"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shakespearian and other discoveries, which were found in a garret at Lamport Hall in 1867 by Mr. Edmonds, are too well-known and too recent to need description. In this case mere chance seems to have led to the preservation of works, the very existence of which set the ears of all lovers of ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... all very well to lay plans, but another matter to carry them out. Miss Gibbs usually locked the wire door behind her, only leaving it open when she went upstairs to fetch something and meant to return almost immediately. The mere fact of its difficulty increased Raymonde's zest for the adventure. Her wild, harum-scarum spirits welcomed the element of possible danger, and the imminence of discovery added an extra spice. For days she haunted the vicinity of the winding staircase, hiding in bedrooms ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle. There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what, which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will say this is mere fancy—and that is what I told myself at the first; but I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague, indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it seems a very ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... of talkers are nothing but mere shams in their art. They affect a knowledge of argumentative processes, and obtrude upon your attention by false reasoning conclusions which perhaps appear as legitimate as possible. You cannot deny, yet you cannot believe. You cannot refute by your logic, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... disappointment. It was the thought of the honor that was his in the eyes of the province, and not that he was to marry her, that set the lights dancing in his eyes! She hated him then for his very love; it was so sure and confident in its right to overlook hers in this petty attention from a mere boy, who had once condescended to praise ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... 'How can you know a mind which has no characteristics except that it is wholly and supremely competent? Mere mental powers won't give us a clue. We want to know the character which is behind all the personalities. Above all we want to know its foibles. If we had only a hint of some weakness ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... of nerve, grim humor and evidence of fidelity to duty. A mere wound in the head could not stop that driver from keeping up with the troops with ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... water, and a few sticks. The succinctest oven ever heard of; for your operation done, and your tiles flung out again, it is capable of all folding flat like a book." [Retzow, ii. 82 n.] Never till now had Wobersnow's oven been at fault: but in these Polish Villages, all of mere thatched hovels, there was not a tile to be found; and the Bakery, with astonishment, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... dined at his Club with him in the most luxurious fashion, quite regardless of expense. He was a capital host, but, like the magazines he wrote for, he only appeared replete once a month. His Press work he looked upon as mere bread and milk. His work was excellent, journalism which editors term "safe," neither too brilliant nor too dull, certainly having no trace ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... had heard what he said, she thought he was a noble character, better than anybody else. She was attracted by the courage of the king in refusing a sort of hospitality which was almost too much to offer a mere man, and thought about the fulfilment of her prayer for a husband. So she went into the garden herself. She drew near to the king and lovingly begged him to accept ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... loss might seem, it proved in reality a blessing to the English race. Forced to confine themselves to Great Britain, her kings became truly English, instead of French—which they had been hitherto. England ceased to be a mere appanage of Normandy, ruled by Norman nobles. The Normans who had settled in the island became sharply divided from those who remained in France, and Saxons and English-Normans became firmly welded into a united race. This is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... elixir fine Exhilarates like sparkling wine; Where mere existence brings a joy Life's trifling ills ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... you have missed something on two separate occasions, ma'am?" Hugh hastened to ask, beginning to realize now that "where there was smoke there must be a fire," and that after all there was something more in this affair than a mere specter brought into being through ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... Reginald's lips. When the second page slipped with seeming carelessness from the reader's hand, a sudden shudder ran through the boy's frame. It was as if an icy hand had gripped his heart. There could be no doubt of it. This was more than mere coincidence. It was plagiarism. He wanted to cry out. But the room swam before his eyes. Surely he must be dreaming. It was a dream. The faces of the audience, the lights, Reginald, Jack—all phantasmagoria of ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... inevitable. There is no reason whatever to suppose that he was not doing his best for the Virginians; he deserved their gratitude; and he got it for the time being. The accusations of treachery against him were afterthoughts, and must be set down to mere vulgar rancor, unless, at least, some faint shadow of proof is advanced. When the Revolutionary war broke out, however, the earl, undoubtedly, like so many other British officials, advocated the most outrageous measures to put down ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Connecticut, in 1800, his father being a shoemaker and tanner, who, five years later, moved to Hudson, Ohio, then a mere outpost in the wilderness. He was soon expert in woodcraft, and he relates how, when he was six years old, an Indian boy gave him a yellow marble, the first he had ever seen, and which he treasured for a long time. He had little or no schooling, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... not a mere boundless self-love, the purism of perfection, an incapacity to accept our human condition, a tacit protest against the order of the world, which lies at the root of my inertia? It means all or nothing, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this instance, we do not mean to insinuate, that it is common. We know that it was reprobated by many. All that we would infer from it is, that where men are habituated to a system of severity, they become wantonly cruel, and that the mere toleration of such an instrument of torture, in any country, is a clear indication, that this wretched class of men do not there enjoy the protection of any laws, that may be pretended to have ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... by an appeal to the supreme court, when Mr. Horne, the attorney-general, admitted that the imputation was unfounded, but succeeded in convincing the jury that no malice is to be inferred from the tenor of a libel when the writer cannot be supposed to be influenced by mere personal animosity. Mr. Dowling lost by his agency more than a ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... had expected an assault when the countryman assumed such a threatening attitude, and was compelled to laugh when the danger simmered down to a mere retort. ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... Egypt, and in August following, on the death of Mehemet Alh—who had been deposed in July 1848 on account of mental weakness,—Abbas succeeded to the pashalik. He has been generally described as a mere voluptuary, but Nubar Pasha spoke of him as a true Turkish gentleman of the old school. He was without question a reactionary, morose and taciturn, and spent nearly all his time shut up in his palace. He undid, as far ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... they knew how to elude the danger, and that any one else who braved it without using precautions met with death for their temerity. This is, in fact; the whole point of the question. Either those privileged persons took indispensable precautions; and in that case their boasted heroism is a mere juggler's trick; or they touched the infected without using precautions, and inoculated themselves with the plague, thus voluntarily encountering death, and then the story is really ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... done out the life so cleverly that for hundreds of years learned pedants and others have thought that the figure represented a real man, and altogether failed to perceive that it was a mere stuffed dummy clothed in an impossible coat, cunningly composed of the front of the left arm buttoned on to the back of the same left arm, as to form a double left armed apology for a man. Moreover, this dummy is surmounted by a hideous staring mask, furnished with an imaginary ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... very directness of human feeling makes his narrowing English a means of absolutely direct communication. Of all his works (and this is my own mere and unshared opinion) this ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... in joyance through the good days and the ill, Nor would shun the war's awaking; but now that the war was still They looked to the wethers' fleeces and what the ewes would yield, And led their bulls from the straw-stall, and drave their kine afield; And they dealt with mere and river and all waters of their land, And cast the glittering angle, and drew the net to the strand, And searched the rattling shallows, and many a rock-walled well, Where the silver-scaled sea-farers, and the crook-lipped bull-trout dwell. But most when their ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... that I was a mere child when they first came into my possession, accompanied with the charge that I should never part with them until they had done their office. I felt bound by my promise, I was afraid of losing them, and of those persons that I could ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a Lord Lieutenant, by a Lord Deputy or by Lords Justices. The King was absent. The Lord Lieutenant was absent. There was no Lord Deputy. There were no Lords Justices. The Act by which Tyrconnel had delegated his authority to a junto composed of his creatures was a mere nullity. The nation was therefore left without any legitimate chief, and might, without violating the allegiance due to the Crown, make temporary provision for its own safety. A deputation was sent to inform Berwick that he had assumed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... during the month that she had been at the Double R—riding out almost daily with him—he had forced her to see that he had taken a liking to her—more, she herself had observed the telltale signs of something deeper than mere liking. ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... proclaimed in 1336, during the reign of the Emperor Charles IV. 'That is true, Sire,' replied the Prince Primate I was mistaken; but how does it happen that your Majesty is so well acquainted with these matters?'—'When I was a mere sub-lieutenant in the artillery, said Napoleon,—at this beginning, there was on the part of the guests a marked movement of interest, and he continued, smiling,—when I had the honor to be simply sub-lieutenant in the artillery I remained three years in the garrison at Valence, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... of the history of our little hero, by giving them an account of the adventures which such a boy may be expected to meet with in making a tour of Europe. The books are intended to be books of instruction rather than of mere amusement; and, in perusing them, the reader may feel assured that all the information which they contain, not only in respect to the countries visited, but to the customs, usages, and modes of life that are ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... in your Excellency's letter corroborates the statement which they have made to this Government. The feelings of apprehension which were aroused in the minds of the people of Afghanistan by the mere announcement of the intention of the British Government to send a Mission to Kabul, before the Mission itself had actually started or arrived at Peshawar, have subsequently been fully justified by the statement in your Excellency's letter, that I should be held responsible for ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... you or Doyle. You can both hit back, and if you were any good would have hit back long ago in a way which Simpkins would have disliked intensely. But a clergyman is different. He can't defend himself. He is obliged, by the mere fact of being a clergyman, to sit down under every species of insult which any ill-conditioned corner-boy chooses to sling at him. There was a fellow in my parish, when I first went there, who thought he'd be perfectly ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... sat upon his throne, with his warriors on each hand, thousands and tens of thousands, clothed from head to foot in steel chain-mail. And the people and the women crowded to every window and bank and wall; while the Minuai stood together, a mere handful in the midst of that ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... "brisk;" we have the mirthful Taylor and the rugged sea-captain, the lady fair and free, and the lady gay. It may be objected that there is too great a sameness in the female characters: but no; the lady fair and free is brave and revengeful; the lady gay is simply gay, a mere insipid character, and introduced by the poet, no doubt, as a contrast to the turbulent and busy character of the other lady. The boisterous captain is a well-drawn and a well-supported character. He is rugged, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... of the march they saw the jungle on their right come to an end. It was succeeded by a vast expanse of shallow mere dotted with half-drowned, rushy islets, and swarming with crocodiles. After some hesitation, Grom decided to go on, though he was uneasy about forsaking the refuge of the trees. Some leagues ahead, however, and a little toward the left, he could see a low, thick-wooded ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... plague visibly upon them, not knowing either whither to go, or what to do, or indeed what they did. And many that did so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities, and perished in the streets or fields for mere want, or dropped down by[101] the raging violence of the fever upon them. Others wandered into the country, and went forward any way, as their desperation guided them, not knowing whither they went or would ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... of life where each single celled unit takes what it needs for its own good; it is the thing which keeps life in the four footed world; it is the highest concern of the priest who while he pretends to serve mere man and a mythological Saviour never loses sight of his own reward at the end of it. It is the basic principle underlying all religion; take out of it the personal, selfish consideration, 'Be good and you can go ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... With the mere mortal inhabitants, Israel was less ceremonious. Commanded by Jahveh to kill, extermination was but an act of piety. It was then, perhaps, that the Wars of Jahveh were sung, a paean that must have been resonant with cries, with the death-rattle of kingdoms, with the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionable than reflective. Nothing humanely great—great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of lives—has come from reflection. On the other hand, you cannot fail to see the power of mere words; such words as Glory, for instance, or Pity. I won't mention any more. They are not far to seek. Shouted with perseverance, with ardour, with conviction, these two by their sound alone have set whole nations in motion and upheaved the dry, hard ground ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... coffee used today is not roasted at or near the place where it is brewed, but in factories that are provided with special equipment for the roasting of coffee in a wholesale way. The reasons for this are various, partly relating to the mere economy of buying and manufacturing on a large scale, and partly relating to the trained skill that is needed both for selecting suitable green coffees to make a satisfactory blend, and for the roasting work itself. The proportion of consumers (including ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... wishing for such a sum on mortgage goes to see the advertiser; the advertiser says he must run down and look at the property on which the money is to be advanced; his journey and expenses will cost him a mere trifle,—say, twenty guineas. Let him speak confidently; let the gentleman very much want the money at the interest stated, and three to one but our sharper gets the twenty guineas,—so paltry a sum in comparison to L70,000 though so serious a sum had the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more than a mere curiosity of epistolary composition. I see in it the prophecy—strangely fulfilled in later years—of events in Mary's life, and in mine, which future pages are ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... employer of thieves, had been familiar with her. But hitherto, in what she was pleased to call her own set, she had always been treated with that courtesy which ladies seldom fail to receive. She understood it all. She knew how much of mere word-service there often is in such complimentary usage. But, nevertheless, it implies respect, and an acknowledgement of the position of her who is so respected. Lord George had treated her as ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... mere ejection of the -n in can, and that the mere lengthening of the vowel, are not irregularities, we learn from a knowledge of the processes that convert the Greek [Greek: odontos] (odontos) into ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... of much concern to the Convention) can excite no astonishment (although used by our enemies to show our inferiority in the scale of human beings); for, what opportunities have they possessed for mental cultivation or improvement? Mere ignorance, however, in a people divested of the means of acquiring information by books, or an extensive connection with the world, is no just criterion of their intellectual incapacity; and it had been actually seen, in various remarkable instances, that the degradation ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... signs of a kind of trial, to which I and other prisoners have been subjected this day, tell me that I am the victim of the treacherous calumny of a few aristocrats, patriots so called, of this house. The mere conjecture that this hellish machination will follow me to the tribunal of the revolution gives me no hope to see you again, my friend, no more to embrace you or our children. I speak not of my sorrow: my tender solicitude ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... peroration with a local allusion very cleverly introduced. "They probably knew him" (he said)—"those, at any rate, who happened to live near Kennington probably knew him—for one who earned his living by a form of sport, by a mere game, if they preferred so to call it." (Cheers.) "He was not there to defend himself, still less to defend cricket." (Hear, hear.) "He would only say that cricket was a game which demanded some skill and— especially when one bowled at the Oval" (loud cheers) "against Surrey" (cheers ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Oakwood girls rose as they watched. The Hillsdale Scouts did their steps perfectly, they had to admit, but they lacked "pep." The Winnebagos knew they could put a dash into their performance that would beat this mere mechanical perfection all hollow. Their nervousness left them; the music of the band, the presence of the crowd, the sight of themselves in their natty white uniforms had gone to their heads like wine. They were inspired; ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... speculation can truly comprehend and appreciate. She had been ambitious, and labored to obtain distinction as a writer; and this, under various fictitious signatures, was hers. She still studied and wrote, but with another aim, now, than mere desire of literary fame; wrote to warn others of the snares in which she had so long been entangled, and to point young seekers after truth to the only sure fountain. She was very lonely, but not unhappy. Georgia ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... itself a harmless, a useful, and I will add, gentlemen, a comforting article of domestic furniture? Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere cover for hidden fire—a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise, agreeably to a preconcerted system of correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a view to his contemplated desertion, and which I ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... province as in another, it was possible for a successful smuggler to make a living by a very few trips. The opportunity was largely used; children were trained by their parents for the illicit traffic, but the penalties were very severe. In the galleys were many salt-smugglers; people were shut up on mere suspicion, and in the crowded prisons of that day were carried off by jail-fevers.[Footnote: Necker, De l'Administration, ii. 1. Ibid., Compte rendu, 82, and see the map of France divided according to the gabelle in the same volume. Bailly, ii. 163. Clamageran, iii. 84 n., 296, 406. For ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... kinsman, perhaps, of the Pater Watteau tutored) as a man who had been "a sick man all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all." Camille Mauclair eloquently ends his study with the confession that the mere utterance of Watteau's name "suffices to evoke in men's minds a memory of the melancholy that was his, arrayed in garments of azure and rose. Ah! crepuscular Psyche, whose smile ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... as much As either hand may rightly clutch. In the taking of it breathe Prayer for all who lie beneath— Not the great nor well-bespoke, But the mere uncounted folk Of whose life and death is none Report or lamentation. Lay that earth upon thy heart, And ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Ray's surprise the young officer's eyes were averted, his face pale and troubled, and the answer was a mere mumble—"I didn't ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... no time for mere fault-finding. It is a time, however, for sober, considerate thought. It is a time when the best of the clergy and the best of the laity of every denomination need seriously to face a question which is not alone common to themselves but is a serious one confronting the entire Protestant Church. ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland
... exclaimed as she remained silent. "You said—Bah! Are mere words only to serve? You lay in my arms not a day since. What words could have been so eloquent? And your eyes—the look in them! Words! Ah, Anne, could I not see? Could I not read?" His hand was on her arm but she ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... not enlarge it. The horn was a King of fierce countenance, and destroyed wonderfully, and prospered and practised; that is, he prospered in his practises against the holy people: but Antiochus was frighted out of Egypt by a mere message of the Romans, and afterwards routed and baffled by the Jews. The horn was mighty by another's power, Antiochus acted by his own. The horn stood up against the Prince of the Host of heaven, the Prince of Princes; and this is the character not of Antiochus but of Antichrist. ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... greedily thirst after the blood of the English, for the many overthrows and dishonours they have received at our hands; whose weakness we have discovered to the world, and whose forces, at home, abroad, in Europe, in the Indies, by sea and by land, even with mere handfuls of men and ships on our sides, we have overthrown and dishonoured? Let not therefore any Englishman, of what religion soever, have other opinion of these Spaniards or their abettors, but that those whom they seek to win ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... arithmetical adjustment. This is probably a graver error than apparent formlessness. Design and logic and unity there must surely be; but any obtrusive evidence of mathematical calculation must degrade music to the level of a mere handicraft. ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... sooth, a strange and monstrous thing to see him so unwavering and bold, flinching before no ignominy, shrinking not to speak openly the thing before the mere accusation of which other men's blood would ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sate long time, to view The champions with such horrid strokes offend, Nor sign of trouble in the warriors true Behold, nor yet of weariness, commend Them with just praises, as the worthiest two That are, where'er the sea's wide arms extend. They deem these of mere toil and labour long Must die, save they be strongest of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... had met him walking in Grafton Street with Violet; yesterday she had caught sight of him driving towards Fitzwilliam Place in a four-wheeler. She had fortunately a visit to pay in that neighbourhood, and was rewarded by seeing the Marquis's cab draw up before the Scullys' door. The mere fact that he should use a cab instead of an outside car was a point to consider, but when she noticed that one of the blinds was partially drawn down, her heart sank. Nor did the secret of this suspicious visit long remain her exclusive property. As if revealed by those mysteriously ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the palace cloister, he was unable to stand. The gout, his life-long companion, had of late so tortured him in the hands and feet that the mere touch of a linen sheet was painful to him. By the middle of July a low fever had attacked him, which rapidly reduced his strength. Moreover, a new and terrible symptom of the utter disintegration of his physical constitution ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ran, without channel, over the grass! But sweet as was its song, I dared not drink of it; I kept walking on, hoping after the light, and listening to the familiar sound so long unheard—for that of the hot stream was very different. The mere wetting of my feet in it, however, had so refreshed me, that I went on without fatigue till the darkness began to grow thinner, and I knew the sun was drawing nigh. A few minutes more, and I could discern, against the pale aurora, the wall-towers of a city—seemingly old as time itself. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... which, Rose had informed him, she was exceedingly fond. These, to his great annoyance, were always carefully deposited in a glass on the dining-room table; for Isabel had remarked in his manner toward her more than mere politeness, and endeavored as much as possible to check his growing attentions. But all his acts of kindness were done with so much tact and consideration, as to leave her no alternative, and oblige her to receive them. Neither was there anything in his behaviour or conversation ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... that the real life of the place is the river behind these houses; even the leisurely little railway station does not seem of much consequence, though it acts as a feeder of the boats that busily ply here. Quite obviously this is no resort of mere pleasure, and it is all the more pleasurable for that; it has set itself to live sturdily, not troubling to attract the idler and the luxurious. Fowey is not altogether content to repose on its memories, though these are great. Generations of those who laboured on deep waters have ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... named Flynn and Jacobi. He discharged these two men and sent them out of the camp over Wells's protest. But even then he had a sense of failure. The trouble was deeper than was manifest upon the surface. No mere raise in wages would clear it away. It was born of the world's sickness, with which the men from ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... known to be extremely rich, and asking in particular if the house possessed a priests' hiding-hole, and if so, exactly where it was located—a man who threatened evil if the information were withheld. Could all this, I could not help wondering, be mere coincidence? Then on the top of it came that extraordinary telegram sent to Dulcie from London, with ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... the northern part of Alaska—that is, beyond the Endicott Range—to obtain this rare plant for me. You have already flown over the North Pole and a trip which carries one only three or four degrees beyond the Arctic Circle is a mere bagatelle to you." ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... any Aladdin. Free! I'm a crazy sort of a beggar, my little love—that same thing in me hungers and thirsts and aches for freedom. I go half mad when people or events try to hold me—you, wise beyond wisdom, never will. Somehow, between us, we've struck the spark that turns a mere piece of machinery into a wonder with wings—somehow, you are forever setting me free. It is your voice—your voice of silver and peace—that's eternally whispering 'Contact!' to me—and I am released, heart, soul, and body! And because you speed me on my way, Janie, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... under my feet: there is one way to a woman's affections, and that is frankness to the uttermost. I thought no longer, ere I spoke, if this sentiment should make me ridiculous, or that sentiment too readily display my fondness, but spoke out as one in a mere gallantry. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... first to take off. He shot downward and as he gained momentum sent back a cry that floated up eerily. Teeny-bits poised at the edge and took a deep breath. This was living. Down there, growing smaller and smaller, a moving speck that seemed a mere shadow on the snow, was a new friend of his. It seemed strange that this was one of the outcomes of the Jefferson-Ridgley game: that from so desperate a struggle had arisen this opportunity to know the leader of the purple for whom he held ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... is lonely. They are very loathsome. The common polecat has made them so like himself that they are fit only for his company. They have became mere refuse. They are very loathsome. The common opossum has made them so like himself that they are fit only to be with him. They are very loathsome. Even the crow has made them so like himself that they are fit only for his company. They are very loathsome. The miserable rain-crow ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... but the same maneuver was twice repeated, and in spite of her fierce attacks on doors and bars the Proprietor, who had acquired through his lifetime association with the great cats as much of their quickness of movement as it is given to mere man to learn, removed the three cubs without receiving ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... of Milady as a brother about to go for a mere walk takes leave of his sister, kissing ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fastened down so tight, that the united strength of the two little men was unable to force them open. They toiled and moiled till they were quite exhausted, but all in vain. In this perplexity a word of advice was worth something. Nutcracker's big blue eyes started out of his head from the mere effort of considering and contriving, till they looked like those of a crayfish; Harlequin, on the contrary, never lost heart or ceased his merriment for an instant. He twirled round and round like a top, looking for help on all sides; and ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... species; men intended for Official business, in which the Prince himself is now to be occupied. The Prince has four lackeys, two pages, one valet. He wears his sword, but has no sword-tash (PORTE EPEE), much less an officer's uniform: a mere Prince put upon his good behavior again; not yet a soldier of the Prussian Army, only hoping to become so again. He wears a light-gray dress, "HECHTGRAUER (pike-gray) frock with narrow silver cordings;" and must recover his uniform, by proving ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... really thoughtful student of science satisfied with the foolish notion that the brain is what thinks and remembers and wills. He looks upon a human brain, on the dissecting table, a mere mass of cells and nerve centres suffused with blood, and he thinks of the glorious poems and the mighty intellectual efforts and the noble thoughts of God and Righteousness, and perforce he laughs at the thought that that poor bleeding thing originated them. Something within him indignantly replies: ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... guide on the art of speaking the language so as to make the thought it expresses clear and impressive. It is a departure from the old and conventional methods which have tended so often to make mere automatons on the platform or stage instead ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... not yet," said the venerable patriarch. "Why, you are both of you mere children; she can't get a house, and how ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... events, it is perhaps ordained that wild animals should be subdued by man to his use at the expense of such tortures as those described in the work before us. Mere amusement, therefore, is too light a motive for dealing such wounds and death Mr. Cumming owns to; but he had other motives,—besides a considerable profit he has reaped in trophies, ivory, fur, &c., he ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... action, and the laws of natural forces. It would be as if in gravitation or electric forces, one were to confound the particles acting on each other with the space across which they are acting, and would, I think, shut the door to advancement. Mere space cannot act as matter acts, even though the utmost latitude be allowed to the hypothesis of an ether; and admitting that hypothesis, it would be a large additional assumption to suppose that the lines of magnetic force are vibrations carried on by it, whilst ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... I replied. "The barge of my old ship, the Colossus, was rigged as a fore-and-aft schooner, and I've sailed her many's the time; and I suppose all fore-and-afters are handled in pretty much the same way. The matter of mere size won't make very much difference, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... specimens, at Messrs. Puttick & Simpson's in 1906. This mirror sold for L100. The figures represent Charles I. and Queen Henrietta Maria, one on either side of the mirror. The figure at the top of the frame is difficult to understand; whether she is an angel or a mere Court lady must be left to conjecture. The rolling clouds and the blazing sun are above her head, and a peacock, with tail displayed, is on one side and a happy-looking stag on the other. Two royal residences adorn ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... whose heart becometh full of evil thoughts, whensoever he seeth me, and he wisheth to carry out his fell design and plunder me. He is like a wild bull seeking to slay the bull of a herd of tame cattle so that he may make the cows his own. Or rather he is a mere braggart who wisheth to seize the property which I have collected by my prudence, and not an experienced warrior. Or rather he is a bull that loveth to fight, and that loveth to make attacks repeatedly, fearing that otherwise some other animal will prove to be his equal. If, however, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... human weakness on this point. On strict Stoical principles, we ought to treat the afflictions and the death of others with the same frigid indifference as our own; for why should a man feel for a second person more than he ought to feel for himself, as a mere unit in the infinitude of the Universe? This is the contradiction inseparable from any system that begins by abjuring pleasure, and relief or protection from pain, as the ends of life. Even granting that we regard pleasure and relief from pain as of no importance in our own ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the center and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. An absence of infrastructure, UN sanctions on the down-sized ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... waters of certain Genoese corsairs from the Levant, who, scouring the coast of Armenia, had captured not a few boys, to purchase of them some of these youngsters, supposing them to be Turks; among whom, albeit most shewed as mere shepherd boys, there was one, Teodoro, by name, whose less rustic mien seemed to betoken gentle blood. Who, though still treated as a slave, was suffered to grow up in the house with Messer Amerigo's children, and, nature getting the better of circumstance, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... lines of Richmond and Petersburg began in the early days of April, and the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia fell back, more than one hundred miles, before its overpowering antagonists, repeatedly presenting front to the latter and giving battle so as to check his progress. Finally, from mere exhaustion, less than eight thousand men with arms in their hands, of the noblest army that ever fought 'in the tide of time,' were surrendered at Appomattox to an army of 150,000 men; the sword of Robert E. Lee, without a blemish on it, was sheathed forever; and the flag, to ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... free To be good or bad, Sane or mad, Merry or grim As the mood may be,— Free as the whim Of a spook on a spree,— Free to be oddities, Not mere commodities, Stupid and salable, Wholly available, Ranged upon shelves; Each with his puny form In the same uniform, Cramped and disabled; We are not labelled, We ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... an assimilation to divinity, in the greatest perfection of which human nature is capable, whatever contributes to this is to be ardently pursued; but whatever has a different tendency, however necessary it may be to the wants and conveniences of the mere animal life, is comparatively little and vile. Hence it necessary to pass rapidly from things visible and audible, to those which are alone seen by the eye of intellect. For the mathematical sciences, when properly studied, move the inherent knowledge of the soul; awaken its ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... that my father had strong religious feeling. He took "The Signs of the Times" for over forty years, reading all those experiences with the deepest emotion. I remember when a mere lad hearing him pray in the hog-pen. It was a time of unusual religious excitement with him, no doubt; I heard, and ran away, knowing it was not for me ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... made was greatly widened at the period of the crusades. However serious may have been the alienation between the East and West at the time of their separation, it is clear that the Greeks were not regarded by the Latins as a mere heretical sect, for one of the primary objects with which the First Crusade was undertaken was the deliverance of the Eastern Empire from the attacks of the Mahometans. But the familiarity which arose from the presence of the crusaders on Greek soil ripened the seeds of mutual ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... now we may conjecture?" continued Glenarvan. "That the shipwreck occurred in the southern seas; and here I would draw your attention at once to the incomplete word GONIE. Doesn't the name of the country strike you even in the mere mention of it?" ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... knowledge accessible to us, could not be arrived at in a very early stage of the progress of thought. Men have not even now left off hoping for other knowledge, nor believing that they have attained it; and that, when attained, it is, in some undefinable manner, greatly more precious than mere knowledge of sequences and co-existences. The true doctrine was not seen in its full clearness even by Bacon, though it is the result to which all his speculations tend: still less by Descartes. It was, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... are not the mere experiments a brief description of them would indicate, but are among the important processes for the mechanical products of modern times. The extensive nickel-plating that became a permanent fad in this country ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... into your hearts. You will do not merely what is pleasant, but what is right; you will not be your own slaves, you will be your own masters, and God's loyal and obedient sons; you will not be, as too many are, mere animals going about in the shape of men, but truly men at heart, who are not afraid of pain, poverty, shame, trouble, or death itself, when they are in the right path, about the work to which God has ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... frightful to him. He felt all at once strangely young, like a child, and a pitiful sense of injury was over him, but the sense of injury was not for himself alone, but for all mankind. He realised that all mankind was enormously pitiful and injured, by the mere fact of their obligatory existence. And he wished more than anything in the world for some understanding soul with whom to share his sense of the ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ourselves to believe that some theatrical goblet really contains a fluid of magical efficacy. Unluckily, however, and the misfortune illustrates the inconvenience of combining politics with fiction, Disraeli had something to say, and still more unluckily that something was a mere nothing. It was the creed of Young England; and even greater imaginative power might have failed in the effort to instil the most temporary vitality into that flimsy collection of sham beliefs. A mere sentimentalist might possibly have introduced it in such a way as to impress us at ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... dwelt the more emphatically upon the purely sensuous aspects of early Greek art, on the beauty and charm of its mere material and workmanship, the grace of hand in it, its chryselephantine character, because the direction of all the more general criticism since Lessing has been, somewhat one-sidedly, towards the ideal or abstract element in Greek art, towards ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... brought his gunstock to his shoulder. Then he hesitated, finger on trigger, for the lion in his path was no burly gamekeeper, as, for the first moment, he had supposed. It was a woman who faced him—a mere girl of twenty, whose slender figure looked somehow boyish in its knitted sports coat and very short, workmanlike skirt. The suggestion of boyishness was emphasized by her attitude, as she stood squarely planted in front of Black Brady, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... place enough when once fairly set in order. There was an abundance of sunshine, fire-wood was plenty, and so small a space was easily kept tidy. Imogen, when she reviewed her resources, realized how wise Lionel had been in recommending her to bring more ornamental things and fewer articles of mere use, such as tapes and buttons. Buttons and tapes were easy enough to come by; but things to make the house pretty were difficult to obtain and cost a great deal. She made the most of her few possessions, and supplied what was lacking with ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... should be as follows: Sow the seed at the natural season, soon as ripe, on moist vegetable soil; do not cover it with more than a mere dash of sand; the aspect should be north, but with a little shade any other will do; the seedlings will be pretty strong by the time of the early frosts; about that time they should, on dry days, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... Then he noted that something was wrong. Teola, pale and wretched, had gradually placed a greater distance between herself and the wooden box. Tess had involuntarily drawn closer to it. She dully comprehended that Teola was ashamed of the rabbit-like body, struggling for a mere existence. Expressions of consternation, of indecision and terror swept over her face. Her eyes dropped for an instant upon the silent infant. The child gave one great yawn, and whiningly dropped the sugar rag. Just at this juncture, lightning flashed through the cracked window and played ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... alive, the result is inevitable: to one who does nothing but the same work from early morning until late at night and who never comes in contact with the outside world except four times a month, the work soon sinks to mere drudgery. ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... plan which you have recommended. The question, whether the men who flourished above one hundred years ago, are to be accounted ancients, has been started by my friend Aper, and, I believe, it is of the first impression. But it is a mere dispute about words. The discussion of it is of no moment, provided it be granted, whether we call them ancients, or our predecessors, or give them any other appellation, that the eloquence of those times was superior to that of the present age. When Aper tells us, that ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... But such pleas do no more than suggest other faults of swearing, and good arguments against it; its impertinence, its abuse of speech, its disgracing the practiser of it in point of judgment and capacity. For so it is, oaths as they commonly pass are mere excrescences of speech, which do nothing but encumber and deform it; they so embellish discourse, as a wen or a scab do beautify a face, as a patch or a spot ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... ran over both listeners. Spinrobin, holding a cold little hand in his, dreaded unuttered sentences. For if mere letters could spell so vast a message, what must be the meaning of a whole syllable, and what the dire content of the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... works, though in other respects very excellent, it is a considerable objection that the anatomical descriptions are much mixed with hypothetical speculation and reasonings on properties, and that the facts are by no means always distinguished from mere matters of opinion. At the same time J. G. Haase published an account of the lymphatics of the skin and intestines, and the plexiform nets ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... science. She had been sending her young men to German seats of learning, and had based the reorganization of her army upon the German military system. But she did not believe that a treaty was a mere "scrap of paper," and was determined to fulfill her obligations ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... world is so liberal to bestow on me? Where could I possibly, without I had stole it, acquire such a treasure?" "Why, truly," says Adams, "I have been always of your opinion; I have wondered as well as yourself with what confidence they could report such things of you, which have to me appeared as mere impossibilities; for you know, sir, and I have often heard you say it, that your wealth is of your own acquisition; and can it be credible that in your short time you should have amassed such a heap of treasure as these people will have you worth? Indeed, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... Carson and her mother by chance in Paris, at the rooms of Father Paul, where they had each gone on the same errand, and since that meeting his whole manner toward the two worlds in which he lived had altered so strangely that mere ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... If instead of "speech" the word "utterance" had been used, as including all possible modes of intelligent communication, the statement might pass without criticism. But it may be doubted if there is any more necessary connection between abstract ideas and sounds, the mere signs of thought, that strike the ear, than there is between the same ideas and signs addressed only to ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... permitted to criticise the first words of our Constitution, I would remark, that what I complain of is something more than a mere metaphysical subtilty, as might seem ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... you are determined to persevere. You are impetuous, not thoughtless, with your brain clouded with drink, and for the mere excitement of the thing, you are determined to risk all in a contest for which there is no chance for you,—and by which you acknowledge you will be driven to self-destruction, as ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... here want mere commendatory phrases, whose stereotyped faces appear again and again. We want just appreciation, just censure. Thus our criticism is not to be considered unkind. Nay, we not only owe it to the truth and to ourselves in Miss Anderson's case, to state the existence of faults ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... dreamily mixed up the infirmities of his present condition with the repose of the approaching one, being haunted by a notion that the damp earth, under the grass and dandelions, must needs be pernicious for his cough and his rheumatism. But, this morning, the cheerful sunbeams, or the mere taste of his grandson's cordial that he had taken at bedtime, or the fitful vigor that often sports irreverently with aged people, had caused an unfrozen drop of youthfulness, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to leisure as for its sake to neglect his neighbour's profit; neither should any man be so devoted to the active life as to forget the thought of God. For in our leisured life we are not to find delight in mere idle repose, but the seeking and finding of the truth must be our aim; each must strive to advance in that, to hold fast what he finds, and yet not to grudge it to his neighbour. Similarly, in the life of action: ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... said calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a noxious drug'—that is the terminology which describes the offence—will be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened and removed the straps at her wrists ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... a mere prelude to an other which has no limits. It is a little portion of duration. As death leaves us, so the day of judgement will ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... can take any of twenty-two forms, which are not compounded according to any rule. Again, there are twenty-eight sets of irregular plurals, which are quite arbitrary. No grammarian has ever given any explanation about them. All mere matters of memory. The very alphabet shows the richness of the language. There are twenty-nine letters, besides vowel points; and each letter is written in four different ways, so that it is different when isolated, when in the beginning, middle, or ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sibylline books. Then I will turn to the efforts of the lay priesthoods, pontifices and augurs, to meet the calls of new experience by formalising the old religion still more completely in the name of the State, until it became a mere skeleton of dry bones, without life and power. That will bring us to the great turning-point in Roman history, the war with Hannibal, to the religious history of which I shall devote my fourth lecture; and the fifth will pursue the subject into ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... depths, which are to heal the nations; here the sacrifice is being offered which is to expiate the sin of man, and bring peace to myriads of penitents; here the last Adam at the tree undoes the deadly work wrought by the first at another tree. This is no mere martyr's last agony; but a sacrifice, premeditated, prearranged, the effects of which have already been prevalent in securing the remission of sins done aforetime. This is an event for which millenniums have been preparing, and to which millenniums ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... wonderfully blue, the stars so real, alive and sparkling, that all other stars she had ever seen paled before them into mere imitations. The spot looked like one of Taylor's pictures of the Holy Land. She half expected to see a shepherd with his crook and sheep approaching her out of the dim shadows, or a turbaned, white-robed David with his lifted hands of prayer standing ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... known, until revealed at the solemn tribunal of the last day. But we dare not hope that such men are rare, though circumstances of self-interest combine to form a class of slave-owners of a higher grade. These are men who look upon their slaves as we do upon our cows and horses—as mere animal property, of greater or less value according to the care which is taken of them. The slaves of these persons are well clothed, lodged, and fed; they are not overworked, and dancing, singing, and other ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... INGENIOSO. A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath by observation, and makes only nature privy to what he indites; so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying; a bold whoreson, as confident now in making of[54] a book, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Barkman upon the scene a succession of new experiences began for Bancroft. He was still determined not to be seduced into making Loo his wife. But now the jealousy that is born of desire and vanity tormented him, and the mere thought that Barkman might marry and live with her irritated him intensely. She was worthy of better things than marriage with such a man. She was vain, no doubt, and lacking in the finer sensibilities, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... have more knowledge or more power than he; and as to that pretence which is usually made use of, that Life is meant as a blessing, and that therefore when it becomes an evil, we may if we think fit resign it, it is indeed but a mere sophistry. We acknowledge God to be infinite in all perfections, and consequently in wisdom and power; from the latter we receive our existence in this Life, and as to the measure it depends wholly on the former; so that if we from the shallow dictates of our reason contemptuously shorten ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... see old Wortley Montagu is dead at last, at eighty- three. It was not mere avarice and its companion abstinence, that kept him alive so long. He every day drank, I think it was, half-a-pint of tokay, which he imported himself from Hungary in greater quantity than he could use, and sold the overplus for any price he chose to set ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... which in these days it is as difficult to imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all Europe flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a party by the mere fact of his position. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... mightily. Then to talk of the King's family. He says many of the musique are ready to starve, they being five years behindhand for their wages; nay, Evens, the famous man upon the Harp having not his equal in the world, did the other day die for mere want, and was fain to be buried at the almes of the parish, and carried to his grave in the dark at night without one linke, but that Mr. Hingston met it by chance, and did give 12d. to buy two or three links. He says all must ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sins are unfittingly divided into sins of thought, word, and deed. For Augustine (De Trin. xii, 12) describes three stages of sin, of which the first is "when the carnal sense offers a bait," which is the sin of thought; the second stage is reached "when one is satisfied with the mere pleasure of thought"; and the third stage, "when consent is given to the deed." Now these three belong to the sin of thought. Therefore it is unfitting to reckon sin of thought as one ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the doctrines of mysticism which we have to consider is its belief that all evil is mere appearance, an illusion produced by the divisions and oppositions of the analytic intellect. Mysticism does not maintain that such things as cruelty, for example, are good, but it denies that they are real: they belong to ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... and deceived, and that the pretense that the guilty Angelo had been given an impartial trial was a farce. Every word of the court had been an accusation, a sneer, an acceptance of the defendant's guilt as a matter of course, an abuse far more subversive of our theory of government than the mere acquittal of a single criminal, for it struck at the very foundations of that liberty which the fathers had sought the shores of the ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... par Mme de Lasteyrie, sa fille, precedee d'une notice sur la vie de sa mere, Mme la ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... State, in the distinguished services rendered to her by him and through so many years of his life. The facts are as stated. It is true, the will was a clear bequest of all his estate to his brother, a resident of the State, and the memorandum a mere request, and this might have been destroyed or disobeyed with impunity. The will alone was the authoritative disposition of his estate; the brother claimed under this, and the property once in his possession, it was his to dispose of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the way to the cook's galley, a mere closet of a place just abaft the foremast. In entering one went down two or three steps. Here they found Neb (short for Nebraska), the cook, a short, fat jolly looking negro, who with his stove and cooking utensils so completely ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... his cruelty, treated as a child. March took it hard that he should be made to suffer in the presence of a co-ordinate power like himself, and began to dislike the old man out of proportion to his offence, which might have been mere want of taste, or an effect of mere embarrassment before him. But evidently, whatever rebellion his daughters had carried through against him, he had kept his dominion over this gentle spirit unbroken. March did not choose to make any response, but to let him continue, if he would, entirely ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in this serious way, it will be understood that the question of dress was not a mere frivolity with her. A week before the ball she stood in front of the large glass in her mother's room, contemplating herself, not with that satisfaction which it is generally supposed a pretty young woman ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... prayer and defiance and thanksgiving—he was ever at hand, to cross-question, to insinuate, to surmise, to bluster, to interpret, to terrify, to perplex, to vociferate: surely, this paragon of learning and virtue must know more about the devil than any mere layman could pretend to know; and they must accept his assurance and guidance. "I stake my reputation," he shouted, "upon the truth of these accusations." And he pointedly prayed that the trial might "have a good issue." When ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Aryyadeva says that whatever depends for its existence on anything else may be proved to be illusory; all our notions of external objects depend on space perceptions and notions of part and whole and should therefore be regarded as mere appearance. Knowing therefore that all that is dependent on others for establishing itself is illusory, no wise man should feel attachment or antipathy towards these mere phenomenal appearances. In his Cittavis'uddhiprakara@na he says that just as ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... history repeated itself, for the Germans were turned back at the beautiful river Marne, where the brave Americans and heroic French smashed their lines. The spectacular event in which the Americans participated was a mere incident of the great conflict raging across France, but the story must ever be one of the outstanding features of the war because of the effect it produced ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller |
