"Lack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wish was to see Uncle Denis married happily, though where to find a wife to suit him, or, as she would have said, "good enough for him," was the difficulty. There were no lack of excellent girls in Kentucky, daughters of settlers, but they could seldom boast of much education or refinement of manners, and Uncle Denis was a gentleman in every sense of the word; at the same time that he had as much spirit and ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... over her colonies. But the bulwarks of popular liberty were rising in America, and every year saw them strengthened and more ably manned. English legislative opposition only defined and solidified the colonial resistance. What was to be the result? There would be no lack of English statesmen competent to consider it; men like Pitt, Murray and Townshend were already above the horizon of history. But it was not by statesmanship that the issue was to be decided. Man is proud of his intellect; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... quarrel, when Julie had snubbed him in Delafield's presence and to Delafield's advantage, he had been conscious of a momentary alarm. But Julie, who on that one and only occasion had paraded her intimacy with Delafield, thenceforward said not a word of him, and Warkworth's jealousy had died for lack of fuel. In relation to Julie, Delafield had been surely the mere shadow and agent of his little cousin the Duchess—a friendly, knight-errant sort of person, with a liking for the distressed. What! the heir-presumptive ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grew less disturbed Aunt Patricia made no effort not to scold Sally for her unwisdom and her lack of reliance upon older judgment than her own. But the great fact was that Aunt Patricia was never unfair, that she had no sentimental suspicions and made no accusations with which Sally could ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... heavily lagging feet—he followed heavy in spirit and bereft of hope. He was still behind him when Denny finally paused before the sagging gate of John Anderson's half-stripped house. Then, watching the boy's dumb lack of understanding, the enormity of the whole horrible complication dawned upon him for the first time. He had forgotten Dryad Anderson's going—forgotten that the house upon the ridge was no longer the property of the man who had ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... lack of confidence on his part created a coldness between us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea, in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my custom into the hands of the opposition coroner ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The lack of a simple and straightforward statement of such facts as are in our possession, often leads to serious misunderstanding and sometimes to ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... dignity and ribaldry, taking each other's place from time to time. But most often through all the years the streets are filled with those who, day by day, come in from all the country round, bringing their produce, seeking what they lack, and all oblivious of the learned ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... feast will say to the hosteler, array for me to-morrow a good dinner for so many folk, and telleth him the number, and deviseth him the viands; and he saith also, thus much I will dispend and no more. And anon the hosteler arrayeth for him so fair and so well and so honestly, that there shall lack nothing; and it shall be done sooner and with less cost than an a man made it ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... that only several hours before this the patient gave a coherent account of his past life and showed nothing grossly psychotic, the foregoing symptoms, such as the lack of knowledge of his wife's or babe's name, inability to solve problems such as 2 times 3, the fainting spell, etc., must be looked upon as unquestionably malingered. When examined the following day he showed still further ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... accurate.) No such matter occurred in the treaty "wyth the quene." Knox added, next day, that he himself "was unfit to treat of so great matters," and Croft appears to have agreed with him, for, by the Reformer's lack of caution, his doings in Holy Island were "well known and published." Consequently, when Whitelaw returned to Knox with Cecil's reply to the requests of the brethren, the performances of Knox and Whitelaw were no secrets, in outline at least, to the Regent's party. For ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... his deficiency in other virtues, certainly did not lack courage, made a strong effort at self-possession, and without replying to the Colonel, whose remark had not been directly addressed to himself, said in his most rollicking tone, "Yes, Mrs. Haughton, Charles was my particular friend, but," lifting his ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... adequate preparation beforehand, in equipment and trained man-power, for such a plan of self-sufficient self-defense. But increasingly among those who are, by force of temperament or insight or by lack of the pecuniary and the placeman's interest, less confident of an appeal to the nation's prowess, there is coming forward an evident persuasion that warlike preparations—"preparedness"—alone and carried through by the Republic in isolation, will ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Emir laughed again, which was the signal for an obsequious roar. He said he would prefer some bread and anchovy, and could help himself. He accepted a little of the rum for politeness' sake, and then professed himself satisfied. After some outcry on his lack of appetite the rest of the party fell to with avidity. The presence of his uncle, which he now realised for the first time, relieved Iskender from the fear of personal indignity. He, too, attacked the victuals with good appetite, but refused the spirits, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... might as well abandon its efforts to make headway among the colored race in that State. So far as we can see, the bishop has made a manly stand, however, and deserves commendation and sympathy. But the seceders have shown a sad lack of the ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... ancestral strains is inevitable, the voluntary legacy may never be transmitted at all. The child will not claim it unless he knows his parent and admires or respects him. The parent's premature death or removal or the lack of sufficient sympathy between the parent and the child can in this case inhibit the transmission, and the potential legacy, with its momentous possibilities of influence upon the child's career, will ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... screaming shrilly. Across other window-spaces heads passed to and fro, denoting the continuous movement of those within. People in the street called to people in the house, and the latter shouted in answer, with that absolute lack of self-consciousness and disregard of the opinions of others which is the hall-mark of the true Neapolitan. From the corner came the rumble and the bell notes of the trams going to and coming from the tunnel that leads to Fuorigrotta. And from ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... us as we did him. He was pretending friendliness. I noticed that though he seemed not over forty, his close-clipped hair beneath the white linen cap was silver white. His face had a strange pallor, not the pallor of ill health, but seemingly a natural lack of color. And his voice, speaking good English, nevertheless marked him for a foreigner—though of what nation certainly I ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... in a great many cases the common road would cost more than the railway in the great central basin of America; as the rich alluvial soil, when wet in spring or fall, is almost impassable, and lack of stone and timber prevents the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Powell was a scientist. The lack of knowledge about the Grand Canon was a challenge too strong for him to resist. With a party of ten picked men he started on 10 the perilous voyage, on May 24, 1869. He did not know that ahead of them was a seething stretch of water, two hundred ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in a daze. It gave him a new sense of the world's lack of interest in him. Probably the great ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... get aired and swept every day—my wife Katherine maintains that the floor ought to be scrubbed as well, but that is a debatable question—in such a house, let me tell you, people will lose within two or three years the power of thinking or acting in a moral manner. Lack of oxygen weakens the conscience. And there must be a plentiful lack of oxygen in very many houses in this town, I should think, judging from the fact that the whole compact majority can be unconscientious enough to wish to build the town's prosperity ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... they loved him, called him intolerant. I never could look at it that way. He did have the only kind of intolerance which is at all tolerable, and that is the intolerance of intolerance. He always set himself with vigour against that unreason and lack of sympathy which are the essence of intolerance; and yet there was a rock of conviction on many subjects behind which he could not be driven. It was not intolerance: it was with him a reasoned certainty of belief. He had a phrase to express that not ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... his theme the unfitness of the negro to participate in government,—an unfitness due to his limited education, his lack of experience, his criminal tendencies, and more especially to his hopeless mental and physical inferiority to the white race,—the major had demonstrated, it seemed to him clearly enough, that the ballot in the hands of the negro was a menace to the commonwealth. He ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... frequently condemned out of his mouth as Cicero, and naturally. In these modern days we have contemporary records as to prominent persons. Of the characters of those who lived in long-past ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. What insight have we into the personality of Alexander the Great, or what insight had Plutarch, who wrote about him? As to Samuel Johnson, we seem to know every turn of his ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... temperature fell far below zero and the air became so thin that neither man nor engine could function unaided. As a result the fliers were kept from freezing by electrically heated clothing and from unconsciousness from lack of air by artificially supplied oxygen. Similarly the oil, water, and gasolene of the engine were kept working by ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... her attention upon one after another of the scenarios, often by main will-power, because of the utter lack of interest in the stories the writers had tried ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... only too probably resent any counter-influence, and set themselves against their mother's friend, and guide, under the title of governess. Moreover, Mary was too clear-sighted not to feel that there was a lack in the Brownlow household of what alone could give her confidence in the charming qualities of its mistress. Yet she knew that her brother would never forgive her for refusing, and that she should hardly forgive herself for following-not so much her better, as her more prudent, judgment. For ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matter to be handled tactfully, but with absolute frankness. Men should be taught that it is not a matter of necessity; that their health will not suffer by any lack of it; that they themselves will be the sufferers for any violations of rules of health. The procedure directed by the War Department for purposes of ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... book; and Nat said within himself, 'If Mr. Morse's house [the landlord[G]] is a tavern, then this is a tavern in my book.' He cared little how it was spelled; if it did not spell tavern, 'it ought to,' he thought. Children believe what they see, more than what they hear. What they lack in reason and judgment they make up in eyes. So Nat had seen the tavern near his father's house again and again, and he had stopped to look at the sign in front of it a great many times, and his eyes told him it was just like that in the book; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... must be manured and irrigated, and is often refreshed by top-dressings of fresh earth from the hill sides. The crops are wheat and barley, rape, lucerne, peas and beans, in spring, and buckwheat, millets, and turnips, in autumn. There is a great lack of wood for building and for fuel, and the deficiency in the latter case has to be supplied by cow-dung cakes. Notwithstanding their hard life the people are cheerful and fairly well off, for polyandry has ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... time to time he was disturbed by the thought that something might have happened to his uncle's family, of whom he had heard little or nothing since he went away. He afterward learned that letters had been sent which he had not received. He was not exactly homesick, but he felt keenly the lack of ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... contumely upon women who demand to be allowed to enjoy their civil political rights. Ridicule is the chief weapon employed against them, and is freely applied to all who advocate their cause. Gentlemen who would blush to be thought negligent in the offices of frivolous gallantry lack the manhood to accord to women their substantial rights. And, strange to say, ladies dwelling in luxurious ease join with the fops of society to cast contempt upon the earnest aspirations of woman for the possession of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... specimens are obtained by sowing direct into the pots and thinning the seedlings to the required number. Use a light rich compost containing a fair proportion of silver sand, and do not let the plants suffer for the lack of water. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, I who would have been turned long since into dust of the ground by Amraphel and into ashes by Nimrod, had it not been for Thy grace.[163] Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous for Zoar, the smallest of the five cities. Wilt Thou destroy all the city ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... discretion, as usual, but with no lack of appetite. It chanced that they were alone. Lord Camperdown was down in the Midlands for a day's hunting, and Helene had ensured their seclusion from any one who might drop in by a whispered word to the hall porter as they passed into the house. It seemed to her that ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... succeed in the world?' Every man should ask himself: 'What is my place? How shall I decide it? How shall I fill it that my life shall not be a failure?' It may be difficult to answer this question. The answer may not always be from the heart, that is, influenced by sincerity. Ignorance or lack of ambition may prompt an answer and failure follow. Though difficult to answer, the question must be answered by all. 'What is my right place in the labor of this world? How shall I find it? How shall I succeed in it?' But few men can be really ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... quartered in a log hut; a blanket over the doorway excludes the damp air and the cold blasts. The immense chinks, or rather lack of immense chinks, in various parts of the edifice, leave abundance of room for the admission of light. There are no windows, but this is fortunate, for if there were, they, like the door, would need covering, and blankets are scarce. The fire-place, however, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... no lack of comfortable furnished apartments in Portsmouth, and no difficulty in finding some that are proportionate to very slender finances; but the former were too good, and the latter too bad, and they went into so many houses, and came ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... regarded his other qualities, his conversation was certainly not exhilarating. But that also was not, under certain conditions, an unforgivable thing. No, looking at the matter all round and weighing it with care, the real obstacle, Claire decided, was not any quality or lack of qualities in Dudley Pickering—it was Lord Dawlish and the simple fact that it would be extremely difficult, if she discarded him in favour of a richer man without any ostensible cause, to retain ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Her face was very pale, but there was a change in her voice, a sudden firmness, and a total lack of hesitancy. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... trust no longer to Paula for putting an end to what made her so restless and self-reproachful. Seeing old Mr. Somerset enter to a little side-table behind for lack of room at the crowded centre tables, again without his son, she turned her head and asked point-blank where the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Yahoos with the enthusiasm of a true Darwinian, and minutely describe those interesting features which would enable us to decide whether they are monkeys progressing to manhood, or men brutalizing into apehood; but which Mr. Gulliver's lack of scientific enthusiasm for evolution prevented him from closely examining. But until the scientific standing of Mr. Gulliver's Yahoos is determined, the theory of evolution must be assigned to the mountains of speculations, big with expectation, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Atkinson's and Gran's accounts: the weather was probably exceptional from the persistency of the early winter blizzards. There was a great dearth of seal-meat, due to the ice blowing out from the North Bay and to the lack of ice ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... forward of their own accord with a determination to find the way for themselves.[49] This great mass, from the standpoint of habitation, was made up of two separate and distinct classes,[50] namely, rural and urban. The rural class was by far the most ignorant, owing to the lack of educational advantages in the rural districts of the South. They were for the most reared upon farms and their occupation was that of farm labor. It is said also that from this class came the majority of the Negroes who migrated ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... much it is lack living in another world now. Folks living in too much hurry. They getting too fast. They are restless. I see a heaps of overbearing folks now. Folks after I got grown looked so fresh and happy. Young folks look tired, mad, worried now. They ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... on Mallory and crowded him back. Weak-nerved from the long strain, suffering for lack of sleep, the two men broke down for the moment, and struggled about the cab. The fireman stumbled back against the boiler with a dazed face, but after a moment he recovered and rushed between ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... discrimination which lets one Had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why—why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; it ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... and on the other side the joy and rejoicing of the elect, who are transported to the right hand side of the blessed by a troop of Angels led by the Archangel Michael. It is truly lamentable that for lack of writers, the names and identity of few or none of these can be ascertained out of such a multitude of magistrates, knights and other lords, who are evidently drawn from life, although the pope there is said to be Innocent IV. ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... because a man usually can not marry until he has finished his education and established himself in business. A fair amount of restriction as to age at marriage will therefore not affect these classes, but may affect the uneducated classes. In so far as lack of education is correlated with eugenic inferiority, some restriction of this sort is desirable, because it will keep inferiors from reproducing too rapidly, as compared with the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... arms to shake off the yoke of Spain and obtain their freedom by destroying the power of Spain in all parts of the archipelago. If, however, all did not at once join in the movement that should not cause surprise, for there would be many unable to assist owing to lack of arms and ammunition, while others, again, might be reluctant to take an active part in the campaign on account of the loss and inconvenience to themselves and families that would result, from open ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... deluding the eye and being unattainable to the feet of mortals. [355] But whatever belief the ancients may have had on this subject, it is certain that it took a strong hold on the faith of the moderns during the prevalent rage for discovery; nor did it lack abundant testimonials. Don Joseph de Viera y Clavijo says, there never was a more difficult paradox nor problem in the science of geography; since, to affirm the existence of this island, is to trample upon sound criticism, judgment, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the duty of the State to provide for the sustenance and support of those of its citizens who cannot procure sustenance themselves"; and again, "work adapted to their strength and capacity shall be supplied to those who lack means and opportunity of earning a livelihood for themselves ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... of the darkness, and was interpreted by each according to his hopes and fears. Fear was their predominating sense. For years they had lived with some species of fear—of honest men or vengeance, of pursuit, of starvation, of lack of drink or gold, of blood and death, of stronger men, of luck, of chance, of fate, of mysterious nameless force. Wilson was the type of fearless spirit, but he endured the most gnawing and implacable fear of all—that of himself—that ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... equals with their husbands in their lowliness, and that their husbands have made the fortune which they pour at their feet. They will recollect also that their husbands must have industry, and a great many other sterling good qualities, if they lack a little polish; and, lastly, that they are in reality no worse off than many other women in high life who are married to boors, to eccentric persons, or, alas! too often to those who, with many admirable virtues, may blot them all by the indulgence in a ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... many faults: but they have one great quality—perhaps the greatest of all: they are alive, and human: nothing human is foreign to them and they are interested in every living being. Even when they lack real, warm sympathy they feel a perpetual curiosity which makes them seek out men and ideas that are of worth, however different from themselves they may be. Not that, generally speaking, they do anything much to help them, for they ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... method and system, in which logic and divinity, as handled by the schoolmen, were the principal thing, were strenuously averse to the linguistic and literary studies which threatened to supplant them. The advocates of the new studies derided the lack of learning, the barbarous style, and fine-spun distinctions of the schoolmen, who had once been the intellectual masters. The disciples of Aristotle and of the schoolmen still had a strong hold in Paris, Cologne, and other universities. But ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... producing at times an impression of immaturity and uncertainty on the part of the author. Even when some isolated phrase strikes one as fortunate, it does not tend to strengthen the drama as a whole. The later versions lack that sense of inner unity and that audacious touch which lend fascination and power to ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... and grateful friend, at length you have remembered the existence of the 'poor lone crittur' living in dead-alive land! Only that I lack gall to make oppression bitter, I should of course return your belated epistle by the Dead Letter Office, marked 'Unknown' across your 'Dear Glory,' there being no longer anybody in these regions who has a plausible ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... to acknowledge God in all His ways. It is only a lack of understanding of the allness of God, which leads you to believe in the existence of matter, or that matter can frame its own conditions, contrary ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker Eddy
... the worst enemy. That was wealth, comfort, quiet business, lack of big disturbances and of great sufferings. The English Church still succeeded in preventing all the misuses and abuses of life under such circumstances. This success can be appreciated only if the British ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... far-reaching policy; and aside from the pleasure of being in the saddle once more, riding over the wild Alleghanies in keen October weather, after four years of the stenches and climatic miseries of Philadelphia, aside from his fear of Governor Miffin's treachery, and his lack of implicit confidence in Lee's judgement, it is quite likely that he had some underlying motive relative to the advantage of his party, which had been weakened by the incessant assaults upon himself. By going with the army ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... life's perfect youth will all come back, And for a moment there I shall stand fresh and fair, And drop the garment care; Once more my perfect youth will nothing lack. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... and left the apothecary's office; the Division Medical Director's premises were besieged. Ambulances continually drove up or departed; files of sick and wounded, able to move without assistance, stood in line, patient, uncomplaining men, bloody, ragged, coughing, burning with fever, weakened for lack of nourishment; many crusted with filth and sometimes with vermin, humbly awaiting the disposition of their battered, half-dead ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... beslavering me with vile abuse and bitter curses. Now, hearkening to this lewd tirade, I marvelled I should ever have feared and trembled because of the womanhood of creature so coarse and unsexed. Thus she continued alternately mocking at and reviling me until she must needs pause for lack of breath; then I turned to look at her and stood amazed to behold that passionate head bowed upon ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... faster, If I have touched it with my charming-wands. And yet,—the wonder any woman knows Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed Among the lilies of the White Eros.— Ere I go down among the witless Dead Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue, Lest lack of that should ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... in Miss Afflint, "that owing to my lack of definite local knowledge I was not in a position to give an answer commensurate with the gravity of the subject." She spoke in a perfect imitation of the tone of a ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... his thoughts reverted to Ruth Patton, with her lack of ornament and severe simplicity, and he felt that her image was to him the more attractive of the two. It was fortunate for Miss Ferguson's peace of mind that she could not ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... highly accomplished, and one son; one of them was married to General R——, but is since divorced; the second is married to a young colonel of Hussars, and the third is still unmarried; but being very young, handsome, accomplished and rich, there will be no lack of suitors whenever she is disposed to accept the connubial chain. I have dined several times with this family. There is an excellent table. The choicest old wines are handed about during dinner, and afterwards we adjourn to another room to take ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... and we shall be taken like foxes, we, who are lions, and thrown into some dungeon, where we shall not even have the consolation of seeing this frightful gray sky of Rueil, which no more resembles the sky of Tarbes than the moon is like the sun. Lack-a-day! if we only had some one to instruct us about the physical and moral topography of this castle. Ah! when one thinks that for twenty years, during which time I did not know what to do with myself, it never occurred to me to come to ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... night with the wonderful power of the hound to whom each trail is a plain record of every living creature that has passed within many hours. And though the first day after a storm has less to tell than the second, just as the second has less than the third, there was no lack of story in the snow. Here sped some antlered buck, trotting along while yet the white was flying. There went a fox, sneaking across the line of march, and eying distrustfully that deadfall. This broad trail with many large ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... belong to the neutral ground of debate; but it is very pitiable that they should so ill bear repetition. All the world, if they dared avow as much, are heartily tired of them. Like cursing and swearing, they are merely unmeaning expletives to supply the lack of sense, to gain time, and to give a man the satisfaction of sometimes hearing his own voice. With all the assistance of cards, music, dancing, and champagne, society is at best but a dreary business, and it requires no little animal spirits to undergo the infliction with decency. Are ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... he send? Men there were in plenty, dry-rotting at the post for lack of something to limber their joints; but officers to lead? There was the rub! Thirty troopers, twenty Apache Mohave guides, a pack train and one or, at most, two officers made up the usual complement of such expeditions. Men, mounts, scouts, mules and packers, all, were ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... commencing to have an odd conviction, which was that her Aunt Elinor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle. He seemed inclined to make up for Elinor's lack of enthusiasm by his own. He built up a larger fire, and moved her chair ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gambling, and lost what he gave me. There was nothing then left but to enlist; and I joined the ——th. Mother still believed me in or near Denver, and wrote regularly there. The life was horrible to me after the luxury and lack of restraint I had enjoyed, and I meant to desert. Chance threw in my way that temptation. I robbed poor Hull the night before he was killed, repacked the paper so that even the torn edges would show the greenbacks, resealed it,—all just as I have had to hear through her pure and sacred lips ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... lack of surprise was real. He wasn't surprised. But he was annoyed with himself for expecting something so impossible as the Sylva tracing the fleet through an overdrive voyage of days to a ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Brussels on the 7th of June, 1574, and there was a tedious interchange of protocols, reports, and remonstrances. The estates, not satisfied with the extinction of a tribunal which had at last worn itself out by its own violence, and had become inactive through lack of victims, insisted on greater concessions. They demanded the departure of the Spanish troops, the establishment of a council of Netherlanders in Spain for Netherland affairs, the restoration to offices in the provinces ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he might, for there hung at the window a man—or the body of one—his hands convulsively grasping the magnetized rod, the distorted face pressed against the glass, the lack-lustre eyes wide open, the jaw drooping. In that ghastly visage I recognized the features of ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... indispensable beginning for all spiritual progress, and that his enactments about animals go beyond what is usual in secular law. But he expressly refrains from requiring adherence to any particular sect. On the other hand there is no lack of definite patronage of Buddhism. He institutes edifying processions, he goes on pilgrimages to sacred sites, he addresses the Sangha as to the most important parts of the scriptures, and we may infer that he did his best to spread the knowledge of those scriptures. Though he says nothing ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... do, with all their struggles, and all their much larger apparent means of enjoyment. They must have seen that wealth and honour were both within his grasp, and they must have known, too, that it was from no lack of appreciation of either that he deliberately declined to seek them. Wealth would have purchased for him many a refined pleasure which he could heartily appreciate, and honours might have saved him from some of the social slights which must have tested his philosophy. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... addressed him from his seat with guile: "We fain would do you remedy of what we lack. It is Hagen's fault, who is willed to let ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... men sin against the truth, and yet the world does not call them by the terrible name, the most shameful of all names—a liar. The world is very fond of giving wrong names to certain sins. A man appears in the morning with pale face, and shaking hand, and lack-lustre eye, and the world says he has been spending a festive evening, whereas the truth is he has been drunk. The man who leads an unclean life is pleasantly styled by the world a fast man. God in the Bible calls him by a very ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... hand-sledges, and providing appliances for lashing sledges together. There is, moreover, a workshop for snow-shoe fastenings, and a tinsmith's shop, busied for the moment with repairs to the lamps. Our doctor, too, for lack of patients, has set up a bookbinding establishment which is greatly patronized by the Fram's library, whereof several books that are in constant circulation, such as Gjest Baardsens Liv og Levnet, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... my analysis, we are suffering here in America, not from a plague of bad taste merely, nor only from a lack of real education among our myriads of readers, nor from decadence— least of all, this last. It is a disease of our own particular virtue which has infected us—idealism, suppressed and perverted. A less commercial, more responsible America, perhaps a less prosperous and more spiritual ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... got his bearings, took over the Laurier policies and widened them. In that significant fact the clue to these policies is found. They were not personal to Laurier, owing their coolness towards perfervid Chamberlainism to his lack of English blood as his critics held; they were in fact national policies dictated by the necessities of the times. To the casual student of the development of Imperial relations for the decade following ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... gatherings of Phyllis's friends, who were too young and frivolous to claim my serious attention. When he protested, and pleaded headache, business, or other sign of disinclination, I rallied him good-humoredly on his lack of gallantry. ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... the treatment of the family during the trial and imprisonment of the deserter is that of encouraging the woman to stick to her guns. If she withdraws her complaint or secures his release before his time is up, she not only convinces him of her lack of firmness but the entry in the court record seriously prejudices her case should she make complaint there again. Unless the social worker is convinced, therefore, that the sentence has been unduly severe, the wife should be encouraged ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... Disregarding my lack of invitation, I drew up a stool, and seating myself opposite the small unbending person, began in a conversational murmur: "M—m, I guess those are tingly-tanglies up there in that curl Lottie's combing; did you ever ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... you are worthy of whatever distinction you may have achieved, monsieur," said the Countess gently, grieved at her lack of consideration and anxious to make amends. "And as one who takes pride in all associated with her ancient house will you tell me how you ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... winter, and he would not believe that our Neva with its rushing streams and rapid current would in winter be changed into a very commodious highway. I wagered that I would convince him of the fact, and be the first to cross it on the ice; he would not believe me, and declared that I should lack the courage. Well, of course I did it, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... fits in its niche and is tolerably symmetrical. The rest are all awry, unfinished, misplaced, and merely faint suggestions of what might have been. Much of this is doubtless beyond mortal control, but a far greater portion is due to the lack of a nice direction of forces. The human mechanism is complicated, and a very slight flaw sets it all wrong. There may be too much steam or too much friction, or too little power or too little balance. But clearly the first step is to strengthen the weak points, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... reaching middle age, are usually heavy and lack agility, but my grandmother was in this also an exception. She was fully sixty when I was born; and when I was seven years old she swam across a swift and wide stream, carrying me on her back, because she did not wish to expose me to accident in one ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... under the protection which they have received, are making rapid progress in learning, and no complaints are heard of lack of industry on their part where they receive fair remuneration for their labor. The means provided for paying the interest on the public debt, with all other expenses of Government, are more than ample. The loss of our commerce is the only result of the late ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... common peasant woman,' he thought; but when the nameless girl appeared, fresh, and bright, and dainty, as if she had never seen a wash-tub, with her hat on her arm, and two of his roses pinned on the bosom of her blue muslin dress, he forgot the peasant woman, and the lack of a name, and thought only of the lovely girl who signified that ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... vanish when that consciousness becomes the object of another state of consciousness; consciousness remains also in the latter case what it is. Jars and similar things, on the other hand, do not possess consciousness, not because they are objects of consciousness but because they lack the two characteristics stated above. If we made the presence of consciousness dependent on the absence of its being an object of consciousness, we should arrive at the conclusion that consciousness is not consciousness; for there are things—e.g. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Cage in Pilgrim's Progress. The fate of the country was in his hands. He alone had the knowledge that could save her, and he could not use it. He was a dumb thing, possessed of a vast world-secret, which he could not impart for lack of voice. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... there is a woful lack of nicety in the butcher's work of cutting and preparing meat. Who that remembers the neatly trimmed mutton-chop of an English inn, or the artistic little circle of lamb-chop fried in bread-crumbs coiled around a tempting centre of spinach which can always be found in France, can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Then, too, the lack of ready money throughout the country and the general indebtedness made an absolute dearth of buyers. In the four years of war there had been no collections. The courts had been debarred from judgment and execution. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... talk to me in such a strain. I am ashamed of their lack of intelligence, ashamed that they will allow themselves to ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... and if ever you are in need or trouble of any sort, send it to me who know it well and you shall not lack succour." ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... Miss.—The work of the school is hindered by lack of room. We have enrolled this year two hundred and thirty two pupils, and many have been turned off because we could not seat them. We opened in December of 1888 with twenty-eight pupils. A school for more advanced pupils is needed in this ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... faults cannot be ignored, let us be rid of them as quickly as possible. We record, then: the unreality of his great work; its lack of human interest, which causes most of us to drop the poem after a single canto; its affected antique spelling; its use of fone (foes), dan (master), teene (trouble), swink (labor), and of many more obsolete words; its frequent torturing of the king's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... has no personal enemies: His private life is so pure that no man has ever dared to assail it. His public acts throughout all these years have been above suspicion even. I ask you, then, if, in the lack of these antagonisms, and with all of these good qualities, living in a State which holds its election in October, the result of which will be decisive, it may be, of the presidential campaign—it is not worth while to see to it that a candidate is nominated against whom nothing can ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... they had ceased from their labour, and had prepared the banquet, they feasted; nor did their soul in anywise lack a due allowance of the feast: but when they had dismissed the desire of drink and food, the youths on the one hand filled the goblets with wine to the brim,[52] and handed round the wine to all, having poured the first of the wine into the cups.[53] But the Grecian youths ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... poor district is now esteemed a wealthy man. I always found him an excellent game-preserver and a most straightforward fellow. Another farming neighbour of mine, however, was always talking about his ignorance and lack of caste. All classes, from the peer to the peasant, seem to resent a man's pushing his way from what they are pleased to consider a lower station ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions. We have an example of this in Theology, a system revered in all countries by a great number of men; an object regarded by them as most important, and ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... behind Hastings at one o'clock he staggered down the road without seeing it. From lack of food, and the horrible wrenching nausea he had suffered, as well as the terror gnawing more and more into his soul, he was ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... the enemy for a few days in one particular corner at the cost of casualties we cannot afford. But the work and the strain are becoming exhausting, and even the Japanese, who are being driven by little S—— like mules, are showing the effects in their lack-lustre eyes and dragging legs. The men are half drunk from lack of sleep and from bad, overheated blood, caused by a perpetual peering through loopholes and a continual alertness even when they are asleep. The strain is intolerable, I say, and pony meat is becoming nauseating, and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... immediate, in a manner that it may see within the marble the exact whole of that figure which they intend to carve from it, and may be able to make many parts perfect without any other model before it combines and unites them together, as Michelagnolo has done divinely well; although, for lack of this happiness of judgment, they make easily and often some of those blunders which have no remedy, and which, when made, bear witness for ever to the slips of the chisel or to the small judgment of the sculptor. This never happens to painters, for the reason that at every ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... little bit of old China, this quarter of ours," said the artist, rising to go. And so it is, saving only a noticeable lack of dwarfed trees and pale pagodas and sprays of willowy bamboo; of clumsy boats adrift on tideless streams; of toy-like tea gardens hanging among artificial rocks, and of troops of flat-faced but complaisant people ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... they stood till some of them were actually bayoneted with fuses in their hands; nor was it till their leader was wounded and taken, and they saw themselves deserted on all sides by the soldiers, that they quitted the field." Certainly such men could not be accused of lack of courage. Something else is needed to account for the failure ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... which side he would take. And this with a splendid disdain of the merits of the cause which he espoused. I remember that he once set out to maintain the thesis that a certain gentleman, as notable for his virtues as he was conspicuous for lack of beauty, was essentially a handsome man. The person who initiated the discussion by observing that 'Mr. Blank was unquestionably a plain man' expected from the Bibliotaph (if he expected any remark whatever) nothing beyond a Platonic 'That I do ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... that of Betty Blackwell, have alarmed the public and baffled the police before this— disappearances that have in their suddenness, apparent lack of purpose, and inexplicability much in common with her case. Leaving out of account the class of disappearances for their own convenience—embezzlers, blackmailers, and so forth—there is still a large number of recorded ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... on writers in his own day was notable. He seems almost to have superseded Cicero as a model. Critics of our day, while recognizing all this and the charm of his style, have found in his philosophy a lack of sincere qualities. An old question is that of his relations to Christianity. So much in his writings partakes of the spirit of the Apostles that he has been credited with having been influenced by them. It is known that his brother Gallio met St. Paul in Corinth and that Burrus, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... man, and if he found it an over-hard matter to depart from us we might very gladly let him board with us, if he could be content to live with us in her little house in the Grassmarket, in which Rosmuller now dwelt. There was no lack of good home-spun cloth in Nuremberg; nay, and if we should never again have new garments that would be all the better for our souls' health. As for me, I might perchance have fewer suitors, but if one should pay his court to me, he would have no thought but for Margery, and how she looked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... would prevent the pump working besides lack of packing and obstructions under the valves. The valve may stick. When it is raised to allow the water to flow through, it may stick in the valve chamber and refuse to settle back in the seat. This may be caused ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... suffered a torture, under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and to despite. She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour. She did not know herself what it was. It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... when he gets right down to the soil. He leaves convention with the spring bed at borne. But you were wise in your choice of time for leaving. You'll be out of the country before mosquito season, which is a blessing your lack of experience will ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... fond of summaries, Julian," he said, "dealt in your own coin. Look you, now, at my hope. You confess that these Jews lack a leader. They have lacked him so long that they hunger and thirst for one. Also they have suffered the distresses of disorder so intensely that peace in any form is most welcome to them. Titus approacheth reluctantly. He had rather deliver ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... "incomparably the best he had ever had, excepting only the Royal Family." The first part is devoted to the Dutch war; the last to the fire of London. The martial half is infinitely the better of the two. He altogether surpasses his model, Davenant. If his poem lack the gravity of thought attained by a few stanzas of "Gondibert," it is vastly superior in life, in picturesqueness, in the energy of single lines, and, above all, in imagination. Few men have read "Gondibert," and almost every one speaks of it, as commonly of the dead, with a ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... I should find these rambles dull, but that their utter lack of interest amuses me. I will be honest with the reader, though, and any Master Pliable is free to forsake me at this point; for I cannot promise to be really livelier than my walk. There is a Slough of Despond in full view, and not a Delectable Mountain ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... chief and the head of the stranger party is not customary. In approaching they often ask who is the spokesman, and the spokesman of the chief addresses the person indicated exclusively. There is no lack of punctilious good manners. The accustomed presents are exchanged with civil ceremoniousness; until our men, wearied and hungry, call out, "English do not buy slaves, they buy food," and then the people bring meal, maize, fowls, batatas, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... profuse in his apologies for the absence of meat, proffering as an excuse that Roman Catholics do not eat it on Friday, a reason which would scarcely hold good, as I arrived on a Saturday. Of eggs and vegetables, however, there was no lack. Vegetable diet and dog Latin are strong provocatives of thirst, and the number of times that I was compelled to say 'ad salutem' in the course of the evening was astonishing. The old priest appeared more ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... a little nettled by his lack of manners; whereupon he opened out the lease so that it screened his face, and as I glanced at the back of the document, I was astonished to observe that it was ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... boy when I left home; and as far as marriage goes, I am but a boy still. We consider it young enough, if we take a wife at five and twenty; and I lack six years ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... but let's get them something to eat as well as ourselves, for they must be faint for the lack of food and losing so much blood, and if they are no better by evening, I think you had better send for the doctor to come here and not try to send the men to him for treatment." The Capt. agreed to this, and as soon as we had something to eat, I went to where the wounded men were laying ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... a dial from his poke; And looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says, very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock; Thus we may see,' quoth he, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... that, There are two things in hypocrisy, lack of holiness, and simulation thereof. Accordingly if by a hypocrite we mean a person whose intention is directed to both the above, one, namely, who cares not to be holy but only to appear so, in which sense Sacred Scripture ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... when, in the words of Christ, that which was spoken in the ear is proclaimed from the housetops; and when the Gospel is influencing every side of human life—domestic, economic, civic, legislative, and international. This lack of true understanding of Christ's words at such a time would be inexplicable, if there were not causes ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... experience. Its enemies call it "an indelible superstition," and its friends assert that man is born believing. That a few persons, here and there, appear to lack the sense for the Invisible no more argues against its naturalness than that occasionally a man is found to be colorblind or without an ear for music. Mr. Lecky has written, "That religious instincts are as truly part of our natures as are our appetites and our nerves is a fact which all ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... say, in their last report, that after four years' experience they feel competent to begin the establishment of branch libraries, and observe that at least six of these centres of light and intelligence should be opened in various quarters of the city. It is understood that lack of funds alone prevents the institution from entering on this wider field. When one considers the liberal and too often indiscriminate charities of the metropolis, and reflects that the need and utility of this excellent enterprise have been demonstrated, it seems impossible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... himself a child. He had brought with him from the asylum at St. Albans the servant who had attended him there, and who had been drawn by the singular talisman of personal attraction which partly made up to this frail and helpless being for his entire lack of force. He had also brought from the same place an outcast boy whose case bad excited his interest, and for whom he afterwards provided by putting him to a trade. The maintenance of these two retainers was expensive and led to grumbling ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... fishing! The net we fasten; This minute hasten! Follow me! Don your skirt and jacket And veil, or you'll lack it; Pike and trout wait a racket; Sails flap free. Waken, Amaryllis, darling, waken! Let me not by thy smile be forsaken: Then by dolphins and fair sirens overtaken, In our gay ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of furniture, or a labor-saving machine, and then coolly finished their duties, and followed their employer. Mr. Schwartz showed him about closing the store, taking care of the furnace, etc., and Dennis saw that his place was no sinecure. Still it was not work, but its lack, that he dreaded, and his movements were so eager and earnest that a faint expression of surprise and curiosity tinged the broad, stolid face of Mr. Schwartz; but he only buttoned his coat to the chin and muttered, "New broom," and went his way homeward, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe |
