"Superfluity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a divine beauty in his eyes, like half- mythical queens of Egypt and Babylon, blinking in a rather barbarous superfluity of jewels: and, blinded and headlong, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... lady. He found himself wishing he were a painter, that he might perpetuate her graces through a few favored generations who might behold and adore her dimly as he beheld and adored her clearly, in her riding-dress of Lincoln green, whose voluminous superfluity she held gathered to her girdle as she moved. No painter could have scanned her more closely, noted more minutely the buckle of brilliants that captured the plume in her hat, the lace about her throat, the curious work upon her leather gauntlets, the firm foot in the small, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is perfect. Just large enough to allow the grace of order in domestic circumstance; just that superfluity of intramural space, to lack which is to be less than at one's ease. The fabric is sound; the work in wood and plaster tells of a more leisurely and a more honest age than ours. The stairs do not creak under my step; I am waylaid by no ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... eighteen inches of the spike have already blossomed, none of the ovaries have been fertilized; they are dropping off, but I am rather sanguine regarding those about the middle of the spike. So great is the superfluity of nectar contained in the flowers, that on the afternoon of the second day it often drops from the cups, and the least shake to the scape brings it down in a shower. The main beauty of the inflorescence consists in the dense bottle-brush-like mass of bright yellow anthers. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... unboundedly that prosperous injustice, royalty, and think so highly of her? Is the being conspicuous honorable? At least, it is empty honor. Or dost thou desire to labor much, possessing much in thy house? but what is superfluity? It possesses but a name; since a sufficiency indeed to the temperate is abundance. Neither do men enjoy riches as their own, but having the property of the Gods do we cherish them. And when they list, again do they take them away. Come, if I ask thee, having ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... herself altogether enjoy the exercise of her art. To the last her periods of mental gestation were long, painful, and unhopeful. Parturition was a dangerous crisis, and the long-expected infant was reared with misgivings and a superfluity of coddling. The romances of George Eliot came like some enfant de miracle, born late in the mother's life, at the cost of infinite pain, much anxiety, and amidst the wondering trepidation of expectant circles ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... prestige and to give a certain color of legality to their acts—this, although they don't know an iota of what they are doing. But what I am sure of, and many other men also, is that there is no order, that here there is not a single person in authority whom to obey. This superfluity of rulers will finally lead to strained relations between them and the towns of this province will end by ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... are so indeterminate, and vary so much, not only as regards century and century, kingdom and kingdom, but also, even in the same century and the same kingdom, as regards rank and rank. That which is a mere necessary to one, is a luxurious superfluity to another. And, in order to ascertain these differences, it is an indispensable qualification to have studied the habits and customs of the several classes concerned, together with the variations ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... more awful than a public dinner—the waste, the extravagance, the outrageous superfluity of everything, the enormous waste of time, the solemn gorging, as if the whole end and aim of life were turtle and venison. I do not know whether to dignify such proceedings by the name of luxury. But what shall ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... his imagination or memory. How often, too, have I seen the reverse of the picture I have just drawn; when the pale unconscious corse has lain abandoned in its loveliness, and grudging hands have scantily dealt out a portion of their superfluity, to obtain the last rites for one who so lately moved, spoke, smiled, and walked amongst them! And I have felt, even then, that there were those to whom that neglected being had been far more precious than heaps of gold, and I have mourned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... felt herself close to and looking into the stream of recorded history, within whose banks the littlest things are great, and outside which she and the general bulk of the human race were content to live on as an unreckoned, unheeded superfluity. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Further, much less superfluity is found in God's works than in the works of nature. Now the theological virtues suffice to direct us to supernatural good. Therefore there are no other supernatural virtues needing to be caused in us ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... and Trojans like two savage tribes, tugging and tearing, and kicking and biting, and gnashing, foaming, grinning, and gouging, in all the poetry of martial nature, unencumbered with gross, prosaic, artificial arms; an equal superfluity to the natural warrior and his natural poet? Is there anything unpoetical in Ulysses striking the horses of Rhesus with his bow (having forgotten his thong), or would Mr. Bowles have had him kick them with his foot, or smack them with his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Public Safety refused to listen to Ferney's explanations. The Scarlet Pimpernel was only an ordinary mortal—an exceedingly cunning and meddlesome personage it is true, and endowed with a superfluity of wealth which enabled him to break the thin crust of patriotism that overlay the natural cupidity of many Captains of the Town Guard—but still an ordinary man for all that! and no true lover of the Republic should allow either ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... had left the affairs he was there to discuss he returned to them. His mind seemed to have freed itself of all irrelevancy and superfluity, as a stream often runs from a faucet with much spluttering and rather muddy at first, then steadies and clears. Norman gave him the attention one can get only from a good mind that is interested in the subject and understands it thoroughly. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... settle me upon the stable foundation of Leadenhall. Sit down, good B.B., in the Banking Office; what, is there not from six to Eleven P.M. 6 days in the week, and is there not all Sunday? Fie, what a superfluity of man's time,—if you could think so! Enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. O the corroding torturing tormenting thoughts, that disturb the Brain of the unlucky wight, who must draw upon it for daily sustenance. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... period and long afterwards, even among women of high degree. See, for instance, several of the enamels in the Louvre, notably one which depicts Henry II. of France with Diana of Poitiers riding behind him. The practice is also referred to in a sixteenth century ballad. "La Superfluity des habitz des Dames" (Anciennes Poesies Francaises. Bib. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to dinner was given. The boatswain's call came into requisition, and all hands, except the watch on deck, were soon busily employed in discussing the contents of a cask of beef, boasting of but a small proportion of fat or lean and a considerable superfluity of bone. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... be no superfluity of servants. The old fellow said that food was ready, and without more ado we went into the dining-room—another vast chamber with rough stone walls above the panelling—and found some cold meats on the table beside a big fire. The servant presently brought in a ham omelette, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from the inner circle of advanced intellectuals. Too much occupied with the obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche in the temple of fame. 'A wish to epater le bourgeois,' says Mr. Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.' I do not think so; at least, in an artist. Now much of Beardsley's work shows the eblouissement of the burgess on arriving ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... thoroughbreds gave me. I was rich enough to be beyond the stage at which a man excites suspicion by frequenting race-tracks and gambling-houses; I was at the height where prodigalities begin to be taken as evidences of abounding superfluity, not of a dangerous profligacy. Jim Harkaway, who failed at playing the same game I played and won, said to me with a sneer one day: "You certainly do know how to get a dollar's worth of notoriety out of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... was the extent of ground owned by Almayer, Willems yet felt that there was not enough room for him inside those neat fences. The man who, during long years, became accustomed to think of himself as indispensable to others, felt a bitter and savage rage at the cruel consciousness of his superfluity, of his uselessness; at the cold hostility visible in every look of the only white man in this barbarous corner of the world. He gnashed his teeth when he thought of the wasted days, of the life thrown away in the unwilling company of that peevish ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... never compensate for the loss of your love. You are my life, and from you alone can I receive happiness or unhappiness. At your side I am rich and joyous, though we may outwardly need; without you I should be poor with superfluity. I am proud that we in spirit have freed ourselves from those fictitious externals with which the foolish burden themselves. Oh, my beloved Philip, my whole soul is exultant that we are never more to part—no, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... in spite of its conventions and its old forms, it is not far behind civilization, not because civilization has made no progress, or is so insecure, but because war, chaos though it be, in some respects contains all our modern feelings. Kerr says that war is due to a superfluity of animal force that must vent itself, but such explanations of war seem certainly to be very far from the truth. That theory is far from being adequate as an explanation of play. It is much less so as an explanation of war. The other theory of play ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... exaggeration, of course. He was not wordless, for the letter contained almost a superfluity of words; but people often said things they did ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... devout lady shall so will, you may obtain from her liberality a shirt for this worthless tabernacle, and also a pair of hose; for I am unsavory to myself and to others, and of such luxuries none here has superfluity; for all live in holy poverty, except the fleas, who have that consolation in this world for which this unhappy nation, and those who labor among them, must wait till the world ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the illustrious Savarin,—in criticism the French Longinus—in poetry the Parisian Horace—in social life the genius of gaiety in pantaloons,—contemplate his attenuated frame! Shall he perish for want of food while thou hast such superfluity in thy larder? I appeal to thy heart, thy conscience, thy patriotism. What, in the eyes of France, are a thousand Foxes compared to ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so wrapped; an amber-mounted hookah (a stake won at cards) and a tobacco pouch (worked, it was alleged, by some countess who had fallen in love with Nozdrev at a posthouse, and whose handiwork Nozdrev averred to constitute the "sublimity of superfluity"—a term which, in the Nozdrevian vocabulary, purported to signify ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... regaling the blackbird, the minstrel of the forest, the Balaninus adds another—that of moderating the superfluity of vegetation. Like all the mighty who are worthy of their strength, the oak is generous; it produces acorns by the bushel. What could the earth do with such prodigality? The forest would stifle itself for want of room; excess ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... extreme nature it is not difficult to decide, but the matter becomes perilously complicated when an attempt is made to gauge the relative importance of "need" and "superfluity" in concrete cases. How much "need" must first be endured before a man has a just claim on another's superfluity? By what standard are "superfluities" themselves to be judged? For it is obvious that when the need among a whole population is general, things possessed by the richer classes, ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... combustible materials found in the earth, on the one hand, and the quantity which is supposed necessary for hardening and consolidating strata, on the other. If this earth has been consolidated by the burning of combustible materials, there must have been a superfluity, so far as there is a certain quantity of these actually found unconsumed in the strata of the earth. Our author's conclusion is the very opposite; let us then see how he is to form his argument, by which he proves that the supposition ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... in my turn, answered: I should think it best, Ischomachus, to use indifferently the whole sowing season. [5] Far better [6] to have enough of corn and meal at any moment and from year to year, than first a superfluity and then perhaps ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... everlasting black soil, tea-tree flats, and gullies running between them, some being very wide. Two more horses died during the day from the effects of the poison, and the Leader owns that he was beginning to be at his wits end as to how they were to get along. Every superfluity and been abandoned, and, with the exception of a few light things, such as clothes and blankets, of too trifling weight to make it worth while to leave, and only what was absolutely necessary, retained; yet there were barely sufficient ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... Spain, when half Europe and all America owned the sway of the Catholic King. The second statue, though not a thing of beauty, has always had the attraction of an unsolved puzzle, for we cannot decide whether it proves a complete absence or an abundant superfluity of humour in the Puteolani of to-day. It is the figure of a Roman senator, vested in his flowing toga, and owning (as the ancient inscription informs us) the grandiose name of Quintus Flavius Mavortius ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Lordship." John Steele bowed. "I ask your lordship's indulgence for the"—an instant's ironical light gleamed from the dark eyes—"superfluity." ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... domestic architecture in the country. It was enlarged subsequently by Rich. Pomeroy (temp. Hen. VIII.), and Bishop Beckington's executors are said to have built the chapel at the other end of the Close. Regarded now-a-days as a devotional superfluity by the singers, it has been turned over to the Theological College. The chapel and muniment room above should be inspected, but admission cannot now be obtained to the hall. Before leaving the Cathedral precincts ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... brings what my soul requires. It answers to my soul, as light and beauty answer to the eye, and as sound and music answer to the ear, and the whole of nature to the whole of man. There is neither want, nor superfluity, nor disagreement. Christianity and my soul, like nature and my physical being, are a glorious match. They are one: as I and my life are one. Christ is my life. Christ is my all. And He is all that ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and harmony, somewhat ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... not a superfluity; still we have a small collection, comprising several which have for some years been on public exhibition, illustrating 'The Good Samaritan;' 'Prodigious;' 'Washington's Blacksmith shoeing Washington's Horse,' and others of less note, while ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of those who are dependent upon us. It dispenses with everything which is not essential, and avoids all methods of living that are wasteful and extravagant. A purchase made at the lowest price will be dear, if it be a superfluity. Little expenses lead to great. Buying things that are not wanted, soon accustoms us to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... other hand, various circumstances have already been suggested that cooeperated, already prior to the days of Hammurabi, in weeding out the superfluity of deities, at least so far as recognition of them in the official inscriptions of the rulers were concerned. Deities, attached to places of small and ever-diminishing importance would, after being at first ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... won't give us something to eat, or sell it," replied Jack, who was ravenous, clutching his pistol, "I shall take it—I consider it no robbery. The fruits of the earth were made for us all, and it never was intended that one man should have a superfluity and another starve. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... call a tub a 'tosh.' When Dirty Dick came here he was unclean. He told his form—oh! the cheek of it!—that in his filthy mind one bath a week was plenty," unconsciously the boy mimicked the thick, rasping tones—"two, luxury, and three—superfluity! After that he was called Dirty Dick. There's another story. They say that years ago he went to a Turkish bath, and after a rare good scraping the man who was scraping him—nasty job that!—found ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the Lodge, a miniature Brantwood, turret and all, the Severn children live when they are at Coniston. Then there are the gardens, terraced in the steep, rocky slope, and some small hot-houses, which Ruskin thinks a superfluity, except that they provide grapes ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... a figure often having its force and propriety, as justified by the law of passion, which, inducing in the mind an unusual activity, seeks for means to waste its superfluity,—when in the highest degree—in lyric repetitions and sublime tautology—"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead,"—and, in lower degrees, in making the words themselves the subjects ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... read the psychological explanations of the Austrian schools and the materialistic conceptions of the classical writers. He would then find himself in a state of confusion, owing to what seemed to him to be a superfluity of explanations of value. When one understands one point of view, an added viewpoint is a source of greater clarity and a means of deeper understanding. But when one is entirely ignorant of fundamental concepts, two points of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the quantity of exclamations he heard at the sight of this picture; the lifting up of hands and eyes, the transports, the ecstasies, the tears—the actual tears that he saw streaming in despite of rouge. It was real! and it was not real feeling! Of one thing he was clear—that this superfluity of feeling or exaggeration of expression completely silenced him, and made him cold indeed: like one unskilled or dumb he seemed ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... in Fig. 18, the ceiling, M, is shown as a semicircle; in Fig. 20, it is only a space between the top and bottom lines. It is, certainly, shaded here to give the effect of rotundity, but that is quite a superfluity. On Fig. 18 the height of the side windows is shown at F, and the thickness of the wall in which they are made. In Fig. 20 (F) their width and spacing are shown. In Fig. 18 some lines drawn across, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... century of our era.[949] But besides grain they also imported from Palestine at some periods wine, oil, honey, balm, and oak timber.[950] Western Palestine was notoriously a land not only of corn, but also of wine, of olive oil, and of honey, and could readily impart of its superfluity to its neighbour in time of need. The oaks of Bashan are very abundant, and seem to have been preferred by the Phoenicians to their own oaks as the material of oars.[951] Balm, or basalm, was a product of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... but for some surprise also. For if its contents had been known, it is certain that all the public men of nearly two generations who figure in it would have combined into one vast and irresistible conspiracy to obtain and destroy it. There was always a superfluity of gall in the diarist's ink. Sooner or later every man of any note in the United States was mentioned in his pages, and there is scarcely one of them, who, if he could have read what was said of him, would not have preferred the ignominy of omission. As one turns ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... world, "poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious and venerable friend ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... 's a sough o' cholera Or typhus, wha sae gleg as she! She buys up baths, an' drugs, an' a', In siccan superfluity! She doesna need—she's fever proof— The pest walked o'er her very roof; She tauld me sae, and then her loof Held ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... clock is sold for forty dollars—it cost me just six dollars and fifty cents. Mrs. Flint will never let Mrs. Steel have the refusal—nor will the deacon learn until I call for the clock, that having once indulged in the use of a superfluity, how difficult it is to give it up. We can do without any article of luxury we have never had, but when once obtained, it is not in 'HUMAN NATUR'' to surrender it voluntarily. Of fifteen thousand sold by myself and partners ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Clark, who was a good skater, and withal a good leader in a frolic. 'You follow me and do as I tell you, and I don't believe old "Tushy" will follow us far.' By general consent he led them to the dry, sandy shore, and such as had them filled their handkerchiefs, and such as could not boast of that superfluity filled their caps, with sand. 'Now,' says Phil, 'when he comes back, and it won't be long, we'll form a line and wait till he gets his skates on, when he'll put chase for some of us. If he gets near any of us, some one sing out "Bully," and every boy ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... into decay, from their look of having outlived their original use. Their extraordinary largeness and massiveness are a satire on their present fate. They weren't built with such a thickness of wall and depth of embrasure, such a solidity of staircase and superfluity of stone, simply to afford an economical winter residence to English and American families. I don't know whether it was the appearance of these stony old villas, which seemed so dumbly conscious of a change of manners, that threw a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... kitchen and pantry. One of our party unearthed a time-honoured tea-pot—we had of course taken the precaution of carrying tea with us—one by one milk and sugar were forthcoming in what may be called wholesale fashion, milk-jugs and sugar-basins being apparently articles of superfluity, and in company of a charming old dog and irresistible kitten, also of some quiet wayfarers, we five-o'clocked ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... dislike and childish impatience of his system which would be aroused among his opponents, he was fully aware, and would often anticipate the jests which the rest of the world, 'in the superfluity of their wits,' were likely to make upon him. Men are annoyed at what puzzles them; they think what they cannot easily understand to be full of danger. Many a sceptic has stood, as he supposed, firmly rooted in the categories of the understanding which ...
— Sophist • Plato
... 60 degrees, Specimens of which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely destitute of civic rights; and a great number of them, not having even intelligence enough for the purposes ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... anticipated. It had appreciably influenced Wildeve, but it was influencing Eustacia far more. Her lover was no longer to her an exciting man whom many women strove for, and herself could only retain by striving with them. He was a superfluity. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... now in plethoric prosperity, anon extenuated into inanition and 'short time,' is of the nature of gambling; they live by it like gamblers, now in luxurious superfluity, now in starvation. Black, mutinous discontent devours them; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the heart of man. English commerce, with its world-wide, convulsive fluctuations, with its immeasurable Proteus Steam demon, makes ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on—it was for ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... constantly kept from inundation, which, if not carefully attended to, the crop is entirely ruined; great precaution is therefore taken in forming drains between the beds, and letting water out, thus preventing a superfluity. On account of the great tendency some kinds of leaves have to breed worms and insects, strict care is observed in the choosing of them, and none but the particular kinds used in manuring ginger are taken in, lest the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... solitary place. It is my rule never to make unnecessary mysteries, and never to set people suspecting me for want of a little seasonable candour on my part. Mrs. Michelson believed in me from first to last. This ladylike person (widow of a Protestant priest) overflowed with faith. Touched by such superfluity of simple confidence in a woman of her mature years, I opened the ample reservoirs of my ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... latter tapers to the waist, which the young dandies compress within the smallest compass. In addition to the cloth, there is always round the waist a girdle of cords made of tasar-silk or of cane. This is now a superfluity, but it is no doubt the remnant of a more primitive costume, perhaps the support of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... one else on her side, and, as they went to bed, she said to Ethel, "Don't you wish we had some of this superfluity of the Riverses ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... There are many good paintings, including portraits of the various presidents of the club, which adorn the entrance hall. After books, perhaps the most distinctive feature of the club is our collection of pipes. In a large rack in the smoking-room—really a superfluity, since smoking is permitted all over the house—is as complete an assortment of pipes as perhaps exists in the civilized world. Indeed, it is an unwritten rule of the club that no one is eligible for membership who cannot produce a new variety ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... we not go farther? Recognising in our own world, in many instances, what to our ideas resembles waste—waste seeds, waste lives, waste races, waste regions, waste forces—recognising superfluity and superabundance in all the processes and in all the works of nature, should it not appear at least possible that some, perhaps even a large proportion, of the worlds in the multitudinous systems peopling space, are not only not now supporting ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... me to give you a few bottles of wine in exchange for your milk," replied Fink, "I will accept your present with thanks. I presume you have no superfluity of this commodity ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... of reasoning, then, breaks down. In whichever way he interprets the Syllogism it is revealed as either a superfluity or a fallacy: it is never a 'formally valid inference' that can compel assent. But common sense is undismayed by the pragmatist's discovery that if the Syllogism is to have any sense its premisses must be taken as ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why—why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism to keep in office a Had that is so delicate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... remaining a longer or shorter period at his will, and, when no longer required, giving place to others. The idea once recorded seems never to appear again. Nature is never so prodigal as with the man of genius. Of all her children he is the favorite; these pictures are given him in superfluity, out of all proportion to his ability to use them. The harder he works in the effort to catch up with his material, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... "as society must have leaders, I prefer that they should be people with brains as well as money. The ambition is quite legitimate. Do your part in civilising the drawing-room, as Arnold conceives he is doing his on a larger scale. A good and intelligent woman is no superfluity in the world ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Faith, crumbs from my superfluity, like those that fell from the other rich man's table. Besides, of what avail will any charities, as you call them, of mine be? They will serve only to convey the curse that attaches itself to me. I tremble to ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... to have a look at the ship Mary and Elizabeth) to find "sundry sorts of carved work and imagery" on that part of the vessel where the cabins were; and in the cabins themselves he observed "some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts." This subjected his mind to "a deep exercise," and he decided that he would have to take passage in the steerage instead of the cabin. Having our self made use of the steerage ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... remember,—in broad streets, narrow streets,—in close-built blocks, in open outskirts,—even a mile or two away among the green fields,—lived in, boarded in. I am cheated in heart by injurious superfluity of houses. One home, remembered alone, would stand embowered forever,—if not among ancestral trees and vines, then in clustering memories far more lovely and more cherished. But what dignity or beauty or quiet or distinctness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891, because of scarcity of food, or even famine, which is no novelty in the government. In a district where the average of rain is twenty inches, there is not much margin of superfluity which can be spared without peril. Wheat grows here better than in the government just north of it, and many peasants are attracted from the "black-bread governments" to Samara by the white bread which is there given them as rations when they hire ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... in this, or perhaps in anything else. It is not only so of the state and statesman, but of all the classes and descriptions of the rich: they are the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by their superfluity. They are under an absolute, hereditary, and indefeasible dependence on those who labor and are ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be doubted, I think, that Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. If the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, I should have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Darwin had demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... have some splendid mania or other. Even the most selfish of young people are endowed with a superfluity of life, a capital sum of energy which has been advanced to them and cannot be left idle and unproductive: they are for ever seeking to expend it on a course of action, or—(more prudently)—on a theory. Aviation or Revolution, a muscular or intellectual ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... off duty for the evening. Not having ventured to put in an appearance at Carteret's since his last rebuff, he found himself burdened with a superfluity of leisure, from which he essayed to find relief by dropping into the hotel office at about nine o'clock. He was invited up to see the cakewalk, which he rather enjoyed, for there was some graceful dancing and posturing. But the grotesque contortions of one participant had struck ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... certainty be called rich? A single man can lodge in a garret, and dine on a herring: nobody knows; nobody cares. Let him marry, and he invites the world to witness where he lodges, and how he dines. The first necessary a wife demands is the most ruinous, the most indefinite superfluity; it is Gentility according to what her neighbours call genteel. Gentility commences with the honeymoon; it is its shadow, and lengthens as the moon declines. When the honey is all gone, your bride says, 'We can have our tea without sugar when quite alone, love; but, in case Gentility drop ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... compulsion, and caused a feeling of dislike to the person honoured, and of absolute hatred against those who enforced them, but showed no gratitude or desire to honour the dead. They were mere displays of barbaric pride and boastful extravagance, which wastes its superfluity on vain and useless objects; whereas, here was a private citizen who died in a foreign land, without his wife, his children or his friends, and, without any one asking for it or compelling them to it, he was escorted to his ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... with boughs. Families take it by turns to entertain their friends. They meet early; the beef and pudding are noble; the mince-pies—peculiar; the nuts half play-things and half-eatables; the oranges as cold and acid as they ought to be, furnishing us with a superfluity which we can afford to laugh at; the cakes indestructible; the wassail bowls generous, old English, huge, demanding ladles, threatening overflow as they come in, solid with roasted apples when set down. Towards bed-time you hear of elder-wine, and not seldom of punch. At the manorhouse it is ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... and I wish you to be persuaded, that unless these are practised habitually and incessantly you can never be truly generous. A readiness to give that which costs you nothing, that which is so truly a superfluity that it involves no sacrifice, is a mere animal instinct, as selfish perhaps, though more refinedly so than any other species of self-indulgence. Generosity is a nobler quality, and one that can have no real existence without economy ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... with the master. At last he asked him to explain how it was that all this gold and silver was the property of one man and was left to rust, and why the master of the treasure incessantly laboured to increase it when he had already such an amazing superfluity of riches. The master answered, "I am not a man, although I have the form and appearance of one. I belong to a nobler race, which was formed by the decree of the Creator to rule the world.[45] By his decree, I must ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... fellow-citizens the faithful Vindex, who had revealed the conspiracy of the Tarquins. The public festival was continued during several days in all the principal cities in Rome, from custom; in Constantinople, from imitation in Carthage, Antioch, and Alexandria, from the love of pleasure, and the superfluity of wealth. In the two capitals of the empire the annual games of the theatre, the circus, and the amphitheatre, cost four thousand pounds of gold, (about) one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling: and if so heavy an expense ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... to shelter a family of boys, and steps being a superfluity scorned by their agile legs, there was a sheer drop of three feet to the ground upon that side. Evadna made it in a jump, just as the boys did, and landed lightly upon her ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... me I shall have money enough for two. What I want is that you should kindly relieve me of my superfluity and make it over to Isabel. Divide my inheritance into two equal halves and ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... methods. "First I have now done as the people of God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsome and beautiful: I have shaved off his hair and pared off his nails, that is, I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter. Further, I have for the most part drawn his private carpings of this or that man to a general moral. I have Englished things not according to the vein of the Latin propriety, but of his own vulgar tongue. I have interfered (to ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... merely as a relic of antiquity, but from an sthetic point of view. Nearly every tradesman of importance in this country has some sort of trade mark; but most printers agree in regarding it as a wholly unnecessary superfluity. As the few exceptions indicated in the last chapter prove that the fashion has an artistic as well as a utilitarian side, Ihope that it will again become ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... among the things which have to be done, and must be done, therefore, as best one can do them. It is in the nature of a superfluity: the excuse for it is that it is beautiful. It is not worth doing unless it is done well, and in material worth the work done on it. If you are going to spend the time you must spend to do good work, it is worth while using good stuff, foolish to use anything else. The stuff need not ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... to enter into a view and examination what parts of learning have been prosecuted, and what omitted. For the opinion of plenty is amongst the causes of want, and the great quantity of books maketh a show rather of superfluity than lack; which surcharge nevertheless is not to be remedied by making no more books, but by making more good books, which, as the serpent of Moses, mought devour the serpents ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... their topics are before them, and they take the hint. You feel so grateful, too, for the hospitality of the log-cabin; such gratitude as the hospitality of the rich, however generous, cannot inspire; for these wait on you with their domestics and money, and give of their superfluity only; but here the Master gives you his bed, his horse, his lamp, his grain from the field, his all, in short; and you see that he enjoys doing so thoroughly, and takes no thought for the morrow; so that you seem in fields full of ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... armour of a great reptile, twelve or more feet long. This great beast had died and got buried in the sand; the sand had gradually hardened over the bones, but remained porous. Water had trickled through it, and that water being probably charged with a superfluity of carbonic acid, had dissolved all the phosphate and carbonate of lime, and the bones themselves had thus decayed and entirely disappeared; but as the sandstone happened to have consolidated by that ...
— The Past Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... not perceptibly affected him to any depth. He had not been conscious that her entry into his sphere had added anything to himself; but now that she was taken away he was very conscious of a great deal being abstracted. The superfluity had become a necessity, and Knight ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... better, those subject to barrenness must eat such meats as are juicy and nourish well, making the body lively and full of sap; of which faculty are all hot moist meats. For, according to Galen, seed is made of pure concocted and windy superfluity of blood, whence we may conclude, that there is a power in many things, to accumulate seed, and also to augment it; and other things of force to cause desire, as hen eggs, pheasants, woodcocks, gnat-snappers, blackbirds, thrushes, young pigeons, sparrows, partridges, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... hands, however, are well defended by a pair of gauntlets that reach his elbows; and on his head he wears a cap richly ornamented with bear's and eagle's claws. His long thick hair, however, renders the head-gear an article of superfluity,—but it is the fashion. The dress of the women consists of a square piece of dressed deer-skin, girt round them by a cloth or worsted belt, and fastened over their shoulders by leather straps; a jacket of leather, and cloth leggings. ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... so fond of the mare that he could hardly endure to let them put her to any kind of work, and he used to come himself every night and feed her of the best; and as for this purpose he usually brought a superfluity of corn, both thrashed and in the straw, from the neighbours' barns, all the rest of the cattle enjoyed the advantage, and they were all ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... Then we are won more by what we half perceive and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed. But this feeling is a part of our young life: when time and years have chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out of which we build a shrine for our idol—then do we seek, we ask, we thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness, which revives in us the withered affections ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... francs. He has undeceived me. Permit me to undeceive you in my turn. My savings enable me at present to enjoy a revenue of about 540 livres, all deductions made. My work brings me in annually a sum almost equal to this amount; I have then a considerable superfluity; I employ it to the best of my power, though I scarcely give any alms. If, contrary to all appearances, age or infirmities should some day incapacitate me from following my usual occupations, I have a friend. J. J. ROUSSEAU PARIS, August ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... and somewhat formal meal, at which civil and ecclesiastical officers had, a few hours before, sat mingled in the same apartment, where a light jest could only be uttered in a whisper, and where, even amid superfluity of feasting and of wine, there reigned a decorum which almost amounted to hypocrisy, there was now such a scene of wild and roaring debauchery as Satan himself, had he taken the chair as founder of the feast, could ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... be somewhat blighted. Innocent III. had now for twelve years occupied the throne of St. Peter. Still young, energetic, resolute, he enjoyed that superfluity of authority given by success. Coming after the feeble Celestine III., he had been able in a few years to reconquer the temporal domain of the Church, and so to improve the papal influence as almost ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Maia's son, with wings for ears, Such plumes about his visage wears, Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers Such superfluity of feathers," ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
