"Centred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them, the one thing which makes a hero's life worth living, which enables him to enact his Hell—we shall scarcely complain that the Iliad is composed on a second-rate subject. The significance of the poem is not in the incidents surrounding the "Achilleis"; the whole significance is centred in the Wrath of Achilles, and thence ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... you couldn't possibly cancel this wedding of yours?" I asked when I had explained the impasse. Self-centred as usual, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... and chests of ancient lacquer; deep-toned carpets in which slumbered jewelled fires of Asia; carved gods from the East, crusted with soft gold; and tapestries of silk shot with amethyst and saffron, centred by dragons and ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... centred in one man; men tried to fill their lungs with the air which he had breathed. Yearly France presented that man with three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax to Caesar; without that troop behind him, he could not follow his fortune. It was the escort he needed that ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... now those forces which had to strike were ordered to move. No sooner did General Rundle receive his orders to advance than he rolled forward with the impetuosity of a storm breaking upon a southern coast. They on the spot knew that all the enemy's hopes lay centred round a town in the middle of the valley. This town was Fouriesburg. The general who could strike that town first would deal the death blow to the Boer forces in the Free State. Rundle was furthest from the town; the pathway his troops ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... the stallion, searching on all sides for a vent but distracted from one torment to another, centred suddenly on this slender figure. He swerved and rushed for the barrier with ears flat back and bloodshot eyes. There he reared and struck at the wood with his great front hoofs; the boards splintered and shivered under ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... never could calculate anything." "Well, let us see." Owen took a pencil and did the sum, irritating Harding, who under his moustache wondered how anybody could be so self-centred, so blind to the picture he presented. "Eighty-five letters a year, Harding, more than one a week; that is a pretty good average, for when I saw her every day I didn't ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... to-day is said and done, and if possible in the company of those who have said or done any of the best things in any line. Life with godlike men on earth must be the best preparative for companionship hereafter. This is possible in Britain only in London, for the celebrities and their works are centred here. An unusually large proportion of the population is of the wealthy classes, for the height of the average Briton's ambition is, in addition to the essential estate in the country, to be in ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... perfectly preserved sarcophagus, measuring some six or seven feet long by three feet wide, covered with exquisite carving at the sides, representing roses among thorns, the flowers having evidently at one time been centred with gems and which even now bore traces of gold. Round the lid there was some dim lettering which was scarcely discernible,—the lid itself was firmly ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... fireplace in an old New England kitchen centred all of homeliness and comfort that could be found in a New England home. The very aspect of the domestic hearth was picturesque, and must have had a beneficent influence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or, as it was called in England, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... shout aloud. For himself he thought nothing, but his thoughts were of his father, and the agony and despair he would suffer if it so happened that his boy was captured and slain; and by degrees these thoughts impressed him so that his desires became centred in one, and that was, to gallop away from the savage pack, leaving them far behind, and riding on and on till he could rejoin his father in triumph and tell ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Mecca of the traders and voyageurs who served the North-West Company. It was the divisional point and the warehousing centre of sixty trading-posts. No less than five thousand persons were engaged in the trade which centred at Fort William. During the season from May to September the traffic carried on at the fort was of the most active character. A flotilla of boats and canoes would arrive from Lachine with multifarious articles of commerce for inland barter. These boats ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... lived before that in Hamburg with his daughter Dora, whose mother died soon after the little girl came into the world, so that Dora had never known any parent but her father. Naturally, therefore, the child's whole affection was centred upon Major Falk, who had always devoted himself to his little motherless girl with such tenderness that she had scarcely felt the want of a mother, until the war with France broke out, and he was obliged ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... Nassau Hall, then serving as barracks for the force centred there, a fresh complication arose, for Colonel Harcourt learned that Lord Cornwallis, having seen his force safely in winter quarters at Princeton, Trenton, and Burlington, had departed the day previous for New York, while General Grant, who succeeded him, was still ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... son, and the hope of the parents centred on him. It was settled that he should be sent to the best schools and to a first-class college. He had, perhaps, rather more than ordinary ability, the power to display to the best advantage the talents and acquirements he did ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... hands of the German princes are dirty with the trade. All over the world statecraft and royalty have been approached and touched and tainted by these vast firms, but it is in Berlin that the corruption is centred, it is from Berlin that the intolerable pressure to arm and ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... blaming—for her unseemly condescension to Philippus; but what chiefly annoyed her was that Paula took up many a half-hour which otherwise Philippus would have devoted to her husband; and in him and his health her life and thoughts were centred. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... about the prosaic New England life!" exclaimed Dr. Ferris. "I wonder where I could match such a story as that, though I dare say that you know a dozen others. I tell you, Leslie, that for intense, self-centred, smouldering volcanoes of humanity, New England cannot be matched the world over. It's like the regions in Iceland that are full of geysers. I don't know whether it is the inheritance from those people who broke away from the old countries, and who ought to be matched to tremendous circumstances ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... since the drawing of lots, and Lady Newhaven remained in ignorance as to which of the two men had received his death-warrant. Few have found suspense easy to bear; but for the self-centred an intolerable element is added to it, which unselfish natures escape. From her early youth Lady Newhaven had been in the habit of viewing life in picturesque tableaux vivants of which she invariably ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... with Miss Dora, who kept her own room, where she lay on the sofa, and received visits, and told the story of her extraordinary adventure, the only adventure of her life. The interest of the household centred chiefly, however, in the dining-room, which, as being the least habitable apartment in the house, was considered to be most adapted for anything in the shape of business. On the way from the church to Miss Wentworth's house the Curate had given his father a brief ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... it, and I suppose some one else has found it. It is all right, so far as the ownership is concerned; but I am still self-centred enough to ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... colleges, and universities began to spring up and develop for one sex, while for the other home life grew more intimate, and domestic ties closer. Montaigne's warning against the undue tenderness of a narrow family life no longer seemed reasonable, and the family became more self-centred and more enclosed. Beneath this, and more profoundly influential, there was a general softening in social respects, and a greater expansiveness of affectional relationships, in reality or in seeming, within the home, compensating, it may be, the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... inches in length. Other changes refer to the voluntary speed, to the number of stitches, to fatigue, to external stimuli, to attention, to methods of training, and so on, but the chief interest remains centred on the psychical factors. We are still too much at the beginning already to foresee whether it will be possible to draw from these psychophysical experiments helpful conclusions. The four young women engaged in this laboratory research will later extend it to the psychological conditions of ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... attachment; it was shown in every word, every look, and every gesture. When Philip would take her hand, or encircle her waist with his arm, or even when he pressed her coral lips, there was no pretence of coyness on her part. She was too noble, too confiding; she felt that her happiness was centred in his love, and she lived but in his presence. Two months had thus passed away, when Father Seysen, who often called, and had paid much attention to Amine's instruction, one day came in as Amine was ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dinning mutter all press into a half-circle at the doors, in one of which stands the huge figure of Balam, the head driver. He gives a scanning look at the circle of anxious faces; he would have us think the importance of the plantation centred in his glowing black face. There he stands-a measure in his hand-while another driver, with an air of less dignity, cries out, with a stentorian voice, the names of the heads of families, and the number of children belonging thereto. Thus, one by one, the name being announced in muddled ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Howe well, admired him exceedingly, and called him 'the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time, and the best soldier in the army.' He would have served under him gladly. But Howe—young, ardent, gallant, yet profound—was dead; and the hopes of discerning judges were centred on Wolfe. The war had not been going well, and this victory at Louisbourg was the first that the British people could really rejoice over with all ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... reflections were cut short by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They were by no means noiseless footsteps; there were good strong nails all over the bottom of Constance's shoes. The next moment she appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were centred on the view; she looked entirely over Tony. It was not until he rose to his feet that she realized his presence ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... it was that all these powers were centred in one famous man, known among the laity as "Parson Upandown." For the Reverend Turner Upround, to give him his proper name, was a doctor of divinity, a justice of the peace, and the present rector of Flamborough. Of all his offices and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the distant land, her husband's home, and every hope was centred in the one intense desire to join him there. The means were wanting, she had none from whom she could solicit assistance, but her determination did not fail. She advertized for a situation as companion to an invalid, or nurse to young children, during the voyage to Port Philip, provided her passage-money ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... board has performed is in the keeping of the government. But that it has been a distinguished service we may not doubt. Seated in their headquarters at Washington, their minds centred upon the various problems of the sea which the war brought forth, they have unquestionably exerted a constructive influence no less vital than that played by the officers and men of the navy on the fighting front. Only one announcement ever ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... which only children are subjected; the thwarting, resulting from over-anxiety; the indiscreet indulgence, arising from a love centred all in one object; had been exaggerated in his education, probably from the circumstance that his mother (his only surviving parent) had been similarly situated ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... far-sighted ulterior ends, as an instrument of progress and research, but for a very present need, as a weapon to be placed in the hands of the country on the day when battle should be joined. Two years before the corps was formed the aeronautical force at the disposal of the nation was centred in the balloon factory and balloon school at Aldershot. The naval and military officers who had interested themselves in aeronautics were few, but they were competent and enthusiastic; they believed in the air, and were quick to recognize inventions of promise. The ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... stories of good luck and bad; vituperations of the lumbermen for leaving tree-tops and broken branches in the stream to get caught among the rocks and ruin the fishing; accounts of the immense number of salmon that had been seen leaping in the estuary, waiting to come up the river. The interest centred in the story of a huge fish that had taken up his transient abode in the pool called La Fourche. The Colonel had pricked and lost the monster two days ago, and had seen him jump twice yesterday. The Colonel was greatly ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Dunscombe in the lower gallery of the cloisters; and the cousins ascended to the apartment which was assigned them as a dressing-room. The intensity of feeling that was gradually accumulating in the breasts of the ladies, as circumstances brought those in whom their deepest interests were centred into situations of extreme delicacy, if not of actual danger, perhaps, in some measure, prevented them from experiencing all that concern which the detection and arrest of Merry might be supposed to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... we are a nation equal to the task of self-discipline and self-control,—a new thing on this planet. Hitherto, on the stage of history, kings and princes have been the star-actors: in them all the interest of the scene has centred: they and a few grand favorites were everything, and all the rest supernumeraries, "a level immensity of foolish small people," of no utility except to support them in their pompous parts. But we have found that "Hamlet" does very well with Hamlet left out. In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... love a woman, and with all the greater fire because I am naturally undemonstrative and self-centred. The stream comes with an increased rush when it has to break through the ice. I love a woman, I say, and I am determined to have her. You know ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... in Bleak House, the culminating story That marks the zenith of his swift career, All the great qualities that won him glory, As writer and reformer too, appear: Righteous resentment of abuses hoary, Of pomp and cant, self-centred, insincere; And burning sympathy that glows unchecked For those who sit in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... of the pages of this journal, which I copy word for word from the manuscript lying before me, I give the reader. Call the dead writer an egotist, if you will: wonder at Callender's love for this self-centred nature; I think she was an artist, and as an artist, her experience is of value ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... the care of Mrs. Burton, alternately quarrelling vigorously with little Cedric Burton whose intellectual leanings provoked her most ardent contempt, and teasing the luckless Scooter out of sheer boredom till all the animal's ideas in life centred in a ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... popular with millionaires, who built themselves houses up there on the height, in the forest! But it was only a passing thought, as he alighted from the train in the welcoming music of many waters, which she hardly heard. Her attention was centred on picking out Mrs. Harland and Falconer among the people who were waiting to meet friends, and on seeing whether Nick ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... had worked one night before to forget, so he spent the following days. It was the end, and he knew it; but he no longer cared. His future was centred on one event—the coming of a letter. Beyond that all was shadow, and he cared not to explore. He worked all that Nature would allow, carrying to completion his observations, admitting his mistake with a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... like to linger and talk to this sultry and self-centred being; I would like to wander with her through these rooms, imbibing their strange Oriental spirit—not your vulgar Orient, but something classic and remote; something that savours, for aught I know, of Indo-China, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... China were centred upon a single man, Chang Chikie, a general of unflinching zeal and courage, who recaptured several towns, and, gathering a great fleet, said to have numbered no fewer than two thousand war-junks, sailed up the Yang-tse-Kiang with the purpose ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... at sight of the money, and tactfully I explained that my principal interest centred in a young guest of the Duchess's. Any person who could take word from me to her, unknown to others, would be well rewarded. I should not think five hundred pesetas too much, to give for ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... annals of our land had expectations and desires equally ardent centred themselves on one young head. Much of the loyal devotion which had been alienated from the immediate family of George III. had transferred itself to his grandchild, the Princess Charlotte, sole offspring of the unhappy marriage ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... looked on action as the one undramatic element of a play. To us, at any rate, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] is the true ideal. From the high tower of Thought we can look out at the world. Calm, and self-centred, and complete, the aesthetic critic contemplates life, and no arrow drawn at a venture can pierce between the joints of his harness. He at least is safe. He has ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... Elinor's mind with the rapidity of lightning, while her aunt was speaking; illness of some absent friend suggested itself—yet who could it be? Not Harry, surely, for he had gone over to Upper Lewiston that morning—yet her fears instinctively centred upon Hazlehurst. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... tea. It had afforded him little pleasure. He must come to some definite understanding with Meg. His thoughts had been all centred on the plan of sending her home, getting her away from the atmosphere which had so strong a hold over her imagination. Perhaps if she was back in England, she might be able to put Michael and his ideas out of her thoughts. He had no wish to be disloyal ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... heart with Him. We possess Him and are possessed by Him, when our wills are kept in harmony with, and submission to, Him, when our thoughts are occupied with Him and His truth, when our affections rest in Him, when our desires go out to Him, when our hopes are centred in Him, when our practical life is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... but now that his wish was accomplished, of a sudden all the reality seemed to fade out of the tragic events he was to recount. His consciousness became in some queer way centred upon the girl who was listening, to the exclusion of the subject she was listening to. He was intensely conscious of her face, of its changing expressions, of the ebb and flow of the blood from time to time ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... gravity in anything. It is almost incredible how quickly and completely a black-fellow can disappear; as if in a moment the whole family was out of sight. One black spot remained visible, and on it I centred my energies. Quickly overhauling, I overtook it, and found it to be an old and hideous gin, who, poor thing! had stopped behind to pick ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... be a notion going round that it would be a good thing for people if they were more "self-centred." Perhaps there was talk of adding a course to the college curriculum, in addition to that for training the all-competent "journalist," for the self-centring of the young. To apply the term to a man or woman was considered highly complimentary. The advisers ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the free air of the open field; the flaming pine-knot torches were extinguished in the bright moonlight. People pressed around him, but so indistinctly he could not recognize them. All his consciousness seemed centred in the burning, throbbing pain of his arm. He felt himself laid upon the gravel; the sleeve cut from his shoulder, the cool sensation of the hot and bursting skin bared to the night air, and then a soft, cool, and indescribable pressure upon a wound he had not felt before. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the idea even of civic peace within the limits of their own town; but patriotic devotion to all Italy fired her great heart. More than this—her instinct for solidarity forced her to dwell in the thought of a world-embracing brotherhood. Her hopes were centred, not like Dante's in the Emperor the heir of the Caesars, but in the Pope the heir of Christ. Despite the corruption from which she recoiled with horror, despite the Babylonian captivity at Avignon, she saw in the Catholic Church that image of a pure universal fellowship ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... been so dim and phantom-like the night before; the red sun lit the icicles that hung from eaves and lintels, tinged the drifts, glowed upon the windows as if with light from within, and turned the steep tin roof into a gigantic rose; but all his glance was centred upon his lady-love, who stood, regardless of the cold, at the entrance of the drift-encircled porch and watched them as long as the sunlight lay upon the land. Was she looking at the plunging sleigh and at its driver, or at the chasms of light in the rent cloud ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... in darkness, and with the darkness Jimmie Dale's mind centred on the work immediately before him. To enter the tenement where he was known and had an acknowledged right as Larry the Bat was one thing; for Jimmie Dale to be discovered ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... a far different grade, running parallel and contemporary with all—a curious, quiet yet busy life centred in a little country village on Long Island, and within sound on still nights of the mystic surf-beat of the sea. About this life, this Personality—neither soldier, nor scientist, nor litterateur—I propose to occupy a few ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and present concern of the three loyal gentlemen in midnight conclave was not centred in the trouble that Mr. Blithers had started, but in the more desperate situation created by Miss Guile. She was the peril that now confronted them, and she was indeed a peril. Quinnox and Dank explained the situation to the Minister of Police, and the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... childhood, and which one has long inhabited in dreams, one is apt to conceive a fantastic notion which it is very difficult to efface, even in presence of reality. The sight of an engraving, of a picture, often forms a starting-point. My Cairo, built out of the materials of the "Thousand and One Nights," centred around the Ezbekiyeh Place, the strange painting of which Marilhat had sent from Egypt to one of the first exhibitions which followed the Revolution of July. Unless I am mistaken, it was his first picture, and whatever ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... apparently artless a being, brought with it that sudden distrust in human nature, so sickening to a youthful and ingenuous mind; but when he thought of the kind, simple parent she was deceiving, whose affections all centred in her, he felt for a moment a sentiment of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... one personality, and have then been bereaved, with the result that the whole life has been palsied and struck into desolation by the loss. I am thinking now of two instances which I have known; one was a wife, who was childless, and whose whole nature, every motive and every faculty, became centred upon her husband, a man most worthy of love. He died suddenly, and his wife lost everything at one blow; not only her lover and comrade, but every occupation as well which might have helped to distract her, because her ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... left, and the dazzling stretch of peak, snowfield, and glacier, with its many gradations of silver and delicious blue, on their right, presented a scene which the mind might have revelled in for hours. But Bracy saw nothing of Nature's beauties, for his attention was centred in the long line of tribes-men coming slowly on, their movements being so full of suggestion and offering ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... slinking about the shack, looking unutterable things. When rogues fall out honest men profit, if they are wise and wakeful, and now, at a time when something of advantage might be learned, the interest of the garrison seemed centred about the general's quarters, whither Harold Willett had been borne, still senseless and in desperate case. Bentley could not say that he would live, yet had been heard to say he believed the bullet not yet cast that could ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... and important point, and I have often wondered if the criticism which centred upon us did not come from the fact that we were among the first, if not the first, to work out the problems of direct selling to the user on a broad scale. This was done in a fair spirit and with due consideration for everyone's rights. We did not ruthlessly go after ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... But the interruption lasted barely half an hour. Then the steamer, her pilot-house screened by sheet iron, and her decks aswarm with infantry, rounded a bend in the river and went coughing away out of sight. Once again, interest centred at the site of the pony corral, where a ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... eat any supper. He went into his bedroom and read an essay by Schartau which the minister had lent him. The subject was the vanity of reason. And here, just here, where all his hopes of arriving at a clear understanding were centred, the light failed. Reason which he had dared to hope would some day guide him out of the darkness into the light, reason, too, was sin; the greatest of all sins, for it questioned God's very existence, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... delight in material beauty, but finally consummated by the teachings of the Christian faith. Eastern thought was pure soul-consciousness, its teaching was to annihilate the flesh, to deny its reality, to look within, and so to gain enlightenment. Christianity, on the other hand, was centred in the doctrine of the Incarnation, in the mystery of God the Father revealing Himself in human form. Hence the human body, human love and relationships became sanctified, became indeed a means of revelation of the divine, and the mystic no longer turned his thoughts ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... Kentucky grandfathers that we understand the Kentuckians almost as well as our own people. I used to meet your grandfather now and then at Aunt Sally's; but I can't say that I ever knew him. He's a delightful man and it's plain that his heart is centred in you." ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... was far before its name. Had the third estate been centred entirely in the communes at strife with their lords, had the fate of burgherdom in France depended on the communal liberties won in that strife, we should see, at the end of the thirteenth century, that element of French society in a state of feebleness and decay. But it was far otherwise. The third ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Wednesday.—Interest of sitting centred in speeches of CARSON and JOHN REDMOND. Former met with rousing reception from Opposition. Some Ministerialists would have liked to join in the demonstration, not because they share CARSON'S views or admire his policy, but because they instinctively feel admiration ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... ideal future toward which his eyes of late had so fondly turned themselves. To live for others and not for himself—this was to extinguish his very life. What were others to him? All of his world was centred in his little home-circle. Alas! that its power to fill the measure of his desires was gone—its brightness dimmed—its attraction ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... born in Kilkenny; a philanthropic man, who conducted in a self-sacrificing spirit practical schemes for the good of humanity, which failed, but the interest in whom has for long centred, and still centres, in his philosophic teaching, his own interest in which was that it contributed to clear up our idea of God and consolidate our faith in Him, and it is known in philosophy as Idealism; only it must be understood, his idealism is not, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... soft-hearted; no match at all for the lady. The thought of her walking the lawns or the drawing-rooms of Crosby Ledgers as the betrothed of the heir stirred in Arthur Meadows's wife a silent, and—be it confessed!—a malicious convulsion. Such mothers, so self-centred, so set on their own triumphs, with their intellectual noses so very much in the clouds, deserved such sons! She promised herself to keep her own counsel, and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... himself useful. His old comrade smiled when he entered; but Mr. Polk took little notice of anyone. Occasionally his eyes rested with an expression of profound pity on the face of his brother-in-law: once or twice he pressed Magdalena's hand; but his attention chiefly centred on the door, although he knew that his wife could not arrive until ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was but a child, the court had been my home, with Owen as my father, and Ina the king as the loved guardian for whom I would gladly give my life in need. All my training and thoughts were centred here, not as what one calls a courtier at all, but as one of the household who feared the king and queen no more than Owen himself, and yet reverenced all three as those to whom all homage was due since he ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... the allies could then, with bloody strides, march to Paris, and place the hated Bourbons on the throne. France knew this, and adored its preserver. Monarchical Europe knew this, and hence all the engergies of its combined kings were centred upon Napoleon. More than thirty of these consipracies were detected by the police. London was the hot-house where they were engendered. Air-guns were aimed to Napoleon. Assassins dogged him with their poniards. A bomb-shell was invented, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... purpose, was successfully prosecuting certain plans with reference solely to those plans, and the Joel Burns who had learned to feel that the chief object of existence lay above and beyond, and was centred in the Omnipotent. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from this awkward business induce the present adventure. He cared no more for Mr. Burns than he did for Mr. Joslin. But he did enjoy the idea of meeting that knave and circumventing him. It was the pleasantest 'duty' he ever had undertaken. On it his whole thoughts were centred. What did he care whether the day was fair or foul—whether the roads were good or bad? He longed to get to ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... congested slum into which he disappeared at night it was no great feat for a man of his power to reach the more northern streets of that circle in whose midst the finances of the nation by turns simmer, boil, and boil over. It was not unusual, during the noon-time rush of self-centred individuals, for the legless man to get himself stridden into and bowled clean over upon his face or back, since nothing is more loosening to purse-strings than the average man's horror at having injured some creature already maimed; nor was it unusual for him at such ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the extravagance of his speech there ran a deeper note than I had believed Harry Underwood to be capable of sounding. As his eyes met mine and I saw that there was something as near suffering in them as the man's self-centred careless nature was capable of feeling I saw ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Introspective, personal, individualistic, self-centred are their painters and their poets. These were greatly so when Holland's fleets ruled the seas, and when Holland's influence and power were felt far beyond ils own narrow frontiers; and they are still so ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... in there, in the old drawing-room, where we had sat together evening after evening, that they found her dead, the very type of all that is brilliant and exquisite and living. To me she was everything. All my personal happiness was centred in her. I cared for nothing so long as she was in the same world as myself, and I might love her. In the darkness that followed, I was brought face to face with the most terrible problems of human fate. I had troubled ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... be, the race went on Improving still through every generation, Until it centred in an only son, Who left an only daughter; my narration May have suggested that this single one Could be but Julia (whom on this occasion I shall have much to speak about), and she Was ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... long as there's a shot in the locker, she shall want for nothing," said the generous fellow, quite pleased with himself for his magnificence of spirit. Nor did Dobbin try and convince him that Amelia's happiness was not centred ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... uncle, Admiral Comte de Kergarouet. This marriage, which she regretted later, was resolved upon during a game of cards with the Bishop of Persepolis, as a result of the anger which she felt on learning that M. Longueville, on whom she had centred her affections, was only a merchant. [The Ball at Sceaux.] Madame de Kergarouet scorned her nephew by marriage, Savinien de Portenduere, who courted her. [Ursule Mirouet.] Having become a widow, she married the Marquis de Vandenesse. A little later she endeavored to overthrow her sister-in-law, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... an intermittent task of needlework, but there were long pauses when her hands lay idle on her lap, when her head drooped against the back of her chair, and all her life centred in her fast beating heart, driven and strained ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of my ideas were suddenly altered; never was there a charm that acted so quickly and powerfully; I ceased to ramble in imagination through the wide world; my excursions since have not exceeded the bounds of my farm, and all my principal pleasures are now centred within its scanty limits: but at the same time there is not an operation belonging to it in which I do not find some food for useful reflections. This is the reason, I suppose, that when you was here, you used, in your refined style, to denominate ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Then, in an instant, her face changed its expression to one of wonder and alarm, and her hands clasped together tightly. What on earth was the matter with her? His agitated fancy, centred in himself, now decided that some manifestation of most shocking absurdity had settled on his forehead, or his hair, for he was certain of his neck-tie. Braintop had recourse to his pocket-mirror ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... encouragement. All this was somewhat bewildering, but I was able to follow the conversation. I was conscious too of Mr. Barr's eyes fixed upon me with intensity. He would eat hurriedly for a moment, and then fold his arms and listen with his brow almost buried in his black bristly beard, and his glance centred on me. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... still remained to me the type of loveliness; and she was without that enthusiasm for the great and good, which, even at the moment of her strongest dominion over me, I should have declared to be the highest element of character. But there is no tyranny more complete than that which a self-centred negative nature exercises over a morbidly sensitive nature perpetually craving sympathy and support. The most independent people feel the effect of a man's silence in heightening their value for his opinion—feel an additional triumph ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... hundred times better known in Nova Scotia than were Montreal and Toronto. The staple trade of the merchants was with the West Indies, to which they sent fish and coal and lumber, receiving in return sugar and rum and molasses. Most of this sea-borne commerce centred at Halifax, rather to the detriment of the rest of the province, for from Halifax inland the ways were rough and difficult. But gradually the other coast towns won their privileges and became ports of entry. At Pictou, especially, the industry of building wooden ships grew up, which, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... other words, v. 11, may have originally read, "set it upon the head of Zerubbabel." Whether we accept this solution or the other, it seems certain that the original prophecy contemplated the crowning of Zerubbabel. As the hopes that centred upon Zerubbabel were never fulfilled, the passage was subsequently ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... who had so much interest and speculation centred on him was on the point of departing with his purchases when he was waylaid by Jimmy, the nephew-apprentice, who, from his post at the cheese and bacon counter, commanded a good ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... centred in the attack of the Guard. Steadily, on a slightly diagonal line, it moved up the British slope. The guns smote it fiercely; but never shrinking or pausing, the great double column moved forward. It crossed the ridge. Nothing met the eyes of the astonished French except a wall of smoke, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... must be impotent for any national effort, "a Parliament" as Mr. Herbert Samuel says, "for the local affairs of Irishmen," there are other and more powerful agencies that no measure of conciliation within the Empire can permanently win to that system of world exploitation centred ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... centred here in the court-room, her brain was subconsciously ranging swiftly over all the details of the case. Far down in the depths of her mind the question was faintly suggesting itself, if one witness is a guilty participant in the plot, then why ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... chief powers in the Commonwealth necessarily centred in the rich. There was no longer an aristocracy of birth, still less of virtue. The patrician families had the start in the race. Great names and great possessions came to them by inheritance. But the door of promotion was open to all who had the golden key. The great commoners bought their ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... inconsistent and incompatible. It was the likeness between the two that filled the field of mental vision, originally. Whether a man makes a petition or a command, the fact is that he wants something; and, with his attention centred on that fact, he may be but little aware, as the child is little, if at all, aware, that he passes, or is guilty of unreasonable inconsistency in passing, from the one mood to the other, and back again. It is in the course of time and as a consequence of mental ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... more interested in the recesses of Comptroller Bay, where our eyes eagerly sought out the three bights of land and centred on the midmost one, where the gathering twilight showed the dim walls of a valley extending inland. How often we had pored over the chart and centred always on that midmost bight and on the valley it opened—the Valley of Typee. "Taipi" the chart spelled it, and spelled ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... elapsed before the captain again steamed into —— harbour. He expected to meet his old friend the Admiral, and a few other Russian gentlemen in whom his interest was centred; but they had either gone to their rest or had been removed. It seemed as though the incident that caused so much commotion at the time had passed out of recollection. Indeed, there seemed quite a new ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... verse, but in the main he recognized the old established laws which have been accepted as regulating both. In short, with all his originality, he worked in Old World harness, and cannot be considered as the creator of a truly American, self-governed, self-centred, absolutely independent style of thinking and writing, knowing no law but its ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... death—what is she even then but an iridescent bubble, as one might say, thrown up by some standing pool of vice, as filmy, very nearly as fleeting, and quite as poisonous? It struck him as he watched—not the girl in particular, but a whole genus centred in her—as really extraordinary, as an obliquity of Providence, that such ephemerids must abound, predestined to misery; must come and sin, and wail and go, with souls inside them to be saved, which nobody could save, and bodies fair enough to be loved, which nobody ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... indeed in a quandary so embarrassing as hardly to be capable of maintaining any consistent policy. The New England of that day was a trading community, of which the industry and capital were almost exclusively centred in ship-owning and commerce. The merchants, almost to a man, had long been the most Anglican of Federalists in their political sympathies. Now they found themselves suffering utterly ruinous treatment at the ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... through vacation. His own life had not been very successful; he had tried hard, but had failed. For a longtime now he had been accepting the failure as best he could. But compensation for all this were the new interests, hopes, ambitions, which centred in the life of his son. To see him a minister, a religious leader among men—that would be happiness enough for him. His family had always been a religious people. One thing he was already looking forward ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... only been in France a few weeks, and had been with us for instruction at Kemmel, had recently taken over the sector on our left, where there had been much fighting during the past few weeks for the possession of Hooge, which centred about the stables and wall running near the Chateau. It was there that in our last tour we had seen a brilliant assault by the Gordons and Middlesex, after a ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... had begun for Cardinal Henry, afterwards king, and then commendator of the abbey, a second story to the great cloister of Dom Diniz. Reached by a picturesque stair on the south side, the three-centred arches each enclose two or three smaller round arches, with the spandrils merely pierced or sometimes cusped. The mouldings are simple but not at all classic. The shafts which support these round arches are all carried down across the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... face that he meant to destroy. It was no news to her. She had known it for a long, long time—in fact, ever since she had came to Grenoble. Her curiosity, strangely enough—or so it seemed afterwards—was centred on Mr. Simpson, as though he were an actor she had been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lightly up the long winding stairs to the show-room over the front door where their labors were to begin, she appeared to Dennis the very embodiment of grace and beauty. And yet she seemed so cold and self-centred, so devoid of warm human interest in the great world of love, joy, and suffering, that ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the awful shock of the exposure following the debauch; and on Sunday afternoon we saw that his heart was failing fast. All day the miners had been dropping in to inquire after him, for Billy had been a great favourite in other days, and the attention of the town had been admiringly centred upon his fight of these last weeks. It was with no ordinary sorrow that the news of his condition was received. As Mrs. Mavor sang to him, his large coarse hands moved in time to the music, but ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... book gave three or four methods of buying boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round "Mr. X," as being of all the most courtly. You talked a good deal with the shopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this means friendship and understanding had been established, you slid naturally and gracefully into the immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... centred about the domestic altars of the ancient West differed in little [51] from that which yet rules the most eastern East. But we miss in Japan the Aryan hearth, the family altar with its perpetual fire. The Japanese home-religion represents, apparently, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... ye, whose thoughts that day In Yarrow's groves were centred, Who through the silent portal arch Of mouldering Newark enter'd; And clomb the winding stair that once Too timidly was mounted By the last Minstrel—not the last!— Ere he his ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... his wife, and yet she was not his daughter—and she was an outcast. The sting of the old shame came back very keenly. The old wound was already open and bleeding again. All the pride and hope and love of his life were centred now on his brilliant son. A few hours before he had learnt that his mother had transmitted to him the terrible, perhaps the fatal taint of inherited alcoholism; and now he had just proved beyond doubt that Vane's half-sister—for she was that in blood if not ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... All Treitschke's activities have centred round one subject: the history and policy of the Prussian State. All his loyalties are given to one cause, the supremacy of the German Empire led by the Prussian State. He has been a voluminous writer, and he has written on the most varied subjects. But all ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea |
