"Graver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the most versatile of their votaries, a man whose nimble intellect plays with luminous ease round many and various subjects; delicate as a poet, acute and picturesque as a critic, a sparkling journalist, no one has pursued with more earnest and more fruitful zeal the graver study of the birth and evolution of natural myths than Mr. Andrew Lang, to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... difficulty graver yet. Did not this doctrine really point to suicide? Would it not be the simplest solution of his problem if he were to climb down to the river, and tie a stone about his neck, and jump in? Samuel wished that he had thought to ask the professor about this. For ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... to record his earnest conviction of the advantage of the present plan of separate studies,—of the vital influence it has on the formation of character, no less than of habits of study in the young. He can well remember how every better impression or graver thought was effaced, often never to return, as the boy came out from the master's room or from reading a letter from home, and was again immersed in the crowd and confusion of the one common school-room of such a school as Winchester. He would here venture to suggest that the plan ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... was a graver matter. Its tangled curls had never satisfied her. She tried all means to bring them into subjection; but the roll on top was ridiculous, and the roll behind was formal. She attempted long waves over the temples. It was impossible. With a lash-comb she dragged her hair back to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... I have not had a creature in my house,' said Madame Bonnemain, and her face grew graver and older in its outline,—'positively not a creature. Bruges has gone down as a place for English residents, and I don't wonder ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... quaintnesses, fun about dogs and boys, and with now and then a graver touch.... Stories which no one but the author of "Vice ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... just now to our system of education, I spoke of the deadness of its details. But it is open to graver criticism than the palsy of its members: it is a system of despair. The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith. Men do not believe in a power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... state, and is not subject to the jurisdiction of governments. It is our function to keep in view and to command the movement of ideas, which are not the effect but the cause of public events;[5] and even to allow some priority to ecclesiastical history over civil, since, by reason of the graver issues concerned, and the vital consequences of error, it opened the way in research, and was the first to be treated by close reasoners and scholars of ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... Park. On such occasions his lordship's most valued boon companion was Mountfort, the comedian, whom he had taken from the stage and made a permanent officer of the Duke Street household. Whether the actor was required to discharge any graver functions in the Chancellor's establishment is unknown; but we have Sir John Reresby's testimony that the clever mimic and brilliant libertine was employed to amuse his lordship's guests by ridiculing the personal and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... sat beside her with a graver air, Something more matronly controlled her mien; Yet was she not a sighing "sentimentalist," But, like her cousin Cary, could be gay: Two Valentines had come for these fair girls, Which made the dimpled smiles show teeth like pearls ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... said, the expression of the useful, an elevated railway, well conceived, may be beautiful. The project of a subterranean railway is attended with great drawbacks, not only as regards the great expense that it would necessitate, but also the difficulties of constructing it. And there is a still graver objection to it, and that is that it would oblige travelers to move like moles in dark, cold, and moist tunnels. At Paris, where we are accustomed to a pleasant climate and clear atmosphere, we like plenty of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... sound sense and sober judgment of the people. Time is a great corrective. Political subjects which but a few years ago excited and exasperated the public mind have passed away and are now nearly forgotten. But this question of domestic slavery is of far graver importance than any mere political question, because should the agitation continue it may eventually endanger the personal safety of a large portion of our countrymen where the institution exists. In that event ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... and efficient measures would be taken in the case of lesser criminals. For the graver crimes committed by atavistic or congenital criminals, of by persons inclining toward crime from acquired habit or mental alienation, the positive school of criminology reserves segregation for an indefinite time, for it is absurd to fix the ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... applause, not of hands only, for those may be, and have often been partially prostituted, and bespoken; but by a general laughter, which the very sight of him provoked, and nature could not resist; yet the louder the laugh, the graver was his look upon it; and sure, the ridiculous solemnity of his features were enough to set a whole bench of bishops into a titter, could he have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... table we were graver than common. The high chair was set back against the wall, and a gap left between that of the young girl and her nearest neighbor's on the right. But the nest morning, to our great surprise, that good-looking young Marylander ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... great number of purposes by turners, engineers, cabinet makers, and philosophical instrument makers. For engraving purposes it is not equal to the dog-wood of America (Cornus florida); it yields, however, more readily to the graver's tools. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... surely intended for a much more noble and profitable purpose than this. Writers are not, I presume, to be considered as mere jack-puddings, whose business it is only to excite laughter: this, indeed, may sometimes be intermixed and served up with graver matters, in order to titillate the palate, and to recommend wholesome food to the mind; and for this purpose it hath been used by many excellent authors: "for why," as Horace says, "should not any one promulgate truth with a smile on his countenance?" Ridicule ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... on this formless uneasiness were graver considerations. He could not but admit to himself that he had by his expressed order placed himself to some extent in Saleratus Bill's power. He did not for a moment doubt the gun-man's loyal intentions. As long as things went well he would do his best by his ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... had found A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round For its long winter sleep; and all his thought As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes, And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize, When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer, Hard won, the frozen captive to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often defective in rhyme, and not unfrequently with even graver faults than these, their ruggedness cannot hide the gleam of the sacred fire. "The Spirit of the Age," moulding her pliant poets, was wiser than to meddle with this sterner stuff. From what hidden cave in Rare Ben ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... vain that poor Mr Cradell endeavoured to asseverate his innocence, and to stake his honour upon his own purity as regarded Mrs Lupex. Lupex still held to his enemy's cravat, though Eames had now got him by the arm, and so far impeded his movements as to hinder him from proceeding to any graver attack. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the subject, we venture to assert, is a graver peril to the race than is the declining birth-rate itself. For there is enough truth in it to make it plausible, and to separate the truth from the dangerous untruth it contains, and to make the bulk of the population ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... conviction in the world is a chiding which may come as justly from the teacher's table as from the preacher's pulpit. Now, if we but catch the meaning of man's mastery of electricity, we shall have light upon his earlier steps as a fire-kindler, and as a graver of pictures and symbols on bone and rock. As we thus recede from civilization to primeval savagery, the process of the making of man may become so clear that the arguments of Darwin shall be received with conviction, and not ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... To this proposition Richard usually assented; and when rival geniuses who monopolize not only all the reputation but most of the money of a neighborhood, are of a mind, it is not uncommon to see them lead the fashion, even in graver matters. In the present instance, as we have already hinted, the castle, as Judge Templetons dwelling was termed in common parlance, came to be the model, in some one or other of its numerous excellences, for every aspiring edifice within twenty ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... pride. At other times her affectionate gayety would give evidence as trustworthy of a fearless and improvident satisfaction. They rode out in state together, and if he kept cap in hand as a subject she would snatch it from him and clap it on his head again; while in graver things she took all due or possible care to gratify his ambition by the insertion of a clause in their contract of marriage which made their joint signature necessary to all documents of state issued under the sign manual. She despatched to France ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... exacting, tyrannical master, to whose will her own must ever be subservient. This, however, she did not then understand. She knew he was not at all like Harry, but she fancied that the difference consisted in his being so much older, graver, and wiser than her husband had been, and so with a sigh she yielded the point, thinking that Janet would be the greater sufferer of ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... never heard of his being a gentleman. It is the peasants who preserve all traditions of the sites of battles or the building of churches. It is they who remember, so far as any one remembers, the glimpses of fairies or the graver wonders of saints. In the classes above them the supernatural has been slain by the supercilious. That is a true and tremendous text in Scripture which says that "where there is no vision the people perish." But it is equally ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... grown a little graver, was a little more set in his movements, but he bore upon his face no mark to indicate the mental agony through which he must have passed in that long-drawn-out and wearisome trial. So thought the girl as she came through the swing doors of the hotel, passed the obsequious ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... clear statement of the truth. And indeed, while the worldly wisdom of Coligny's censors has received a species of justification in the avidity with which his sincere avowals have been employed as the basis of graver accusations which he repelled, the candor of his defence has set upon his words the indelible impress of veracity which following ages can never fail to read aright. That Catharine recognized his innocence is evident from the very act by which she endeavored to make ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... goodness of our horse, but the foot were not in an equal condition; and the colonels of foot representing to the king the weakness of their regiments, and how their men had been balked and disheartened at this cursed siege, the graver counsel prevailed, and it was resolved to raise the siege, and retreat towards Bristol, till the army was recruited. Pursuant to this resolution, the 5th of September, the king, having before sent away his heavy cannon and baggage, raised the siege, and marched to Berkeley Castle. The Earl ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... as my money is concerned. But there's a graver charge against you still. Jacob Poole has informed me, and asserts it most positively, that you stole into his tent at the diggings and ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... propitious heaven, drink deep of the cup of pleasure. The sun has now withdrawn his splendid lustre, and his flaring beams. The period of exercise is past, and the lids of prying curiosity is [are] closed. Night is the season of feast and the season of gaiety. In the graver hours of activity and industry, sobriety may be proper. It may then be fit to listen to the dictates of prudence, and pay some attention to the prejudices of mankind. The sternness of age and the austerity of censoriousness are now silent. Now pleasure ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... a nicer graver Head stept out, And with this Language chid their groundless Doubt: For shame, no more; what is't that frights you thus? Is it his Hatred of our God, and us, Makes him so formidable in your Eye? Or is't his Wit, Sense, Honour, Bravery? Give him a thousand ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... under a fallen log and with a deadlier weapon on his shoulder followed in the train; the hunter on the trail of the frightened buck saw the column coming through the forest road and allowed his prey to escape while he turned his attention to matters of graver moment. Thus the army of Americans was swelled from hour to hour by ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... looking forward hopefully to the future. The buoyancy of spirits that George Leslie had in those days is an excellent gift for a young artist, because it carries him merrily over the difficulties of his craft. His brother Robert was older and graver. He painted landscape and marine subjects; but though his pictures have been regularly accepted at the Academy he has had no popular success. This may be attributed in great part to his habit of living away from London. Robert Leslie has all ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... wherefore lest you be swollen by these very small things I, who now know David both by day and by night, am minded to compare him and Porthos the one with the other, both in this matter and in other matters of graver account. And touching this matter of outward show, they are both very lordly, and neither of them likes it to be referred to, but they endure in different ways. For David says 'Oh, bother!' and even at times hits out, but Porthos droops his tail and lets them have their say. Yet is he ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... maintained a profound silence during the route. This adventure, which at first had presented itself under the appearance of an amorous intrigue, had soon assumed a graver aspect, and appeared to turn toward political machinations. If this new aspect did not frighten the chevalier, at least it gave him matter for reflection. There is a moment in the affairs of every man which ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Useless is not the question; I cannot rest at uselessness; I must be useful or I must be noxious—one or other. I grant you the whole thing, prince and principality alike, is pure absurdity, a stroke of satire; and that a banker or the man who keeps an inn has graver duties. But now, when I have washed my hands of it three years, and left all—labour, responsibility, and honour and enjoyment too, if there be any—to Gondremark and to—Seraphina——" He hesitated at the name, and Gotthold glanced aside. "Well," the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in spite of increased height, a dark moustache, and martial bearing. It was Paul, older, graver, handsomer, but still "her Paul," as she called him, with a flush of pride and delight as she watched him, and felt that of all there she knew him best and loved him most. For the childish affection still existed, and this discovery ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... an angel," said he, embracing her. "But there's one thing we must do"—and his voice became graver—"we must see Pash and offer a reward for the discovery of the person ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... drawbacks now and then, which threw rather a graver tone into the soliloquy of the lonely traveller, it was still a time of excessive enjoyment. The noble rocks towered up high on the left, and the endless water opened out wide on the right with only some dot of a sail, hull down, far far off on the horizon, a little lonely speck ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... of our Gospel, that, taking far sadder, graver views of what sin and alienation from God are, than the world's philosophers and philanthropists do, it surpasses them just as much as in the superb confidence with which it sets itself to the cure of the disease as in the unflinching clearness with which it diagnoses the disease as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... being a very plain and brief one, was soon stated, the woman's reply was then heard, after which Mr. Coke looked graver than before, and proceeded somewhat ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... all," said the archbishop; "let not the gibe and jest go round; there be matters of graver import that should occupy us this night. To-morrow, let the elements be propitious, and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... which, and upon which alone, the campaign could turn and did turn. Neither was the question one of the relative merits, as yet unknown, of Rodney and Hood. A commander-in-chief cannot devolve his own proper functions upon a subordinate, however able, without graver cause than can be shown in this instance. The infatuation which detained Rodney at a side issue can only be excused—not justified—by a temporary inability to see things in their true proportion, induced on ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... childless and in every way a failure; he now desired a wife such as he felt sure she would be, and his heart hankered sorely after his son. He tried to read Esther's quiet, subdued face. It was graver than usual, and betrayed none of the passion that choked in her. She must manage that the men should not meet. But how should she rid herself of him? She noticed that he was looking at her, and to lead his thoughts away from herself she asked him where he had gone with ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... I only wish to make its moral mine. Say then, O ye who tell how authors speed, May Hope indulge her flight, and I succeed? Say, shall my name, to future song prefixed, Be with the meanest of the tuneful mix'd? Shall my soft strains the modest maid engage, My graver numbers move the silver "d sage, My tender themes delight the lover's heart, And comfort to the poor my solemn songs impart? For Oh! thou Hope's, thou Thought's eternal King, Who gav'st them power to charm, and me to sing ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... earnest sweetness; no signs of having grown older, no sign of wear and tear, climate, or exertion, only the widow's dress and the presence of the great boys enhancing her soft youthfulness. The smile was certainly changed; it was graver, sadder, tenderer, and only conjured up by maternal affection or in grateful reply, and the blitheness of the young brow had changed to quiet pensiveness, but more than ever there was an air of dependence almost beseeching protection, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the very grave discontents of the people of the Pacific States with the present working of the Chinese immigration, and their still graver apprehensions therefrom in the future, as deserving the most serious attention of the people of the whole country and a solicitous interest on the part of Congress and the Executive. If this were not my own judgment, the passage of this bill by both Houses of Congress would impress ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... she had greeted her hostess, her eyes swept around the room, and in their circuit rested for a moment on Keith, who was talking to Lois. She gave them a charming smile. The next moment, however, her eyes stole that way again, and this time they bore a graver expression. The admiration that filled the younger girl's eyes ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... strong current of the divinest of truths, stirred the very veins of the village. Mothers were more loving and fathers more tender, and maidens were sweeter and graver—all for the coming of this one little babe into the bosom of full and ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... my son left me, we were sitting round the library fire. Christoper, now a captain in one of the famous Massachusetts regiments, sat near me, a little older and a little graver than when I saw him last. We were talking with flushed cheeks and beating hearts of the subject nearest our hearts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was defending his own State of New York against a charge of infidelity to the compact of 1820; now Everett, friend and biographer and successor of Webster, was protesting that he had not meant to misrepresent Webster's views. Always, after these encounters, Douglas knew how to come back, with a graver tone, to the larger issue, as if they, and not he, were trying to obscure it. A spectator might have fancied that these high-minded men were culprits, and he their inquisitor. Now and then, as when he dealt with the abolitionists, there was no questioning the sincerity ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... answers seemed to satisfy the Monster Rabbit, for when he kissed them a little later and said good-night, he gave orders, with a graver face, for Jimbo to be sent down to the study before he went to bed. Moreover, he called him "James," which was a sure ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... up and goes quickly from the room. In a little while she returns with Doctor Green, who sits down and looks at the child for some moments with a sober, thoughtful face. Then he lays his fingers on her pulse and times its beat by his watch—shakes his head, and looks graver still. ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... him doing any mischief in the room. The offense, merely, of visiting another midshipman's room improperly would call but for ten demerits. Pooh! The scrape was such a simple one that he would lie valiantly out of the graver charge and escape with ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... individuals who make up the stream of youthful life which has ebbed and flowed through the College gate there is but little official record. An Admonition Book exists, in which more than a century ago those who were punished for graver offences against discipline signed the record of their sentence and promised amendment. One youth admits over a trembling signature that he was "admonished by the Master, before the Seniors, for keeping strangers in my chamber till twelve o' the clock, and disturbing the Master by ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... You have turned things upside down," he remarked in a graver tone. "And here's where you two have spent all these days, is it?" Again his eye rested on Adam's graceful figure, whose cheeks were flushed with his run upstairs. With the glance came a certain feeling of revolt, as if the lad's ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... trivial to you among the graver concerns of state; nevertheless, I am sanguine enough to hope that the courtesies which have passed this year between the Buffalonians and us will not be without their fruit. The bulk of those who came here from ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Lordship is bound to follow, and your Lordship should not undertake to constrain your master. The worst thing would be that your Lordship should think that what you have said pertains to your duty, because that would be a graver matter; for, if your Lordship could stretch your arm so far as that, there would be no need of any bishop in this country, except a titular one, [3] for I do not see what remains to me if your Lordship ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... seems to me—what is to be done," replied the Earl, whose face had been gradually growing graver. "What, for instance, are you going to do, Mr. Chestermarke? Let us be plain with each other. You disclaim all liability in ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... usual a fair weather one, but it was fraught with much anxiety as regarded the progress of the war. The ports of call of our ship were Genoa, Port Said and Aden, Colombo, and then Western Australia. As we arrived at each of these ports the news from South Africa became graver and graver. Siege of Ladysmith, siege of Mafeking, siege of Kimberley. Rebellion in Cape Colony. Then Colenso and Spion Kop. We felt somewhat relieved on arrival at Freemantle, where the news met us that General Buller was to be superseded in the command ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... of me, they let me be and came to the graver business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was Falconnet who ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the garden patches grew bare and brown, and the bleak winds from across the Mississippi swept over the common, untoward tidings came like water dripping from a roof, bit by bit. And day by day Colonel Clark looked graver. The messengers he had sent to Vincennes came not back, and the coureurs and traders from time to time brought rumors of a British force gathering like a thundercloud in the northeast. Monsieur Vigo ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he said, looking graver yet. "Me do 'tempt su'thing. But missie knows, de Sabbat' be de only day de people hab, and dey tink ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... royal birth, that it maintained its place on Hadrian's table to the time of his death. These, however, were mere fopperies or pardonable extravagancies in one so young and so exalted; "qu, etsi non decora," as the historian observes, "non tamen ad perniciem publicam prompta sunt." A graver mode of licentiousness appeared in his connections with women. He made no secret of his lawless amours; and to his own wife, on her expostulating with him on his aberrations in this respect, he replied—that "wife" was a designation of rank and official dignity, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... growing weaker as the state of hostilities, his loneliness, the sight of that detestable barricade, became more and more odious to him. He began to make excuses for the Countess—not indeed for all that she had done (for her graver offences were unknown to him), but for what he knew of, for the broken promise and the renewal of acquaintance with Paul de Roustache. He imputed to her a picturesque penitence and imagined her, on her side of the barricade, longing ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... and have become so seasoned to those losses that I have ceased to weep. Yet there is one man over whose loss I will never cease to grieve. He was the loved companion of my youth, and the steadfast associate of my graver years. He was one of the most loyal of Christian knights. As a friend he was loving and sincere; as a warrior his achievements were above all praise. What has become of him, alas! I know not. If fallen in battle, and I knew where his bones were laid, whether bleaching on the plains ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... self-styled communicator has suffered from mental illness before his death, the communications repeat the trouble feature by feature; they are full of confusion and incoherence. This confusion and incoherence is all the graver, as the mental trouble preceding death was graver. It disappears slowly, but sometimes traces of it appear years after. Telepathy does not explain this. If there is madness in the mind of the dead person, there ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... assistance. But the alternative of abandoning the whole of the northern districts of Cape Colony to the enemy, and thus allowing them to enforce recruitments from colonists who might otherwise live in peaceful security under the British flag, involved dangers far graver, and was, in fact, never contemplated by the military authorities either in London or at the Cape, except in the remote contingency of war with some maritime Power coinciding with the outbreak of hostilities with the Boer Republics. Moreover, by the middle of September, 1899, the organisation ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... the human mood. He has not known, however, how to keep up that difficult equilibrium between artifice and simplicity which the idyl demands. His later books tend to be turgid, oppressive, cloying with sentimentalism and amorous obsessions in their graver moments, and in their lighter moments to fall flat from a lack of the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... came to realize that this question for and against England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth, and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and social affiliations than of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... asked, and the trooper withdrew, while when they sat down to a last cigar it seemed to Dane that his companion's face was graver than usual. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... Arthur and Cornell, it was argued, was no less irrational. In failing to charge them with inefficiency he subjected himself to the graver charge of inconsistency, since his letter of acceptance and inaugural address declared in substance that efficient officers would be retained. The President meant, his friends assumed, that political activity nullified efficiency, to which opponents replied that the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... that Merrifield could only tell what he knew—there'll probably be details to come out later. Anyway, Merrifield—whose chief object is, I must also remind you, the clearing of himself from any charge of murder—he doesn't mind the other charge, but he does object to the graver one!—says that though he's been playing it straight for some time, ever since he went into Delkin's service, in fact—he'd had negotiations of a questionable sort with both Schmall and Van Koon before years ago, in this city and in New York. He renewed his acquaintance with Schmall when he ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... spoke, the landlord stepped into the yard, followed by an officer and a half-dozen soldiers. These were no ordinary keepers of the peace, but musketeers of the guard, and at sight of them I knew that their business was not to interrupt a duel, but to arrest my erstwhile opponent upon a much graver charge. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... reasonable; 'tis not the friskiest sheep that falls down the cliff. All creatures must have their fling soon, or late; and why not a woman? What more frivolous than a kitten? what graver than ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and gave a little dainty pat to his arm. 'I like to see a man in earnest,' said she. Her little Skye terrier was seized with jealousy at her gesture, and came nuzzling in between with his black nose. 'Mull objects!' she said, smiling; but then, with a graver look, 'And so will ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strains of graver measure: Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure In sweet Muses' groves ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to it, another mystery, more profound and graver floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the mystery of the creation itself! For was it not in stagnant and muddy water, amid the heavy humidity of moist land under the heat of the sun, that the first germ of life vibrated and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... dropped, and the Bishop would not have pressed him for the world. They fell upon the anonymous letters, a comparatively safe topic, and the relation of Barron to them. Naturally Meynell gave the Bishop no hint whatever of the graver matter which had finally compelled Barron's surrender. He described his comparison of the Dawes letters with "a document in the young man's handwriting which I happened to have in my possession," and the gradual but certain conviction it ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to noble Barkley's health, I'll take my pipe and try The Phrygian melody; Which he that hears, Lets through his ears A madness to distemper all the brain: Then I another pipe will take And Doric music make, To civilize with graver notes our ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Instructor and Adjutant at Chatham, where his practical knowledge gained in the Sebastopol trenches was turned to good account in the theoretical training of future officers of his Corps. He was thus employed when the conflict in China, which had been in progress for some years, assumed a graver character in consequence of the Chinese refusal to ratify the Treaty of Tientsin and Admiral Hope's repulse in front of the Taku forts. Gordon at once volunteered for active service, and on 22nd July 1860 he sailed for the Far East. He did not ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... along the perilous incline toward enthusiasm and fanaticism. Those, on the other hand, repelled by the grotesqueness and extravagance of these manifestations, who were led to distrust or condemn the good work with which they were associated, fell into a graver error. This was the error into which, to its cost, the Presbyterian Church was by and by drawn in dealing with questions that emerged from these agitations. The revival gave rise to two new sects, both of them marked by the fervor of spirit that characterized the time, and both ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the electric chair. We also have ample evidence with which to convict Mrs. Collins and Ward as accessories after the fact—the law is very plain concerning the concealment of evidence. But I am about to lay a graver charge against them. I have a letter written by Ward in which he implores Whitmore to extend financial assistance to him. Mrs. Collins joined in writing that letter, and, moreover, after the murder, I found ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... gloomy and clouded, and he was even graver and more reticent than usual. He retired into the background of the room, addressing only now and then a few quick words to Field-Marshal Kalkreuth, who stood by his side. Alexander's countenance was serene and pleasant, and a smile played round ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... come to her cabin, once to ascertain who was moving into the sheep camp, once when he had pitched Lord Clendenning into the creek, and again, only a few days before, when he had come to teach her to shoot. The girl noted that he seemed graver than usual, if that were possible. Certain it was that he appeared to be holding himself under restraint. She wondered if he had come to warn her of ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... with a presentation bat bearing a silver shield on the back of it. No boy in the house, so Mr. Dupre said, grudged the sixpence which had been stopped from his pocket money to pay for the bat. Then, passing to graver matters, Mr. Dupre spoke warmly of the tone of the house, that indefinable quality which in the eyes of a faithful schoolmaster is more precious than rubies. It was Mannix, prefect and member of the lower sixth, who more than any one else deserved credit for ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... was not as well as he led them to believe; and though Kitty was not observant enough to notice such signs as a slower, heavier step, a want of energy in setting about his work, a flagging appetite, she did notice that he was quieter and graver, and had not such ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... hiding two or three miles off, disguised as a laborer, and will be at the grove to-night to receive this money. I have invited the justices to get Mr. Hare safe away from his own house. If he saw Richard, he would undoubtedly give him up to justice, and—putting graver considerations aside—that would be pleasant for neither you nor for me. To have a connection gibbeted for a willful murder would be an ugly blot on the ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... grew graver than usual, as with a sudden recollection of that shadow upon her life which Elinor so often seemed to have forgotten. "As much of a success," she said, "as anything of the kind ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... apart, his art has given us a message from the purest source of poetry and painting, couched in a language which is thoroughly of our time; and in this year, which is the centenary of his birth, it can be said that no other painter of the century, save the graver Millet, has held fast that which was good in the art of the past, and so enriched it by added truth and beauty as Corot. It was fitting that when he lay dying as cheerfully as he had lived, contented ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... tell the whole story. In the first named year twenty-six persons were convicted of felonies, with sentences in the penitentiary, while in the year succeeding only nine, or one-third as many, were convicted of the graver offences of the law." ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... our greatest English wits is indissolubly connected with the neighbourhood of the Poultry. It falls like a cracker, with merry bang and sparkle, among the graver histories with which this great street is associated. Tom Hood was the son of a Scotch bookseller in the Poultry. The firm was "Vernor and Hood." "Mr. Hood," says Mrs. Broderip, "was one of the 'Associated Booksellers,' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... left, Bastianello and Beatrice are the most changed—both, perhaps, for the better. The sailor is graver and sterner than before, but he still has the gentleness which was never his brother's. Beatrice has not yet learned the great lesson of love in her own heart, but she knows and will never forget ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... find my ideas much more rapid than consists with a goose quill. The unbending of the mind in a trifle like the present is also agreeable; and if the reader only likes it, as much as it amuses me and it whiles away graver cares, and the every-day monotony of a matter-of-fact existence, so much the better. An engineer-officer has no time to become a blase, but every body else is not in his position, and thus this "little boke" may be taken up with the morning paper, and your man of the world may ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... This occurrence assumes the graver aspect from the consideration that in 1833 a treaty negotiated between the two Governments and ratified on the part of the United States failed to be ratified on the part of Belgium. The representative of that Government at Washington informs the Department of State that he has been instructed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the Prioress, who was reinstated at Greystone, a graver woman than before she had set forth, the better for having watched deeper devotion at the Minoresses', and still more for the terrible realities of the battle of Barnet. At Bolton Abbey Harry found monks who encouraged his craving for information ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... period, but also to that of the Church. Few preachers were so effective from their pulpits as were Addison and his fellow-contributors in the pages of the 'Spectator' and other kindred serials. It was not only in those Saturday papers which were specially devoted to graver musings that they served the cause of religion and morality. They were true sons of the Church; and if they did not go far below the surface, nor profess to do more as a rule than satirise follies and censure venial ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... sufficiently relieved from this precise delineation, to prevent a starched formality. Perhaps the greater part of the buildings were painted white, as is usual in the smaller American towns; though a better taste was growing in the place, and many of the dwellings had the graver and chaster hues of the grey stones of which they were built. A general air of neatness and comfort pervaded the place, it being as unlike a continental European town, south of the Rhine, in this respect, as possible, if indeed we except the picturesque bourgs of Switzerland. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of that kind then. Not because he feared them or felt unequal to them! Oh, no. But because such an outbreak would make the regiment more difficult to control in the greater emergency, and he knew he needed all the influence and moral power and force he could exercise to keep it in line for the graver duty and more tremendous responsibility it must now face. And because he did not wish to leave it with Marteau in Grenoble, he took the regiment with him. If he could force it to do its duty and ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... unmistakeable family likeness to creeds abhorred. A belief was deemed to be accounted for and its sanctity dissolved, by referring it historically to human origins, and showing it to be only one branch of a genealogical trunk. Historic explanation became a graver ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... not be multiplied; this is an essential precaution. Multiplied movements are detrimental when a graver movement ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... affected in some way or other (V. ii. 2), in fact all with which we are vitally interested in philosophy. Ka@nada's philosophy gives only some facts of experience regarding substances, qualities and actions, leaving all the graver issues of metaphysics to ad@r@s@ta But what leads to ad@r@s@ta? In answer to this, Ka@nada does not speak of good or bad or virtuous or sinful deeds, but of Vedic works, such as holy ablutions (snana), fasting, holy student life (brahmacarya), remaining at the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... 'The Graver and the Pen' is a most strikingly illustrated little work and the poetry so pleasing that when it is taken up to be read is finished before ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scholarly person named Finck Went mad in the effort to think Which were graver misplaced, To dip pen in his paste, Or dip his ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of the tower, nor the rising sun; nor the Anno Domini of your new sovereign's coronation. This must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party; especially to those who have not been so happy as to purchase the original. I hear the graver has made a good market of it: all his Kings are bought up already; or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that many a poor Polander, who would be glad to worship the image, is not able to go to the cost of him; but must be content ...
— English Satires • Various
... with nuts and grapes, we passed a poor creature by the roadside, who seemed fainting with fatigue or hunger. We both laughed at the queer figure at first, and passed by merrily, and went on our way; but Noll's face grew graver and graver, I remember, and by and by he would turn about, in spite of me, and go all the long way back to empty his pockets of their pennies and bits of silver into the wanderer's lap. Yes, he had a heart for every unfortunate, ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... flippant old windbag, I know. And I'm not. Why don't you fall in love with her, Maraton? It would be the making of you. Even a prophet needs relaxation. She is yours, body and soul. One can tell it with every sentence she speaks. And she is for the cause," he concluded with a graver note in his tone. "She has found the fire somewhere. There were women like her who ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mass. Bay, vol. iii. p. 287, n. Instances of pardons and reprieves occur in our judicial history, but they were invariably granted in the name of the king, by the commander-in-chief; and, if for a graver offence than manslaughter, it seems to have been understood that a pardon was not to be granted without previous express direction from the king. This was in compliance with a clause in the royal instructions, issued to all the governors, by which they were enjoined not to remit any fines or ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.
... some on earnest business bent Their murmuring labours ply 'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint To sweeten liberty: Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of their little reign, And unknown regions dare descry: Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... instance, or corn on the stalk, or melons in the field—and that of other species of property. The surreptitious appropriation of the former class of chattels is known in common parlance as "hooking," while the graver term "stealing" describes the same process in other cases. The distinction may arise from a feeling that, so long as crops remain rooted to the ground, they are nature's, not man's, and that nature ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... looking at him, not me, with a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth, which, when it decided not to alight anywhere, scarcely left her aspect graver for its flitting. She said at last, in her slow, deep-throated voice, "I guess I will let you ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... and gazed into the smithy fire as if he were engaged in pondering some knotty point. "Well, I'm not sure," said he slowly, and descending to a graver tone of address—"I'm not sure that I can go quite so far as that. If we had no war at all, perchance our swords might rust, and our skill, for want of practice, might fail us in the hour of need. Besides, how could men in that case hope to ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... in those few short months! The boyish expression had vanished. He looked older, more care-worn. The fair, handsome face was graver; the blue eyes were surely more thoughtful. Even his fair chestnut hair seemed to have taken on a deeper, ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... pages of the present edition,[6] were printed in the year 1757. This is the only part that has received the finishing stroke of the author. In those who are acquainted with the manner in which Mr. Burke usually composed his graver literary works, and of which some account is given in the Advertisement prefixed to the fourth volume, this circumstance will excite a deep regret; and whilst the public partakes with us in this feeling, it will doubtless be led to judge ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it is not to be wondered at, if this triumvirate made no objections to the proposal, when some of the graver personages of the company made a motion for adjourning into another apartment, where they might enjoy their pipes and bottles, while the young folks indulged themselves in the continuance of their own favourite diversion. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... courtesies, this prisoner became fully and freely his tool in ferreting out the larger problem. He might be offered immunity on one indictment, if, as State's evidence, he made possible a number of true bills on graver charges. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... sent him a nightcap, finely wrought by a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth (Tatler, No. 141). The "nightcap" was a periwig with a short tie and small round head, and embroidered nightcaps were worn chiefly by members of the graver professions. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... frankness than is customary has been attempted in this story; with no bad desire on the writer's part, it is hoped, and with no ill consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant, at any rate truth is best, from whatever chair—from those whence graver writers or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits as he concludes his labour, and bids his kind ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and to nullify its laws; this painful necessity for the first time imposed upon the federal government to take up arms against misguided citizens of the Republic, in order to save itself from disintegration and national death, were destined to be followed by far graver convulsions on the self-same spot. Religious differences and religious hatreds were to mingle their poison with antagonistic political theories and personal ambitions, and to develop on a wide scale the danger ever lurking in a constitution whose fundamental law was unstable, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... conditions in which every man might have enough and to spare, making it his aim to see that his fellow had the same, there could be greed and ingenious oppression and social crime, with the menace of things graver still? What's the matter with us? he asked, helplessly. Was it something wrong with the American people? or was it something wrong with the whole human race? or was it a condition of permanent strife that the human race could never escape from? Was man a being capable of high spiritual ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... in two directions, according to the individual character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated noble actions, and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires, as the former did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men. ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... lasted through the summer of 1856. The general impression on the country was to strengthen the opposition to the usurpation of the Territorial Legislature, and to the administration which sustained it. In September there came a crisis. Another and graver attack on Lawrence was threatened, and this time a vigorous resistance was probable. But a new and able governor, John W. Geary of Pennsylvania, had been dispatched by President Pierce, with imperative instructions to pacify the Territory, as a pressing political necessity. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... means a pleasant gouvernante for a nervous girl of my years. Sometimes she had accesses of a sort of hilarity which frightened me still more than her graver moods, and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... of which I speak was not confined to the graver poets. It infected satire, comedy, burlesque. No person can admire more than I do the great masterpieces of wit and humour which Italy has produced. Still I cannot but discern and lament a great deficiency, which is ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... movement. From century to century these remained the same. Between the bases of the mighty columns he watched the wave of darkness drown the world, leading it with a rush of silence towards sleep. For the children Night meant play and mischief; for himself it meant graver reverie.... ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Nothing of the passion, flaming hot and terrible, of Tristan is here; only a sense of sheer delight and happiness. Melody after melody—of a very Weberesque pattern, of course, but sweet, voluptuous—is poured forth; and a graver tone comes into the music only when Elsa begins timidly to lead up to the questionings of Lohengrin which are her aim. She hints at what she wants, and Lohengrin gives her, to a very pretty tune, an answer that can merely be called sublimely fatuous. Drawing her to the window, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman |
