"Unimportant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stanza, also, the dash after "'T is the star-spangled banner" makes the change more abrupt, the line more spirited, and the burst of feeling more intense, than the usual semicolon. The other variations are unimportant. Some of them were made in 1840, when Key wrote out ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... the extreme loveliness of the St. Mary's Chapel, centres rather in the small and outwardly unimportant oratories (if they should be so called) that lead up to it. These begin immediately with the ascent from the level ground on which the village of Saas-im-Grund is placed, and contain scenes in the history ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... and as she hastily did a little amateur coiffing, he thought she looked slightly annoyed. At any rate, she hadn't much more to say to him, and he went back to London almost immediately, feeling quite absurdly agitated about such an unimportant trifle. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... to the different nations—to the tribes of the North on the Lakes; to the northwest, the head-waters of the Mississippi and south to its mouth; to the east and the southeast. The Indians thus enlisted and banded together against the British comprised, "with few unimportant exceptions, the whole Algonquin stock." Especially were the Ohio tribes solicited and secured; the Shawanoes, the Miamis, the Wyandots, and the Delawares. The Senecas were the only members of the Iroquois confederacy that joined the league. The onslaught was to be made in the month of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... carefully considered. Very often unaccented syllables are made unduly prominent and unimportant words are over-emphasized through lack of attention to this principle. The careful appreciation of rhythm, or the movement of syllables in enunciation, gives a flowing, easy, well-proportioned clearness that is indispensable to beauty. This should ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... covenant engagements. For the vows of God are upon him and he is careful to fulfil them. He doth not wish to be released from his obligations with which he is bound to be the Lord's and to serve him. He is concerned to honor God—thinks nothing unimportant which he hath required, though the reasons of the requirement may lie out of sight. "Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" is his daily inquiry. And he seeks to know, that he may do his duty. He waits on God in the ways of his appointment, and is busy about the work ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... races and among most of the higher animals. It is only during recent years that sexual inversion has been recognized; previously it was not distinguished from homosexuality in general, and homosexuality was regarded as a national custom, as an individual vice, or as an unimportant episode in grave forms of insanity.[1] We have further to distinguish sexual inversion and all other forms of homosexuality from another kind of inversion which usually remains, so far as the sexual impulse itself ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... changes went others, less revolutionary but equally necessary to complete the new ecclesiastical system. The Saxon bishops had many of them had their seats in unimportant places in their dioceses, tending to degrade the dignity almost to the level of a rural bishopric. The Norman prelates by degrees removed the sees to the chief towns, changing the names with the change of place. Dorchester was removed to Lincoln, Selsey to Chichester, Sherborne to Old ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... brought that bill forward, although I may differ from them on some minor points, entitled to the strongest support of Parliament. The right honourable gentleman, the Member for the University of Cambridge, has attempted to divert the course of the debate to questions comparatively unimportant. He has said much about the coal duty, about the candle duty, about the budget of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. On most of the points to which he has referred, it would be easy for me, were I so inclined, to defend the Ministers; and where I could not defend ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the author of "The Playboy of the Western World" can be uninteresting or unimportant ... A fine achievement, and only a sympathetically gifted man would and could have done ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... time I was an unimportant officer on board a battleship in the Russian Navy, until I was discovered to be a Nihilist, when I was cast into prison. I escaped last May, and came to ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... my idea," replied he, "we have here only a scrap of unimportant paper; the name of the legatee is not indicated, and even were it indicated, the testament would still be without force, being ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... high explosives which burst in the earth. If you are at the front and a curtain of fire is put behind you, wait until it is over or go around it. If there is one ahead, wait until another day—provided that you are a spectator. Always bear in mind how unimportant you are, how small a figure on the great field, and that if every shell fired had killed one soldier there would not be an able-bodied man in uniform left alive on the continent of Europe. By observing these simple rules you may see ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... in writing to Mr. Thomas Grenville, Lord Temple alludes to a former letter, which evidently had not reached its destination. The circumstance would be unimportant in itself, were there not reason to believe that it formed part of a regular system of espionnage to which the whole of