"Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boys saw little more of the horrors of the petty war. Aboard the schooner what met their eyes were the triumphs of peace. The next day flags were flying, bells ringing, guns firing, and the whole of the inhabitants of the town were marching in procession and ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... trace any resemblance to it in a life so different; but the old-fashioned Calvinistic divine in his small country parish, revolving in an actual world of petty details, and in another world of grim theological speculation and absorption in the contemplation of death, must have seldom smiled. The young pastor was bound by no vow of celibacy, but he knew that his life must ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. In these moments of insight we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by day; we see, surrounding the narrow raft, illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... when he was silent, an unrest as of trouble he would not show. "The rascal has been doing something wrong," he said to himself; "he is afraid of being found out! And found out he is sure to be; he has not the brains to hide a thing! It's not murder—he ain't got the pluck for that; but it may be petty larceny!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... deified, and exercises a peculiar fatality over his fortune. The barbarism of Africa, may be attributed in part its great fertility, which enables its inhabitants to live without are but chiefly to its imperviousness to strangers. Every petty state is so surrounded with natural barriers, that it is isolated from the rest, and though it may be overrun and wasted, and part of its inhabitants carried into captivity, it has never been made to form a constituent ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... prince's coronet you wanted to dazzle my eyes—with the two hundred thousand subjects you offered me just now, you wanted me to corrupt my soul, and induce me to barter away the honor and greatness of France for the miserable people of a petty German prince! No, sir. I shall not sell my honor at so low a price. I stand here in the name of the French Republic and ask you, the representative of Austria, to fulfil what we have agreed upon at Campo Formic. Mentz must ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... earthly fortunes are actually precarious; and such an observation might inspire detachment from material things and a kind of philosophy. But what at first inspires sacrifice is a literal envy imputed to the gods, a spirit of vengeance and petty ill-will; so that they grudge a man even the good things which they cannot enjoy themselves. If the god is a tyrant, the votary will be a tax-payer surrendering his tithes to secure immunity from further levies or from attack by other potentates. God and man will be natural ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Government and Life of the Indians, they live in a kind of patriarchal Manner, variously diversify'd, not unlike the Tribes and Families mentioned in the Old Testament. Every small Town is a petty Kingdom govern'd by an absolute Monarch, assisted and advised by his great Men, selected out of the gravest, oldest, bravest, and richest; if I may allow their Dear-Skins, Peak and Roenoak (black and white Shells with Holes, which they wear on Strings about ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... his lifetime by popularity, but he is known now, and Byron is hardly the tenth part of a Shakespeare. Every storm must have its calm, and Byron took fame by storm. By a desperate daring he over-swept petty control like a rebellious flood, or a tempest worked up into madness by the quarrel of the elements, and he seemed to value that daring as the attainment of true fame. He looked upon Horace's "Art of Poetry" no doubt with esteem as ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great practitioners in Crawlers way?—how many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a noble nobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has an execution in his house—and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the morning he polished his sonnets, while at midnight he poached game from a neighboring estate. Our era bestows unstinted admiration upon the essays of Lord Bacon. How noble his aphorisms! How petty his envy and avarice! What scholarship was his, and what cunning also! With what splendor of argument does he plead for the advancement of learning and liberty! With what meanness does he take bribes from the rich against the poor! His mind seems ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... our first creation, before we sinned; but that similitude being at best but created, and since most unspeakably defiled, defaced and polluted with sin; there is now, no not in the best of men, as men, any sinless likeness, and similitude of God to be found, no such petty divine, or Godlike nature to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... informs us, that in his time, the petty British kings sent embassies to cultivate the alliance of Augustus, and make offerings in the Capitol: and that nearly the whole island was on terms of amity with the Romans, and, as well as the Gauls, paid a light tribute.—Strabo, B. iv. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... that he could obtain one of dried fruit, figs, currants, and raisins. We spent ten days there, and on our homeward voyage, keeping somewhat to the northward of our course, got among the islands of the Greek Archipelago. At that time a great many of the petty Greek chiefs, driven by the Turks from their hereditary domains, had established themselves on any rocky island they could find, with as many followers as they could collect, and nothing loth, used to carry on the respectable avocation of pirates. Some possessed only lateen-rigged craft, or ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... scenically sustained. But, in England, the vast intricacy and complex interweaving of property, of commerce, of commercial interests, of details infinite in number, and infinite in littleness, break down and fritter away into fractions and petty minutiae, the whole huge labyrinth of our public affairs. It is scarcely necessary to explain my meaning. In Athens, the question before the public assembly was, peace or war—before our House of Commons, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... with the interests of the capitalist class, which, oddly enough, shares his views: it needs many "hands," so as to own cheap labor-power that may fit it out for competition in the world's market. With such petty notions and measures, born of a near-sighted philistinism, the gigantic growing ills of the day are ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... hated greetings in the market-place, and there were generally loiterers in the streets to persecute him either about the events of the day, or about some petty pieces of business." ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... or other of its plainest rules. In such cases we have witnessed a sharpness and activity of intellect claiming almost our admiration. What contrivance of deception and artful evasion. What dexterity of quibble, and captious objection, and petty sophistry. What vigilance to observe how the plea in justification or excuse takes effect, and, if they perceive it does not succeed, what address in sliding into a different one. What quickness to avail themselves of any mistake, or apparent concession, in the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... detained in New York by a number of petty duties, but in a few days I shall set forth on my second pilgrimage to Morningtown. Shall I have any wit to persuade your father that my "infidelity" is not the unpardonable sin, or that my love for you is sufficient to cover even that sin and a host of others? And how will Jessica meet me? ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the latent cupidity of his soul, and he wants me to ride ahead, so that he can straggle along in the rear and investigate the contents of the purse at his leisure. While winking at the amusing little act of petty larceny already detected, I do not propose to give his kleptomaniac tendencies full swing, and so I meet his proposal to sowar and go ahead by peremptorily ordering ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... out of Port Sandwich, two reddish fish, about the size of large bream, and not unlike them, were caught with hook and line. On these fish most of the officers, and some of the petty officers, dined the next day. The night following, every one who had eaten of them was seized with violent pains in the head and bones, attended with a scorching heat all over the skin, and numbness in the joints. There remained no doubt that this was occasioned by the fish being of a poisonous ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... and Empires in my little day I have outlived, and yet I am not old; And when I look on this, the petty spray Of my own years of trouble, which have rolled Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away: Something—I know not what—does still uphold A spirit of slight patience;—not in vain, Even for its own sake, do ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... mechanism of a government which, en grand, becomes that of Delhi, Teheran, and Constantinople. The Governor farms the place from the Porte: he may do what he pleases as long as he pays his rent with punctuality and provides presents and douceurs for the Pasha of Mocha. He punishes the petty offences of theft, quarrels, and arson by fines, the bastinado, the stocks, or confinement in an Arish or thatch-hut: the latter is a severe penalty, as the prisoner must provide himself with food. In cases of murder, he either refers to Mocha or he carries out the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... respectable, ever was, or ever can be, really happy. As work is our life, show me what you can do, and I will show you what you are. I have spoken of love of one's work as the best preventive of merely low and vicious tastes. I will go farther and say that it is the best preservative against petty anxieties and the annoyances that arise out of indulged self-love. Men have thought before now that they could take refuge from trouble and vexation by sheltering themselves, as it wore, in a world of their own. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... he said. 'You'd think from the fuss he's made that the business of the place was at a standstill till we got to work. Perfect rot! There's never anything to do here till after lunch, except checking the stamps and petty cash, and I've done that ages ago. There are three letters. You may as well enter them. It all looks like work. But you'll find the best way is to wait till you get a couple of dozen or so, and then work them off in a batch. But if you see Rossiter about, then start stamping ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... education of the soul. But if you are unhappy over petty worries and trials, you are wearing yourself to no avail; and if you are allowing small things to irritate and harass you and to spoil the beautiful days for you, take yourself in hand ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... has investigation, done concerning the universe of which we are a part? In the old days, before doubt began its work, before men asked questions and demanded proof, we lived in a little, petty, tiny world, which the imagination of the superstitious and the fear of ignorant men had created. But the cycles and epicycles which Ptolemy devised, and by means of which he explained, as well as he knew how, the movements of the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... Romaine, do not let us be petty!" He drew in a chair and sat down. "Understand you have stolen a march upon me. You have introduced your soldier of Napoleon, and (how, I cannot conceive) he has been apparently accepted with favour. I ask ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... amused us? Did I not—but oh! what is man, that he dares so to accuse himself? My dear friend I promise you I will improve; I will no longer, as has ever been my habit, continue to ruminate on every petty vexation which fortune may dispense; I will enjoy the present, and the past shall be for me the past. No doubt you are right, my best of friends, there would be far less suffering amongst mankind, if men—and God ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... called Don Gumersindo, the possessor of a small entailed estate, one of those petty estates that, in olden times, owed their foundation to a foolish vanity. Any ordinary person, with the income derived from this estate, would have lived in continual difficulties, burdened by debts, and altogether cut off ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... will not let myself be corrupted and give myself up as lost, and yet I know that my thoughts are too great to be accepted from free conviction without slavishness by my living fellow-men. Therefore have I peace in this petty world under the heavy burden of my tremendous life. I did not confer it on myself and I have no choice. Were I to speak my mind freely and honestly, I should be either locked up or worshipped. I deserve neither one nor the other; but such is the nature of the ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... plunges beneath, and remains there as long as his breath holds out. He comes up again at a great distance, and lands out of sight; then, when he is supposed to be dead, lost forever to the sight of man, he rises up and has his vengeance. You have an enemy? Some petty imprudence will betray him. But, while he sees you standing by on the watch, he will be ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... be the cause of casualties. Military drill is constantly approaching greater simplicity, as experience shows that various particulars may be dispensed with. Formerly, when soldiers were kept up as part of the state pageants, they were subjected to numberless petty tribulations of drill, which no longer exist. Pipe-clayed belts, for example, have disappeared, except in the marine corps. Frederick the Great was the first who introduced into drill ease and quickness of execution, and since his day it has been ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... would not allow to herself that he had lied. His was not a petty nature given to lying, or to the faults of the weak and timid. He was a daring and defiant sinner, "risking damnation," as he had once said, for the desire of his heart. She could now understand his bitterness, his recurring moods of sadness and almost of remorse; ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... judgments of God, as they have an end, so the end of many of them prove the profit of those on whom they are inflicted, being I say, God's instrument of conversion to sinners; and so may fitly be compared to those petty judgments among men, as putting in the stocks, whipping, or burning in the hand: which punishments, and judgments, do often prove profitable to those that are punished with them; but eternal judgment, it is like those more severe judgments among ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... or demagogues, is generally so hateful, and at the same time so contemptible, so grasping, so irritable, so unscrupulous, and so oppressive—so much dictated by ambition, by antipathy and by vanity, so selfish, often so petty in its objects, and so regardless of human misery in its means, that a sovereign who behaves to other nations with merely the honesty and justice and forbearance which are usual between man and man, deserves the praise ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the watchword is: "Seek the type" ("Typum quaeras").[630] But they went a step further still. In opposition to Marcion's antitheses and his demonstration that the God of the Old Testament is a petty being and has enjoined petty, external observances, they seek to show in syntheses that the same may be said of the New. (See Irenaeus IV. 21-36). The effort of the older teachers to exclude everything outward ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... sooner arrived at Palpa than he found himself absolutely dependent upon Harry's knowledge of Spanish; and this advantage on Escombe's part served in a great measure to place the two upon a somewhat more equal footing, and gradually to suppress those acts of petty tyranny which Butler had at first evinced ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... concentration which could enable him to examine a subject to its close. He would begin to talk with me seriously enough, and with a due solemnity, about the suit against him; but, in a tangent, he would dart off to the consideration of some trifle, some household matter, or petty affair, of which, at any other time, he must have known that his hearers had no wish to hear. Poor Julia confirmed the conjectures which I entertained, but did not utter, by telling me that her father had changed very much in his ways ever since ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... that we were vested with any political power; and therefore we could not interfere, and what became of her I know not, though we were afterwards told that on her resigning her trinkets as her ransom she would be released. Indeed the personal ornaments of the petty chiefs are generally the point of some lawless proceeding like the one alluded to, as they are seldom possessed of sufficient capital in specie to purchase jewels, but exchange their grain and fruits for clothes and precious stones. I have mentioned the above circumstance ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... replied the Bishop, a grave, earnest-looking man. "Would that His Majesty himself could stand on these walls and see with his own eyes, as you do, this splendid patrimony of the crown of France. He would not dream of bartering it away in exchange for petty ends and corners of Germany and Flanders, as is rumored, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... cried, almost before I entered the office—"what do you think they've done? I knew that young puppy's coming was no good to us! Here have I been here twelve years next Michaelmas, and he not a year, and blest if I haven't got to hand over the petty cash to my lord, because old Merrett wants the dear child to get used to a sense of responsibility in the business! Sense of rot, ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... as the newspapers say, but Rigby the tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conquerers could not build up a strong, united kinigdom, but they had to content themselves with establishing a number of petty kingdoms which were constantly at war with each other. Later, the whole of England became subject to a sing sovereign. But the chief men of the separate kingdoms, which had now become simply shires or counties, retained ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... and insisted pertinaciously on the terms he felt his would-be Captain's necessity enabled him to command; and in the end Captain Semmes was fain to consent to the exorbitant rates of L4 10s. a month for seamen, L5 and L6 for petty officers, and L7 for firemen! "I was glad," he writes, "to get them even upon these terms, as I was afraid a large bounty in addition would be ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... shall be at some future time. My clarinet enables me to live in the humble manner I have always done. You remember, probably, that I had some skill in it, which I have since much improved. When travelling, my music was generally taken as payment for my bed and supper at the petty hostelries at which I put up; and when I came to a large town, I remained a few days, and usually gained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... long ago,' he answered, 'by both of us, I should think. When my mother bribed you to leave Ilfracombe, you bartered my love and my happiness for the petty price she was able to pay. I was a weak fool in those days, and I took the business to heart bitterly enough, God knows; but the lesson was a useful one, and it served its turn. I have never trusted myself to love ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... Finn', well in hand, and was on the watch for promising subscription books by other authors. Clemens, with his usual business vision and eye for results, with a generous disregard of detail, was supervising the larger preliminaries, and fulminating at the petty distractions and difficulties as they came along. Certain plays he was trying to place were enough to keep him pretty thoroughly upset during this period, and proof-reading never added to his happiness. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... discourses; I mean, in my own and in that which you recited out of the book. Would not any one who was himself of a noble and gentle nature, and who loved or ever had loved a nature like his own, when we tell of the petty causes of lovers' jealousies, and of their exceeding animosities, and of the injuries which they do to their beloved, have imagined that our ideas of love were taken from some haunt of sailors to which good manners were unknown—he would certainly never have ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... most satisfactory for Bulgaria. Now a chance is given her to fulfill her obligations to Russia, who made her free. Let the Bulgarian sword be thrust against the secular enemy of Slavdom and the petty differences be forgotten. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... stubbornness. But if they could not frighten or subdue him, they could still oppose and irritate him, and the contention was obstinate. This feeling even influenced the girls and women at the "mouth." They, too, organized in petty rebellion, ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Then Ganga merely flows a watery stream; the elephants that bear the skies, and Indra's steed, are brutal forms; the charms of Rembha are the fleeting beauties of earth's weak daughters, and the golden age, a term of years. Love is a petty archer; the mighty Hanuman, in thy proud discernment, is ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... Queen." There were also the Essenes, who allegorized the Law; the Hellenists, who mixed it up with Greek philosophy; the Therapeutists, who thought supreme happiness to be meditation; the political Herodians; the Zealots; and other petty sects who formed the great mass of the people, and held either with or against the two great schools. The decisions of both schools are remarkable for their concise brevity. A phrase suggests many thoughts—a single word awakes a whole train of reasoning. ...
— Hebrew Literature
... light and air. Rashi (1064-1105), whose genial activity began before the first crusade, opened up Jewish religious literature to the popular mind, by his systematic commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud. On the other hand, the Tossafists, the school of commentators succeeding him, by their petty quibbling and hairsplitting casuistry made the Talmudic books more intricate and less intelligible. Such being the intellectual bias of the age, a sober, rationalistic philosophy could not assert itself. In lieu of an Ibn Ezra or a Maimonides, we have Jehuda Hachassid and Eliezer of Worms, with ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... pursuit. Fergus sometimes indeed observed that he had offended Waverley, but, always intent upon some favourite plan or project of his own, he was never sufficiently aware of the extent or duration of his displeasure, so that the reiteration of these petty offences somewhat cooled the volunteer's extreme attachment to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... by private interests and personal revenge. Their unlimited popularity was also a warrant that they would receive far more efficient assistance in their arduous labors than could be expected by the bishops, whose position was generally that of antagonism to their flocks, and to the petty seigneurs and powerful barons whose ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... parlor at the foot of the stairs, and the Representatives were summoned two by two. The Representatives agreed not to answer to their names, and to reply to each name which should be called out, "He is not here." But those "Burgraves" who had accepted the hospitality of Colonel Feray considered such petty resistance unworthy of them, and answered to the calling out of their names. This drew the others after them. Everybody answered. Amongst the Legitimists some serio-comic scenes were enacted. They who alone were not threatened insisted on believing that they were ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... beautifully dressed, and took a drink at the bar and looked round to see who would drink with him. He could never catch a responsive eye, so was forced to drink alone. He hated drinking, anyway. In many ways he was like his father. The petty clerks who were at the office failed to see him at the race course. He hated the races, anyway. In many respects he was like his father. But he was far more lonely than his father had ever been. Thus he went about very lonely, too proud to associate with ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... bound in the close-meshed strait-waistcoat of endless toil, petty anxiety. The days and hours heaped in front of them obliterated all possible view ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... pleases me well. Be Caesar as my husband. So you will save my life and my throne, of which I vow to you an equal share. With the help of your Northmen and the legions I command and who cling to me, we can defeat Constantine and rule the world together. This petty fray is nothing. What matters it if some lives have been lost in a palace tumult? The world lies in your grasp; take it, Olaf, and, with ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... seemed and devoid of desire at the hour when he stood near the corpse of his daughter, joined with the silent smoke of the censer, which rose like light mist in the air. How petty he appeared at that juncture, crushed, as it were, by some giant hand—not a demi-god in any sense, or a Titan, but rather an insect, pushing into some narrow cranny to hide from a bird of prey. Kranitski had seen Darvid then, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... great account in their countries and provinces, which, when they come up to the seat of the estate, are but of mean rank and scarcely regarded; so these arts, being here placed with the principal and supreme sciences, seem petty things: yet to such as have chosen them to spend their labours and studies in them, they ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... were wet to the skin, and even on a scorching day in August that is anything but a pleasant sensation. Then, too, the way was rough, and the briers and brambles along the path scratched their hands and tore at their clothing. Ordinarily all these petty annoyances would have tended toward making them irritable and cross, but on this day all such trifles passed over their heads unnoticed. For had they not between them done a marvelous thing? To save one life—to have brought back from eternity one little soul—was there not joy enough ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... night, undermined his health. He fell sick, and was compelled to give up his hap-hazard calling, to the great gain of Hebrew poetry. He went into the brokerage business, and his small leisure he devoted to his muse. Harassed by petty, sordid cares, this broker was yet a genuine idealist, though it cannot be maintained that Lebensohn was of the stuff of which dreamers are made and great poets. But in his mind, rationalistic and logical to the point of dryness, ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... ideals than he could, with far greater command of Talmudic quotation, while their knowledge of how to run their local organization was naturally superior. But throughout all the mean surroundings, the petty wrangles, and the grotesque jealousies that tarnished the movement he retained his inner exaltation. He had at last found himself and found his art. He fell to work upon a great Michel-angelesque figure of the awakening genius of his people, blowing the trumpet of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... came back towards the bed. His large mind felt a sudden contempt for this petty and mean woman. He did not understand her, and the contempt he felt for her in some way hurt him. He was afraid of what she ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... country, and they boast that they see better than their neighbours what real love of one's country should consist in. But of late they have grown, more candid and are ashamed of the expression 'love of country,' and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as something injurious and petty and undignified. This is the truth, and I hold by it; but at the same time it is a phenomenon which has not been repeated at any other time or place; and therefore, though I hold to it as a fact, yet I recognize that it is an accidental phenomenon, and may ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rat when he's cornered! But I do believe that if he and Penfield could get in touch today, here in Genoa, he would hand over every dollar of those securities, and give up the job, and get back to his familiar old lairs among the New York poolrooms and wardheelers and petty criminals where he knows his enemies and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... home a smile; forget the petty cares, The dull, grim grind of all the day's affairs; The day is done, come be yourself awhile: To-night, to those who wait, take ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... notions of heaven, but all and each appear agreed upon the point that up into the stars alone their hoped-for heaven is to be found; and if all do not, in this agree, still there are some aspiring minds high soaring above sublunary things, above the petty disputes of differing creeds, and the vague promises they hold out to their votaries, who behold, in the firmament above, mighty and mysterious objects for ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... his time. For the soot and grime become them, and London as well, for that matter. A great impressionist, this smoke-smudger and wiper-out of detail, this believer in masses and simple surfaces, this destroyer of gingerbread ornaments, petty mouldings, and cheap flutings! ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... Medenham landed from Africa; during the preceding twelve months his license had been indorsed three times for exceeding the speed limit on the Brighton Road, and he had paid L40 in fines and costs to various petty sessional courts in Surrey and Sussex. Sunday, therefore, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... that awful chasm he trembled to contemplate, from which no agony of prayers or tears could save him. Nothing could comfort him now; Hattersley's rough attempts at consolation were utterly in vain. The world was nothing to him: life and all its interests, its petty cares and transient pleasures, were a cruel mockery. To talk of the past was to torture him with vain remorse; to refer to the future was to increase his anguish; and yet to be silent was to leave him a prey to his own regrets and apprehensions. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... eyes answered hers, but he was puzzled. Had he probed her aright? It was one of those intimate moments that come to nervously organized people, when the petty detail of acquaintanceship and fact is needless, when each one stands nearly confessed to the other. And then she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... enough to say somewhere: "I have always remarked that geometry leaves the mind just where it found it." Franklin also has clearly and plainly expressed a special aversion to mathematicians, in respect to their social qualities, and finds their petty contradictory ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and introduced at the Comedie Francaise." The only fault which I never have had, which I never shall have, is vulgarity. That was an injustice and a determination to hurt my feelings. Vitu was no friend of mine, but I understood from this way of attacking me that petty hatreds were lifting up their rattlesnake heads. All the low-down, little viper world was crawling about under my flowers and my laurels. I had known what was going on for a long time, and sometimes I had heard rattling behind the scenes. I wanted to have the enjoyment ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... survey and charting of the tortuous and difficult ship-channel between St. George's and the Dockyard, at once held a consultation with the Senior Naval Officer, in the Admiral's absence, and, as a result of this consultation, three naval petty officers were detailed to show the Germans the best fishing-grounds. At the same time naval patrol boats displayed a quite unusual activity inside the reefs. Both patrol boats and petty officers had their private orders, and I fancy that these steps resulted in very few ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... most characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty "proprieties" until everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of his ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... Marmaduke persevere in his disbelief; but every day some fresh wave of tidings floated in. Murder wholesale had surely been perpetrated. Now came stories of death-bells at Rouen from the fishermen on the coast; now markets and petty sessions discussed the foul slaughter of the Ambassador and his household; truly related how the Queen had put on mourning, and falsely that she had hung the French Ambassador, La Mothe Feneon. And Burleigh wrote to his old friend from London, that some horrible carnage had assuredly taken ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The stricken father was there, dragged from his dead by the petty concerns of this world which cannot bide for grief. He was as a sleep-walker. He had come into another universe. The hacienda sala, where his child lay mid tapers, where mumbled prayers arose, or this adobe, where uniformed men fouled ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... England nature; the solid self-respect which does not need—nor use—to put itself in the balance with anything else to be assured of its own quality. But part belonged to Diana's own personalty; in a simple, large nature, too simple and too large to feel small motives or to know petty issues. If her cheeks and brow were flushed at first, it was because the sun had been hot in the lot and Prince tiresome. She was as composedly herself as ever the young officer could be. But I think each of them was a little excited by the ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... that Erastus could afford to keep her in luxury, if he would, but some women are so constituted that they accept their fate rather than rebel, and Mary Hopkins lived the life of a slave, contenting herself with petty scoldings and bickerings that did nothing to relieve her ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... the other, he transformed it, within the space of thirty-seven years (which was the time that his reign lasted), into a great and nourishing Empire. It is not too much to say that, but for him, Parthia might have remained a more petty State on the outskirts of the Syrian kingdom, and, instead of becoming a rival to Rome, might have sunk shortly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... native blacks about the run, but by this time they were harmless enough: never killed shepherds, or took mutton without leave. They were somewhat addicted to petty larceny, but felony had been frightened out of their souls long ago. They knew all the station hands, and the station hands knew them. They soon spotted a new chum, and found out the soft side of him; and were generally able to coax or frighten him to give them tobacco, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... had in earning double the sum in the time I spent. Figure out the profit in that transaction if you can. Whatever it was, it was satisfactory, and indeed few things in life are sweeter than the practice of our pet and petty economies. We all have them. I once knew a very rich man who would light a match and race from one gas-jet to another until he burnt his fingers, lighting as many as he could before striking a second match. He would generally ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... determination, gallantry, patience and resource, the splendid training and high standard of discipline, which were necessary to success in this form of warfare. Lieutenant Charles G. Bonner, R.N.R., and Petty-Officer Ernest Pitcher, R.N., were awarded the V.C. for their services in this action, and many medals for conspicuous gallantry were also given to the splendid ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... the noblest parts of the immortal nature,—a waste and withering which are the almost certain consequence of violence done to its instincts and its laws. From these pains and terrors she suffered; and from some of smaller account,—from the petty insults, or speculations of the more coarse-minded of her neighbours, and the being too suddenly reminded by passing circumstances of the change which had come over her expectations and prospects; but her love, her forgiveness, her conviction of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... resignation of Mr. Landells, immediately promoted my son to the post he had vacated, which appointment the committee confirmed. Here there was perfect union and reciprocal understanding. Neither had petty jealousies or reserved views. The success of the expedition was their object, and personal glory their aim. The leader had every confidence in his second, and the second was proud of his leader. But Mr. Burke committed an error in the selection ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... that the men carry on a petty trade in feathers, but that their principal occupation, at least that from which they derive the largest emolument, consists in apprehending, and leading back to their masters, run-away slaves. For their services in this department, they ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... trees and crags in long steep shadows down the hill. Then the sloping rays, through furze and brush-land, kindling the sparkles of the dew, descended to the brink of the Dike, and scorning to halt at petty obstacles, with a hundred golden hurdles bridged ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... rather, you wish to know simply whether I dream of love? Very well, I dream only of that! Have I lovers, or have I not? I have none, and never shall have, but that will not be because of my virtue. I believe in nothing, except my own self-esteem and my contempt of others. The little intrigues, the petty passions, which I see in the world, make me indignant to the bottom of my soul. It seems to me that women who give themselves for so little must be base creatures. As for myself, I remember having said to you one day—it is a million years since then!—that my person is sacred to me; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... impatience and violent measures. But if we put ourselves back equitably into the ways of thinking prevalent then, the excitement about Dr. Hampden will not seem so unreasonable or so unjustifiable as it is sometimes assumed to be. The University legislation, indeed, to which it led was poor and petty, doing small and annoying things, because the University rulers dared not commit themselves to definite charges. But, in the first place, the provocation was great on the part of the Government in putting into the chief theological chair an unwelcome man who could ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... second town in size, possessed not more than some thirty thousand souls, while York, Norwich, and Exeter, which came next, had considerably fewer people than that. The bulk of the people lived in the country, either in the villages, or in the petty market-towns which were not much superior. The country squire class was the most important in the community. Below this, but likewise occupying a very important position in the country, were the clergy and yeomen. Probably at no time was the yeoman ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... take me for a Country Squire, whose Reputation will be crackt at the loss of a petty Thousand? You have my Note for it ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... I was compelled to swallow. For ten long years I had been serving my country incessantly as midshipman and master's mate, and now at the very moment when I felt sure that I was about to emerge from the subordinate rank of a petty officer, and to obtain my commission as a lieutenant, no longer to be subject to the midnight calls of quartermasters and the unnumbered snubs which patient midshipmen from their superiors take, I found all my hopes of my promotion ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... their birthright and to toil a field of hope; to industry the wealth that it creates, and to the toiler his dues. So liberty to brotherhood shall lead, and brotherhood to peace, and brotherhood and peace shall bring to unity all human families, and men shall live no more in petty strife for gain, but for the souls of men. The destinies then, as in Virgil's eye, shall spin life's web, and to their spindles say, 'Thus go forever and forever on!' He is the leader appointed by Heaven for sublime events. I am sent to him as a knight of God. ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... incomparable. That Giotto and his successors went on for two hundred years painting saints and miracles was not because the Church so ordained, nor from any extraordinary devoutness of the artists, but because they still needed an outward assurance that what they did was not the petty triviality it seemed. There must always remain the sense of an ulterior, undeveloped meaning; when that is laid bare, Art has become superfluous, and makes haste to withdraw into obscure regions. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... necessity be constituted. On the side of the court will be, all honors, offices, emoluments; every sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable petty services to individuals, into a spreading interest in their country. On the other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the court, and in opposition to its system. For his own person, no office, or emolument, or title; no promotion, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the prairie, never could think as clearly when her vision was bounded by walls. She had to have blue distance—the great, long look that swept away the little petty, trifling, hampering things, which so slavishly dominate our lives, if we will let them. So she took her way to a little lake behind the school, where with the school axe she had already made a seat for herself under two big poplar trees, and cut the lower branches of some of the smaller ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... needs, but retained the absolute simplicity of his earlier habits. When his publishers first proposed the notable public dinner in honor of his seventieth birthday he demurred, explaining to a member of his family that he did not want the bother of "buying a new pair of pants"—a petty anecdote, but somehow refreshing. So the rustic, shrewd, gentle old man waited for the end. He had known what it means to toil, to fight, to renounce, to eat his bread in tears, and to see some of his dreams come true. We have had, and shall have, more accomplished craftsmen in verse, but ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... which the artist materialises the private conceptions of his mind. It would hardly be possible to find a more sympathetic series of illustrations than those which Frank Reynolds drew for Keble Howard's idyll of Suburbia, entitled "The Smiths of Surbiton." The author constructed out of the petty doings and humdrum habits of suburban life a charming little story of simple people, and with equal cleverness the artist built up, out of these slight materials, a series of exquisitely natural pictures, which revealed the almost incredible fact that semi-detached ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... behave themselves neither in victory nor defeat. Yet none of the three had seen war as we have seen it. Shakespeare blamed great men, saying that "Could great men thunder as Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet; for every pelting petty officer would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder." What would Shakespeare have said if he had seen something far more destructive than thunder in the hand of every village laborer, and found on the ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... men within the limits of the camp; but stragglers who failed to return, and some who had been cut off, scalped and left for dead, but who had crawled back to die, convinced every one of the wisdom of the commanding officer's repeated orders and cautions. To chronicle the constant succession of petty skirmishes would be wearisome; yet they often resulted in torture and loss of life on the part of the soldiers, although the Indians in most ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... petty auctions in the States, a person is employed to bid up articles, in order to raise their price. Such a person is called a Peter Funk, probably from that name having frequently been given when things were bought in. In short, it is now used ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... us declare war on all meanness, snobbishness, petty or great jealousies, all forms of injustice, all forms of special privilege, all selfishness and all greed. Let us drop bombs on our prejudices! Let us send submarines to blow up all our poor little petty vanities, subterfuges and conceits, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... answered, after stepping back a pace to assure himself by a careful look that no one was remarking a colloquy which the time and the weather rendered suspicious. "Use them if you please. Let them drink and swear and raise petty riots, and keep the Syndics on their guard! It is all they are good for, M. d'Albigny; and I cannot say that aught keeps back the cause so much as Grio's friends ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... considered as a creator, and for the rest goes about in unobtrusive gray like an unpainted actor who is nothing so long as he has no part to play. He worked in mute isolation, excluding and despising those petty ones who used their talent as a social ornament, who either went about in barbarous raggedness, whatever the state of their fortunes, or else were extravagant in "personal" cravats; whose foremost thought was to live happily, amiably, and artistically, ignorant of the fact ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... round a centre; and he is neither strong enough nor clever enough for the job. He has made a wretched little whirlpool in the mighty River of Becoming, interrupting—as he imagines, in his own interest—its even flow: and within that whirlpool are numerous petty complexes and counter-currents, amongst which his will and attention fly to and fro in a continual state of unrest. The man who makes a success of his life, in any department, is he who has chosen one from amongst these claims and interests, and devoted to it his ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... ministered to the sick; attended the dying; procured their coffins; spoke the comforting words, and sung the hymns at their funerals. She instructed them in their Sunday meetings, and gained release for those in prison for petty offences, or for those unjustly accused. Soldiers often appealed to her to assist and aid them. Her work at the jails was very wearing, for the poor creatures, not unfrequently the mother of an infant left at home, arrested for an imaginary offense, or for stealing bread to avert ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... about it? I can make a place for you in my organization. It seems to run to secret service, oddly enough. You will be rewarded far beyond anything you could expect in your present career of chasing petty crooks from Mercury to Pluto ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... satisfaction—that of finding that the lieutenant had made no report concerning his conduct on the night of the collision. In fact, the lieutenant had forgotten his mad words almost as soon as he had spoken them, for they were only the outcomings of his petty malicious spirit ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... consequence of superstition. As soon as any one falls ill, his friends and relatives come together, and deliberately discuss who might be the cause of the illness. All possible enemies are considered, every one confesses of his own petty quarrels, and finally the real cause is discovered. An enemy from the next village has called it down, and a raid upon that village is decided upon. Therefore, feuds are rather frequent, even between the coast villages, not to say a word of the cannibal mountaineers who ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... you haven't learned the lesson, you petty meddler, you don't understand it yourself, and ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... arrival, you appeared and seemed a part of it. Do you remember what I said then? I have reluctantly thought to-night that you could wear your coronet of beauty, not Only as a benignant queen, but as a petty tyrant,—that you could put it to ignoble uses, and make it a slave to self. It seemed at times that you only sought to lead men to bow in admiration to you, instead of inspiring them to stand erect in true manhood, with their faces heavenward. A woman endowed as you are can always ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... singing and making merry over tiny glasses of sweetened tea quite as naturally as sailors in a seaport groggery, or Germans over a keg of lager. Jolly, happy-go-lucky fellows though they outwardly appear, they prove no exception, however, to the general run of their countrymen in the matter of petty dishonesty; although I gave them money enough to purchase twice the quantity of provisions they brought back, besides promising them the customary small present before leaving, in the morning they make a further ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... great triumph for a woman. The affection which is equal to such a test certainly ought to be eternal. It is to be wondered at that women do not oftener employ it to judge of their lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature could never stand it. Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of dissimulation, would have told his secrets if condemned to a month's tete-a-tete in the country. Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in perpetual motion, and allow no one ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... proportion. We have already seen the extent to which it was carried in Italy. It was, if possible, surpassed in France. The diabolical ease with which these murders could be effected, by means of these scentless and tasteless poisons, enticed the evil-minded. Jealousy, revenge, avarice, even petty spite, alike resorted to them. Those who would have been deterred, by fear of detection, from using the pistol or the dagger, or even strong doses of poison, which kill at once, employed slow poisons without dread. The corrupt government of the day, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... you an answer to your last, which, on reflection, pleases me as little as it probably has pleased yourself. I will not wait for your rejoinder; but proceed to tell you, that I had just then been greeted with an epistle of * *'s, full of his petty grievances, and this at the moment when (from circumstances it is not necessary to enter upon) I was bearing up against recollections to which his imaginary sufferings are as a scratch to a cancer. These things combined, put me out of humour with him and all mankind. The latter part of my ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Africa is a punishment for petty thefts and delinquincies. Trial by red water is generally applied to crimes of greater magnitude. After the usual ceremonial of calling a palaver, the operation is performed by heating a piece of ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... you, this evening, two suits of clothes such as we spoke of. In them you can pass as followers of some petty rajah, and are not likely to attract attention. I have inquired among some of my friends, and hear that the Rajah of Bohr left here today with his following. He is but a petty chief, and Bohr lies ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... find an utterance in the employment of solemn and earnest words in senses comparatively trivial or even ridiculous. 'Gehenna,' that word of such terrible significance on the lips of our Lord, has in French issued in 'gene,' and in this shape expresses no more than a slight and petty annoyance. 'Ennui' meant once something very different from what now it means. [Footnote: Ennui is derived from the Late Latin phrase in odio esse.] Littre gives as its original signification, 'anguish of soul, caused by the death of persons beloved, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... was replaced by a Norman "vicecomes," who practically did as he chose, or as he was used to do in Normandy, in questions of procedure, proof, and judgment. The old English hundred courts, where the peasants' petty crimes had once been judged by the freemen of the district, had now in most cases become part of the fief of the lord, whose newly-built castle towered over the wretched hovels of his tenants, and the peasants came for justice ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... fields Are not a spoil for him,—thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth:—there ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... succeeding centuries, the political nullity of the German nation, the absence of any strong popular element to make head against the petty despotism of the princes, and launch Germany in the career of progress. Hence the backwardness and torpor of the Teutonic race in its original seat, while elsewhere it led the world. Hence, while England ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... emotions did not last long. Whatever his other shortcomings, Ashe possessed a just mind. By the time he had found Joan, after Mr. Peters had said his say, and dispatched him below stairs for that purpose, he had purged himself of petty regrets and was prepared to congratulate her whole-heartedly. He was, however, resolved that nothing should induce him to share in the reward. On that point, he resolved, he ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... mental health as ever it has been my fortune to meet; there was something so full of purpose and resolve—something so wholesome, too, about the character—something so womanly—I might almost say manly, and would, but for the petty prejudice maybe occasioned by the trivial fact of a locket having dropped from her bosom as she knelt; and that trinket still dangles in my memory even as it then dangled and dropped back to its concealment in her breast as she arose. But her face, by no means handsome in the common meaning, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... heads of hair were shorn, and many fine beards reaped that day, yet several still held out, and vowed to defend their sacred hair to the last gasp of their breath. These were chiefly old sailors—some of them petty officers—who, presuming upon their age or rank, doubtless thought that, after so many had complied with the Captain's commands, they, being but a handful, would be exempted from compliance, and remain a monument ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the agony of a new idea." But his heart goes out to the unscholarly Cavalier with his dash and his loyalty, to the county member who "hardly reads two books per existence," and even to the rustic who sticks to his old ideas and whom "it takes seven weeks to comprehend an atom of a new one." A petty surface consistency must not be exacted from the miscellaneous utterances of a humorist: all sorts of complementary half-truths are part of his service. His own quite just conception of humor, as meaning merely full vision and balanced judgment, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... announcement of the renewal of hostilities volunteers flowed in on all sides, whether of young men full of ardor and excitement, or, as in many instances, of old soldiers who had already served their time. After a winter of petty skirmishing and reestablishing in Algeria the semblance of security, the Duke of Orlans led the army, considerably reinforced, in a raid against the Arabs under Abd-el-Kader in their own territory. The Zouaves accompanied this expedition, and whether in their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Ceylon, and which, from its being famous for its elephants in his days, is described by Ptolemy in the map he made of Ceylon sixteen hundred years ago as the elephantum pascua. The trade in elephants from Ceylon, which used to be lucrative, is now completely annihilated, in consequence of all the petty Rajahs, Foligars, and other chiefs in the southern peninsula of India, who used formerly to purchase Ceylon elephants as a part of their state, having lost their sovereignties, and being therefore no longer required to keep up any state of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... urged me to this answer. Hear me out. What, uncle, is the character you've stooped To fill contentedly through life? Have you No higher pride, than in these lonely wilds To be the Landamman or Banneret, [11] The petty chieftain of a shepherd race? How! Were it not a far more glorious choice To bend in homage to our royal lord, And swell the princely splendors of his court, Than sit at home, the peer of your own vassals, And share the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... elsewhere? or is this A preparation in the wond'rous depth Of thy sage counsel made, for some good end, Entirely from our reach of thought cut off? So are the' Italian cities all o'erthrong'd With tyrants, and a great Marcellus made Of every petty factious villager. My Florence! thou mayst well remain unmov'd At this digression, which affects not thee: Thanks to thy people, who so wisely speed. Many have justice in their heart, that long Waiteth for counsel to direct the bow, Or ere it dart unto its aim: but shine Have ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and whence the Merrimac appeared, and where the Congress was sunk, and from what place the Monitor darted out upon its big antagonist. But everything was on a scale so vast that it was difficult to localize these petty incidents (big as they were in consequences), and the party soon abandoned history and geography for the enjoyment of the moment. Song began to take the place of conversation. A couple of banjos were produced, and both the facility and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fields, was hidden from the passer-by, and here began the great intrigue, as it was called then. Of a truth the plot, as it was conceived, was no mighty thing; it was designed, as many another gossamer web of court gallantry and petty pecuniary gain, for obscure individuals; but great it became through the potent will ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... separation was effected, whereon at a hoarse word of command, a company of soldiers began to fire at the men and continued doing so until all had fallen. Then petty officers went among the slaughtered and with pistols blew out the brains of any ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... which makes life supportable is the knowledge of Death's quick obedience. And the tragedy of life is not that we cannot forget, but that we can. Think of being an old woman with not so much as a connecting current between the memory and the heart, the long interval blocked with ten thousand petty events and trials! It must be worse than this. I shall have gone over the cliff long before that time comes. I would go to-day, but I cannot leave the world while he ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... first through the upper rooms, where a small but choice assortment of habitual drunkards and petty thieves were confined; these, as Sam Wardwell's father had predicted, either declined to converse or talked stupidly for a moment or two, and then begged either tobacco or money to buy it with. Still, Mr. Morton thought he saw in these wretched fellows some material to work ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... reproved him for talking of "soch things:" she holds it petty treason to speak of it, as they are both in office about the Court; though she confessed it would be ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... affection of dependence, of habit. Yet for such as it was his soul uttered thanksgiving. Any other woman gifted with a less sweet nature would have felt for him nothing but hatred, but in Fatalite's mind neither spite nor malice ever found a place. The petty vices of womankind had never been hers. He knew now that he had been something to her, and that knowledge would make sunshine for him even in the shadow of a prison. It gave him courage also to play out the tragi-comedy to the end, to make a brave ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... in a longer or a shorter space successively crumbled to decay. At a time when the kings of Egypt had never ventured beyond their borders, unless it were for a foray in Ethiopia, and when in Asia no monarch had held dominion over more than a few petty tribes, and a few hundred miles of territory, he conceived the magnificent notion of binding into one the manifold nations inhabiting the vast tract which lies between the Zagros mountain-range and the Mediterranean. Lord by inheritance ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... them, that is. I am wearied to death with the perpetual annoyances and vexations, and petty calls upon my time—life is not worth having at such a rate! I'll have done ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... number of queens and concubines; but a petty Hindoo chief has been known to have two thousand women confined within the walls of his harem, and appropriated entirely to his pleasure. Nothing less than unlimited power in the husband is able to restrain women so confined, from the utmost disorder and confusion. They may repine ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... everybody in that hall in fear of death, and he began shouting his insults. Law was a farce in Linrock. The court was a farce. There was no law. Your father's office as mayor should be impeached. He made arrests only for petty offenses. He was afraid of the rustlers, highwaymen, murderers. He was afraid or—he just let them alone. He used his office to cheat ranchers and cattlemen ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... we do not keep our eyes on the model; we lose our earlier vision. A liberal education ought to broaden a man's mind so that he will be able to keep his eye always on the model, the perfect ideal of his work, uninfluenced by the thousand and one petty annoyances, bickerings, misunderstandings, and discords which destroy much of the efficiency of narrower, less ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... give a copy; and 'tis so much mixed with his own poor little private concerns, that it would not be right in me to do it."[381] This is the generosity which makes Hume's impatience and that of his mischievous advisers in Paris appear petty. Rousseau had behaved quite as ill to Mr. Davenport as he had done to Hume, and had received at least equal services from him.[382] The good man at once sent a servant to Spalding in search of his unhappy guest, but Rousseau had again disappeared. The parson of the parish had passed several ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... times, attained only a partial unity. The chief king indeed presided at Tara, and enjoyed the reputation and emoluments flowing to him on that account, but, upon the whole, no Irish king exercised more than a local sovereignty; they were all reguli, petty kings, and their direct authority was small. This being the case, it would appear to me that in the more ancient times the death of a king would not be an event which would disturb a very extensive district, and that, though his tomb might be considerable, it ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... had always existed between Richard and the King of France now led to constant petty wars between them. To secure his Norman province, Richard built on its border a splendid fortress, which he called his Chateau Gaillard,—"Saucy Castle." Amazed and enraged at the wonderful strength of this stronghold, perched on a rocky mount five hundred feet ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... occasions answered in the same tone—"And who says I have not a lover?" So Cousin Betty's lover, real or fictitious, became a subject of mild jesting. At last, after two years of this petty warfare, the last time Lisbeth had come to the house ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... weakened by the Southern element, revolted at first from the creed that is to prove its salvation. Not alone in our border States had the dragon crept, searing our fair institutions with his hot breath, but even upon the sturdy old Puritan stock were engrafted many of the petty notions that pass for 'principles' in Dixie. True, we were educated, all of us, into a sort of decent regard for the good old element of labor,—we call it industry,—more antique, since antiquity is a virtue, than aristocracy, for it began in Paradise. But this was a feature of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Tadman could only show her friendly feelings in a very small way, by being especially active and brisk in assisting all the household labours of the new mistress of Wyncomb, and by endeavouring to cheer her with such petty gossip as she was able to pick up. Ellen felt that the woman was kindly disposed towards her, and she was not ungrateful; but her heart was quite shut against sympathy, her sorrow was too profound to be lightened ever so little by human friendship. It was a dull despair, a settled conviction ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... in a rage, by loud, angry talking and evil-speaking and petty malice, by unkindness and hard-heartedness and an unforgiving spirit, we grieve Him. In a word, by not walking through the world as in our Father's house, and among our neighbours and friends as among His dear children; by not loving tenderly and ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... they. Indeed, so much did Fritz impress Eric with the value of carefully considering every petty detail of their outfit, so that they might not find something omitted at the last moment which would be of use, that there was danger of their forgetting more important articles— the "little things," ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the potency of the bottle, was to carry off the whistle as a trophy of victory. The Dane produced credentials of his victories, without a single defeat, at the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, Warsaw, and several of the petty courts in Germany; and challenged the Scotch Bacchanalians to the alternative of trying his prowess, or else of acknowledging their inferiority. After man overthrows on the part of the Scots, the Dane was encountered by Sir Robert ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham |
