"Pronoun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the first personal pronoun is being overworked, I remind you that this is more a confession than a lecture. You cannot confess without ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... has the slightest pretensions to delicacy of sentiment, or liberality of mind. I should expect to find this vulgar prejudice only among the downright dames, who talk of my good man, and lay a particular emphasis on the possessive pronoun my; who understand literally, and expect that their spouses should adhere punctually to every coarse article of our ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... take charge and help plan it all out; and Allison is going to hunt up some of the big Christian Endeavor people in the city, and get them to come out one or two at a time to our meetings,"—Julia Cloud noted the pronoun "our" with satisfaction,—"and stir things up on Sundays; and we'll drive in and get them, and bring them to our house to supper, maybe, and put them wise to things so they'll know best how to help; and then ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... The pronoun sounded ominous to him as soon as he had uttered it. But it acted like magic upon Maud. She lifted a bright glance through her tears and said, like a happy child to whom a new game has been proposed, "What shall ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... origin and fitness of his nickname were apparent after two minutes' conversation with him. Buzz Werner was called Buzz not only because he talked too much, but because he was a braggart. His conversation bristled with the perpendicular pronoun, and his pet phrase was, "I ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... laid a special emphasis on the personal pronoun. Julius turned to his brother. The change for the better in the state of Lord Holchester's health made Geoffrey's position, at that moment, an embarrassing one. He had been positively forbidden to enter the house. His ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... dilemma. My modesty (?) is at variance with my love of verity. Oh, the inconvenience of that little pronoun, I! Would that I had in the first instance imitated the wily conduct of the bald-pated invader of Britain. How complacently might I not then have vaunted in the beginning, have caracoled through the middle, and glorified myself at the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... got into the personal-pronoun stage of human intercourse, there is but one thing left for the unfortunate third in the party to do. Yes, now that I think of it, there are two roles to be played. The usual conception of the part is to turn marplot—to spoil and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... attract through their oddity were at one time in popular use and grammatically correct. These people are clinging to the dialect of their fathers who were Anglo-Saxons. The use of "hit" for "it" is not confined to the mountains, but the Old English grammars give "hit" as the neuter of the pronoun "he." ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... each line, of the pronoun Tu—Thou—is here to be noticed. It is characteristic of this middle Stanza that each of the three phases of the Saviour's existence is expressed by two thoughts which are included in one line. The pronoun Tu introduces each ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... MAITRES. On may be followed by the plural, if taken in a plural sense, although some later editions give the singular, le maitre. In fact, after this indefinite pronoun, a noun, adjective, or participle may agree in gender and number with the person or persons to ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... little round black eyes flashed at this. "He takee monee too?" he demanded, with contemptuous emphasis on the pronoun. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... personal pronoun "I" when writing as Blank Company. "We" is the proper pronoun. Where a personal reference is necessary, "the writer" may be used; but even this should be ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... go home in the fly?" I ask impulsively, yet humbly, "I mean with—with her!" (a gulp at the pronoun), then, under the influence of a fear that he may think that I am driven by a hankering after creature comforts to this overture, I go on quickly, "it is not because I want to be kept dry—if I were to be dragged through the sea I could not be ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... read by a third of the tribes of Central Africa. Asking my negro master what I was, he replied, "Kerdee," which means kafer ("infidel") in Bornou, the negro mistaking my individual self for the pronoun I, which is oomah. I laughed heartily at the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... has found himself unequal to the solving of the abstruse arguments it contains. One thought seems to have dulled all others. He is leaving to-morrow! He is leaving her to-morrow! Oh! surely it is more than that curt pronoun can contain. He is leaving, in a few short hours, his life, his hope, his one small chance of heaven upon earth. How much she had been to him, how strong his hoping even against hope had been, he never knew till now, when all is swept out of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... is what made him love me," answered Fanny, never calling her lover by his name, but making the little personal pronoun a very sweet word by the tone in which she uttered it. "He was disappointed in me last year, he told me, but you said good things about me and though he did n't care much then, yet when he lost you, and came back to me, he found that you were not altogether mistaken, and he has watched ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... a personal narrative is the most wearying to the writer, if not to the reader; egotistical talk may be pleasant enough, but, commit it to paper, the fault carries its own punishment. The recurrence of that everlasting first pronoun becomes a real stumbling-block to one at last. Yet there is no evading it, unless you cast your story into a curt, succinct diary; to carry this off effectively, requires a succession of incidents, more varied and important than ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... astonishing thing is that Crabbe should not have felt the dramatic impropriety of putting into the young man's mouth passages of an impressive, and almost Shakespearian, beauty such as are rare indeed in his poetry. The following lines are not indeed placed within inverted commas, but the pronoun "I" is retained, and they are apparently intended for something passing in the ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... unconsciously, by many a scanning line. Setting up correctness, that humble merit of prose, as the central literary excellence, he is really a less correct writer than he may seem, still with an imperfect mastery of the relative pronoun. It might have been foreseen that, in the rotations of mind, the province of poetry in prose would find its assertor; and, a century after Dryden, amid very different intellectual needs, and with the need therefore of great modifications in literary ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... me." Then, after a pause, "At least I will only read this page which is open, and then look at the beginning to see whose it is; for, you know, I may need to send it back to him." The back she had seen vanish round the Far Away Turn demanded the masculine pronoun. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Greenow got two notes, one from each of them, accepting the invitation. Cheesacre wrote in the singular number, altogether ignoring Captain Bellfield, as he might have ignored his footman had he intended to take one. The captain condescended to use the plural pronoun. "We shall be so happy to come," said he. "Dear old Cheesy is out of his little wits with delight," he added, "and has already begun to polish off the effects ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... it grew, as it were, without attributes. The sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1), and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But Atman remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from the Brahman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is worshipped as Brahman (masculine), together with Vishnu and Siva, and other popular gods. The idea of the Atman or Self, like a pure crystal, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Egyptian word for the personal pronoun 'I' was anuk," said the Tracer placidly. "The phonetic for ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... condition of receptivity, so that the jokes, the songs, the dances, even the spindling little shafts of romance that you shot out into it, could be felt to dig in and take hold. It never occurred to her to think of it with a plural pronoun; it was "it" simply, an inchoate monster, which was, as the show progressed, delightfully loosening up, becoming good-humored, undiscriminating, stupidly infatuate; laughing at things no human being would ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... who ever come in are the woodward and his wife. He served in my Lord of Essex's army, but he has never seen you. Moreover, he was to be at the squire's to-day helping to stack his corn. Ben, do you tell Patience that he"—again taking refuge in a pronoun—"is a gentleman in danger, and she must see to his safety for an hour or two till ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not know why he said "Pooh!" It merely notes, apropos of Miss Dickenson's last words, that the first person plural pronoun, used as a dual by a lady to a gentleman, sometimes makes hay of the thirdness of their respective persons singular. But if it had done so, this time, "Pooh!" was a weak counter-blast ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... from you, demanding his advice and opinion as to your marriage with Lady Florence, but in answer to a letter of yours in which you congratulate him on his approaching marriage to her. By the substitution of one pronoun for another, in two places, the letter will read as well one way as another. Read it again, and see; or stop, I ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the one to darlin' Cap'n Sproul this evenin'," Hiram remarked, persisting still in his satiric use of the feminine pronoun. "If you'll put on your bonnet, Mis' Look, we'll all sa'nter acrost to the Cap'n's and see that Louada Murilla gets hers. Near's I can find out, the rules of this special post-office is that all love-letters to us pass through ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... word: e.g. mik ("friend,'' amicus), mik-u ("the friend''); kien ("dog''), kien-i Shkumb, Shkumb-i. The suffix-article likewise appears in Rumanian and Bulgarian, but in no other Latin or Slavobic language; it is in each case a form of the demonstrative pronoun. Another remarkable analogy between the Albanian and the neighbouring languages is found in the formation of the future; the Albanian do (3rd pers. sing. of dova, "I will''), like the Greek tha, is prefixed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and equivalent in value to th. In the "yt" then, we have the y or thorn substituted for th and the vowel elided, but the sign should be pronounced "that." The sign "ye" as in the familiar phrase of the posters "ye olde folkes' concerte," should always be pronounced "the" and never like the pronoun ye. ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... boy any longer,"—with an inflection on the personal pronoun. "Well, to continue about that excuse. You left the house without a hat, and you met the boys and played poker all night. That hitches wonderfully. You didn't feel well enough to go to the embassy, but you could go ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... Turkey of its capital or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace which are predominantly Turkish in race." Mr. Candler seems to read 'which', as if it meant 'if they,' whereas I give the pronoun its natural meaning, namely, that the Prime Minister knew in 1918, that the lands referred to by him were "predominantly Turkish in race." And if this is the meaning I venture to suggest that the pledge has been broken in a most barefaced ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... one of the company, who instantly rendered the lines in English, contending with reason that the indefinite article in English, together with the pronoun "his," &c. should be considered as one word with the noun following, and more than counterbalanced by the greater number of syllables in the Greek words, the terminations of which are in truth only little words glued on to them. The English distich ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... discipline of my boyhood. The piercing through the involved and inverted sentences of 'Paradise Lost'; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence—all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced when I ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... shipmates accompany me in my strolls,—we shall get along much pleasanter, and enjoy ourselves much better thus than if we were scattered without any end in view: besides, it will be much less difficult for me, and I shall be enabled to get rid of that objectionable personal pronoun, first person singular, nominative. I will, therefore, with your kind co-operation, introduce you to the first of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... introduced to show the grouping of the letters and the words. At first the sentences were separated by spaces, then the long words, and finally all words. In some languages, as in Italian, there are still combinations of long and short words, such as the combination of the pronoun with the verb, as ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... he said, "I am afraid I am obliged to tell you that I cannot listen to anything you may have to say. I can guess, of course, why you have come here, and I am sorry for you," he said, leaning on the pronoun. "But I can do nothing," and he spoke slowly and inexorably, "I can do nothing for either you or your husband." But Rachel had now lost all ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... embraces every good quality of masculine and feminine character, as also the impersonal life Principle. It is therefore proper to use the masculine, feminine or neuter pronoun when referring to Deity. As different phases of the one Love, we see manifested, the strong, all-protecting, intelligent father-love, the tender, restful, patient mother-love, the innocent, confiding, trustful child-love, each ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... almost every day. The morale severe of the Jansenists he strongly reprobated in discourse, and no person receded further from it in practice: but he was an admirer of the style of the gentlemen of Port Royal, and spoke with praise of their general practice of avoiding the insertion of the pronoun I in their writings. He thought the Bible should not be read by very young persons, or by those who were wholly uninformed: even the translation of the whole divine office of the church he thought should not ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... to Worcester, "means land, country, a district of country under a temporary Government." The words "territory or other property," as used, do imply, from the use of the pronoun other, that territory was used as descriptive of land; but does it follow that it was not used also as descriptive of a district of country? In both of these senses it belonged to the United States—as land, for the purpose ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... proceeded to Secocoeni's town, accompanied by a fresh set of interpreters, and had a long interview with Secocoeni. The chief's Prime Minister or "mouth," Makurupiji, speaking in his presence, and on his behalf and making use of the pronoun "I" before all the assembled headmen of the tribe, gave an account of the interview between Commandant Ferreira in the presence of that gentleman, who accompanied the commission and Secocoeni, in almost the same words as had been used by the interpreters ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... in the front where all can see— "Now turn the spot-light right on me," He says, and sings in tones sonorous His own sweet halleluiah chorus. Refrain and verse are both the same— The pronoun I or his own name. He trumpets his worth with such windy tooting That louder it sounds than cowboys shooting. This man's a nuisance wherever he goes, For the world soon tires of the chap who blows. Whether mighty in station or hoer of corn, ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... the reader can see for himself that this pronoun business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning are a fruitful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... diagram of steps supply a verb after the pronoun "I" that sets forth the thought of each ...
— A Bird's-Eye View of the Bible - Second Edition • Frank Nelson Palmer
... rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who have reported them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their natural reply to "are you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have nothing but the nominative pronoun. "Lift I up and let I see it raining," she bids; and told that it does not rain resumes, "Lift I up and let I ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... I suppose," she assented; and Rowdy turned and rode by her side, grateful for the plurality of the pronoun which tacitly included him in her wanderings, and meditating many things. For one, he wondered if she were as nice a girl as her voice sounded. He could not see much of her face, because it was muffled ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... bore, and which he regarded as one of honor and respect, he said: "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."[366] Whether his use of the plural pronoun "we" indicates that he was sent by the Sanhedrin, or by the society of Pharisees—the members of which were accustomed to so speak, as representatives of the order—or was employed in the rhetorical sense as indicating himself alone, is of little importance. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... grew within her. She was not her father's child for nothing. The tenacity which had at once made and undone Soames was her backbone, too, frilled and embroidered by French grace and quickness. Instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always with the pronoun "I." She concealed, however, all signs of her growing desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of a disagreeable July permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor did any "sucking baronet" ever neglect the business of a publisher ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... like little fiends in their own little hells, Damnation for others brewing— 240 Though their paper seemed to shrink, from the heat of their ink, They were only coolly reviewing! And as one of them wrote down the pronoun "We," "That Plural"—says Satan—"means him and me, With the Editor added to make up the three Of an Athanasian Trinity, And render the believers in our 'Articles' sensible, How many must combine to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... vision of noble womanhood and the sanctity of home. It is an extraordinarily appealing phrase and Lady Moyne used it for all it was worth. As addressed by her to wives and sisters of the Belfast working-men, it had a further value. The plural possessive pronoun bracketed McConkey with Lord Moyne. McConkey's wife, assuming for the moment that he had not abstained from matrimony as he had from tobacco, shared his joys and sorrows, his hopes and fears, heartened him for ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Flower's certificate appointing her a member of the Board of Managers of the State Industrial School at Rochester, N. Y. She took considerable satisfaction in pointing out that it referred to her as "him," because she had always contended that, if the masculine pronoun in an official document is sufficient to send a woman to the jail or the gallows, it is sufficient to enable her to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... announced, with a slight emphasis on the pronoun. "Shame on you, Angus MacLean—ditching the ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... from something your sister said; she isn't over fond of him, is she?" Nellie inquired, with a light laugh and a mischievous glance at the averted face on the pillow in the berth, as she emphasized the pronoun. "Come," she added, presently, "let us lay out the things we are likely to need during the voyage, and put our state-room in order, for there is no knowing how soon we may be attacked by the dread enemy ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... voice, and with an air of anxious simplicity, Doddle began, 'Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, outerjection, beginning with ies in the plural—as, baby, babies; lady, ladies; hady, hadies. Please, sir, isn't that last one a ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... papa?" she said, abruptly, while a jerk of her head in Guy's direction signified the proper noun to which the pronoun referred. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... seek Jesus who was crucified. That the women as well as the soldiers were present at the descent of this angel, appears not only from there being nobody else, by whom these uncommon circumstances could have been related, but also by the pronoun personal ye, inserted in the original Greek, which in that language is never done, unless it be emphatically to mark such a distinction, or antithesis, as there was on this occasion, between them and the Roman ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... that it was only my own laziness—that I have given you the work I ought to have done myself. My reply would be that it was not my work. If a man happens to be born to a job he is not in the least fitted for, that's the affair of Providence. Providence bungled it when he, she, or it—take which pronoun you like—[Greek: tyche], as you and I know, is feminine—made me a landowner. My proper job was to dig up and decipher what is left of the Greeks. And if any one says that the two jobs are not tanti, and the landowning job is more important than the other, ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... true, discovered goodness to be a phase of a process called "interest," which is qualified further, through the use of a personal pronoun. The nature of goodness, in other words, is such as to involve certain specific relations, here involving a person or subject. Goodness is not peculiar in this respect; for there are very few things in this world that do not involve specific relations. This is the case, for ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... pronoun "thou" had its old English manner and was not confined to the Friends alone. The more rigid, who sought to despise all things that savored of worldliness, used their objective in season and out. And among the younger of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... must agree with its antecedent, or the noun or pronoun which it represents, in person, number, and gender:[379] as, "This is the friend of whom I spoke; he has just arrived."—"This is the book which I bought; it is an excellent work."—"Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Strawboard Mfg. Co. did the thing up in shape. Waggons loaded with straw, and drawn by four-horse teams, went the rounds of the village, collecting the guests. It is doubtful if Fairfield was ever more surprised than at the realisation of how much there was of her—using the pronoun out of respect to the majority—"when she was bunched," as Red said. You would not have believed that straggling, lonesome-looking place held so many people. As Red could discover no means in the town's resources ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... will come." We! Then, is there more than One? Who is this who dares class Himself with the supreme God within the limits of a common pronoun, that challenges the love and trust and obedience of man, that poses as King? The meekest and humblest of men. The One who, above all others of the human family, seemed to have least to disturb or darken the incidence of the rays of truth upon His soul; who has cast a ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... nothing to respect. He is cursed with that form of moral disease which sometimes renders a man ridiculous, sometimes infamous, but which never renders him respectable,—namely, vanity of will. Other men may be vain of their talents and accomplishments, but he is vain of the personal pronoun itself, utterly regardless of what it covers and includes. Reason, conscience, understanding, have no impersonality to him. When he uses the words, he uses them as synonymes of his determinations, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... both hope to have some practical results of his study?" I could not help asking a little mischievously; for I somehow resented the plural pronoun in her ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Boccaccio uses the feminine pronoun, immediately afterward resuming the masculine ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... blessing: some again that say, He did it with uttering five solemn chosen words: and some, with rehearsing the same words afterward again. Some will have it, that, when Christ did speak those five words, the material wheaten bread was pointed by this demonstrative pronoun hoc: some had rather have, that a certain vagum individuum, as they term it, was meant thereby. Again, others there be that say dogs and mice may truly and in very deed eat the body of Christ; and others again there be that steadfastly deny it. There be others, which say, ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... haughtily. The slight emphasis on the personal pronoun and the fervid squeeze of Mrs. Black's fat hand hurt her sore heart. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... wi' Mildred," said the smith. "Didn't offer good enough; and She"—by which pronoun he usually designated his vixenish wife—"wouldn't hear on it. Emma's bound, worse luck! I could ha' done wi' Emma. She and Bertha's the only ones as can be ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... opposite view. Child psychology has established the fact that an early phenomenon of child mental development is the emphasis laid on "meum" and "tuum," mine and yours. The child is a thoroughgoing individualist in feelings, conceptions, and language. The first personal pronoun is ever on his lips and in his thought. Only as culture arises and he is trained to see how disagreeable in others is excessive emphasis on the first person, does he learn to moderate his own excessive egoistic tendency. Is it not a fact that the studied evasion of first ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... inwardly: that pronoun was so pregnant with surprise, contempt, anger, and indignation! "Yes, it is I, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... name to a universal case), as far as nouns, adjectives, and articles are concerned. Their pronouns offer the sole survival of declension by case endings. Here France, the runner-up, is a trifle slow in the possession of a real, live dative case of the pronoun (acc. le, la, les; dat. lui, leur). England wins by a neck with one universal oblique case (him, her, them). This insidious suggestion is not meant to endanger the entente cordiale; even perfidious Albion would not convict the ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... to myself, an archetype, from which the conception was derived. In this argument (which, it may be observed, would equally prove the real existence of ghosts and of witches) the ambiguity is in the pronoun I, by which, in one place, is to be understood my will, in another the laws of my nature. If the conception, existing as it does in my mind, had no original without, the conclusion would unquestionably follow that I made it; that is, the laws of my nature ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... intemperate haste, and like many another rebel to the English tongue, she found a proper pronoun would not serve her for ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... that a plural pronoun is used in this recognition of Christ as our Lord, while elsewhere throughout the Creed the confession of belief is personal, "I believe." The plural form here indicates that while in following Jesus we are separated from the world, we are gathered into the fellowship of the saints, and are members ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... A pronoun is a substitute, or (as we once heard a lady of the Malaprop family say), a subterfuge ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... persistent plural of the personal pronoun, and a great fear laid hold upon him. None the less, the president's invitation was a little like the king's—it was, in some sense, a command. Lidgerwood merely asked for a moment's respite, and went down to announce his intention to McCloskey and Dawson. Curiously enough, the draftsman ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... close-knit sentences in which he embodied his statements and arguments. He is an eminent instance of the power which character communicates to style. Though evidently proud, self-respecting, and high-spirited, he is ever above mere vanity and egotism. Whenever he gives emphasis to the personal pronoun the reader feels that he had as much earned the right to make his opinion an authority, as he had earned the right to use the words he employs to express his ideas and sentiments. Thus, in the celebrated Smith Will trial, his antagonist, Mr. Choate, quoted a decision of Lord ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making things comfortable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The pronoun "you" has its equivocal aspects. Her expression, while marked enough, threw no clear light. Cope took the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... to observe that the African, like the Scotch Highlander, will interpose the personal or demonstrative pronoun between noun and verb: "sun he go down," means "the sun sets" and, as genders do not exist, you must be careful to say, "This woman he cry ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... descends); then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thess. iv. 15-17). It was the frequent use of the pronoun "we" that had confused them—we who remain, we who are alive. The Thessalonians had inferred from this that the second coming of Christ would take place in their day. Hence, to correct this impression ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... put on the back" and "to indorse;" or by an actual distinction of meanings, as "naturalist," and "physician;" or by difference of relation, as "I" and "Me" (each of which the rustics of our different provinces still use in all the cases singular of the first personal pronoun). Even the mere difference, or corruption, in the pronunciation of the same word, if it have become general, will produce a new word with a distinct signification; thus "property" and "propriety;" the latter of which, even to the time of Charles II was the written word for ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this little neuter pronoun in this wise: "The word it is the greatest troubler that I know of in language. It is so small and so convenient that few are careful enough in using it. Writers seldom spare this word. Whenever they are at a loss for either a nominative or an objective to their sentence, they, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... Druids, the sacred name of God was Hu[132]—a name which, although it is supposed, by Bryant, to have been intended by them for Noah, will be recognized as one of the modifications of the Hebrew tetragrammaton. It is, in fact, the masculine pronoun in Hebrew, and may be considered as the symbolization of the male or generative principle in nature—a sort of modification of the system of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... me if I know what H * * means or meaned about the demonstrative pronoun[68], but I admire your fear of being inoculated with the same. Have you never found out that you have a particular style of your own, which is as distinct from all other people, as Hafiz of Shiraz from Hafiz ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... must be crushed," returned Armitage absent-mindedly, in English; then, remembering himself, he repeated the affirmation in French, changing the pronoun. ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... to this declension, and forms the genitive nnauhte; but when preceded by a possessive pronoun, it loses the final guat, as has been stated, and the termination is left in o, to form the genitive in the first declension, as, no, my, no nnoque, of my father, which rule applies equally to other ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... frequently used for forgotten, spoken, frozen, ridden. 3. It does not appear that any confusion would follow the indiscriminate use of the same word for the past tense and the participle passive, since the auxiliary verb have, or the preceding noun or pronoun always clearly distinguishes them: and lastly, rhime-poetry must lose the use of many ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... remarks if YOU please,' said Miss Knag, with a strong emphasis on the personal pronoun. 'Is there any fire downstairs for ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... struck with the beauty of his plural pronoun as she had judged he might be with that of her own; but she knew now so well what she was about that she could almost play with him and with her new-born joy. "You say 'about the time you speak of.' But I don't think you speak of ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... form the second person pronoun. They are differentiated to indicate those persons deserving no honor and respect, those deserving some, moderate, great, or maximal honor and respect. In speaking to inferiors there are three particles used for 'you'; vare, vonore, and sochi. If me or mega ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... had in addressing one another changed the homely singular pronoun to the more polite, if less grammatical, second person plural. The boy laughed, nodded his head, and said, ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wore his hat in the presence of no matter whom, taking it off only in time of prayer. In protest against the unmeaning compliments, he addressed no man by any artificial title, calling all his neighbors, without distinction of persons, by their Christian names; and for the plural pronoun "you," the plural of dignity and flattery, he ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... that jarred unpleasantly, a lack of the sincere simplicity and self-forgetfulness which were her usual characteristics. He had never known her to use the pronoun "I" with such distinctness and emphasis before. Still all this would not have seemed strange to him in another, but ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... were hoist, and the stragglers left behind. It was not long before the wild people seized on them and strip's them, and those that had beards they knocked their braines out, and (as I remember) did eat them; but the queen saved T. Stump, and the other boy. Stump threw himself into the river Pronoun to have drowned himself, but could not sinke; he is very full chested. The other youth shortly died. He lived with them till 1636 or 1637. His narrations are very strange and pleasant; but so many yeares since have made me almost forget all. He sayes there ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... got on mighty quick with that chapter—about five days of the toughest kind of work. God forbid I should ever have such another pirn to wind! When I invent a language, there shall be a direct and an indirect pronoun differently declined—then writing would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Divine Presence amongst them, I perceived a Beauty in the Psalm which was entirely new to me, and which I was going to lose; and that is, that the Poet utterly conceals the Presence of God in the Beginning of it, and rather lets a Possessive Pronoun go without a Substantive, than he will so much as mention any thing of Divinity there. Judah was his Sanctuary, and Israel his Dominion or Kingdom. The Reason now seems evident, and this Conduct necessary: For if God had appeared before, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... knowingly vote without his having a lawful right." It was precisely so with all the papers served on me the United States marshal's warrant, the bail-bond, the petition for habeas corpus, the bill of indictment—not one of them had a feminine pronoun; but to make them applicable to me, the clerk of the court prefixed an "s" to the "he" and made "her" out of "his" and "him;" and I insist if government officials may thus manipulate the pronouns to tax, fine, imprison and hang women, it is their duty to thus change them in order ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of angkau, or of most of the words given above, must be avoided, as it is considered by Malays to be vulgar or harsh. In addressing servants or followers, the name of the individual addressed is often inserted in the sentence instead of the pronoun you; as, in addressing Ismail: When you were at the bazaar just now who was with you?— Apabila Ismail di pekan tadi siapa sama? In the same way tuan, sir, master, is employed in addressing a haji or sayyid; tuan-ku or tunku, ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... think the masculine pronoun is permissible—you'll see what I mean, sir. It's this Lord Koreff, the Marshal. He came here on business, and had to bring the king along, for fear somebody else would grab him while he was gone. The whole object of Durendalian politics, as I understand, is to get possession ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... to get over this difficulty by saying that Albany wants her confession: but there is another fact which seems to have passed unnoticed. When Albany is undoubtedly speaking to his wife, he uses the plural pronoun, 'Shut your mouth, dame,' 'No tearing, lady; I perceive you know it.' When then he asks 'Know'st thou this paper?' he is probably ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... of a noun or pronoun which denotes the speaker, the person spoken to, or the person ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... scruple. He would have thought himself wanting in honor if he had made a false or an incomplete quotation. In one of the notes to "Don Juan," speaking of Voltaire, he had quoted those famous words:—" Zaire, vous pleurez;" but being accustomed at that time to make great use of the familiar pronoun thou, as in the case in Italy, his quotation ran: "Zaire, tu pleures." But he hastened to write to Murray, "Voltaire wrote: Zaire, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... child's voice, and the humble emphasis on the pronoun me, touched the old lady; something familiar too in the tone caused her to look up quickly and kindly over her spectacles, and it seemed to her for a moment as if the little, long-lost sister sat opposite to her—great grey eyes, delicate skin, bright brown hair, expression ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "he" is used, signifying that Solomon's longing was what theology terms "spiritual" and consequently impersonal, meaning God The Absolute, yet we suggest that the use of the masculine pronoun may be due entirely to the translators and commentators (of whom there have been many), and that, in their zeal to reconcile the song with the ecclesiastical ideas of spirituality, the gender of the pronoun has been changed. We submit that the idea is more than possible, and indeed in view of ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... my! my!" exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, her possessive pronoun stumbling and fainting away without reaching its object. "Must we have that bear in ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... to use the first person singular. I cannot, like old Weller, spell myself with a We. Ours is, I believe, the only language that has shown so much sense of the worth of the individual (to himself) as to erect the first personal pronoun into a kind of votive column to the dignity of human nature. Other tongues have, or ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... speaking to YOU," he said, with his eyes on Mosby, and slightly accenting the pronoun with a tap of his revolver butt on the bar. "Ye don't ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the pronoun he, not only in this section, but the whole chapter, is used indefinitely for any person, and may refer to either ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sense, it may sometimes relate to the person of the Son; and in that sense it would be taken personally; as, for instance, were we to say, "The Son is the begotten 'Who is,'" inasmuch as "God begotten is personal." But taken indefinitely, it is an essential term. And although the pronoun "this" [iste] seems grammatically to point to a particular person, nevertheless everything that we can point to can be grammatically treated as a person, although in its own nature it is not a person; as we may say, "this stone," and "this ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... have you fared?" inquired the captain, whom I found luxuriously reclining in our mound of litter. And the accent on the pronoun, the heightened colour of the speaker's face, and the contained excitement in his tones, advertised me at once that I had not been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is necessarily a very personal thing. Without the person with which it is associated it could not exist. Therefore, I feel that it is appropriate to present throughout this paper a liberal use of the pronoun ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... The pronoun which seemed to separate him from the company to which his friend belonged struck harshly on Maurice's ear. He felt himself being forced to define for Philip thoughts which he had thus far ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... person gives a certain realism through the mere use of the pronoun "I," and so excites some measure of the desired personal interest; but the same result may be secured, without the accompanying disadvantages, by making the characters do a good deal of talking. That method escapes the danger of getting the narrator between the story and the reader; for the puppet ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... like that. I never use the first Personal pronoun, like the Monarch LOUIS, Who said (in French—a tongue I deem accurst), "L'etat, c'est moi." My conscience, clear and dewy, Tells me that, as a Kaiser, I am a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... me, Dora. Please don't," I said in Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. "I love thee. I love thee, Dora," I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiar pronoun ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... adverbial ending -ly was always -osh; terribly, terriblosh. A certain percentage of words were absolutely independent, or at least of obscure origin. The grammar tended to Chinese or infantine simplicity; ta represented any case of any personal pronoun. A proper name might vary in sound according to the euphonic requirements of the different Christian names by which it was preceded. There were two dialects, one, however, stigmatized as provincial. This invention of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... subosubo "serving," in which all the syllables have a high tone. Even more striking are cases furnished by Shilluk, one of the languages of the headwaters of the Nile. The plural of the noun often differs in tone from the singular, e.g., yit (high) "ear" but yit (low) "ears." In the pronoun three forms may be distinguished by tone alone; e "he" has a high tone and is subjective, -e "him" (e.g., a chwol-e "he called him") has a low tone and is objective, -e "his" (e.g., wod-e "his house") has a middle tone and is possessive. From the verbal ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... request of the publishers this chapter will be very largely the relation of personal experiences in the war on the White Slave Trade. The personal pronoun is used in obedience to instructions. After all, that is the most useful testimony which grows out of what one has seen ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... it must be borne in mind that no attempt has been made for literary style; that the task imposed upon him was attempted solely to comply with the insistence of others and that the use of the first personal pronoun is the ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... very general character, being evidently arranged with reference to the service of song in the sanctuary. Throughout this book the divine name Jehovah prevails; the name Elohim, God, being rarely used except in connection with a pronoun or some epithet—my God, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... obscurity of meaning in news writing may be found in the use of unclear pronouns. One or more instances may be found in almost every paper a reader examines. A reporter should assure himself that every pronoun he uses refers to a particular word in the sentence and that it agrees with that word in gender and number. The use of a pronoun to refer to a general idea not expressed in a particular word is one of the commonest causes of ambiguity and obscurity in newspaper work. In the following sentence ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... trembling. The solemnity of his mien and the feminine pronoun he had let slip revealed to Trenholme the direction ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... this proposition with full lucidity, his companion's plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her daughter, having no ambiguity for him. There was nothing, apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our friend's sense of Chad's knowing what he thought. "But they've made up their minds ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... come." (John 16:13) The spirit of truth here mentioned is the holy spirit, the spirit of God, the invisible power operating upon the minds of those who are in covenant relationship with God. Jesus here used the masculine pronoun in speaking ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... deary ME!" cries Sally, her desperation culminating in the pronoun, "what am I ever to do? And there! See how you turn my own words back upon me. I tell you I am going to be married, on purpose to make it clearer to you that I am going to leave, and therefore couldn't help you if I would, Poor Thing, and you make it seem to my own self as if I was cruel ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... eccentric Harrow master was the Rev. T. Steele, invariably known as "Tommy." His peculiarities were limited to his use of the pronoun "we" instead of "I," as though he had been a crowned head, and to his habit of perpetually carrying, winter and summer, rain or sunshine, a gigantic bright blue umbrella. He had these umbrellas specially made for him; they were enormous, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... "portrait-statue" is, of course, resistless, and one cannot but regret, in the interests of public decency, that testimony so conclusive is not admitted in modern trials involving a similar issue. One great characteristic of Mr. Mahaffy's style is an unsparing use of the first personal pronoun. "I think," "I do not think," "I conceive," "I believe," "I advocate," "I infer," "I would select," "I had predicted," are forms of expression strewn abundantly, often in clusters, over the pages of the work, the subject to which they refer being generally one on which most other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... is the possessive pronoun "his"; and [Hebrew: אביו], Abiu (which we read "Abif") means "of my father's." Its full meaning, as connected with the name of Khūrūm, no doubt is, "formerly one of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... treatment of Mrs. Haywood's legitimate novels, suggests the possibility that even the reviewers were ignorant of the authorship of "The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy" (1753) and "The Invisible Spy" (1755). Twenty years later, in fact, a writer in the "Critical Review" used the masculine pronoun to refer to the author of "Betsy Thoughtless." It is quite certain that Mrs. Haywood spent the closing years of her life in great obscurity, for no notice of her death appeared in any one of the usual magazines. She continued to publish until the end, and with two novels ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... I have been using the pronoun 'he' hitherto, whilst describing this insatiable love of finery, but on reflection I cannot but think that I am utterly wrong, and that when more is known of the domestic arrangements of the bower-bird, it will be found that the lady alone is responsible for this meretricious taste, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... sir, but 'e ..." she glanced at her son—she laid a stress on the pronoun always when she spoke of him that differentiated its significance—"'e 'asn't seen Mr. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... use the masculine pronoun in speaking of both the young birds; but I knew nothing as to the sex of either of them, though I came finally to believe that one was a male and ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... e.g., the bitterness of the imprecatory psalms, or the far-reaching consequences attached in other psalms (cf. xxii., xl.) to the deliverance of the singer. Till the exile, the religious unit was the nation, and the collective use of the singular pronoun is one of the commonest phenomena in Hebrew literature. The Decalogue is addressed to Israel in the 2nd pers. sing., in Deuteronomy the 2nd pers. sing, alternates with the pl., in the priestly blessing (Num. vi. 24ff.) ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... delighted with the idea, and undoubtedly Dora would be equally delighted to receive a letter from him. It would show her that he remembered his promise, and also give her a chance to note his progress. Since Smith had learned that a capital letter is used to designate the personal pronoun, and that a period is placed at such points as one's breath gives out, he had begun to think himself something of ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... related that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he icily replied, "We didn't enter ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... reading I desire should be here given to the language of the immortal bard, it will be perceived that the last pronoun is made ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... ask of whom he spoke. The pronoun was as final and definitive as his "since." Never have I heard such tenderness as he gave to its utterance. Nor such desolation as dimmed his voice ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... within doors Suppose I have laughed at better men than ever he was Sure if he did, doesn't he take it out o' me in the corns? That vanity which wine inspires That "to stand was to fall," That land of punch, priests, and potatoes The divil a bit better she was nor a pronoun The tone of assumed compassion The "fat, fair, and forty" category There are unhappily impracticable people in the world There is no infatuation like the taste for flirtation They were so perfectly contented with their self-deception Time, that 'pregnant old gentleman,' will disclose all ...
— Quotes and Images From The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer • Charles James Lever
... que se pisa y despliega. Loose construction, in which the relative pronoun object of the first verb is understood as ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... separation implies sorrow. They were near enough to watch His every movement as He "kneeled down" and "fell on His face to the ground" They were near enough to hear the passionate cry of love and agony, "O, My Father." This is the only time we know of His using this personal pronoun in prayer to His Father. He thus showed the intensity of His feeling, and longing for that sympathy and help which the Father alone ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... understanding that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed to us in language, inadequate indeed to convey divine truths, but still the only language possible; and I asked whether some such feeling was not present in his mind when he used the pronoun "His," in the above passage from "Modern Painters," of the Son, where it would be usually understood of the Father; and as a corollary, whether, in the letter, he does not himself fully recognize the fact of the redemption of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... her principles," said Tom, indicating Lois rather awkwardly by the pronoun rather than in any more definite way. "You ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... speak, using the pronoun I as though it were the Matabele king himself who spoke to his vassal, the Makalanga chief: "I sent to you last year, you slave, who dare to call yourself Mambo of the Makalanga, demanding a tribute of cattle and women, and warning you that if they did not come, I would take them. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... quarter-eagle's leveled face, The Lord's Prayer, legibly inscribed, I trace. "Our Father which"—the pronoun there is funny, And shows the scribe to have addressed the money— "Which art in Heaven"—an error this, no doubt: The preposition should be stricken out. Needless to quote; I only have designed To praise the frankness of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... but thank thee, Giles," said Stephen, changing to the familiar singular pronoun. "I have oft since thought what a foolish figure I should have cut had I met thee among the Badgers, after having given leg bail because I might not brook seeing thee wedded to her. For I was sore tempted—only thou wast free, and mine indenture ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... intelligent reader, and that they may delineate Landor in more truthful colors than those in which he has heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope to be pardoned by all charitable souls. That Landor, the octogenarian, has not been photographed by a more competent person, is certainly not my fault. Having had the good fortune to enjoy opportunities beyond my deserts, I should have shown a great want ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... (Shakspeare) and you," appears to apply the "you" to those only who were out of bed and in Covent Garden market on the night of conflagration, instead of the audience or the discerning public at large, all of whom are intended to be comprised in that comprehensive and, I hope, comprehensible pronoun. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... cavalier tone, and overlooking the pronoun Gonzaga employed, Francesco inclined his head again to ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... previous conversations many a point without which the above conversation would remain obscure. The Vedantins and the followers of Shankaracharya's philosophy, in talking of themselves, often avoid using the pronoun I, and say, "this body went," "this hand took," and so on, in everything concerning the automatic actions of man. The personal pronouns are only used concerning mental and moral processes, such as, "I thought," "he desired." The body in their ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... name, I think; no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my name; my brother's—my ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... ago, ages and ages,—when you came to see—" She paused a little, and then spoke the personal pronoun that tells the whole story, for a woman can say "him" in such a way as to betray unspeakable heights of adoration or abysses of loathing. She went on slowly. "You were not one of my friends then; how could you be, if there existed anything in common between ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... forgotten the first person singular of the personal pronoun, and not until comparatively late in life did I learn to use "I" and "me" in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... music and din would drown my exact words, but she smilingly replied, "THY hand, not YOUR hand." Yet the dance was over before I had succeeded in saying THOU, even though I kept conning over phrases in which the pronoun could be employed—and employed more than once. All that I wanted was the courage to ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... found that many supposed Messianic claims become general statements of Jesus' conception of the high prerogatives of man, while in other places the name stands simply as an emphatic substitute for the personal pronoun. Thus, for instance, Jesus is found to assert that authority on earth to forgive sins belongs to man (Mark ii. 10), and, toward the end of his course, to have taught simply that he himself must meet with suffering (Mark viii. 31), and will come on the clouds to judge the world ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... they would perish," said Mrs. Breen, hazarding the pronoun, with a woman's confidence that her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