Lord Temple's correspondence was subjected. The establishment of such an inquisition ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... the shambles, and makes the revolutionary butchers inquire as to their ducal victim, "how he cuts up? how he tallows in the caul or on the kidneys?" Apart from the beauty of the style, the value, as I conceive, of Burke's writings, is subject to one not unimportant deduction. For most lofty and far-sighted views in politics they will never be consulted in vain. On the other hand, let no man expect to find in them just or accurate, or even consistent, delineations of contemporary character. Where eternal principles are at stake, Burke was ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... all reunited upon true constitutional principles to any other object that could be offered me in life; and to restore, upon the principles of of our fathers, the Union of these States, to me the sacrifice of one unimportant life would be nothing; nothing, sir. But I infinitely prefer to see a peaceful separation of these States, than to see endless, aimless, devastating war, at the end of which I see the grave of public ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... act of sin in the pupil ought to be carefully guarded against by the parent or teacher, and, if possible, prevented; while every exertion ought to be made to induce to the performance of good and kind actions, however humble or unimportant these actions in themselves may be. If God does "not despise the day of small things," neither should we; and one act of kindness by a child, however trifling, will most assuredly prepare the way for another. This circumstance also shews the impropriety of attempting ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... from the window; but he had quaffed so deeply of the morning glory, that the sinister frescos no longer depressed him. They were ridiculously unimportant,—nothing more than stains on the wall, in fact. Balder could not tell why he felt light-hearted. It was solemn light-heartedness,—not the gayety of sensuous spirits, such as he had experienced heretofore. It had little to do with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of the army under Gen. Sullivan, had, on their arrival at Tioga Point, found the Indians in some force there, with whom they had had some unimportant skirmishes before our arrival. Upon the junction of these two bodies of troops, Gen. Sullivan assumed the command of the whole, and proceeded up the Tioga. When within a few miles of the place now called Newtown, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... Origin.—Mention must also be made of haemorrhages which depend upon infective or toxic conditions and in which no gross lesion of the vessels can be discovered. The bleeding occurs as an oozing, which may be comparatively slight and unimportant, or by its persistence may become serious. It takes place into the superficial layers of the skin, from mucous membranes, and into the substance of such organs as the pancreas. Haemorrhage from the stomach and intestine, attended with a brown or black discoloration of the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... And the fear that perhaps Seryozha was without tobacco or Werner without the strong tea to which he was accustomed, in addition to the fact that they were to die, caused her no less pain than the idea of the execution itself. Death was something inevitable and even unimportant, of which it was not worth while to think; but for a man in prison, before his execution, to be left without tobacco—that was altogether unbearable. She recalled and went over in her mind all the pleasant details of their life together, and then she grew faint with fear when ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... from Sylvia. Her duty to her father, and—my ideas seemed too much for her peace of mind; so bewildering. "I am no politician, you know; and truth to tell, these matters which seem so much to you that you would have them drive religion from me, they seem to me so infinitely unimportant. Forgive me!" ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... a too great tendency to a boyish stride in walking. Her brow, covered by blue-black hair, was low and frank and honest; her eyes, a very dark hazel, were not particularly large, but rather heavily freighted in their melancholy lids with sleeping passion; her nose was of that unimportant character which no man remembers; her mouth was small and straight; her teeth, white and regular. The whole expression of her face was piquancy that might be subdued by tenderness or made malevolent by anger. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... finds the word most descriptive of the process to be forgery. "The main point is that practically all the experts assure you that in scores of material points the Old Testament history has been discredited, and has only been confirmed in a few unimportant incidental statements; and that the books are a tissue of inventions, expansions, conflations, or recensions dating centuries ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... add here an incident which seemed, when it took place, as unimportant as a single fact well ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... is disposed to believe that this is an over-drawn picture, let him study the facts brought out in the recent patent medicine investigation. It was found that one small, unimportant, quack medical company had under treatment at one time (the day the government closed it up) 200,000 women, suffering exclusively from female diseases. How many similar cases must there be to support the large advertising concerns, whose tentacles reach to the remotest corners of the country ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... persistent application. All that this school or any school can do for its students in this respect is to start them upon the right track in the acquisition of skill. But do not make the mistake of assuming that this is a small and unimportant matter. If this school did nothing more than this, it would still repay tenfold the cost of its establishment and maintenance. Three fourths of the failures in a world that sometimes seems full of failures ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... exactly what you saw, thought, and felt this morning. Every detail, however unimportant you might ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... required a long and difficult elaboration, and he therefore dwells mainly upon the folly of the legislative, unsupported by the moral, remedy. To Godwin, on the other hand, who professed an unlimited faith in the power of reason, this difficulty was comparatively unimportant. Remove political inequalities and men will ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed—at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case—to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman's fate during its earlier stages. And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact, that ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... atmosphere. Biopsy of even selected brain tissues seemed to show that microscopic cellular changes due to prolonged weightlessness or primary cosmic-ray bombardment, which had been suggested by some authorities, were unimportant. Somewhat reluctantly, it was decided to repeat ...
— Egocentric Orbit • John Cory
... the period which terminated with the arrival of the 28th Battalion at Marseilles. That first phase of the unit's history was not so unimportant as might be thought. Although the following years were marked by a series of great events, in which the Battalion took a glorious part, yet there was a sameness in the surroundings and a monotony of routine which was ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a pair of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, for the Park is rarely used in the morning except by unimportant people who love to be healthy, poor and wise. In the vehicle sat an old gentleman with snowy side-whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could not be worn while driving except by a personage. At his side sat the lady of Remsen's heart—the lady who looked like pomegranate ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... The first is the rioting in 1717, when Captain-General Roja enforced the decree establishing a government monopoly in tobacco. The disturbances in Haiti and Santo Domingo (1791-1800) resulting in the establishment of independence in Haiti, under Toussaint, excited unimportant uprisings on the part of negroes in Cuba, but they were quickly suppressed. The first movement worthy of note came in 1823. It was a consequence of the general movement that extended throughout Spanish-America and resulted in the independence of all Spain's former colonies, ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... an increasing number of women in the West are ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant. The reason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored. It is a rebellion against a necessity, which is not equal ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... interest was done that day. A few unimportant witnesses were examined on legal points, and then the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... district of London, and the same author asserts, that the scene of his disgrace as indeed seems probable beforehand, was not the first but the last of his arenas as a schoolboy Which indeed was first, and which last, is very unimportant; but with a view to another point, which is not without interest, namely, as to the motive of Pope for so bitter a lampoon as we must suppose it to have been, as well as with regard to the topics which he used to season it, this anonymous ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... horses, cows, sheep, seed-corn, and arms were collected at Rochelle for exportation in 1619. But the laymen, partly Protestants and partly Roman Catholics, began to squabble about the immaculate conception, or something else, equally stupid and unimportant, until Champlain himself got into trouble and nearly lost his Deputy Governorship, and the expedition was delayed. In 1620, Champlain, however, set sail, and on his arrival at his capital, in July, was agreeably surprised to find that a missionary, named Duplessis, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... they were out in the street. Cornish made some unimportant remark, which the other did not answer. So they walked on in silence. Presently, Cornish glanced at his companion, and was startled at the sight of his face, which was grey, and glazed all over with perspiration, as an actor's ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... this first residence in London are meagre, but not unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with Mr. Timothy Shelley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley would not recede from the position he had taken up. Nothing would induce him to break off his intimacy with Hogg, or to place himself under the tutor selected for ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... her guests and family might be much more comfortable. But she does not think of these common articles as constituting a good table. So long as she has puff pastry, rich black cake, clear jelly and preserves, she considers that such unimportant matters as bread, butter, and meat may take care of themselves. It is the same inattention to common things as that which leads people to build houses with stone fronts, and window-caps and expensive front-door trimmings, without bathing-rooms or fireplaces, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... which one tamper is required for each two men shoveling the back-fill into the trench; and some such specific requirement should be made in a concrete specification if close estimates from reliable contractors are desired. Surely no engineer will claim that this is too unimportant a matter for consideration when it is known that ramming can easily be made to cost as high as 40 cts. per cu. yd., depending largely upon the whim of ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... arms a vast army of crippled and diseased men temporarily from the woods. The poor lumber-jack was often left broken in mind and body from causes which a little intelligent care would have rendered unimportant. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Historical Society, accompanying his translation, and also in the Archivio Storico Italiano, in which it is represented by the editor to be more correctly copied from the manuscript, and amended in its language where it seemed corrupt; but such corrections are few and unimportant. In all cases in which the letter is now made the subject of critical examination, the passages referred to are given, for obvious reasons, according to the reading ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... correct the proof-sheets. I thought it my duty, therefore, in revising my work to have the text of Boswell's second edition read aloud to me throughout. Some typographical errors might, I feared, have crept in. In a few unimportant cases early in the book I adopted the reading of the second edition, but as I read on I became convinced that almost all the verbal alterations were Boswell's own. Slight errors, often of the nature of Scotticisms, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in torrents, but the end was worth the cost. Would it hurl a hundred thousand men into bloody graves? That was unfortunate, but unavoidable. Would the struggle frighten and horrify the world? It was possible. But these things were unimportant. The rebellion must be crushed. The sledge-hammer must strike until Lee's keen rapier was shattered. Hammer and rapier were matched against each other—the combat was a l'outrance—the hammer must beat down the rapier, or fall from the grasp of ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... these legislators provided for the maintenance of public worship, and took the initial steps for the establishment of an institution of learning. It is not too much to say that the hour that witnessed these enactments witnessed the triumph of the popular over the court party; in no unimportant sense, the first triumph of the American colonists over kingly prerogative. Looking through the mists of the mighty past, Mr. Speaker, to the House of Burgesses, over which your first predecessor presided, would it be out ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... you must get over your habit of becoming so tense over unimportant matters. If you can't learn to like Edith, learn to ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... by the authority of Hugh Miller and Smith of Jordanhill, and are led on to continuous defeat on their own ground, under the auspices of the Scotsman, who knows well how to shut the door politely in any man's face who pursues them. These gentlemen are far from being either unimportant or unworthy antagonists, if they would only speak intelligently for themselves and not allow their credit to be usurped by some nameless reviewer in a newspaper, who may know less about the whole matter in dispute than they ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... de Choiseul was thus writing to M. Durand, the English government had already justified the fears of its wisest and most sagacious friends. On the 7th of March, 1765, after a short and unimportant debate, Parliament, on the motion of Mr. George Grenville, then first lord of the treasury, had extended to the American colonies the stamp-tax everywhere in force in England. The proposal had been brought forward in the preceding year, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the two stared at one another challengingly. On the earth, their attitude would have indicated some unimportant tiff. None would have dreamed that the most momentous question in their lives had come up, and had found ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... surrounded by chaperons. These were the social people, and also there were a certain number of young men with pretty women who were too fashionably dressed, too much made up, and who were looking forward too much to supper. These ladies seemed inclined to crab the play, and to find unimportant little faults with the unimportant actresses. There were many Americans—who took it seriously; and altogether one could see it was an immense success; in other words everyone had paid for ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... indicated by him I find that, in regard to specific characters, Mr. Darwin is very cautious in admitting inutility. His most pronounced "admissions" on this question are the following: "But when, from the nature of the organism and of the conditions, modifications have been induced which are unimportant for the welfare of the species, they may be, and apparently often have been, transmitted in nearly the same state to numerous, otherwise modified, descendants" (Origin, p. 175). The words I ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... division of labor," smiled the cosmopolitan. "I do about all the drinking, and you do about all—the genial. But yours is a nature competent to do that to a large population. And now, my friend," with a peculiarly grave air, evidently foreshadowing something not unimportant, and very likely of close personal interest; "wine, you ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... is unimportant, Ann. Another cup, please. Ah! there it is now." He went out on to the porch. "You ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... describe my feelings of rage (for I believe I was more angry than any thing else) when the egregious oversight I had committed flashed suddenly upon my perception. The blunder itself would have been unimportant, had not my own folly and impetuosity rendered it otherwise—in my disappointment at not finding some words upon the slip, I had childishly torn it in pieces and thrown it away, it was impossible to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... time of Constantine and the Crusades. The central fact of European expansion in the Dark Ages (from the seventh to the eleventh century) is the advance of the Vikings to the Arctic Continent and to America about the year 1000. All that precedes this on the same line is doubtful and unimportant. For, of the other voyages to the West in the sixth, the eighth, the tenth centuries, which, on Columbus' success, turned into prior claims to the finding of the New World, there is not one that ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... and, though the address given was full enough for the postal authorities, the cabman had some difficulty in finding it, and went wrong before he went right. It was a dingy street, and not very long; it had an unimportant, apologetic sort of air, as if it were quite used to being overlooked. The houses were oldish, and very narrow, so that a good many were packed into the short length; the pavement was narrow, too, and so were ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... devotion to the service of God in the service of man, we cannot know. Along one line its influence can be partly traced. The "Life of David Brainerd" made Henry Martyn a missionary to the heathen. As spiritual father to Henry Martyn, Brainerd may be reckoned, in no unimportant sense, to be the father of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... washes the shores of Scotland, Denmark, and Norway. There are a great many islands in this sea, many more than I can enumerate. Near Scotland there are several little unimportant places of trifling interest, of which I should be glad to gain some information, as at present I know nothing more than that they are there, are ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... but animated mainly by the desire to give expression to their deep personal convictions. If there were demagogues here and there among them, seeking merely to create a balance of power for bargain and sale, they were unimportant in number, and only of local influence, and soon became deserters. There was no mistaking the earnestness of the body of this faction. A few fanatical men, who had made it the vehicle of violent expressions, had kept it under the ban of popular prejudice. It had long been held up to public ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... to undermine your position? Your whole personality is far too unimportant. But you may take my word for this, that if you don't change your tactics completely, you will cause so much trouble that you will make ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... attention of scholars and reformers and thinkers to the whole Methodist history, work, and mission," while a new impulse should be given to every good work, and a more daring purpose of evangelisation kindled. The British Conference pointed out the need of frankly recognising the not unimportant differences amongst the various Methodist bodies, so as to rule out of discussion any points which had a suggestion of past controversies. The American Conference ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... interesting because they treat of the great men and important affairs of his day. They are interesting because he lived a quiet life and was able in his own way to paint a picture treating of the common doings of an apparently unimportant life. Here is a picture of an election in the country, or rather of the candidates' methods ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... took my last lunar observations, and made its mouth N. lat. 9 deg. 20' 48", E. long. 31 deg. 24' 0". The Sobat has a third mouth farther down the Nile, which unfortunately was passed without my knowing it; but as it is so well known to be unimportant, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... something, but he did not think it safe to question the man further, for fear of exciting his suspicions; so, after a few unimportant remarks, he turned on his heel and walked into the hotel, which was used as the army head-quarters. Here he remained for nearly half an hour, to give the man of whom he had received his information time to leave the place, and then directed his steps toward Mr. Abbott's dwelling. He ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... meanwhile, was a candidate for Tavistock, and when the election was still in progress the new Premier offered him the comparatively unimportant post of Paymaster-General, and, though he might reasonably have expected higher rank in the Government, he accepted the appointment. He was accustomed to assert that the actual duties of the Paymaster were performed by cashiers; and he has left it on record that the only official act of any importance ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... farmer and old Timothy the father. But the father, too, is far from what he should be, as one must suspect, not believing that education alone can account for so many gone wrong. Timothy burns down some unimportant farm buildings for the insurance upon them. This practice is so common in all parts of the world civilized sufficiently to have insurance that I wonder insurance companies take risks on backwoods farms anywhere. An old man with whom I have talked often in the mountains ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... civilization. I have seen whole tribes of most respectable aborigines that never bathed. And they seemed to be quite happy. It saves a lot of time. But that's another queer thing. The more time we need, the more we waste it on matters that are really unimportant. Like most of our attempts to improve on nature, it costs more ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... had come and he was a mere brigadier pigeonholed in an unimportant office with juniors broadly hinting at his retirement while classmates were leading divisions and even army corps to glorious victory on the field of battle. At least, they would have been leading them to glorious victory if there had been any ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... to the disadvantage of the Cavalry is even more apparent on mobilization for War, owing to the many Reserve and Landwehr formations of Infantry and Artillery, in comparison with which the few new units provided by the Cavalry are relatively unimportant. Considering the mobilized Army as a whole, the Cavalry forms numerically ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... seemingly unimportant, bore fruit in Paul's life. It determined him to leave the neighbourhood at once. But where should he go? He hated Cornwall, hated the Pencarrow Mines, and longed to get away where he could begin what he regarded as his life's ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... is greater difficulty in seeing and hearing the small than the great, but more facility in moving and controlling and taking care of small and unimportant things than of ...
— Laws • Plato
... intelligible and vivid by colored maps and comic drawings. Until the boy was fourteen, his schooling was of the most casual sort, his only formal training being such as he received in the comparatively unimportant three or four years he spent, after he was ten, at Mr. Ready's private school. His real education came, through all his early life, from his home. What would now be called nature-study he pursued ardently and on his own initiative in the home garden and neighboring ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... so furrowed that they leaned inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin. His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse, from which hung a croix de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... home bonds and he soon left Hof forever, though still for a time maintaining diligent correspondence with the "erotic academy" as well as with new and more aristocratic "daughters of the Storm and Stress." The writings of this period are unimportant, some of them unworthy. Jean Paul was for a time in Leipzig and in Dresden. In October, 1798, he was again in Weimar, which, in the sunshine of Herder's praise, seemed at first his "Canaan," though he soon felt himself out of tune with Duchess Amalia's literary court. To this time ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... maneuvers? No, I suspected a little at times, but I was so astounded that a man like you—in the full flush of success, so well known, so sought after—should concern himself with such a little, unimportant girl as I, that, really, I could place no faith in the sincerity of ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... legate or from Anselm, the privilege of bestowing the pallium himself. He was obliged to yield in everything which he had most desired; to reconcile himself publicly with the archbishop, and to content himself with certain not unimportant concessions, which the cardinal wisely yielded, but which brought upon him the censure of the extreme Church party. Anselm promised to observe faithfully the laws and customs of the kingdom; at this time also was sworn his oath of fidelity to the pope, with the clause reserving his ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... carried in his memory were, however, not unimportant, for both bore on his relationship with the man who was moulding his life. The one episode turned Vespasian's bald statements into real emotional facts, and the other was the first serious collision between the far-off disastrous tutelage of Marley Sartin ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... of your convictions. Life has no value. Blanche Stroeve didn't commit suicide because I left her, but because she was a foolish and unbalanced woman. But we've talked about her quite enough; she was an entirely unimportant person. Come, and ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... him to escort her, which was obviously the proper thing. When she refused again, and went off, like any nobody, alone, he returned to his chambers, leaving Rosalie to the unimportant persons whose business it ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... discarded his personality as an Englishman, which was becoming too well known in the district, disguised himself as a workman and made for Cuzion. It was an unimportant village. He would easily discover the sender of ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... The fact that the majority of cursive MSS. and some valuable versions, such as the later Syriac and the Armenian, place it at the end of xiv. seems to be accounted for by the fact that the last two chapters were often omitted in the lessons read in church, being considered unimportant for the purposes of general edification. The fact that the Epistle seems to come to an end at xv. 33, and also at xvi. 20, before the final doxology in xvi. 27, suggests the best solution. It is that the apostle, after concluding the argument of the Epistle, made various {160} additions of ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... belongs to the same period, because it is written in a melancholy tone, and in it she asks Heaven to watch over her bed. The last dated letters, which are of October 31st and November 2d, are devoted to unimportant domestic affairs; they show that Lucretia was in Nepi as late as November. Another undated letter to the same Vincenzo Giordano refers to her return to Rome; it purposely contains obscurities which it is now impossible to decipher ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... and the tactics of the tournament! She deliver France! On a much smaller argument and to put down a less ambition, the half serious, half amused adviser has bidden a young fanatic's ears to be boxed on many an unimportant occasion, and has often been justified in so doing. There would be a half hour of gaiety after poor Laxart, crestfallen, had got his dismissal. The good man must have turned back to Jeanne, where she waited for him in courtyard or antechamber, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... this, in any point of view, an unimportant matter. A tall man is, whether as labourer, carpenter, bricklayer, soldier or sailor, or almost anything else, worth more than a short man: he can look over a higher thing; he can reach higher and wider; he can move on from place ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... playing at the same recital. What a variety, what a wealth of contrasting artistic enjoyment such a concert would afford. There is nothing that is so enjoyable for the true artist as ensemble playing with his peers. Solo playing seems quite unimportant beside it. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... They also combine human and animal forms in a less noble and artistic way than is done in the Egyptian representation of the Sphinx. There are also small figures of animals in terra-cotta, principally dogs and ducks. But the large and small statues of the Assyrians are their most unimportant works in sculpture. It is in their bas-reliefs that their greatest excellence is seen, and in them alone their progress in art can be traced. This sort of sculpture seems to have been used by the Assyrians just as painting was used in Italy after ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... others by placing them last. In this particular outline we have a natural time-order to follow, and emphasis will be determined mainly by the relative proportion to be given to different paragraphs. Do not give unimportant paragraphs too much space. Be sure that the introduction and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... lances, bridles, chains worn round the neck (torques), bracelets (armillae), pins or brooches (fibulae) to fasten the cloak, and crowns (coronae). It was less common, but very honourable, to receive a flag (vexillum) attached to a pole. [456] 'I consider this as something too unimportant.' Parum is used substantively. [457] 'Greek literature has not benefited its professors (that is, the Greek nation) in regard to political virtue:' inasmuch as the Greek states had been unable to protect their political liberty either against kings and tyrants, or against foreigners. ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... acts were alleged by the prosecutors against the accused bearing properly on the charge of aspiring to kingly power, except his assembling the multitude, and his seditious expressions and his largesses, and pretended discovery; nor have I any doubt that they were by no means unimportant, as the people's delay in condemning him was occasioned not by the merits of the cause, but by the place of trial. This seems deserving of notice, that men may know what great and glorious achievements his depraved ambition of regal power ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... likely transpierces it, in a perfectly turned sentence, a phrase of impromptu elaboration. Perhaps it is only a stupid book that some one has mentioned, or a stupid woman; as he speaks, the book looms up before one, becomes monstrous in its dulness, a masterpiece and miracle of imbecility; the unimportant little woman grows into a slow horror before your eyes. It is always the unpleasant aspect of things that he seizes, but the intensity of his revolt from that unpleasantness brings a touch of the sublime into the very expression of his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... advice but few to share the danger. While Sabinus' Body Guard were marching down by the Fundane reservoir[185] they were attacked by some of the most determined Vitellians. The surprise was unpremeditated, but the Vitellians got the best of an unimportant skirmish. In the panic Sabinus chose what was at the moment the safest course, and occupied the summit of the Capitol,[186] where his troops were joined by a few senators and knights. It is not easy to record their names, since after Vespasian's victory ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... that he is no man, but only a shell of a man, with works inside, which can of course be exhibited and taken to pieces—a rather more difficult matter with flesh and blood. If we believe that God is educating, the when, the where, and the how are not only unimportant, but, considering who is the teacher, unfathomable to us, and it is enough to be able to believe with John Bethune that the Lord of all things is influencing us through all things; whether sacraments, or sabbaths, or sun-gleams, or ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... individual. For the Trail is a vantage-ground, and from it, as your day's travel unrolls, you see many things. Nine tenths of your experience comes thus, for in the long journeys the side excursions are few enough and unimportant enough almost to merit classification with the accidents. In time the character of the Trail ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... much for my unchastised squeamishness; and as to assafoetida, the favorite condiment of our Aryan cousins, I was so uncatholic as to bring away from India the same aversion to it that I had carried out there. But a Mohammedan has, with some unimportant reservations, highly rational notions as concerns the eatable and the drinkable. His endless variety of kabobs and pilaus is worthy of all commendation; and his sherbets, which refresh without a sting or a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Prague is a great city, the capital of the Bohemian Crownland, the centre of a not unimportant nation, the focus in which are concentrated the hottest, if not the brightest, rays from the fire of regeneration kindled within the last half century by the Slavonic race. There is an ardent furnace of life hidden beneath ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... friend, aren't you, in your queer way?" She did not wait for an answer, but went on: "You don't come to see me when I ask you. You don't send me any word. You make me feel that, compared to your concerns with beetles and flies, I'm quite hopelessly unimportant. And yet here I find you giving up your own pursuits and wasting your time to plan and watch ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... preacher, with a good deal of courage, as well as dignity, rose in the boat. He thrust aside, as unimportant, the machete of the Caco who threatened him, and the assumption of authority took the guerilla aback. Quietly, and with perfect coolness, he walked up to the Haitian general. A little to Stuart's surprise, he spoke the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... ministerial notice. With every system where competition is the acknowledged principle, it is clearly impolitic to interfere; nor can we avoid the painful conviction, that this first measure, though comparatively light and generally unimportant, was put out by way of feeler, in order to test the temper of the Scottish people—to ascertain whether eighteen years of prosperity might not have made them a little more supple and pliable, and whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... sufficient for some time after conception has taken place. To most persons, however, it is not clear that the quantity of food ordinarily eaten will suffice also during the later months of pregnancy. On the contrary, popular opinion holds that the prospective mother "should eat for two." It is not unimportant to point out the erroneous character of this superstition, because overeating during pregnancy is much more likely to provoke discomfort ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... great "council" of the realm, to which the king summoned the most considerable persons in England, the persons he most wanted to advise him, and the persons whose tempers he was most anxious to ascertain. Exactly who came to it at first is obscure and unimportant. I need not distinguish between the "magnum concilium in Parliament" and the "magnum concilium out of Parliament". Gradually the principal assemblies summoned by the English sovereign took the precise and ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the pilchard fishery of Cornwall—a small unit, indeed, in the vast aggregate of England's internal sources of wealth: but yet neither unimportant nor uninteresting, if it be regarded as giving active employment to a hardy and honest race who would starve without it; as impartially extending the advantages of commerce to one of the remotest corners of our island; and, more than all, as displaying a wise ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... undertake such a task, not only from his access to the various sources of information, and his singular power and skill in narrating events and delineating characters, but also from the circumstance that he himself had a personal and no unimportant share in most of the transactions of those times, which have left the character of his own mind so indelibly impressed on his country and its institutions. It is scarcely necessary to subjoin ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... happen to her. And if you ask me, how, wherefore, for what reason? I will answer you: Why, by chance! By the merest chance, as things do happen, lucky and unlucky, terrible or tender, important or unimportant; and even things which are neither, things so completely neutral in character that you would wonder why they do happen at all if you didn't know that they, too, carry in their insignificance the seeds of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Castanho, but broader at this point, and probably of less length, here joined the Castanho from the east, and the two together formed what the rubbermen called the lower Aripuanan. The mouth of this was indicated, and sometimes named, on the maps, but only as a small and unimportant stream. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... not unimportant, although secondary, reason for fostering and enlarging the Navy may be found in the unquestionable service to the expansion of our commerce which would be rendered by the frequent circulation of naval ships in the seas and ports of all quarters of the globe. Ships of the proper ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... My conscience is a tender one. I dread to do any one an injury. That has always been true of me, in spite of your sceptical look; and the tendency increases as I grow older. Let us have done with so unimportant a matter. Isn't Miss Nunn able ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... other than such pure and delicate thoughts as she would not scruple to whisper in her mother's ear, or to ask God's blessing on at night. Should there be any circumstance or incident, however seemingly trifling and unimportant, in her reminiscences, which nevertheless keeps recurring to the mind with a slight twinge of regret—a feeling that it would have been just as well had it never happened—then is love a dangerous companion. Gradually does the trifling ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne |
