"Meagreness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the reader will know why, but this letter gave Rowland extraordinary pleasure. He liked its very brevity and meagreness, and there seemed to him an exquisite modesty in its saying nothing from the young girl herself. He delighted in the formal address and conclusion; they pleased him as he had been pleased by an angular ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... that the children cannot fail to benefit as well. Indeed, it is these various reforms which, in all probability, have conduced to a better school attendance than could be boasted of in the past. Many an educational reformer has had cause to wring his hands over the meagreness of attendance in days gone by. Even to-day it is not as it should be. It is lower than in England and in Scotland, but it has steadily risen, and continues to rise, and stands now at about 71 per cent., an advance of between ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... a more common-sense treatment that we want; for here is sufficient simplicity, but a simplicity barren of all satisfaction. And singularly enough, it seems, with all its meagreness, to pass easily into an ostentatious display. In these houses there is no thought of "architecture"; that is considered as something quite apart, and not essential to the well-building of the house. But for this very reason matters are not much changed when the owner determines to spend something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... weakened by enemies without and within; how, like limbs lopped from a stately tree, the themes [Footnote: Provinces.] richest in their yield of revenue have been wrested from the body of our State, until scarce more than the capital remains. I make the allusion in apology and excuse for the meagreness of what I have to bestow for thy many heroic services. Wert thou in the prime of manhood, I would bring thee into the palace. That being impossible, I must confine myself to amends within my power. First, take ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... extraordinary flow and fund of stories, remarked to his neighbour, 'I could not afford to spend at that rate.' Violet Fane is certainly lavishly extravagant of incident, plot, and character. But we must not quarrel with richness of subject-matter at a time when tenuity of purpose and meagreness of motive seem to be becoming the dominant notes of contemporary fiction. The side-issues of the story are so complex that it is difficult, almost impossible, to describe the plot in any adequate manner. The interest centres round a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... they seemed more my boys than ever before. What a reunion we had! The folks all about us didn't understand it in the least, but we did, and that was enough. I forgot my coarse clothes, my well-nigh empty pockets, my inability to buy the many beautiful things that kept tantalizing me, and the meagreness of my salary. These were all swallowed up in the joy of seeing the boys, and I wanted to proclaim to all and sundry; "These are my jewels." Those boys are noble, clean, upstanding fellows, and no schoolmaster could help being proud of them. Such as they nestle down in the heart of the schoolmaster ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... court German then went on. Mrs. Vanderlyn was plainly disappointed at the meagreness of Anna's family history, and did badly with her lesson; but she could not possibly complain. Anna had made no claims. She had accepted her purely of her own—she did not realize how much it, really, had been her son's—volition. Anna had ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... dating back to early childhood—the remembrance of a servant's face. Here is the tale, Marie. A thousand times I have gone over it to myself, only to be disappointed at its meagreness. My parents must have died when I was too young to have remembered them, judging from what this attendant seems to have told me. I have that impression resisting all arguments. My recollections all centre about a gray-haired man of the confidential-servant class. He was my companion ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... which was not in the back, but high up in the shoulders. His head, without being large, was fine. His eyes were of a dark hazel, and possessed uncommon expression. His nose, mouth, and chin were symmetrically, if not elegantly formed, and came short of beauty only because of that meagreness which marked his whole person. His complexion, light without redness, inclined to sallow, and suggested a temperament somewhat bilious. His dark brown hair had become thin above the forehead, revealing to advantage that most striking feature of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... emotions, showing the inner workings of his hero's mind from day to day, and multiplying petty details with convincing logic. But in his preoccupation for mental conditions he is apt to lose sight of the material side of life, and the symmetry of his novels is marred by a meagreness of physical detail and a lack of atmosphere. Zola has laid his finger upon Stendhal's real weakness when he points out that "the landscape, the climate, the time of day, the weather,.—Nature herself, in other words,—never ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... barefooted boys in tartan kilt's, and about twenty girls, all of the poorer class. The schoolmaster was one Donald Frazer, a good teacher, but a severe disciplinarian. Under him, William made some progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic; and though he himself has often lamented the meagreness of his school instruction, it is clear, from what he has since been enabled to accomplish, that these early lessons were enough at all events to set him fairly on the road of self-culture, and proved the fruitful seed ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... say to herself in the dark, "My dress only?" Mrs. Penniman's announcement struck her by its richness, not by its meagreness. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... accidents—that was surely proof enough of how his conscience had been encumbered. If any further proof were needed it would have been to be found in the fact that, as he perfectly now saw, he had ceased even to measure his meagreness, a meagreness that sprawled, in this retrospect, vague and comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped Hinterland from a rough coast-settlement. His conscience had been amusing itself for the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a book; he held ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... a pallid and limited society that Henry Neville and his wife frequented—a coterie of elderly, intellectual people, and their prematurely dried-out offspring. And intellectual in-breeding was thinning it to attenuation—to a bloodless meagreness in which they, who composed it, conceived ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers |
