"Line of life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... living creature has its home? The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field and forest, the creepers in the grass, all go home. Most of them turn toward it when the day wanes. The call of home is the one voice heard and respected all the way down the line of life. And, ye know, the most wonderful and mysterious thing in nature is the power that fool animals have to go home through great distances, like the turtle that swam from the Bay of Biscay to his home off Van Dieman's Land. Somehow coming over in a ship he had blazed a trail through the pathless ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... modern times. Aristophanes, he maintains, did not possess the genuine element in question. Allowing the claims of the great satirist to genius, he had not reached the perennial springs of cheerfulness in the depths of the human soul. In his gayest arabesques, we trace the eternal line of life, but the deep, monotonous echo of death is always nigh. He still had the sorrows which grieve the strong humorist of every age. He could not escape the deep woe of seeing social right and human happiness trodden under foot by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into very good society. Sam was a dashing fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr. Ringwood at the Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and the honorable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being well to do IN A CERTAIN QUARTER; and he had had a game of billiards with the Baron, at the Estaminy, "a very distangy place, where you smoke," ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with you, for the encouragement of the study of Natural History? I am afraid it will never be in my power to contribute anything to the object of the institution. Circumstances have thrown me into a very different line of life, and not choice, as I am happy to find in your case. In the year 1781, while confined to my room by a fall from my horse, I wrote some Notes, in answer to the inquiries of M. de Marbois, as to the natural and political state of Virginia. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... to thee, Jesus of Nazareth! Though in a manger thou drawest thy breath, Thou art greater than Life and Death, Greater than Joy or Woe! This cross upon the line of life Portendeth struggle, toil, and strife, And through a region with dangers rife ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Success and Fame, starting on the hand from the Line of Life and ascending to the base of the third finger, exactly coincides with the period in Lord Kitchener's career when he began to find ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... gold-bowed spectacles! Really, they were electro-plate, and the glass was plain (for the poor fellow's eyes were excellent). Then in four successive afternoons I taught him four speeches. I had found these would be quite enough for the supernumerary-Sepoy line of life, and it was well for me they were; for though he was good-natured, he was very shiftless, and it was, as our national proverb says, "like pulling teeth" to teach him. But at the end of the next week he could say, with quite ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... occasioned thereby, told on my health. I did not admit as much to myself, and I still kept on at the paper as usual through the very thick of it all. For one thing, this was necessary in order not to arouse the curiosity of many of the comrades, and moreover there is no doubt that whatever line of life we may adopt we gradually become the creatures of our habits, however much we may scoff at such a notion. Thus, though I had grown out of the first stage of youthful enthusiasm when I revelled in squalor and ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... of our being. Friendship has a limit, because of the infinite element in the soul. It is hard to kick against the pricks, but they are meant to drive us toward the true end of living. It is hard to be brought up by a limit along any line of life, but it is designed to send us to a deeper and richer development of our life. Man's limitation is God's occasion. Only God can fully satisfy ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... whole body in favor of the "gentleman," so that it would almost seem as if every book we read is republished in the person. The first thing that struck me in these gypsy hands was the fewness of the lines, their clearly defined sweep, and their simplicity. In every one the line of life was unbroken, and, in fine, one might think from a drawing of the hand, and without knowing who its owner might be, that he or she was of a type of character unknown in most great European cities,—a being gifted with special culture, and in a certain simple ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... sketches regularly, continuing to act as reporter for the Morning Chronicle, and getting his salary increased from five guineas to seven guineas a week. To be making an income of nearly four hundred pounds a year at the age of two or three and twenty, would be considered fortunate in any line of life. Sixty years ago, such an income represented a much more solid success than would now be the case. The sketches were collected and published in the beginning of the year 1836, the author receiving a hundred and fifty pounds for the copyright. He ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... strength in all kinds of love affairs that did not last long, and that the day when I really loved, or when, to use her expression, I was fairly caught, would be to me the prelude of intense sufferings, a real way of the Cross and of an illness of which I should never be cured. Then, as she examined my line of life, that which surrounds the thick part of the thumb, the lady in black suddenly grew gloomy, frowned and appeared to hesitate to go on to the end and continue my horoscope, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the ideas suggested by their superstitions. The difficulty is to comprehend how these superstitions came into existence. For instance, who first conceived the idea that a particular line in the palm of the hand is the line of life; and what can possibly have suggested so absurd a notion? To whom did the thought first present itself that the pips on playing-cards are significant of future events; and why did he think so? How did the 'grounds' of a teacup ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... and perhaps never to be revived in anything like its former extent), I did not much interfere. They could safely be left to the treatment of two as faithful, upright, and competent subordinates, both Englishmen, as ever a man was fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life altogether new and strange to him. I had come over with instructions to supply both their places with Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of knowing my own interest and the public's, I quietly kept hold of them, being ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he greatly doubted in his own mind the capacity of the brothers for the line of life they ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... When she was invited to an early wedding, She'd dress her head o'ernight, sponge up herself, And give her neck three lathers. Gaar. Ne'er a halter.") Laugh and lye downe Launcepresado Law, the spider's cobweb Legerity Letters of mart Leveret Limbo Line of life Linstock Long haire, treatise against (An allusion to William Prynne's tract The Unlovelinesse of Love-Lockes.) Loves Changelings Changed, MS. play founded on Sidney's Arcadia Low ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... his horse and had meant to ride home, but came back again at night, "just," he thought, "to have one more look at her before he entered on some line of life which would take him far away from ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... holds out very well while it is green, but has not substance enough for a backlog when dry. Seasoning green timber or men is always an experiment. A man may do very well in a simple, let us say, country or backwoods line of life, who would come to nothing in a more complicated civilization. City life is a severe trial. One man is struck with a dry-rot; another develops season-cracks; another shrinks and swells with every change of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had been at one time a tenor of some reputation. His wife, who had been a soprano, still taught young children to play the piano at low terms. His line of life had not been the shortest distance between two points and for short periods he had been driven to live by his wits. He had been a clerk in the Midland Railway, a canvasser for advertisements for The Irish Times and for The Freeman's Journal, a town traveller ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... youth went through a period of hardship and hand-to-mouth living which ended at last in the usual tramp to London. Here, after a period of semi-starvation, he found it impossible to get work at his own trade, and finally drifted into carpentering and cabinet-making. The beginnings of this new line of life were incredibly difficult, owing to the jealousy of his fellow-workmen, who had properly served their time to the trade, and did not see why an interloper from another trade, without qualifications, should be allowed to take the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought of him in the country—to his unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and his having his own likeness turned into the Saracen's head—to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a gipsy that tells him "he has a widow in his line of life"—to his doubts as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed witches—to his account of the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain—to his falling asleep at church, and his reproof of John Williams, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... may have some scruples which prevent my adoption of that rising line of life you have proposed to me, yet you are very much mistaken if you imagine me so spiritless as any longer to subject myself to the frauds of that rascal MacGrawler. No! My present intention is to pay my old nurse a visit. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That was his line of life. It was in that capacity that he was known to the Devonshire world; it was as such that he journeyed about with his humble carpet-bag, staying away from his parsonage a night or two at a time; it was ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... line of life has to work hard. My motto is promptness. I have no time to waste on superfluity of any kind. I come to the point at once. Consequently, my first remark to the Baroness was ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... haven't undergone so many of these things as I have. But he's right to do it. It's his line of life; and when a man begins a thing he ought to go on with it. Where's Lufton ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... earthly tie she possessed. She saw, however, it was inevitable; the whole of her property, when every thing was sold, only amounted to three hundred pounds; and even if she could have lived on this in her native dale, she thought, on reflection, it was her duty to go into a more active line of life, at least for some years. Mr. Armstrong was decidedly of the same opinion; a change of scene and of habits he thought would amuse her mind, and prevent her dwelling on events which, from the melancholy attending their recollection, and the retirement in which she would live, ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... far enough back in time, may remain for a long period, or for ever, incapable of demonstration. The law will not strictly hold good in those cases in which an ancient form became adapted in its larval state to some special line of life, and transmitted the same larval state to a whole group of descendants; for such larvae will not resemble any still more ancient form in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... have that dread of it which their children have of being put in a dark closet. But I am not going to investigate the mysterious dread of death, or the even more mysterious attachment to life. I am merely recalling to my memory men whom I have seen stagger awhile and then fall out of the line of life. There is no more pathetic sight to me, than a man when he first finds that he is failing. Like a child, he cannot understand it. This strange feeling that he has never had before; that pain that must come from this or ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... cause to be ashamed of my grandmother, for every one who knew her said, and I am sure of it, that she was as worthy a woman in her line of life as ever lived. She gave good measure and charged honest prices, whether she was dealing in soft tack, fruit, vegetables, cheese, herrings, or any of the other miscellaneous articles with which she supplied the seamen of His Majesty's ships; and her daughter Polly, who assisted her, was acknowledged ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... very promising candidate for success or honors in any line of life. A young man can't set out in life with much less chance than when he starts his "daily" for a living. Yet the man who more than any other is responsible for the industrial regeneration of this continent started in life as a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway. Thomas Alva Edison was then ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a little in dread of this future husband of his niece, feeling there was a great gulf between them intellectually, the surgeon having a rare power in a line of life of which he knew nothing. Besides, he could not understand him,—not his homely, keen little face even. The eyes held their own thought, and never answered yours; but on the mouth there was a forlorn depression sometimes, like that of a man who, in spite of his fame, felt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... admired for their art, and however influential in irregular ways, were looked upon as in a degraded position, and no Roman who valued social regard would adopt this line of life. Among the Greeks and such Orientals as were under Greek influence no such stigma rested upon the profession, and therefore many of the chief actors of the imperial city had received their training in this ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker |
