"Sober" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they acquire their skill, and from their skill a graceful manner; yet from hence draw no gain or hire: though this adventurous gaiety has its reward, namely, that of pleasing the spectators. What is marvellous, playing at dice is one of their most serious employments; and even sober, they are gamesters: nay, so desperately do they venture upon the chance of winning or losing, that when their whole substance is played away, they stake their liberty and their persons upon one and the last ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... 'n' when he seed ye goin' to the house, he got it inter his head that ye mought be meanin' harm to Easter, who air the only thing alive thet he keers fer much. He promised not to tech ye, 'n' I knowed he would keep his word as long as he was sober. It'll be all right now, I reckon," he concluded, "when I tell him whut ye aims to do, though he hev got a spite ag'in all furriners. Far'well! I wish ye ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... in such a nation what can be the use of oratory? You may as well profess the healing art where ill health is never known. Let men enjoy bodily vigour, and the practice of physic will have no encouragement. In like manner, where sober manners prevail, and submission to the authority of government is the national virtue, the powers of persuasion are rendered useless. Eloquence has lost her field of glory. In the senate, what need ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the seriousness with which she spoke, Heideck could not help smiling as he answered: "What a wonderful picture of the world and its affairs is sometimes drawn in a pretty woman's little head! It is really fortunate that we sober-minded men do not allow our heart to run away with our head so easily. Otherwise we should come badly off, for you yourselves would certainly be the first to turn away from us with contempt, if we tried to purchase ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... intelligent, independent, suggestive, and manifests an unaffected enthusiasm for social progress, and on the whole a just and sober apprehension of the conditions and essential features of such progress." —Professor H. SIDGWICK, in The ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... enjoy. Our resources are too many, our principles too dynamic, our purposes too worthy and the issues at stake too immense for us to entertain doubt or fear. But our responsibilities require that we approach this year's business with a sober humility. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... States from each other, and has even seriously endangered the very existence of the Union. Nor has the danger yet entirely ceased. Under our system there is a remedy for all mere political evils in the sound sense and sober judgment of the people. Time is a great corrective. Political subjects which but a few years ago excited and exasperated the public mind have passed away and are now nearly forgotten. But this question of domestic slavery is of far graver importance ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... he was alone. Valerius, who had known him with that Nereid-mother, had gone forever. Because they had lain upon the same mother's breast and danced with her upon the Sirmian shore, Catullus had always known that his older brother's sober life was the fruit of a wine-red passion for Rome's glory. And Valerius's knowledge of him—ah, how penetrating that ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... spiritual- mindedness to be sad and of a mortified countenance. Unquestionably, Christianity brings men into the continual presence of very solemn truths about themselves and the world which may well sober them, and make what the world calls ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child. It ought not come too early in a man's life—not till he has fully enjoyed his youth—for methinks the spirit can never be thoroughly gay and careless again, after ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Swedes of Delaware, telling them that he was now their Governor. "I hope you will not be troubled at the change," he said, "for you are now fixed at the mercy of no Governor who comes to make his fortune. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free and, if you will, a sober and industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of any, or ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... declares that "a Bishop must be sober, just, holy, continent."(520) And writing to Timothy, whom he had consecrated Bishop, he says: "Be thou an example to the faithful ... in charity, in faith, in chastity."(521) In another place, he enumerates chastity among the virtues that should adorn the Christian minister: ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... paradise, where everything seemed not only possible, but actually accomplished. His rising, however, shook some of these iridescent colours from his thoughts, until they gradually began to assume the more sober hue of fact, a change like that which he now discovered had come ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... matter of time, and it was confidently expected that a disaster of such magnitude would assuredly bring the North to terms. But the slaughter of the Confederates at Malvern Hill, the unmolested retreat of the enemy to Harrison's Landing, the fortification of that strong position, induced a more sober mood. The Northern soldiers had displayed a courage for which the South had not yet given them credit. On the last of the Seven Days they had fought almost as stubbornly as on the first. Their losses had been heavy, but ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... intentional instead of being thoughtless or, in ignorance, as I am sure it really is. Imagine my speaking of the pastor of this church in that way. "It is a good preacher. It is a helpful pastor." You smile, and he smiles. But if I said it repeatedly, and in sober earnest, you know how insulted he would be. I suppose that the use of the word "itself" for the Holy Spirit in the eighth chapter of Romans is largely responsible for this. The revisers have properly substituted the word "himself." That very usage so common has ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... bear the delay no longer. Gruffly he bade Sylvie come with him. He caught her hand and led her out, she looking back over her shoulder like a loath child. They had gone but a few yards along the beach trail when the sober, solid gentleman came out across the porch and waved his hand to them. Pete hastened his steps without replying. Then came a summons in a loud, full, authoritative voice: ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... treat love as if it were a passing whim; whereas in sober reality it is (or should be) a ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... form and character. The time for universal toleration might come later, when the vigor and solidity of the nucleus could no longer be vitiated by fanciful and transient vagaries. The right of private judgment carried no guarantee comparable with that which attached to the sober and tested convictions of the harmonious body of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... of his meditations was the influence of intoxication in disclosing the hidden weaknesses and vices of a man's character by exhibiting them just as they are, released from the restraint which he exercises over himself when he is sober. That there was a weak side, and probably a vicious side, in Mr. Vimpany's nature it was hardly possible to doubt. His blustering good humour, his audacious self-conceit, the tones of his voice, the expression in his eyes, all revealed ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... character. Thus in Macbeth, which was perhaps, on the whole, his most perfect impersonation, every look and gesture, every intonation, conveyed the idea of one who lived on the border-line of an invisible world, to whom all shapes and actions were half phantasmal, for whom clear vision and sober contemplation were impossible. All his utterances were abrupt, all his movements hurried; a certain wildness, not of mere mental agitation, but of a spirit nurtured on unrealities, marked his manner and countenance throughout. In Hamlet there was the drawback of a physical ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... to excel in character, in conduct, and in the beautiful graces of disposition, and to do their work among men faithfully, are forgetting meanwhile the law of love which bids every follower of Christ go about doing good as the Master did. To be a Christian is far more than to be honest, truthful, sober, industrious, and decorous; it is also to be a cross-bearer after Jesus; to love men, and to serve them. Ofttimes it is to leave your fine room, your favorite work, your delightful companionship, your pet self-indulgence, and to go out among the needy, the suffering, the sinning, to try to ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... reputation; some out of envy and malice, and others as supposing that by this foolish talking of theirs they may be thought worthy of being remembered themselves; and indeed they do by no means fail of their hopes, with regard to the foolish part of mankind, but men of sober judgment still ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... mammy look so sober, Flora?" questioned Grace. "She is usually all smiles; but to-day she hasn't a ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... twenty-seven crowned princes of the realm, Ahasuerus turned to the Jewish sages, and requested them to pass sentence upon his queen. Their thoughts ran in this wise: If we condemn the queen to death, we shall suffer for it as soon as Ahasuerus becomes sober, and hears it was at our advice that she was executed. But if we admonish him unto clemency now, while he is intoxicated, he will accuse us of not paying due deference to the majesty of the king. They therefore ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... has never drooped drowsily while the tale went on, and that his chirp was distinct in the general plea for, "More—to-morrow night?" with which the conclave brought up at the call to prayers and to pillows. This has not so far flattered me out of my sober senses as to beget a hope that my reminiscences will find such loving interest and attention so rapt in the larger audience outlying our doors. Yet I dare believe that other grandparents will read and other children will listen to the real happenings of the Long Time Ago ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... fits, which were perceived coming on her by her going off from her discourse very abruptly to some impertinence. She was maintained by an only brother, and kept his house in Dover. She was a very pious woman, and her brother a very sober man to all appearance; but now he does all he can to null and quash the story. Mrs. Veal was intimately acquainted with Mrs. Bargrave from her childhood. Mrs. Veal's circumstances were then mean; her father did not take care of his children as he ought, so that they were exposed to hardships. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... and laughed and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking whereof he walked about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles, many a night when all the sober folks had gone to bed.... Its success is most prodigious. And by every post all manner of strangers write all manner of letters to him about their homes and hearths, and how this same Carol is read aloud there, and kept on a little shelf by itself. Indeed, it is the greatest ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... come, there is no need of claiming too much for human nature. The grand prize was to be gained, ultimately, by seizure! Even the sober, common-sense William I, to whom it finally fell to be crowned German Emperor, saw the true situation early, after the church-building William IV had been gathered to his fathers. You will hear more of that as ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... French version of the stories of the Greek. It is true as Macaulay wrote, the historical plays of Shakespeare have superseded history. When we think of Henry V, it is of Prince Hal, the boon companion of Falstaff, who spent his youth in brawl and riot, and then became a sober and duty-loving king; and our idea of Richard III. is a deceitful, dissembling, cruel wretch who knew no touch of pity, a bloody tyrant who knew no law of ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... drinking that hard that he's never rightly sober from morning to night." As she told this story of her husband's disgrace, the poor woman burst into tears. "Who's to trust him with business now? He's that broken-hearted that he don't know which way to turn,—only to the bottle. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Lincolnshire for his pocket- money by return of post and got it, still he is my poor Lirriper's own youngest brother and mightn't have meant not paying his bill at the Salisbury Arms when his affection took him down to stay a fortnight at Hatfield churchyard and might have meant to keep sober but for bad company. Consequently if the Major had played on him with the garden- engine which he got privately into his room without my knowing of it, I think that much as I should have regretted it there would have been words betwixt the Major ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... looked upon as the greatest and most glorious work of a lawgiver, he began with it at the very source, taking into consideration their conception and birth, by regulating the marriages. For he did not (as Aristotle says) desist from his attempt to bring the women under sober rules. They had, indeed, assumed great liberty and power on account of the frequent expeditions of their husbands, during which they were left sole mistresses at home, and so gained an undue deference and improper titles; but notwithstanding ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... refutation of the claim of Douglas and the Democracy that the fathers of the nation were on their side as to the territorial question. Lincoln then passed to a broader view, and inquired: What can we do that will really satisfy the South? Every word is sober, temperate, well-weighed. The South, he showed, is really taking very little interest now in the Territories. It is excited about the John Brown raid, and accuses the Republican party of responsibility for that. But not a single Republican was implicated in the raid—not one. You, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... thing too," said the purple-visaged dowager wrathfully. "Privileges indeed! Fine privileges, if honest, sober-minded Christians are to learn the way to Heaven from heathens and idolaters. You are all just as bad as those people Saint Paul speaks of, who were always running after some new thing. I'm happy to say my Bible and my Church are good enough ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... would not have dared to choose the bridegroom had he not been half drunk. Perrin Corbet, a sober man himself, looked on in disgust; and glanced at Blaisette to see how she took it. But she was giggling as usual, and drinking mulled wine from one ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... the pantry-door to reconnoitre, and finding the sober quiet already described reigning, he opened a drawer, and drew forth ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... foundation; but might we not hold them as a result? Doctrine must be our foundation; but perhaps we might believe the miracles for the sake of it.—And in the epistles of Paul I thought I saw various indications that he took this view. The practical soundness of his eminently sober understanding had appeared to me the more signal, the more I discerned the atmosphere of erroneous philosophy which he necessarily breathed. But he also proved a broken reed, when I tried really to lean upon him ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... count for much, Madge," answered David honestly, "but I am more grateful to you than you can know for putting me on that list. Some day——" The young man hesitated, then his sober face relaxed and a brilliant smile lighted it. "It's pretty early for a fellow like me to be talking about ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... Spencer Percival, Prime Minister 1809-12, who was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons in the latter year, and who was his maternal grandfather, and of Earl Russell. His latest book was Studies in Biography. He wrote with much knowledge, and in a clear and sober style. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... building. It seems the only other prisoner is old Sing Wah, that they're willing to save money on, too. He'd got full of perfumed port and raw gin a few nights before, announced himself as a prize-hatchet man, and started a tong war in the laundry of one of his cousins. But Sing was sober now and would stay so until the next New Year's; so they was going to let him walk out with Pete. The judge said Pete would probably be at the Arrowhead by sunup, and if he'd behave himself from now on the law would let bygones be ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Chelsea Church rose up before her with its little motherly old pew-opener. She had so often been meaning to go and see her again, but something had always interfered. She hunted through her drawers and found a comparatively sober-coloured shawl, and tucked it under her cloak. The service was just commencing when she reached the church. Mary Stopperton showed her into a seat and evidently remembered her. "I want to see you afterwards," she whispered; and Mary Stopperton had smiled and nodded. The service, with its ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... probably useless to argue with any such. It might, indeed, be urged in all seriousness that the Peacockian attitude is not in the least identical with the Mephistophelian; that it is based simply on the very sober and arguable ground that human nature is always very much the same, liable to the same delusions and the same weaknesses; and that the oldest things are likely to be best, not for any intrinsic or mystical virtue ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... form of audacious egotism or to the effervescings of intoxication. The hint of a smile lurking in the sobriety of the powerful features of his extraordinary friend only increased his doubt. Was Norman mocking him, and himself as well? If so, was it the mockery of sober sense or of drunkenness? ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... kept from speaking it. He had been advised that his son had at last struck out definitely into some bookish bypath—just what bypath mattered little, he gathered, if it were but followed to the end. Yet the end was still far—and the boy evidently realized this. He was glad that Bertram was sober over the prospect and over his present plan—which was a serious undertaking, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... light summer dress and her picture-hat and her open-work stockings and her absurd little high-heeled, silver-buckled shoes she had somehow regained the feminine self-confidence which her thick boots and sober brown woods dress had filched from her. For the first time in this whimsical visit to a new environment she was completely happy. Dear little Barbara; she was ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to be light, and I'm afraid ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... which, when priced, sell high.——HULSIUS. Bibliotheca Hulsiana, sive Catalogus Librorum quos magno labore, summa cura et maximis sumptibus collegit Vir Consularis Samuel Hulsius. Hag. Com. 1730, four vols. 8vo. (the second and third being in two parts, and the fourth in three). This is, in sober truth, a wonderful collection of books; containing nearly 34,000 articles—which, allowing three volumes to an article, would make the owner to have been in possession of 100,000 volumes of printed books and MSS. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the tale with all the sober calm of one utterly destitute of a sense of the ridiculous, but he improves upon it by a delicious touch, worthy of Guicciardini himself, when he assures us that Cesare took these forty women ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the change in his own feelings after her long sleep at the Hotel du Chalet; besides a score of disquieting trifles which meant nothing till they were strung on a thread. He felt himself beginning to be infected with Flora Timson's mania against his will, against his sober judgment; and he spun down Bagley Hill at a runaway speed, only saved by a miracle from collision with a cart which emerged from Hincksey Lane at the jolting pace with which the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Down there!" which the boys eagerly join in, to eke out their bliss a little longer by keeping away even the appearance of anything transitory in it. The country-jake comes stumbling awkwardly into the ring, but he is perfectly sober, and he boldly leaps astride the mule, which tries all its arts to shake him off, plunging, kicking, rearing. He sticks on, and everybody cheers him, and the owner of the mule begins to get mad and to make it do more things to shake the country-jake off. At last, with one convulsive spring, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... replied with reason that they did not want them in at all. Various guests began to take it in their heads that this was not the entertainment they had come for; and in an access of the strange panic which is liable to plunge even the most sober crowd into blind folly, if nothing worse, collected their valuables and their attendants and prepared incontinently to fly from the house. Greatly their wrath raged when Marius refused to let them out. They muttered that the heads of upstarts were easily ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... I, in truth, fantastical?" she sighed, "or, if Heaven is witness to the sober truth of that which I conceive, am I so weak as to need other sympathy?" This was the tenor, not the words, of her thought. Yet all the way home, as they talked and walked through the glowing autumn ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... had hailed him with sober delight. Truly, the Lord was with him thus to spur on so broken-spirited a creature ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... philosophic truth is a path too steep to be climbed by such an undisciplined spirit as his, "sworn enemy to obligation, to assiduity, to constancy";[176] and the net result of his "Apology" for Raimond Sebonde is to upset the system of that sober theologian as well as all others. Whether Shakspere, on the other hand, could or did detect all the inconsistencies of Montaigne's reasoning, is a point on which we are not entitled to more than a surmise; but we do find that on certain issues on which Montaigne dogmatises very much ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... word to anyone'—that's Dushkin's tale—'but I found out what I could about the murder, and went home feeling as suspicious as ever. And at eight o'clock this morning'—that was the third day, you understand—'I saw Nikolay coming in, not sober, though not to say very drunk—he could understand what was said to him. He sat down on the bench and did not speak. There was only one stranger in the bar and a man I knew asleep on a bench and our two boys. "Have you seen Dmitri?" said I. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Dolly went home very sober and careful. It is true, not much wine had been drunk that day. Yet she knew a line had been passed, the passing of which was significant of future licence, and introductory to it. And that it had been done in her presence was to prove to her that ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... will resist a Home Rule Parliament at any cost and at every cost. We will not have it. Our faith is plighted, and we are not the men to go back of our word." His manner was very subdued, and the audience also kept very quiet. What these men say they say in their sober senses, and not by reason of excitement. Another room was livelier. An English gentleman was holding forth. Then the band played "No surrender," after which a lady sang "Killarney's hills and vales." In a third room a brother was calling on the brethren to give three cheers for ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Aunt Henshaw's permission, I went out to feed the chickens; and having drawn them near the wood-pile, I confined my favors almost exclusively to a sober-looking hen and five little chickens. When the pan was empty, I conceived that I had well earned the right, and putting my hand down softly, I took up a cunning little thing and hugged it in delight. But a terrible flapping of wings sounded close to my ears—I ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... bloodstained cabin, and breaking open the spirit-locker began a carousal which lasted some hours, to the accompaniment of music on Mancillo's guitar. They took care, however, to relieve the two sentinels, and kept themselves sober enough to shorten sail ...
— The South Seaman - An Incident In The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... very few Christians had suffered by the hand of the executioner, except on account of their religion. [85] Their serious and sequestered life, averse to the gay luxury of the age, inured them to chastity, temperance, economy, and all the sober and domestic virtues. As the greater number were of some trade or profession, it was incumbent on them, by the strictest integrity and the fairest dealing, to remove the suspicions which the profane are too apt to conceive against the appearances of sanctity. The contempt of the world exercised ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... round, and in the open space, turreted with fantastic fires, the Indians swayed in and out with weird chanting, their bodies mostly naked, and painted in strange colours. The earth itself was still and sober. Scarce a star peeped forth. A purple velvet curtain seemed to hang all down the sky, though here and there the flame bronzed it. The Indian lodges were empty, save where a few children squatted at the openings. The seven stood still with wonder, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tears ran down his cheeks. So overcome was he with mirth, that it is possible he would have let go, and permitted Pouchskin to tumble back into his trap; but the more sober Alexis, foreseeing such a contingency, ran up and took hold of ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... begin with the youngest, consists, in acting as steward on Owen's property. The routine of my duties has never lost its sober attraction to my tastes, for it has always employed me in watching the best interests of my brother, and of my son also, who is one day to be his heir. But can I expect our fair guest to sympathize with such family ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... established orbit; for after this night the world will never be the same careless, happy-go-lucky world. The farce has its tragedy, and what tragedy is free of the ludificatory? Youth must run its course, even as the gay, wild brook must riot on its way to join the sober river. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... delicate moustache gave him a brilliancy his father had never possessed. He seemed to bring the light with him into the deep shade of the glen where they met. One looking at him would have felt instinctively that he was made to wear the gleaming uniform of a Prussian Lifeguard, rather than the sober garments of a civilian. As a matter of fact, he was dressed like an Englishman, and would probably have been taken for one, to his own intense disgust, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... first to arrive. The old weaver was resplendent in the apparel usually reserved for "Cheppel Sunday." The external elevation of his appearance from the worn and sober brown of his daily "top-sark" seemed to produce a corresponding elevation of the weaver's spirit. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, he seemed tempted to let fall a sapient proverb of anything but a funereal tone. On stepping into the kitchen and seeing the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... he were as big a sinner as ever you clap eyes on. Me and my son was among the sawdust, spite of our three crutches, and he spreading hands at us, sober as a judge, for lumps of ungenerous iniquity. Mother Tapsy told us of it, the very next day, for it was not in our power to be ackirate when he done it, and we see everybody laffing at us round the corner. But we took the wind out of his sails ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... some time and astonished her by saying that if she wanted Hostels for married couples, it wasn't perhaps so entirely unreasonable. Selected cases, he stipulated, it would have to be and above a certain age limit, sober people. "It might even be a check on immorality," he said, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... been far from the shadow of the heavy trees of the wood, and their dark wall round about the clearing where they dwelt. Face-of-god gave the twain the sele of the day in merry fashion as he passed them by, and the sober dark-faced man nodded to him but spake no word, and the child stayed her prattle to watch ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... was a sickly-looking man, who held by the hand a little boy of five or six years. The child, pale and sober, regarded with incessant interest the prosperous and energetic man who ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... spoke when I set out for the hall that she would like me to pledge myself. Someway I didn't see any use in it, but that lecturer made me see lots of things, so I up and followed old man Potter who hadn't drawn a sober breath ever since I could remember. Claude clung to my coat-tails. "I want a ribbon, too!" he screamed. The lecturer gave one look at the little shaver and the crowd roared as he pinned a badge on the boy's coat. Ah, here we ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... always sober in these, his later years. He was sober to-day. He liked to bask in that ripe sunlight as well as his dog and cat did; and in such baskings he almost always looked out of his doorway at the far, fine blue sky over the tops of the crowding maples. But to-day ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... wonder—he had taken to drink,—not drinking in the would-be-jolly, rollicking, old Irish style, as his father had done before him; but a slow, desperate, solitary, continual melancholy kind of suction, which left him never drunk and never sober. It had come to that, that if he were left throughout the morning without his whiskey and water, he would cry like a child; whatever power he had of endurance would leave him, and he would sit over the fire whining the ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... but merely as I bear my master's image and superscription; his Majesty's prerogative shining the more therein, by how much the metal on which he is stamped hath less of value in itself. Not a compliment, which will be always a saucy thing, as well as impertinent, with a man's prince; but a sober and natural inference, at least so understood by such as could wish it were ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... or crop herbage all the way along, daintily picking and choosing the herbage and shrubs which they like best. My chief occupation in riding is watching them browse, and observing the epicurean fancies of these reflective, sober-thinking brutes of The Desert. I observe also as a happy trait in the Arab, that nothing delights him more than watching his own faithful camel graze. The ordinary drivers sometimes allow them to graze, and wait till they ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... shadow outlined against the window pane; someone was trying to look into the room. The peasant approached the window and became sober. He ran into the passage and pulled the door open with trembling hands. Frosty air fanned his face. His wife was standing outside, still trying to ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... said Mr. Hopewell, "for a man that is wide awake and duly sober, I never saw one yet that talked such nonsense as you do. You said, you understood me, but you don't, one mite or morsel; but men are made differently, some people's narves operate on the brain sensitively and ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... were confused and enthusiastic greetings, and the car dashed on up the track, with an outrider on each side—both horses strongly resenting this new and ferocious monster. The years had brought a good deal of sober sense to Bosun and Monarch, but motors were still unfamiliar objects on Billabong. Indeed, no car of the size of Norah's Rolls-Royce had ever been seen in the district, and the men gaped at it open-mouthed as Jim drove it round to the stable after ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... sterile; in area Ireland is not collossal, but neither is she microscopic. Mr. Shaw has spoken of her as a "cabbage patch at the back of beyond." On this kind of description Rome might be called a hen-run and Greece a back yard. The sober fact is that Ireland has a larger geographical area than many an independent and prosperous European kingdom, and for all human and social needs she is a fairly big country, and is beautiful and fertile to boot. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... apparently conflicting phenomena under the operation of one law? Is there any way of showing that this experience of the race, of which so much is said without the least attempt to show in what way it may or does become the experience of the individual, is in sober seriousness the experience of one single being only, repeating in a great many different ways certain performances with which he has become ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... gets by keeping hisself sober," said the youthful philosopher, as he poured a little cold tea out of the kettle on his handkerchief and washed himself. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... was sober, he could do something," suggested Weary. "I guess I'd better go after ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... as the soldier became sober, and saw himself placed under such an unwieldy animal, he was so terrified that he scarcely durst move either hand or foot; but the elephant soon caused his fears to subside by caressing him with his trunk, and thus tacitly saying, "Depart ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... voice catarrhal thrilled the Member's ear: "Brief is our business, Jones. Look round this room! Regard yon portraits! Read their meaning clear! These much proclaim MY station. I presume YOU are our Congressman, before whose wit And sober judgment shall the youth appear Who for West Point is deemed most just and fit To serve his country and to ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... of the matter. The language, even where most faulty, is weighty and massive, and indicates strong sense in every line. It often rises to an eloquence, not florid or impassioned, but high, grave, and sober; such as would become a state paper, or a judgment delivered by a great magistrate, a Somers or ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... roads very much as the old men o' war of King Edward's fleet had sailed over that same country when it was fathoms deep under the seas of Rye Bay.... With their towering, decorated poops they were more like mad galleys of a bygone age than sober waggons of ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... more, when I read, say, the fantastic discourses on the pictures of Poussin delivered by the Academicians of 1667, I feel certain that some of these erudite old gentlemen had, in fact, much the same sort of enthusiasm, stirred by the monumental qualities of his design and the sober glory of his colours, that I have myself. Through all the dry dust of their pedantry the accent of ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... ashore." Bill looked at me just long enough to satisfy himself that I was in earnest, and said, "For God's sake, George, give me one more pull, for I don't want you to sail in with me in tow." So I went to him, as I had got rested, and he had got sober; we pulled together, and I soon had the big fellow on board. We sailed around for some time; but when we had to make a tack, you can bet your life that Bill was on the lookout for the boom. Every ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... said Anne, mimicking Miss Cornelia's tone. Then she laughed. "Dear Miss Cornelia, they're only little children. And you KNOW they've never yet done anything bad—they're just heedless and impulsive—as I was myself once. They'll grow sedate and sober—as I've done." ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... see grave Nestor stand, As 'twere encouraging the Greeks to fight; Making such sober action with his hand, That it beguiled attention, charm'd the sight: In speech, it seem'd, his beard, all silver white, Wagg'd up and down, and from his lips did fly Thin winding breath, which curl'd up ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... gifted with superior understanding or with any stock of what is called imagination. He was cold, silent, sad, sober, fond of no pleasure except the chase, fearing society, fearing himself, unexpansive, a recluse by taste and habits, rarely touched by others, of good sense nevertheless, and upright, with a tolerably good knowledge of things, obstinate when he liked, and often ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... final improvement and popular use may be attributed to the first reformers, who enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation. Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... of meditative restraint. "By Jove!" he broke out, "one tries to take a serious, sober view. I don't quite know why. But this is a great lark, Ann Veronica! This turns life into a ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... saluted, Fergus knew that it was the king. He had never had the king described to him, and had depicted to himself a stiff and somewhat austere figure; but the newcomer was somewhat below middle height, with a kindly face, and the air rather of a sober citizen than of a military martinet. The remarkable feature of his face were his eyes, which were very large and blue, with a quick piercing glance that seemed to read the mind of anyone to whom he addressed himself. So striking were they that the king, when he went about the ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... he thought, a great fear came upon Dick, a fear that made him hold his breath as he walked into the oculist's waiting room, with the heavy carved furniture, the dark-green paper, and the sober-hued prints on the wall. He recognised a reproduction of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 'In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... postulates evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater 'catastrophe' than any of those which Lyell success fully eliminated from sober geological speculation." ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the agitation and sectional hatred, which it engenders. This is a grievous misfortune. It is folly to attempt to conceal the fact, that it has originated sectional jealousy and prejudice, which endangers the perpetuity of the Union. This is a serious view of the subject, and it demands the sober consideration of every friend of this glorious Union. The Union must be preserved; should be the motto of every one who has a spark of patriotism in his breast. All those questions of national policy, which have separated ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... am told I am on, with all the delight of a child on a toboggan slide. Yes, I would. I surely would, Kate. I'm a drunkard, I know. A drunkard by nature. I have not the smallest desire to be otherwise, from any moral scruple. It's you that makes me want to straighten up, and you only. When I'm sober I'd be glad if I weren't. And when I'm not sober I'd hate being otherwise. Why should I be sober, when in such moments I suffer agonies of craving? Is it worth it? What does it matter if drink eases the craving, and lends ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... we wield, to attack them without a suitable motive. "Flashy people," says the learned and pious Cotton Mather, Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of the Royal Society, "may burlesque these things; but when hundreds of the most sober people, in a country where they have as much mother wit, certainly, as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadducism can question them." Against this grave and credited authority, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... hindrance in this stealthy groping among the trees was the condition of Jim Deane, who had taken a prodigious over-dose of the universal remedy for the rattlesnake's venom. When in his sober senses, he was one of the bravest and most skilful scouts in the west, and was held in special high esteem by Capt. Bushwick, for whom he had performed ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis |
