insignificant dot. ...
— A Matter of Magnitude • Al Sevcik
... Bay, moreover, he found a Chilian schooner, the Montezuma, and a Brazilian brig, the Intrepido. He attached the former to his service, and accepted the volunteered aid of the latter. With this augmented but still insignificant force, very defective in some important respects, he returned to Valdivia. "The flag-ship," he said, "had only two naval officers on board, one of these being under arrest for disobedience of orders, whilst the other was incapable of performing the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... bodily of the frame of mind in which a schoolboy stands before his master. But apart from an incidental recollection of this kind, I found it most difficult to believe with, any reality of belief, that such a poor and insignificant creature as I, could really belong to, really form a part of, an assembly which, notwithstanding the prosaic character of its entire visible equipment, I felt to be so august. What I may term its ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... engaged in private business at present, that I have not had time to thank you for the favour of your letter: nor can I now answer it to your satisfaction. My life has been too insignificant to afford materials interesting to the public. In general, the lives of mere authors are dry and unentertaining; nor, though I -have been one occasionally, are my writings of a class or merit to entitle me to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of the concierge! He was a locksmith by trade. He and his wife and their children lived in two little dark rooms by the archway—an insignificant fragment of the house. He was away from home about fourteen hours every day, except Sundays, when he washed the courtyard. All the other duties of the concierge were performed by the wife. The pair always ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... universal lover, and too little of an enthusiast, that he has an irritating and ungentlemanly habit of seeing blemishes in the greatest, a pottering and peddling fancy for discovering beauties in the most insignificant; that he lacks the exclusiveness and the fastidiousness of intellectual aristocracy, the fervour and rapture of aesthetic passion. To this, one can answer little more than, "It may be so." Certainly the critic of this ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... for rehearsal, discloses the whole strength of a very fair company of Spanish actors. None of them bear the conventional air of strolling players; the men are moustached, and fashionably attired, and the women, from leading lady to insignificant super, are elegantly dressed. Apropos of supers, El Marquesito assures me it is no easy matter to secure the invaluable services of a genuine white for these purposes. A white lady is not to be had for love or money; and when fairies are required ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... little compositions lately. They are insignificant, but it is impossible to find a technical error in them. Such precision was remarkable for a child who had no idea of the science of harmony. About that time some one had the notion that I should hear an orchestra. So they took me to a symphony concert and my mother ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... insignificant customers father measured off great quantities of white goods for the two ladies; and I strained my ears to hear every word that was said. They asked father if he was going to New York soon? He said, in about ten days. Then Mrs. Marigold confided to him that they wanted him to purchase ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... without risk or inconvenience spare. In this way, at an expense very much less than that which he incurred in building and decorating Versailles or Marli, he succeeded in making England, during nearly twenty years, almost as insignificant a member of the political system of Europe as the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anything more incredible. The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. The prisoner was asked the question, 'Where did you get the stuff ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... productions of Ceylon, as it is asserted that they are valueless in their natural state. Nevertheless, I do not imply that they must necessarily remain useless. Where Nature simply creates a genus, cultivation extends the species, and from an insignificant parent stock we propagate our finest varieties of both animals and vegetables. Witness the wild kale, parsnip, carrot, crab-apple, sloe, etc., all utterly worthless, but nevertheless the first parents of ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... shoots up to B, in a steep and massive peak—a kind of Matterhorn of heat, which dwarfs the portion of the diagram C D E, representing the luminous radiation. Indeed the idea forced upon the mind by this diagram is that the light rays are a mere insignificant appendage to the heat-rays represented by the area A B C D, thrown in as it were by nature for ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... he soon settled the difficulty by calling it 'Wypers.' Etaples was also another stumbling block, but 'Eatables' soon revealed Tommy's way out of another difficulty. Ploegstreete, which for centuries has been an insignificant hamlet, is now known throughout the British Army as 'Plug Street'; well known for possessing some of the ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... This shelter afforded to Gutenberg sheds everlasting lustre on Nassau and its prince. We meet in history with instances where a generous hospitality has given happiness and immortal fame to the most insignificant potentates and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... forgotten that in every boarding school of the A. M. A. the regular ongoing of the domestic work of the institution, nearly all of which except the cooking and washing is done by the students, furnishes no insignificant or ineffectual training in the ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... apparently insignificant circumstance, Dr. Smith eventually educed and reduced to successful practice the method of reducing dislocations by the manoeuvre, a system as useful as it is simple, and as scientific as the principle of flexion and leverage on which it depends. Had this incident been related to a stupid man, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... impaired health except they are chargeable to his service. Medical theories are set at naught and the most startling relation is claimed between alleged incidents of military service and disability or death. Fatal apoplexy is admitted as the result of quite insignificant wounds, heart disease is attributed to chronic diarrhea, consumption to hernia, and suicide is traced to army service in a wonderfully devious and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... examine her face, she had not one feature but what was pretty; yet, from that constant uneasiness which appeared in her countenance, it gave you so little pleasure to look at her, that she seldom had common justice done her, but had generally hitherto passed for a little insignificant plain girl, though her very face was so altered since she was grown good natured, and had got the better of that foolish fretfulness she used to be possessed of, that she appeared from her good-humoured smiles quite ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... to the turn of the Sacian nation to enter the course, a private man, of no apparent importance in respect to his rank or standing, came forward as the champion; though the man appeared insignificant, his horse was as fleet as the wind. He flew around the arena with astonishing speed, and came in at the goal while his competitor was still midway of the course. Every body was astonished at this performance. ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... what else there is to attract attention, and we may notice one star shining very brilliantly, almost like a little lamp, rather low down in the sky, in that part of it where the sun has lately set. It is so beautifully bright that it makes all the others look insignificant in comparison, yet it is not really large compared with the others, only, as it comes nearer to us than anything else in the sky except the moon, it looks larger than it has any right to do in ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... question in perfect innocence, but his answer (the difference in distance was insignificant) and his manner offered me a clue to the simple truth. He took the ship to a port where he expected to be confirmed in his temporary command from lack of a qualified master to put over his head. Whereas Singapore, he surmised justly, would be ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... but not till near midnight did the army halt with the feeling that it had placed safe distance between it and our adversaries. Then we 'broke ranks for rails,' and, with coffee and pipes, sat beside the cheering blaze recounting the incidents of the engagement. Our little encounter, so insignificant beside the story of great battles, was yet full of interest to us, and some were missing from our ranks who would never again respond to their country's call. To them and theirs it was the great battle of the Rebellion; to us, who ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... youth. We are either growing better or worse all the time. We rarely stand still. To the musician work is the great sculptor of individuality. As you work and as you think, so will you be. No deed, no thought, no hope is too insignificant to fail to influence your nature. As through work we become better men and women, so through work do we become better musicians. Carlyle has beautifully expressed this thought in "Past and Present" thus: "The latest ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... town being collected into one place, can easily combine together. The most insignificant trades carried on in towns have, accordingly, in some place or other, been incorporated; and even where they have never been incorporated, yet the corporation-spirit, the jealousy of strangers, the aversion to take apprentices, or to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... and over. "Mr. Overton was evidently considerably excited when he sent it, and somewhat incoherent in consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I dare say, by the time I have looked through the TIMES, and then we shall know all about it. Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... faintly conceive the delight and astonishment of naturalists at large when the barramunda first 'swam into their ken' in the rivers of Queensland. To be sure, in size and shape this 'extinct fish,' still living and grunting quietly in our midst, is comparatively insignificant beside the 'dragons of the prime' immortalised in a famous stanza by Tennyson: but, to the true enthusiast, size is nothing; and the barramunda is just as much a marvel and a monster as the Atlantosaurus himself would have been if he ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... and going. A certain little runnel of verse flowed no more through the pages of "The Firefly," and in a month there was not the shadow of Tom upon his age. But the print of him was deep in the heart of Letty, and not shallow in the affection of Mary; nor were such as these, insignificant records for any one to leave behind him, as records go. Happy was he to have left behind him any love, especially such a love as Letty bore him! For what is the loudest praise of posterity to the quietest love of one's own generation? For ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... advert to them as specimens of that style of thinking which has a natural tendency to induce an atheistic frame of mind.[227] The profession of such sentiments is a symptom rather of incipient danger, than of confirmed disease. But that danger is far from being either doubtful or insignificant. For should the distinction between "truth and error" be obliterated or even feebly discerned, should it come to be regarded as a matter of comparative indifference whether our beliefs be true or false, should it, above all, become our prevailing habit to "call good evil, and evil good," ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... him came two soldiers of the guard, dragging between them an insignificant-looking little Filipino ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... through the forest. As they proceeded their talk was all of tigers; for in India, though there be bigger and more splendid game in the land, its traditional animal never fails to interest, and to Wargrave on his way to his first tiger-shoot all other topics were insignificant. ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... When we limit our vocational teaching to a mere mastery of technique, there is no guarantee that the process which we teach to-day may not be discarded in five or ten years from to-day. Even the narrower technical principles which are so extremely important to-day may be relatively insignificant by the time that the child whom we are training takes his place in the industrial world. But if we can arm the individual with the more fundamental principles which are fixed for all time; and if, in addition ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... come. The great political concussion was not favourable to art. Abstract ideas united with the passions of the hour produced poetry which was of the nature of a declamatory pamphlet. Innumerable pieces were presented on the stage, but their literary value is insignificant. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... inability of England to feed these few million Jews I'd answer: "I don't know how you can be so silly!" Why, the whole human race, friends, can find room on the Isle of Wight—the earth laughs at the insignificant drawings upon her made by the small infantry called Man. Then, why do we suffer, friends? We do suffer, I suppose? I was once at Paris, and at a place called 'the Morgue' I saw exposed young men with wounded temples, and girls with dead ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... many a rogue has done before him, and found half a hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his capital ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... government, and affecting the public credit. After a long trial he was found guilty of treason, and received the sentence of death usually pronounced on such occasions; but whether he earned forgiveness by some material discovery, or the minister found him so insensible and insignificant that he was ashamed to take his life, he escaped execution, and was pardoned, on condition of going into perpetual exile. The severity of the government was much about the same period exercised on Dr. Shebbeare, a public writer, who, in a series of printed letters to the people of England, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... solo, the showy caprices, fantaisies and transcriptions. Being obliged to write this kind of music, the young composer sought for new forms in fingering and novel harmonic effects, even in his most insignificant productions. Thus among the early piano works, the Eclogue, Op. 3, and the Ballade, Op. 9, are to be found innovations which should attract the pianist and musician ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... manner born to realise the sort of extravagant, nightmare effect that many of our social customs have in the eyes of our untutored American cousins. The inherent absurdities that are second nature to us exhale for them the full flavour of their grotesqueness. The idea of an insignificant boy peer taking precedence of Mr. John Morley! The idea of having to appear before royalty in a state of partial nudity on a cold winter day! The necessity of backing out of the royal presence! The idea of a freeborn Briton having to get out of an engagement ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... a sunbeam bursts through a crack in the door into the dusty room, how a whirling column of dust seems circling round; but this was not poor and insignificant like common dust, for even the rainbow is dead in colour compared with the beauty which showed itself. Thus, from the leaf of the book with the beaming word "Believe," arose every grain of truth, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... him (and do not think that I here speak in terms of exaggeration), I have seen him deeply moved by the perils of his friends. Simple and natural as he was, I have seen his features betray his emotions at the story of their misfortunes, and he was ever ready to confer with them on the most insignificant details as well as on affairs of the utmost importance. In the adjustment of quarrels, he was ever ready to soothe turbulent spirits with a patience and good nature that one would little have expected from a disposition so excitable, nor from a character so lofty. What a contrast ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... one can run for cover when unheralded gales and sudden squalls catch one in the open. The Atlantic coast of Labrador is dangerous indeed, but there Nature has providentially distributed innumerable safe harbor retreats, and the tide is insignificant compared with that of Ungava Bay. "Nature exhausted her supply of harbors," some one has said, "before she rounded Cape Chidley, or she forgot Ungava entirely; and she just bunched the tide ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... this insignificant stranger into our home seemed a disturbing and restless evil in my eyes. Naturally my stepmother was beside herself with ecstacy, but why should she have expected the rest of the household to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... said Ali, laughing quietly. "My ideas are pretty well-known; but I am too insignificant a fellow for what I say to be noticed. Now ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... came on the hills, through which and the dividing valleys we proceeded for two miles, thence emerging into a narrow valley in which Nowshera is situated, drained by the river of Mysoor, which is an insignificant running stream. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... did not make up my mind to achieve something in Paris, she would lose all faith in me. She said, moreover, that she absolutely refused to be a witness of my misery and grief as a wretched literary man and insignificant conductor of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was comparatively new, but this remained almost unchanged by the ravages of time and of fire. Here great trials had taken place. Here great battles had been won—battles which had changed the destinies of the nation. Brunford, which had seemed so important to him a few years ago, was now only an insignificant manufacturing town. It had but little history, little meaning; but London—London was everything. There, in Westminster Abbey, close by him, kings had been crowned and monarchs were buried. There, too, the great ones of the world had come. Men whose names were imperishable ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... concerning our navy, and the destination of the squadron to which we had belonged, we were also called forward by two and three at a time as we stood according to our rank. He then asked most of us some very insignificant questions, and took some to be Portuguese because they had black hair, and others to be Swedes because their hair was light. He judged none of us to be English excepting the captain, the second lieutenant, the ensign of the soldiers, and myself. But assuring him we were all English, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... spite of their fire and smoke, appear but insignificant pigmies compared to that mighty mountain which rises in their neighbourhood—the majestic Chimborazo. We could see far off its snow-white dome, free of clouds, towering into the deep blue sky, many thousand feet above the ocean; while on the other side its brother, Tunguragua, shoots ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... which now very rarely take the tone towards Americans formerly habitual with them. Their change of tone is the most obvious change which I think Americans can count upon noting when they come to England, and I am far from reckoning it insignificant. It did not happen of the newspapers themselves; it must be the expression of a prevalent mood, if not a very deeply rooted feeling in their readers. One hears of their interest, their kindness, not from the Americans alone; the English ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... not about to abuse the reader's patience with a prolonged enumeration of the many additional conspiring circumstances,—insignificant in themselves and confessedly unimportant when considered singly, but of which the cumulative force is unquestionably great,—which an examination of 99 MSS. of the Gospels brought to light.(429) Enough has been ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... new pride, in the love which now made all other matters of life so insignificant, Mayo was afraid of himself; he knew his limitations in the matter of submission; even then he felt a hankering to walk aft and jounce Julius Marston up and down in his hammock chair. He did not believe he could stand calmly in the presence of Alma Marston ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... little town, cut in two in its entire length by a broad, paved street. Its modest inhabitants cannot possibly look any more stupid or insignificant ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... little seacoast town of Shelbourne. Here they sold their ponies and arms, and renting a little house, went busily to work cleaning and preparing the damaged plumes for market. When the task was finished and the last plume sold, they found themselves the happy possessors of the not insignificant sum of $3,200, which divided between them gave each a capital ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... is a moral problem; Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one. The whole alone has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event, the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly artificial mechanism which is named the state. So far Polybius was certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was "trop bonne," and that he felt perfectly well. Madame appealed to me—Dr. John following her movement with a slow glance which seemed to express languid surprise at reference being made to a quarter so insignificant. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... residences still inhabited had a dreary, if not a mean, aspect. Some of them—and Marcian's dwelling was one—had been built in latter times with material taken from temple or portico or palace in ruins; thus they combined richness of detail with insignificant or clumsy architecture. An earthquake of a few years ago, followed by a great inundation of the Tiber, had wrought disaster among these modern structures. A pillar of Marcian's porch, broken into ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... therefore, assume that he intends this evening to consult the spirit of my dead mother again, and this would be an excellent opportunity for getting on the track of the matter, if you do not object to opposing the most powerful force in the Empire, for the sake of such an insignificant ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... see at a time—the one before and the one behind. So small and insignificant the schooner seemed on the long Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward and down into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... that an Austrian force had been reported approaching from the south, moving on Krupanie, and that it had seemed so insignificant that a small detachment of third reserve troops had been sent to hold it back. But this enemy force now developed into ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... industries, too insignificant or unorganized even for municipal operation, might be left ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... perceive, therefore, that Lisconnel lies out of the way, on the route to no places of importance, and as its own ten or a dozen little houses are, I fear, collectively altogether insignificant, it has small reason to expect many visitors. The Widow M'Gurk said one day that you might as well be living at the bottom of the boghole for any company you got the chance of seeing; but this was ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the animal, but merely that he is inferior in some one respect, or that he depends less upon instincts and thus has a greater need of training. If the child learns at this early stage that there is no person or no creature too insignificant to teach him something, he will have learned one of the most valuable lessons in life. The child may not be able to tell why the wild hog has lost its tusks, but he will enjoy thinking about it. He can observe or find out in other ways that the domesticated ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... while his coarse, black hair was combed straight down over a pair of small, piercing, dark eyes. The complexion, or such of it as was visible through the mask of wiry hair, was swarthy, his form thin and insignificant. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... has been the hero of the day on my premises, and he has placed me under ever-lasting obligations to him," added the colonel. "With a very insignificant force we had cleaned out the ruffians from the house when the approach of the main body of the gang was announced by my servants, who had been scouting beyond the hills. The coming of the cavalry has probably saved my mansion and my life. As the villains supposed, I have a considerable ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... Clarges Street, who received me, on my first coming to London with my wife, with a burst of scorn, mollified presently, and as soon as she came to know Theo (who she had pronounced to be an insignificant little country-faced chit), fell utterly in love with her, and would have her to tea and supper every day when there was no other company. "As for company, my dears," she would say, "I don't ask you. You are no longer du monde. Your marriage has put that entirely out of the question." So she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him," she said, pointing with her fat finger at my insignificant self and addressing her family. "If only I had such a husband or a son, instead of you lumps that God has tied to me like clogs to the heels of a she-ass, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... condolence, he said to them by way of banter, as if the affair had already faded from his memory, "And I heartily condole with you on the loss of your renowned countryman, Hector." He so much affected to depreciate Germanicus, that he spoke of his achievements as utterly insignificant, and railed at his most glorious victories as ruinous to the state; complaining of him also to the senate for going to Alexandria without his knowledge, upon occasion of a great and sudden famine at Rome. It was ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... on the part of Greece is worrying the rest of the Powers. She is too small and insignificant to attempt to brave the wrath of Europe alone, and there is an uneasy feeling that some one of the great nations must ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... The story, to a woman's mind, was full of pathos, and, though barren of great incidents, was not without a due richness of colouring if looked at by appreciative eyes. Nor were the results of Laura Secord's brave deed insignificant. Had the Americans carried Beaver Dams at that juncture, the whole peninsula was before them—all its supplies, all its means of communication with other parts of the Province. And Canada—Upper Canada, at least—would have been ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... in the successive attempts to roll back the wave of conquest upon the Alleghanies. The redskins were pushed from Ohio into Indiana, from Indiana into Illinois, from Illinois and Wisconsin into Iowa and Minnesota; the few tribal fragments which by treaty arrangement remained behind formed only insignificant "islands" in the midst of the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... else can impart; and certainly a collection of household curios cannot be complete without some musical instrument, although but a humble example. It may be a moot point among collectors whether the insignificant whistle or primitive call can be regarded as sufficiently musical to rank in this category. It is certain, however, that it is one of the commonest of sound producers; if there is a boy in the home there is almost sure to be a whistle in the house. Few trouble about the scientific ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... which he may have given weeks and weeks before? The magistrate, however, remembers it; and twenty times, if need be, he brings it up again. And as the small snowflake may become an irresistible avalanche, so an insignificant word, uttered at haphazard, forgotten, then recalled, commented upon, and enlarged may ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... that this movement is making no progress; that while the movements along other lines are largely succeeding, there has been no advance along this line. Twenty-five years ago, with insignificant exceptions, women could not vote anywhere. To-day they have school suffrage in twenty-three States, full suffrage in Wyoming, municipal suffrage in Kansas, and municipal suffrage for single women and widows in England, Scotland and most of the British provinces. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... public at large, not only as to its merits, but as to the very appearance of the light, Some few thousand people had gone out to Menlo Park, and had there seen the lamps in operation at the laboratory or on the hillsides, but they were an insignificant proportion of the inhabitants of the United States. Of course, a great many accounts were written and read, but while genuine interest was aroused it was necessarily apathetic. A newspaper description or a magazine article may be admirably complete ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... with a serious repulse. Great numbers of the inhabitants from the surrounding country had crowded into the town with their valuables, and Tippoo, expecting a rich booty, attacked the town; but although its fortifications were insignificant, the little garrison was commanded by Captain Flint, the officer who had so bravely defended Wandiwash in the previous war, and two assaults ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... the signal to depart. Every lady had her attendant gentleman. Orangine and Roussette were obliged to content themselves with two insignificant princes who were neither so young nor so handsome as Prince Charmant. Orangine and Roussette were so sulky that even these princes declared they would never wed ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... been manufactured for thousands of years by the wasp;—to the levers, joints, and pulleys of the human body, of which the mechanist has as yet only made imperfect imitations;—and to the saw of an insignificant insect, (the saw-fly) which has never yet been ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... over House of Lords.] largely unreal, over her constitution and her liberties, even while foreign wars and complications were still being debated; and in the middle of it all, suddenly, from a local labour dispute, putting by all thought of the constitution, feeling as comparatively insignificant the fear of invasion, all England stood shuddering on the verge of frantic civil war;[Footnote: The Railway strike.] and all Ireland, when the moment of possible freedom was given, when England might have been hardly able to save ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... a mark on the figures at the first of the month, and when you are studying the almanac it will remind you of your duty to society. People east here, that is, business men in your class, change their shirts every week or two. Try and look out for these little matters, insignificant as they may seem, because the public has some rights that it is dangerous for a man ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... students, they well knew that this must be the final consummation, but then it looked a great way off. That they really loved the young men, no one can doubt. It would not be strange for a little shop-girl to even adore a talented university student, however insignificant he might be to other people. To her he is everything that is great and noble. These girls knew well that they were not wives, but mistresses, yet when the day of separation came, it was like parting husband and wife. But there was no use ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... the rigging, the decks are awash. It is hard to say whether it is raining, for the spray cut off by the wind makes rain a somewhat insignificant event. As he makes his way up on to the bridge, not a very lofty climb, he looks to see what sail is set, and judges so far as he can the force of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... recent times. It is true we can draw no comparison between the result of their respective labors. The hundreds, which in the old time were deemed a respectable if not an extensive collection, would look insignificant beside the ostentatious array of ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... friends should advise. And I heartily wish his Grace had entirely stifled that comedy, if it were possible, than do an injury to our friend's reputation, only to get a hundred or two pounds to a couple of, perhaps, insignificant women. It has been printed here, and I am grieved to say it is a very poor performance. I have often chid Mr. Gay for not varying his schemes, but still adhering to those he had exhausted; and I much doubt whether the posthumous Fables will prove equal to the first. I think it is incumbent ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... of such reforming zeal in the Church, and in the world. Even among those who in private lament prevailing evils there is a singular contentment and tolerance even of those which might be at once removed. This is grievously common in large centres of population, where each individual feels insignificant among such vast multitudes, and loses the sense of individual responsibility in the vastness of the crowd which surrounds him. How many professing Christians, for example, deplore drunkenness and impurity, while they shrink from any kind of open protest, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... contended and rejoiced; Amid the glories of the house of life Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld: Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love Fall insignificant on my closing ears, What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind In our inclement city? what return But the image of the emptiness of youth, Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice Of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The mighty Captain of this warship accepts the advice of the insignificant pilot—who happens to know the channel. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... few men with working talent. They know how to deal with the facts before them, to put things into a practical shape, and they value men only as they can forward the work. But some new man comes there, who has no capacity for helping them at all, is insignificant, and nobody in the committee, but has a talent for speaking. In the debate with open doors, this precious person makes a speech, which is printed, and read all over the Union, and he at once becomes famous, and takes the lead ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... prudent to withdraw to some little distance for a time, lest the irritated and wronged bees should set upon them and take an ample revenge. Had they known their power, this might easily have been done, no ingenuity of man being able to protect him against the assaults of this insignificant-looking animal, when unable to cover himself, and the angry little heroes are in earnest. On the present occasion, however, no harm befell the marauders. So suddenly had the hive tumbled that its late occupants appeared to be astounded, and they submitted to their fate ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... that happened at Craythew on Sunday evening threw such insignificant details as these into the shade, and brought out the true character of the chief actors, amongst whom Margaret ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... One insignificant detail struck his eye—a weighty cane of Mr. Meeker's stood in an angle of the half-opened door to the hall, across the floor from where Jannie and he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... common end of every system studied by the Hindus is the ascertainment of the means by which perpetual exemption from the necessity of repeated births may be won."15 In comparison with this aim, every thing else is utterly insignificant. Prahlada, on being offered by Vishnu any boon he might ask, exclaimed, "Wealth, virtue, love, are as nothing; for even liberation is in his reach whose faith is firm in thee." And Vishnu replied, "Thou shalt, therefore, obtain freedom from existence."16 All true Orientals, however ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of the quarrel had been an insignificant something that speedily lost itself in the torrent of angry words that burst from the lips of the irate husband and wife, until by night it would have been difficult for either the man or the woman to tell exactly what had been the first point of difference. By that time, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... that yesterday was the last time I spoke to her. We spoke only a few insignificant words that I have forgotten, and today I have ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... you forgot," she interrupted, "or you could never have forgotten mine, but then one can't be too hard on a person for forgetting such mere trifles, I don't blame you, yours is so insignificant, that ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... discharge is sent through the tube, there proceeds from the anode—that is, the wire which is connected with the positive pole of the battery—certain bands of light, varying in colour with the colour of the glass. But these are insignificant in comparison with the brilliant glow which shoots from the cathode, or negative wire. This glow excites brilliant phosphorescence in glass and many substances, and these "cathode rays," as they are called, were observed and studied by Hertz; and more ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... he could, watching all the time with fascinated eyes Annabel moving gracefully about amongst her guests, always gay, with a smile and a whisper for nearly everybody. Grudgingly he admired her. To him she had always appeared as a mere pleasure-loving parasite—something quite insignificant. He had pictured her, if indeed she had ever had the courage to do this thing, as sitting alone, convulsed with guilty fear, starting at her own shadow, a slave to constant terror. And instead he found her playing the great lady, and playing it well. She knew, or guessed his mission too, for ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... war-stricken peoples of Europe opportunity to resume their normal industrial life seemed to me the first and greatest task to be accomplished. It was in my judgment superior to every other object of the Paris negotiations. Compared with it the creation of a League of Nations was insignificant and could well be postponed. President Wilson thought otherwise. We were very far apart in this matter as he well knew, and he rightly assumed that I followed his instructions with reluctance, and, he might have added, ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... condemnation, has been in a recent case, held by this Court, and on other occasions.[174] What is the number of military persons that shall constitute such a case it may be difficult to define. In the former cases there were many, in the present they are fewer in number; number alone is an insignificant circumstance in the considerations on which the principles of law on this subject are built; since fewer persons of high quality and character may be of more importance than a much greater number of persons of lower condition. To send out one veteran general of France to take command of ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... herself to remaining a marvel of ancient art, which one ought to put under glass so as to preserve her intact, slumbering amid the sovereign pomp of her annals; next Genoa, which is absorbed in trade, still active and bustling, one of the last queens of that Mediterranean, that insignificant lake which was once the opulent central sea, whose waters carried the wealth of the world; and then particularly Turin and Milan, those industrial and commercial centres, which are so full of life and so modernised that tourists disdain them as not being "Italian" cities, both ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... insignificant compared to other things to which the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been subjected, things which unite them more firmly than ever to the French and the ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... streams, which, rising near the summit, course down the steep slopes and finally discharge through Canyon Chelly into the great Chinlee valley, which is the western of the two valleys referred to above. The eastern slope is more pronounced than the western, and its streams are so small and insignificant that they are hardly worthy ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... Insignificant as was the hold, it was evident that something like feudal discipline was kept up. Two men, armed with pikes, were stationed on the wall, while two others leant in careless fashion against the posts of the open gate. On the approach of Archie an elderly man, with a long white beard, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... among his fellow-craftsmen. They alone can take a serious interest in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting of dull and insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will say, "Why do you not write a great book? paint a great picture?" If his guardian angel fail him, they may even persuade him to the attempt, and, ten to one, his hand is coarsened and his style ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ineffectual attempts, could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently to reach the latch without being seen by his royal master. The mission on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the Susunan himself inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out of the dodok posture. When it is necessary for an inferior to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with his hams upon his heels until he is out of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... time to make him understand what had been wrong, but even when he did comprehend he seemed to be annoyed with me for waking him out of a pleasant dream, probably about damper and mutton, for the saving of so insignificant a thing as his hair, which would have soon ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn |
