"Would-be" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the admirers of "Faustine," whom Faustina would have picked up between her thumb and finger, and eyed with serene contempt before throwing them out of the window. A future age will have for these would-be wickeds, who are only monks half turned inside out, more laughter than we now indulge ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... his toes well wedged into the side, the would-be fugitive raised one arm and began feeling about in the mats above him, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... [205] Some would-be knowing critics inform us that "Dastar-khwan" literally signifies the "turband of the table"!!! How they manage to make such a meaning out of it is beyond ordinary research; and when done, it makes nonsense. They forget that the Orientals never made use of tables in the good old times. ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... never anywhere in bad weather. These flowers of Paris, blooming only in Oriental weather, perfume the highways; and after five o'clock fold up like morning-glory flowers. The women you will see later, looking a little like them, are would-be ladies; while the fair Unknown, your Beatrice of a day, is a ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... bring you in more than enough to pay off your debt, principal and interest, is a profitable enterprise. It shows business sagacity and courage, and is not a thing to be ashamed of. But it cannot be too much emphasized that the would-be borrower must calculate very carefully and be sure that it is a productive enterprise before he goes into debt. [Footnote: T. N. Carver, "How to ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... abstract (and consequently too static) presentments of the general methodology of social science into which sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, as indeed also the comparative unattractiveness of our studies to the body of specialist scientific workers, not even excepting those within what we consider ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... came, with budding life and quickening impulses; when the trees in the parks began to show a hint of green, the Amazonian idea developed afresh, and the would-be coca-hunter prepared for his expedition. He had saved a little money—enough to take him to New Orleans—and he decided to begin his long trip with a peaceful journey down the Mississippi, for once, at least, to give himself up to that indolent ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the throw with gold cocoa-nuts. The young lady has her degree of bliss when her waist is entwined by "Dear CHAWLES," who soothes her troubled spirit with the tender melody of "Red as a beet is she,"—alluding to her would-be rival. The nice young man has his degree of bliss when he chews a tooth-pick—poor goose! (not the nice young man, but the fowl which gave the quill,)—and is given a smile by a dark-eyed female in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... these summary refutations in their early days; but they outlive them, and the refutations then sound oddly antiquated and scholastic. I cannot help suspecting that the humanistic theory is going through this kind of would-be ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... became very much alarmed. Efforts were made to restore and remove the would-be drunkard, but Lucas was too good an actor, and was therefore in such a fit as to be unable to be moved hither or thither. "Should a physician be sent for?" asked Rothschild. But the housekeeper threw some cold water into Lucas's face, and the patient ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the day—"a morbid humanity" towards the would-be suicide—is, happily, doomed. Sir PETER LAURIE refuses to patronise any effort at self-slaughter; and, moreover, threatens to "look very narrowly at the cases" of those despairing fools who may be caught in the attempt. It would here be well for Sir PETER to inform ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... hurry. That man is dead," pointing to his would-be executioner, "but plenty more in the forest." He seized the dah as a weapon for himself, and all four hurried after the ponies, who had come to a stand fifty yards ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... was the particular kind of work he wanted done, Somerset thought the answer promising. Coming to terms with Dare, he requested the would-be student of architecture to wait at the castle the next day, and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Homeric heroes did with their melas oinos,—that black sweet, syrupy wine (?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream. [Could it have been melasses, as Webster and his provincials spell it,—or Molossa's, as dear old smattering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the "Magnalia"? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries who make barn-door-fowl flights of learning in "Notes and Queries!"—ye Historical Societies, in one of whose ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Mohammed firmly. "That would-be simple Grec sailor, as he represented himself to you, was no one else than Demetri Pedrovanto, better known in the Aegean Sea, as 'The Corsair of Chios.' There's a price of ten thousand piastres on his head. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Bonnet and Kitty and enticed to the lair of the We are Sevens, which chanced this time to be the summer-house in the Senorita's little garden. This rather shaky bower, overgrown by jack-beans which held together the would-be rustic structure, had once been the pride of Blue Bonnet's heart, but now, neglected—as was the garden since the advent of the ranch party—had become the residence of a large and growing family of insects. It served, however, as a very excellent spot for secret sessions ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... said to have grown so common that the 'meetings' which began with Rheims were hardly worth holding, owing to the fact that increase in height and distance flown rendered it no longer necessary for a would-be spectator of a flight to pay half a crown and enter an enclosure. Henceforth, flying as a spectacle was very little to be considered; its commercial aspects were talked of, and to a very slight degree exploited, but, more and more, the fact ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... we call Yoga. Systematized knowledge of the unfolding of consciousness applied to the individualized Self, that is Yoga. As I have just said, it is by the world that consciousness has been unfolded, and the world is admirably planned by the LOGOS for this unfolding of consciousness; hence the would-be yogi, choosing out his objects and applying his laws, finds in the world exactly the things he wants to make his practice of Yoga real, a vital thing, a quickening process for the knowledge of the Self. There are ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... rode the great mare, and sat in the beech-tree, was at present their guest—as she often was, in a fluctuating or intermittent fashion. She lived in the neighbourhood, but was more at Mortgrange than at home; one consequence of which was, that, as would-be-clever Miss Malliver phrased it, the house was very much B. Wyldered. Nor was that the first house the little lady had bewildered, for she was indeed an importation from a new colony rather startling to sedate old England. Her father, a younger ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... bad dream. But the open drawer and the window, where the bits of glass were glistening in the moonlight, were no dream. Miss Calista recovered herself speedily, closed the window, lit the lamp, gathered up the broken glass, and set up the chairs which the would-be thief had upset in his exit. An examination of the sideboard showed the precious five hundred safe and sound ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Herbert?" she asked, closing in round him and getting under his arm. How could he refuse her? So they went together and sat over a fire in a small room that was sacred to her and her sister, and there, with many sobs on her part and much would-be brave contempt of poverty on his, they talked over the altered world as it now showed itself ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... right, and hope the Museum authorities will not be severe upon me if any of them reads this confession; but I wanted a desk, and set myself to consider which of the many very interesting works which a grateful nation places at the disposal of its would-be authors was best ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... with a Roman sense of duty, took an active interest in seeing that the Republican was given his full rights. Moreover, they made the most energetic reprisals on their opponents, and as they were distinctly the tough and fighting element, justice came to her own with a whoop. Would-be repeaters were thrown out on their heads. Every person who could be cajoled or, I fear, intimidated, was given the Republican ticket, and the upshot was that at the end of the day a district which had never hitherto polled more than two or three per cent of its vote Republican ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Her father, whom I might designate as a fly-by-night sort of a gentleman, a character which I once ventured to portray myself, is obsessed by the one thought of getting rid of her as quickly as possible, but all the would-be suitors the moment they set eyes on her beat a hasty retreat. There were, of course, very many more pieces that Mr. Pittar played in, but these two were the chef d'oeuvres of ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... The two would-be divines made a simultaneous dash for the place of honor, and scrambling upon it, crushed their way, side by side, into the hole, which was scarcely large enough for one. In the struggle Rebekah gained her liberty, and with a loud squawk she leaped ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... everybody else shrank. And amongst our neighbours in the village, those with whom, day after day, time after time, she would plead "the Lord's controversy," were those with whom every one else had failed. Some old village would-be sceptic, half shame-faced, half conceited, who had not prayed for half a lifetime, or been inside a church except at funerals; careworn mothers fossilized in the long neglect, of religious duties; sinners whom every one else thought hopeless, and who most-of all counted themselves so—if ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and woollen night-cap; he was a soldier, and from the more than usual glances of the girl, I presumed was her lover. He was, beyond compare, the gallant and the dancer of the party. Next came two boors: one of whom, in the whole contour of his face and person, and, above all, in the laughably would-be frolicksome kick out of his heel, irresistibly reminded me of Shakespeare's Slender, and the other of his Dogberry. Oh! two such faces, and two such postures! O that I were an Hogarth! What an enviable ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... of a short extract from book 1, chap. i, p. 4, of Baltasar de Santa Cruz's Historia, which is followed by a heavy and would-be learned discussion filled with classical allusions, by an auditor, Licentiate Salvador Gomez de Espinosa, of which Tirso Lopez, the Spanish editor, says that it might have been omitted without ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... that would-be sellers of horseflesh were not so numerous in the district, noted the names and addresses of the local men, and promised to write when he could make an appointment. Then he escaped upstairs, whither Furneaux soon followed. Winter had ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... secrets or giving the game away, the employes know exactly what to expect. More than one would-be witness has disappeared; his epitaph is, 'Found drowned.' Ah, I see FitzGerald moving, and so you must take your departure out of this ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... (very likely a Cabinet Minister in Australia to-day) on my father's right. This simple soul made the mistake of endeavouring to establish an affectionate friendship with my father, who was sufficiently resentful of the man's mere proximity, and received his would-be genial advances with the most freezing politeness. But the event which precipitated a crisis was the coal-heaver's removal of his knife from his mouth—the dexterity with which his kind can manipulate these lethal weapons, even when partly ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... why escapes us; what we dignify with the pretentious title of a law is but a way of looking at things with our mind, a very squint-eyed way, which we adopt for the requirements of our case. Our would-be laws contain but an infinitesimal shade of reality; often indeed they are but puffed out with vain imaginings. Such is the law of mimesis, which explains the Green Grasshopper by the green leaves in which this Locust settles ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... appear in a respectable suit of clothes, who will buy a dinner in some cheap eating-house for sixpence, and then pick their teeth on the door-steps of the Astor House, to make people think they have dined there. And that is not any worse than some would-be genteel people manage when the warm season comes on, every year. They close their front window blinds, and steal into and out of their houses like thieves, or dogs that have just had a flogging, so that their neighbors will think they have gone to Saratoga, or Rockaway, or some other fashionable ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... Spain were depleted of their most energetic men. Every craft that could sail the seas was called into use, and the building of new vessels was hastened to completion in order to provide for the needs of adventurous prospectors and would-be explorers. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... himself familiar with the medical properties of such plants as are within his reach; he might likewise examine the bones of an ape, and thus, by analogy, become acquainted with the framework of the human body. The would-be lawyer might, in the same way, avail himself of the library to obtain an insight into those social mysteries that bind men in communities and necessitate human laws for the preservation of peace and order. Thus, by directing our thoughts ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... come to the rescue, and the gamblers' gang was soon on the run. They had not been able to get near Norris, for Kit had fought them off with his one good arm until, finding themselves attacked in the rear, the would-be lynchers ran ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... said that they had been very much troubled of late in that House by gentlemen who could not keep their fingers from poker and tongs. But there had now fallen upon them a trouble of a nature much more serious in its effects than any that had come or could come from would-be reformers. A spirit of personal ambition, a wretched thirst for office, a hankering after the power and privileges of ruling, had not only actuated men,—as, alas, had been the case since first ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... wisdom, and out of proportion to anything that could be gained thereby. But he understood the situation and comparative values correctly. Loyalty to the State governed multitudes; preference of the State over the United States cost the nation vast numbers of would-be Unionists in the seceding States, and in fact made secession possible; and the same feeling, erroneous though it was from the Unionist point of view, yet saved for the Unionist party very great numbers in these doubtful States which never in fact seceded. Mr. Davis appreciated this ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... and moralists pretend, a lie like that of Sir Henry Lee for saving his prince from the hands of Cromwell (vide Woodstock), or like that of the goldsmith's son, even when he was dying, for saving the prince Chevalier from the hands of his would-be captors, is excusable in the estimation of many and even meritorious according to some. The world again is agreed that if an adulterer be called into the witness box, perjury would be a venal offence compared with the meanness of betraying the honour of a confiding woman. Hence, the exclusion ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... our first arrival at Chattanooga. Immediately the president of the court arose, and said that he commanded the guard that day, and no guard was placed at the ferry. The whole court was instantly in a roar of laughter, and the confusion of our would-be convictor may be ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... would be mentioned frequently and in no complimentary manner. His soul had been stripped bare, sensitive to a breath. It would writhe under the mild compassion of a former admirer as much as it would under the open jibes of his enemies. He had plenty of enemies. Every "is," "has-been," "would-be," "will-be" has enemies. It is well they have. Nothing is lost in nature. Enemies ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... before him—the man who had said, "I am the light of the world," and straightway the world burst upon him in light! Would this man ever need further proof that there was indeed a God of men? I suspect he had a grander idea of the Son of God than any of his disciples as yet. The would-be refutations of experience, for "since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind;" the objections of the religious authorities, "This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day;" endless possible perplexities ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... his would-be auditors were beginning to fidget over his absence, the police of San Francisco had started the search for the great doctor. Jerome had followed his intuition. It had led him into a tragedy and he was ready to swear almost on his ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... blue (and none others succeed well or long), Champagne and ice and the best of fish are indispensable. She may then be at home once a week in the evening, with a chance of having her house fuller than it can hold, of all the would-be wits and three or four of the leaders of London. Very thankful she must be for the honour of their company. She had need to have all the superlatives, in and out of the English language, at her tongue's end; and when she has exhausted these, then she must invent ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... find a fault or two with what we've writ, When, unrequested, we again go o'er A passage we recited once, before, When we complain, forsooth, our laboured strokes, Our dexterous turns, are lost on careless folks, When we expect, so soon as you're informed That ours are hearts by would-be genius warmed, You'll send for us instanter, end our woes With a high hand, and make ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... know. I doubt it. We don't take every one." His eyes seemed to bore into the interior of his would-be guest. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the man's contemptuous laugh and saw him pull the trigger. The hammer refused to move. It was so rusted that the weapon was quite useless. For a moment the desperado's eyes sought the pale face of his would-be slayer. A devilish smile lurked in their depths. Then he held out the pistol for the other to take, while his whole ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... he said thy daughter, but deemed that he said my daughter, since he was wont as her would-be foster-father to call her ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... keep on. Shamelessly I wormed my way into friends by the dozen. I found it such an absorbing pursuit I could hardly wait to finish up one before I went on to another. There were such a bewildering lot of them, now that I had pried open my eyes. Would-be painters, sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, rich and poor, tragic ones and comic ones, with the meanest pettiest jealousies, the most bumptious self-conceits, the blindest worship of masters, the most profound humility, ambition ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... think that possibly they had eluded their would-be captors. But his hopes were dashed, for suddenly there came the dreaded ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... pleased to describe it, and he came down again not very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name exacted ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... the narrative Margaret exclaimed, "None other than my would-be pension! I have known it from the first, so pray do not keep me on tenterhooks. Were you or were you not successful? Yet all hope has died within me already, for such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... ludicrous objects I have ever laid my eyes on," said Hazlehurst, "have been pretending houses, and, I am sorry to say, churches too, in the interior of the country; chiefly in the would-be Corinthian and Composite styles. They set every rule of good taste and good sense at defiance, and look, withal, so unconscious of their absurdity, that the effect is as thoroughly ridiculous, as if it had been the object of the architect ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of the would-be passengers would go out on the tracks to look and listen, and at last one of these announced that a train ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... added legal restrictions upon the colored population, slave and free. But when the fright and fervor of the year had passed, conditions normal to the community returned. On the one hand the warnings of wiseacres impressed upon the would-be problem solvers the maxim of the golden quality of silence, particularly while the attacks of the Northern abolitionists upon the general Southern regime were so active. On the other hand the new severities of the law were promptly relegated, as the old ones had been, to the limbo ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... could not resist this challenge, and in a few minutes Peter had secured the pledges of half a dozen young hot-heads, Donald Gordon among them. Before the evening was past it had been arranged that these would-be-martyrs should hire a truck, and make their debut on Main Street the very next evening. Old hands in the movement warned them that they would only get their heads cracked by the police. But the answer to that was obvious—they ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... what profit of it all? The old order changeth yielding place to new, To me small change, and this the Counter-change Of custom beating on the self-same bar— Change out of chop. Ah me! the talk, the tip, The would-be-evening should-be-mourning suit, The forged solicitude for petty wants More petty still than they,—all these I loathe, Learning they lie who feign that all things come To him that waiteth. I have waited ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nation. It is bad enough to find that a splendid gift like this cannot be accepted; but even worse features in this lengthy controversy have been the gross personal attacks and ungenerous insinuations made against the would-be donor, which must be particularly hurtful to his modest and unobtrusive nature, and I now write to suggest that all those who sympathise with him (and surely their name is legion) should show him some public mark of their ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... slayers have used the knowledge of the scientists both to commit and to cover up the crimes. I tell you, Walter, a murder science bureau not only would clear up nearly every poison mystery, but also it would inspire such a wholesome fear among would-be murderers that they would abandon many attempts to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... less prepared to listen to the addresses of a would-be wooer than was Gerty Keane when she entered the tartan boudoir that evening at Grantley Hall. She was little more than a child even now, only lately turned seventeen; and before Jack went away to sea—now two years and a ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... Kernville. The man was observed stealing valuable articles from the houses. He was seized by a mob, a rope was placed around his neck and he was jerked up into the air. The rope was tied to the tree and his would-be lynchers left him. Bystanders cut him down before he was dead. The other men did not interfere and he was allowed to go. The man was so badly scared that he could not give his name if he ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of the observations and deductions to be found scattered through Cook's Journals, and an improvement on the would-be scientific and classical rubbish put into his mouth ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... this," he said, exhibiting the knife thrown by the would-be murderer—a simple trench dagger, without ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... cried; "get out with it, you thief and would-be murderer. Use it to get as far from here as you can, for as true as there is a heaven above us, if you ever interfere with me or—mine—again, I'll shoot you at sight. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... I had left Oxford, that I made any attempt to write for The Spectator. In the last few days of 1885 I got my father to give me a formal introduction to the editors, and went to see them in Wellington Street. They told me, as in my turn I have had to tell so many would-be reviewers, what no doubt was perfectly true, namely that they had already got more outside reviewers than they could possibly find work for, and that they were sorry to say I must not count upon their being able to give me ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Mr. Hardy had considered this precaution to be absolutely necessary; as otherwise Sarah might have married and left them within a month of her arrival. At the end of a year her so doing would not matter so much, as by that time the party would-be comfortably settled in their new home; whereas during the necessary hardship at first, it would be a great comfort having ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... always dignified position occupied by the daughters of the house culminates." Among other privileges she is allowed to receive the "most intimate attentions from the clan-fellows of the group." "She is the receiver of the supplies furnished by her lover, measuring his competence as would-be husband. Through his energy she is enabled to dispense largess with a lavish hand, and thus to dignify her clan and honour her spouse in the most effective way known to primitive life; and at the same time she enjoys the immeasurable moral stimulus of realising she is the arbiter ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... through the Pardiggle stage. I do not in my heart believe it. Mrs. Pardiggle seems to me to be not part of the cure of the disease, but rather one of the ugliest of its symptoms. I think that she is on the wrong tack altogether, and leading other people astray. I do know some would-be social reformers, whom I respect and commiserate with all my heart, who see what is amiss, and have no idea how to mend it, and who lose themselves, like Hamlet, in a sort of hopeless melancholy about it all, with a deep-seated desire to give others a kind of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... officer is to have a drink, Lieutenant?" he grumbled. "Don't you know that our would-be Brigadier sent all the commissary to the rear day before yesterday? A eanteenful can't last two days. Mine went empty ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... after another they nodded their approval, and approval had never before been won when he addressed a Spanish audience. But when Archbishop Talavera, who was spokesman for King Ferdinand, asked the would-be discoverer what reward he expected in case his voyage was successful, the answer was so unexpected that nearly every man in ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... gardens were laid out, the market-place was surrounded with arcades, and an opera-house was built, with a stage that could be extended into the open air so as to permit the spectacular evolution of real troops. Everything about the place was new and pretentious. The roomy streets and the would-be gorgeous palaces, flaunting their fresh coats of yellow and white stucco, teemed with officers in uniform, with blazing little potentates of the court and with high-born ladies in the puffs and frills of the rococo age. Here Karl Eugen gave himself up to his dream of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of introducing a new wine is well known to English wine-merchants, and the mysteries of the trade would somewhat astonish the innocent would-be connoisseur. There can be no doubt that the palate must be educated to enjoy fine dry wines, precisely as the ear must be instructed before it can appreciate classical music. There is a harmony in the senses of hearing, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... unexpected denouement, Bergenheim, who was getting ready to make his appearance from behind the trees and to interpose his authority, started in full pursuit of the would-be murderer. From the direction he took, he judged that he would try to reach the river by passing over the rock. He walked in this direction, with his gun over his shoulder, until he reached the foot of the steps which descended ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... it around his own waist, and returned to his comrades. All followed his example. With their own arms and ammunition the advance of the blood-thirsty enemy was again checked. With the newly acquired arms and ammunition the brave little band inflicted a decided injury to their would-be slayers. Now every shot was ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... gizzard-piercing tune and received his meed of applause, when Toinette came out of the kitchen, two great zinc crocks in her hands, and crossed to the pump in the corner of the yard. Three or four would-be pumpers, among them Doggie, went ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... found in some one of these sources. Such a notice or a casual word from any one is called a "tip" and indicates the possibility of securing a story. The securing of the story is another matter. A would-be reporter may get good practice from studying the stories in the daily papers and trying to discover or imagine from what source the original news tip came. He will soon find that certain classes of stories always come from certain sources and that there ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... that they wouldn't live in a country where it couldn't rain any day it felt like it, and California lads retort that they are glad their dispositions are not ruined by the freaks of New England weather. At all events, it is a paradise for would-be campers, and any one who should assert the contrary would meet with energetic opposition from the loyal ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... click behind me, and immediately they halted all three, their ferocious looks smitten to surprised dismay—and glancing over my shoulder I beheld the aged person still puffing serenely at his pipe but with his slender right hand grasping a small, silver-mounted pistol levelled at our would-be aggressors across his knee. And there was something very terrible, I ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... smallest chance. And now, more than ever, in spite of his disappointment, he saw how imperative it was that some one should stand by to help any one of these three. Old "saws" were not for him. The world-old advice to the would-be interferer might be for those of less thought, less tact. Besides, he had no intention of interfering. He only meant to "stand by." That was the key-note of his whole nature, his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... short, with states but with the State. Yet this need not involve that the ideal, the State, is always and everywhere the same. Ideals are born of historical circumstances and fashioned to meet historical problems, and the would-be timeless ideals which political philosophers have put before us have always borne clear marks of the country and time of their origin. The ideal which men have set themselves in political organization has varied from time to time. That such variation is inevitable will ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... narrative to a plain statement of the successive stages in the crisis, neither discussing the motives of the several Powers involved, nor distinguishing the fine shades of difference in the various proposals which were made by would-be mediators. ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... beware how we calumniate, without intending it, the few generous impulses which break out here and there among mankind. I know that there is a would-be prudent skepticism which attacks all moral greatness that it may depreciate it, all enthusiasm that it may translate it into calculation. To admire nothing is most deplorable, and, I hasten to add, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... wretch to secure himself from danger or suspicion. With his finger on the trigger, all ready to pull, he paused one moment to raise himself and look about. That moment saved the life of Deborah Shimmin, for the would-be murderer was the next instant under the knee of Fred Harcourt and his throat in his grip, while my hand was over the nipples of the gun. While we were all on the ground together, and the setter dog had a hold of Harcourt's leg, the tall ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... French translation of the Bible, but he established important Protestant schools— including the University of Geneva—which attracted students from distant lands, and he conducted a correspondence with his disciples and would-be reformers in all points of Europe. His letters alone would fill ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... eyes, gave a little sob, and ran out of the room. Sophia listened at the door, and heard her dismiss the would-be tenants of the best bedroom. She wondered that she should possess such moral ascendancy over the woman, she so young and ingenuous! For, of course, she had not meant to remove the furniture. She could hear Madame Foucault sobbing quietly ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for some time they could move neither forward nor backward. Graham noticed what appeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators, and was reminded ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Of course," and here Alec beamed on them most affably, "there are other alternatives. You may elect to put me in jail, or throw me into the Danube, or swing me from a gibbet as a warning to all would-be monarchs and other malefactors. But there is one thing you cannot do. You can never persuade me to wade to a throne through the blood of innocent people! And that is why I am here, and not in the company of the wretched conspirators ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... untutored remarks, he often led me to discuss the subjects he was treating, and would read to me his productions, previous to their publication, wishing to profit by the criticism of unsophisticated feeling. The aim of his writings was to touch the simple springs of the heart; for he despised the would-be oracles, the self-elected philosophers, who fright away fancy, while sifting each grain of thought to prove that slowness ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... He struggled to help himself, throwing his arms out blindly, was aware that someone had hold of his hair and was striking him in the face, of a great roaring and rushing sound, and then he lost all consciousness as the river bore him and his would-be rescuers down ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... by which must have been intended her mother and brothers, then the marriage might be solemnized. It was clearly a question in which the woman's friends were the proper parties to summon. The bond of John Shakespeare would not then have been good for L40, and the would-be bridegroom had nothing of his own. The place where they were married has not yet been discovered; it is quite possible to have been at "a private mass," as was the case in another marriage with a similar bond at the same ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... accustomed, when her help was asked as to a composition, to receive as a reason for the request the extremely gratifying assurance that she was "good" at punctuation and spelling. It gave the would-be author a comfortable feeling that, after all, he was only asking advice on the crudest technical matters on which Hester's superiority could be admitted without ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... stand boldly between his adherents and the would-be runaways and appealed to them in loud and emphatic tones to do their duty. They listened to him silently and respectfully; but when he ended by stating that the women were commanded to withdraw, a terrific outcry was raised, some of the girls ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... their homes, and the would-be scalpers were seen no more, leaving the world to darkness and to us in the woods. The woods, where Adam and Eve lived and loved, where Pan piped, and Satyrs danced, the opera house of birds; the woods, green, imparadisaical, mystic, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... hot words were constantly exchanged at the enrolling desk, over would-be members, but not understanding the exact nature of the qualifications needed, he could not follow the disputes. Finally these ceased, for ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... that there is amongst the people of the Mother Country a minority, now ceasing to be small, which takes a quickening interest in the Colonies. It no longer consists merely of would-be investors, or emigrants who want to inquire into the resources, industries, and finances of one or other of the self-governing parts of the Empire. Many of its members never expect to see a colony. But they have come to recognise that those new-comers into ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... old days, with our learned men, an interesting and oft-investigate question, "What is the origin of light?" and the solution of it has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crowd our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers. Hence, after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations indirectly by making them liable to a heavy tax, the Legislature, in comparatively recent times, absolutely prohibited them. ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... point, and of greater interest to T. B., there was a three-line scrawl on a piece of paper in Italian, which, translated, showed that minute instructions had been given to the would-be murderer as to ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... waiting. It was just as well he did, for the elderly gentleman, whose shining bald head had been belabored by the old maid's parasol, came in, accompanied by the damsel. She had recovered her hair when the monkeys were caught and had tendered handsome apologies to the would-be gallant. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the moment she came alongside him. She would have caught the rein, she might have stopped the horse or turned it aside—God alone knows!—but as her fingers almost grasped it, Maude, steadied in her seat by the nearness of her would-be rescuer, raised her whip and struck Ida across the bosom and across the outstretched hand. The blow, in its finish, fell on Adonis's reeking neck. With a snort he tore away from the other horse ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... (lucky man if not) been vex'd, Worn, fretted, and perplex'd, By a pert, busy, would-be-clever knave, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... a "crossing the river" puzzle, in which people have to be got over in a boat that will only hold a certain number or combination of persons, directly the would-be solver fails to master the difficulty he boldly introduces a rope to pull the boat across. You say that a rope is forbidden; and he then falls back on the use of a current in the stream. I once thought I had carefully excluded all such tricks in a particular puzzle of this class. ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... as the successor to the throne of Spain. The Archduke Charles of Austria was supported by England, Portugal, and Holland, and was conveyed to the Peninsula and landed at Lisbon by an English fleet under Admiral Rorke. The admiral, having disposed of the would-be king, sailed for Barcelona, which he was told was a ripe plum, ready to fall into his mouth. He was disappointed; Barcelona was by no means ripe for his purposes, and he sailed back, ready for any enterprise that ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... loathing and dread, he began to read the thick-serried columns of newspaper advertisement, Wanted! Wanted! Wanted! Wants by the thousand; but many more those of the would-be employed than those of the would-be employers, and under the second heading not one in a hundred that offered him the slightest hint or hope. Wanted! Wanted. To glance over these columns is like listening ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... are some pessimists for whom indigestion can plead no excuse, [6] but for whose intellectual perversity some other cosmic influence must be sought "behind the veil, behind the veil,"—to borrow Mr. Laing's favourite line from his favourite poem. These are not only "social swells, would-be superior persons and orthodox theologians, but even a man of light and learning like Mr. F. Harrison." "Religion, they say, is becoming extinct.... Without a lively faith in such a personal, ever-present deity who listens to our prayers, ... there can be, they ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... vernacular speech, the expounder of the classical language, the translator of both into English and of the English Bible into both, the founder of a pure literature, the purifier of society, the watchful philanthropist, the saviour of the widow and the fatherless, of the despairing and the would-be suicide, of the downtrodden and oppressed. We have now to see him on the scientific or the physical and economic side, while he still jealously keeps his strength for the one motive power of all, the spiritual, and with almost equal ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... success was really great. Claudie is still given, and I remember seeing Paul Mounet interpret the part of Remy admirably at the Odeon Theatre. As to the Mariage de Victorine, it figures every year on the programme of the Conservatoire competitions. It is the typical piece for would-be ingenues. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... of the Queen and the Italian courtiers gives away one after another all the offices and honors of the realm to his Hungarian followers. A conflict with drawn swords is about to ensue, when the Queen rushes between the would-be combatants, reminding them of the decree of the Pope; but Andrea in fury accuses the Queen of conduct worthy a shameless adventuress, and cites the reports that liken her to Semiramis in her orgies. The Prince of Taranto throws down his glove to the enraged Andrea, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... The Haswail. In the hajoinin' cage observe the Loocorricks, the hony hanimal to oom fear is habsolootly hunknown. When hattacked by the Lion, he places his 'ed between his fore-legs, and in that position awaits the honset of his would-be destroyer. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... in hand. There was no lack of recruits when it came to doing the cooking; in fact, Elmer found that he had six enthusiastic would-be chefs to choose from, even Landy expressing a willingness to serve, as he had to hover near the blaze more or less anyway, and might as well ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... besides the natural difficulties of the way, the chief proved a new obstacle. Every mile or so he would apparently repent of his hospitality. He would stop, gather his tattooed braves about him and confer with them, while his would-be visitors sat on the ground or a fallen tree-trunk to await his pleasure. Finally he would start off again, the travelers following, but no sooner were they under way than again their uncertain guide would stop. Once he and his men stood motionless, listening. Away up ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... Gordon Browne's illustrations leaves a would-be iconographer appalled. So many thousand designs—and all so good—deserve a lengthened and exhaustive eulogy. But space absolutely forbids it, and as a large number cater for older children than most of the books here noticed, ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Chesterton would restore the primitive joys of wonder and childlike delight in simple things. His ideal is the real, not the merely impossible. Unlike most would-be saviours of the race, he seeks not to merge a new humanity into a brand new glittering civilization. He would have us awaken once more to the ancient mysteries and eternal truths. He would have us turn ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... marriage. If it is a male child it is, in fact, an advantage. Love does not enter into the Indian's marriage relationship. It is a mating for convenience. Gifts are made to the girl's father or nearest male relative, and she is turned over, whether she will or no, to the would-be husband. There is no ceremony. A hunter has as many wives as he is physically able to control and take care of—one, two or even three. Sometimes it happens that they combine against him and he receives at their hands what is doubtless ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... the chief personage, Horace. It is a cleverly painted portrait of a type that reappears, with slight modifications, in all ages; a moral charlatan, who half imposes on himself, and entirely for a while on other people. A would-be hero, genius, and chivalrous lover, he has none of the genuine qualities needed for sustaining the parts. Nonchalant and inert of temperament, he is capable of nothing beyond a short course of successful affectation. The imposition breaking down at last, he ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the rule of Napoleon; or falls under the domination of a system or of wealth, as it has done in our own day. The Republican Assembly, that dream of some innocent souls, is an impossibility. Those who would fain bring it to pass are either grossly deluded dupes or would-be tyrants. Do you not think that there is something ludicrous about an Assembly which gravely sits in debate upon the perils of a nation which ought to be roused into immediate action? It is only right of course that the people should elect a body of representatives who will decide questions of ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... principles, against the vice of the upper classes, as typified in the character of Mr. Thornhill, while the sketch of Beau Tibbs in The Citizen of the World is a racy picture of the out-at-elbows, would-be man of fashion, who seeks to pose as a social leader and arbiter of taste when he had better ...
— English Satires • Various
... with downward sweep of his hand. "Many a would-be gun slinger has borrowed Fisher's name. But Fisher is ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... I peeped round its immediate neighbourhood, and saw, to my inexpressible delight, within hail, some noble-looking evergreen oaks, and close to the house itself a tiny would-be garden, a plot of ground with one or two peach-trees in full blossom, tufts of silver narcissus and jonquils, a quantity of violets and an exquisite myrtle bush; wherefore I said my prayers with ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... probably not be noticed. The bedclothes, too, might be turned the other way up, and with care the injured parts tucked in tightly at the bottom. It would leave them a little short at the top perhaps, but that couldn't be helped. Suspicion must be allayed at all costs. Time enough to bring the would-be murderer to justice when he had solved the riddle in its entirety. There were two pillows, so he took the damaged one, tore off its case, and tucked that away in his kit-bag, pushed the bag under the bed, and then set about the remaking, with some small success. At least for the time, the incisions ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... with a bushel of bunkum or cant. How is it, that ever since the days of James I, of 'hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain' memory, there have always been carpers on the injurious effects of smoking? 'Nicotine!' they say, with a would-be-taken-for-know-all-about-it-air. Quite so; but, as recent investigations have proved that, so far as the actual 'poisoning' is concerned, it would take upwards of a thousand years to kill the most inveterate of healthy smokers, we have still time to breathe—and 'it please the pigs.' ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... later humourists, is essential to this kind of humour, and here again Cervantes has suffered at the hands of his interpreters. Nothing, unless indeed the coarse buffoonery of Phillips, could be more out of place in an attempt to represent Cervantes, than a flippant, would-be facetious style, like that of Motteux's version for example, or the sprightly, jaunty air, French translators sometimes adopt. It is the grave matter-of-factness of the narrative, and the apparent unconsciousness ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the time when Gustavo was much better known at Turin than Camillo the suspicious radical could not persuade himself that one brother was not as much of an aristocrat as the other. When Mr. Cobden was cordially received by both Marquis and Count, a would-be wit exclaimed, "There goes Free-trade in the charge of Monopoly," which was understood to refer to the false accusation that the Cavours had stored up a quantity of grain in that year of scarcity, 1847, in order to sell it dear, the truth ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... last words the captive bends upon her would-be deliverer a bewildered, wondering look. Is it possible Nacena has knowledge of her tenderest secret? It must be so; but how can she have learnt it? Surely Cypriano—whom she says she has seen outside ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... . .!" the little barkeeper's sentence was bristled out and contained along with the expletives some comparatively mild words which gave the would-be combatants to understand that any such foolishness would not be tolerated in The Polka unless he himself "'lowed it to ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... corner a denser throng was gathered around jugglers, tumblers, wrestlers that writhed over the road-way, actors who danced Etruscan pantomimes and carried their make-up in little bags slung around their necks, singers of medleys, and would-be popular poets who spouted coarse epigrams and ribald satires levelled at the thieving, the effeminate, the adulterous patricians who thought to rule Rome and had named an Aemilius Paullus to stand beside and ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... her delicate hand and let it fall. Her resentment at the would-be intruder by marriage still mounted. "Not even from that pair would I have believed such a thing possible!" she exclaimed; and she went into a long, low, contemplative laugh, looking not at me, but at the fire. Our silent companion ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... room to the table now, and thar ain't dishes enough to go around, but you're so contrivin' like, I thought you might find out a way." Memories of the footlights were temporarily banished upon hearing this wonderful intelligence. A puzzled pucker came between the brows of the little would-be prima donna and remained there until at last the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... My would-be host was himself a very striking somebody. He wore only a pareu, as I, of scarlet muslin, with the William Morris design, but he had wound his about so that it was a mere ornamental triangle upon his tall, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... she remarked, "and I suppose even your dislike of him doesn't go so far as to suggest that he is likely to play the would-be murderer in broad daylight." ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a strong grip. "You darned old son-of-a-gun! I'm sure glad to see you. Heard you was back. Say, you've ce'tainly been goin' some. Suits me. I never did like either Dug or Miller a whole lot. Dug's one sure-enough bad man and Miller's a tinhorn would-be. What you did to both of 'em was a-plenty. But keep yore eye peeled, old-timer. Miller's where he belongs again, but Dug's still on the range, and you can bet he's seein' red these days. He'll gun you if he ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... of the company were now riveted on that remarkable figure who had just begun to finger a few keys with one hand. He did not do as some would-be performers sometimes do, strike eight to ten keys as soon as they touch the piano, but, strange to say, he commenced playing with ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... Europeans may pass anywhere through the country in safety. Except for a few half-breeds in the town, there are no native Christians in the island of Timor. The people retain their independence in a great measure, and both dislike and despise their would-be rulers, whether ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... press, for a free land and a free world." This was a good key-note, and when, six years later, in 1854 a slave-catcher came to this same city of Worcester, the citizens proved that they could raise the tune most readily; and the would-be man-stealer was only too happy to march to its measures out of the city, without his booty, and possessed of a whole skin. Mr. Jankins, the object of Butman, the kidnapper's cupidity, during these intervening thirty years, has ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... the bolt, and returned noiselessly to his place just as Sosha knocked. After a pause, the knock was repeated. Then the door was tried, shaken, and pulled. In vain. There came no sound from within. Ivan heard his servitor inform the would-be condolers that his master had evidently gone out again. There were ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and eloquent; much too high-bred to put a restraint upon her natural manner, she was often more naive, and even brusk, than your would-be aristocrats dare to be; but what a charming ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... joke for the pillars of society. What, if the workers, conscious of their economic power, cease to store up great wealth in the warehouses of the privileged? It was not difficult to get along with the would-be labor leaders in the legislative bodies, these worthy ones, experienced through the practice of manufacturing laws to maintain law and disorder, rapidly develop into good supporters of ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... we think it is not so successful as, were its previous fasciculi. The "literary" is a good epithet for its sale among would-be authors, like the "Gentleman's" Magazine among a certain class of worthies. But of what use are such articles as the following to literary men:—The Seasons, by a Man of Taste, (like the carte of a restaurateur;) Sayings of a Man about Town; Remonstrance with J.F. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... flow of her drapery, and the pink ribbon round her neck was confined by a little dainty Jew's harp of a brooch; she had her mother's pinch of the nose too. Then there were two other young ladies;—Miss Letitia Ann Thornton, a tall grown girl in pantalettes, evidently a would-be aristocrat from the air of her head and lip, with a well-looking face and looking well knowing of the same, and sporting neat little white cuffs at her wrists, the only one who bore such a distinction. The third of these damsels, Jessie Healy, impressed Fleda with ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... dear. Not only to be able to check any such demonstration yourself, with a movement, a glance, a turn of your head, but without even a sign, to make your would-be adorer check it himself! And to feel as still and calm and superior to it all! Is that nothing ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... fact that she never missed an opportunity to belittle the male sex; she had never had much charm for men, she had none now, and consequently she associated chiefly with women: with widows and grass widows of her own type, and with the young actresses and would-be actresses of the curious social level upon which she lived. Emeline's lack of charm was the most valuable moral asset she had. Had she attracted men she would not long have remained virtuous, for she was violently opposed to any restriction ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... would-be rebels. Their experience warned the others. The State was in a mood to try reform. The reform was promised on the usual broad lines. Individuals did not stop to reflect what effect the suggested legislation would ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day |
