"Unimportant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lightly. That morning, when he gave his word to Mitri, he had felt alone and helpless. Now, in repossession of his Emir, with boundless wealth in prospect, the question of his change of faith seemed unimportant. That the Orthodox creed was the way of salvation, he had no doubt; his mother had always said so; but there seemed plenty of time in which to save his soul. He added: "How can their faith be false, seeing it is founded on ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... mutual gratulations they passed the evening. My readers who now enjoy a mother's love, or look back with affectionate reverence to such scenes in the past, will pardon these apparently unimportant portions of the story. Sooner or later all will learn that no worldly success whatever, no friendships, not even the absorbing love of wife and children, can afford a pleasure so full, so serene, as the sacred feeling which rises at the recollection of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... bigot. He has already made up his mind, and he doesn't intend to have his solid convictions disturbed by anything so unimportant as a contradictory fact. Lenny was of the opinion that all mathematics was arcane gobbledygook, and his precise knowledge of the mathematical odds in poker and dice games didn't abate that opinion one whit. Obviously, a ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... be hidden between the leaves, I came to the fourth drawer, and found more relics of past pecuniary transactions in the shape of receipted bills, neatly tied together, and each inscribed at the back. Among the bills I found nearly a dozen loose papers, all equally unimportant. The fifth drawer was in sad confusion. I took out first a loose bundle of ornamental cards, each containing the list of dishes at past banquets given or attended by the Major in London or Paris; next, a box full of delicately tinted quill ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... read that the Government has wonderful means of locating any 'squeak-box', as they call it, that is not registered and which litters up the airways with either unimportant or absolutely evil communications. These methods of tracing unregistered sending stations were discovered during the war and were proved thoroughly before the Government allowed any small stations to ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... stoves. It would have ruined his reputation if he had. The above programme, with unimportant variations, will be carried out in many respectable families during the next ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... in Congress. Public opinion is mightier than Congress; and they who wield or control that do, in reality, bear rule. Power in the world, upon a large view, and in the light of history, has not been confided to the majorities of men. Greece, unimportant in extent of territory, a peninsula and archipelago in the sea, led the way in the civilization of the west, and, through her eloquence, poetry, history and art, became the model of modern culture. Rome, a single city in Italy, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... ranges set down, apparently at random, like a child's blocks. In and out between them flowed the broad, plain-like valleys. On the valleys were the various ranges, great or small, controlled by the different individuals of the Cattlemen's Association. During the year an unimportant, but certain, shifting of stock took place. A few cattle of Senor Johnson's Lazy Y eluded the vigilance of his riders to drift over through the Grant Pass and into the ranges of his neighbour; equally, many of the neighbour's steers watered daily at Senor Johnson's troughs. It was a matter ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... to himself, "I ought to go back. I ought not to take for granted the fact that this old letter is unimportant. However, Irene has read it, and if it happened to be of value I'm sure the girl would have told me ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... their attitude towards Norwegian shipping, you will notice that they make the flimsiest excuse for the destruction of as much tonnage as they can sink. It was confidently stated to me by a member of the National Liberal Party, and by no means an unimportant one, that Germany is building ships as rapidly as she is sinking them. That I do not believe; but that a great part of her effort is devoted to the construction of mercantile vessels I ascertained beyond the shadow ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... affirmative; as, "It is not improbable that Congress will convene in special session before the end of the summer." "It is not unimportant that, he attend to the matter at once." "His story was not incredible." "The ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... In some unimportant ways I acted as aid for Kilpatrick. A few hundred yards in advance of the main body rode a vanguard of two hundred men, thrown forward to warn us should we strike any considerable number of the enemy's cavalry. As is ever the case, the horses of a small force ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Bank of Adot had been an important institution in an unimportant community. It employed three people and enlarged its chartered rights to perform many services in the little community. In the prosperous days following the World War it added to its surplus and paid fair ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... [24] It is not unimportant in this connection to find that London itself assumes an exceptional place in tradition. Mr. Frazer notes a German legend about London, Golden Bough (2nd ed.), iii. 235; Pausanias, v. 292. Mr. ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... with which, however, the king was not displeased, for he smiled, and said, "How do you know that?" Here I was at a loss for a moment how to answer; for I was sensible that it did not become me to occupy the king's attention with any long stories or traditions about a subject so unimportant as my own family; and yet it was necessary that I should say something, unless I would be thought to have denied my Huguenot descent upon no reason or authority. After a moment's hesitation, I said, in effect, that the family from which I traced my descent had certainly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Zebedee on the other, John's absence was the less apparent. Twilight had not yet come, but Helen had lighted candles to give the room a festive look, and there was a feeling of freedom and friendship in the house. They all talked of unimportant things, and there was laughter amid the chinking of the cups. For the young men, the presence of the girls had a potent, hardly admitted charm: for Miriam there was the exciting antagonism of sex: for Helen there was a pleasure which made her ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... self-sacrifice. I call them historic, for they have appeared and reappeared in the history of ethics, and have been worked out there on a great scale. While not altogether consistent with one another, no one of them is unimportant. Together they compactly present those conflicting considerations which must be borne in mind when we attempt to comprehend the subtleties of self- sacrifice. I will endeavor to state ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... coals are, with some unimportant exceptions, confined to five small fields in Eastern Pennsylvania, as shown in the following list. These fields are given in the order of ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... understand what that means. It wasn't that my reason didn't assure me just as certainly as ever that what I was trying to do was the right thing to try to do. But somehow that seemed a cold and personally unimportant proposition. The life had ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... conquerors; this would indicate a population of at least some 4-5 millions. This seems a possible number, if we consider that an inscription of the tenth century B.C. which reports about an ordinary war against a small and unimportant western neighbour, speaks of 13,081 free men and 4,812 ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... kept silence, and she could listen undisturbed. To unpractised ears the sound that so entranced her would have been scarcely audible. Even the experienced traveller would have thought it nothing more than the echo of a fallen stone among the rocks in the eastward distance. But to her it was no unimportant sound, for it gave the welcome signal of deliverance ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... reflected that these unimportant articles would excite no suspicion if found in his possession. A fragment of the rock, which, if he had taken it as he felt impelled, would have precipitated the discovery that Aristides had decided to put off until he had perfected a certain plan. The light ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... collected by reason, in opposition to the senses, will seldom stand forward in the mind, but lie treasured in the remoter repositories of memory, to be found only when they are sought. Whatever any man may have written or done, his precepts or his valour will scarcely overbalance the unimportant uniformity which runs through his time. We do not easily consider him as great, whom our own eyes show us to be little; nor labour to keep present to our thoughts the latent excellencies of him, who shares with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... replied he, "we have here only a scrap of unimportant paper; the name of the legatee is not indicated, and even were it indicated, the testament would still be without force, being neither dated ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... showed her the women's apartments, separated from the men's apartments by a bolted door, [5] whereby nothing from within could be conveyed without clandestinely, nor children born and bred by our domestics without our knowledge and consent [6]—no unimportant matter, since, if the act of rearing children tends to make good servants still more loyally disposed, [7] cohabiting but sharpens ingenuity for mischief in ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... an instance, the opinion so continuously affirmed, that women are distinguished by good memories, in particular, for details. Now to regard this as necessarily a mental sexual character is entirely to mistake the facts. A tenacious memory for details that are often quite unimportant, belongs to all people of limited impressions and unskilled in thought; it maybe noticed in all children. Without a wide experience of life and practice in constructive thinking the mind inevitably falls back on fact-memory. I knew an agricultural labourer who could only tell his age by ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... expressions, as I have told you already, that fix a man's position for you before you have done shaking hands with him. Allow me to expand a little. There are several things, very slight in themselves, yet implying other things not so unimportant. Thus, your French servant has devalise your premises and got caught. Excusez, says the sergent-de-ville, as he politely relieves him of his upper garments and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good shoulders ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... muster-grounds, and dancing attendance as a silent voter at the halls of the state legislature, to the membership of which his constituents had returned him, he saw but little of his family, and they almost as little of him. His influence grew unimportant with his wards, in proportion as it obtained vigor with his faction—was seldom referred to by them, and, perhaps, if it had been, such was the rapid growth of their affections, would have been but little regarded. He appeared to take it for granted, that, having provided them with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... was unimportant save for an amusing incident which showed Franklin's innocence at that time whatever he may have been later on, and for an agreement he made to collect a debt of thirty-five pounds in Pennsylvania for ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... not feel that these brief records of an humble career were "upon honor," and that the only useful lesson a life so unimportant can teach is, the conflict between opposing influences, I might possibly be disposed to blink the avowal, that, as I rode along toward Nancy, a very great doubt occurred to me as to whether I ought not to desert! It is a very ignoble expression; but it must out. There were not in the French ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... intelligent standing by an undertaking through its ups and downs, its dull seasons and its unpopular phases, they are incapable of. Their efforts have no relation to an intelligently conceived purpose. With them may be grouped those women who, by their canonization of the unimportant, construct heavily burdened but utterly fruitless lives. They laboriously pad out their days with trivial things, vanities, shams, and shadows, to which they give the serious undivided attention which should be ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... face; she nodded, finding no words in which to expand that joyous "perhaps," which touched the quick in her. Instantly that sum in addition which he had not essayed in his own mind, became unimportant in hers. What difference did the twenty severing years make, after all? Her heart rose with a bound—she had a quick vision of a little head against her bosom! But she could not put it into words. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... but he wrote a marvelous and at the time convincing tale. According to his account, Simpson had only three weeks for a tour of the gold-fields, and considered ten days of the period was all he could spare the unimportant job of picking up gold. In the ten days, however, with no other implements than a pocket-knife, he accumulated fifty thousand dollars. The rest of the time he really preferred to travel about viewing ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Gogol, he created his own school, and attained an independent position from his very first piece. His plays have only one thing in common with Gogol's—he draws his scenes from commonplace, every-day life in Russia, his characters are unimportant, every-day people. Gogol's comedies were such in the strict meaning of the word, and their object was to cast ridicule on the acting personages, to bring into prominence the absurd sides of their characters; and this aim accomplished, the heroes leave ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... estimation you may have been accustomed to hold rank and connection, nor whether you are impressed with a proper sense of their superiority and value; for early prejudices are not easily rooted out, and those who have lived chiefly with monied people, regard even birth itself as unimportant when compared ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... Boston are exceedingly mistaken if they think I have condescended to become a Party Man in their unimportant Disputes about Manly & Mc Neil,1 Neither of whom, in my opinion have derived any Honor from the Decisions of the late Courts martial. I wonder how Manly can attribute his Disappointment to me. At ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... everywhere. Measures of protection against the cold, so difficult to render effective in other countries, are unimportant here, owing to the mildness of the climate. Both boarded and beaten earth floors are kept ...
— Turkish Prisoners in Egypt - A Report By The Delegates Of The International Committee - Of The Red Cross • Various
... on an expedition from the Scottish settlement of Glen Lynden. But before touching on this, we will turn aside to relate an incident which affected the movements of both parties, and has reference to a small though not unimportant ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... first term of the Triple Alliance, by which she was bound to take her allies into consultation. The insolence of the Austrian attitude was betrayed in the disregard of this obligation: Italy evidently was too unimportant a factor to be precise with. Italy might, then and there, the 1st of August, 1914, very well have denounced the Alliance, and perhaps would have done so had she been prepared for the consequences, had the Salandra Government ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... previous occasion, she had taken the liberty of helping herself to certain papers which she found lying just inside an unlocked desk. These papers on examination, as she feared might be the case, for the most part proved to be quite unimportant—unpaid accounts, military reports, a billet or two from ladies, and so forth. But in thinking the matter over Black Meg remembered that this desk had another part to it, which seemed to be locked, and, therefore, just in case they should prove useful, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the invalid's breakfast, and the invalid himself, pale and emaciated, performing no small part in the same, it may be fairly questioned whether at any meal, where no word, good or bad, was spoken from beginning to end, so much was expressed by gestures in themselves so slight and unimportant. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... classifications[2] which have been applied to the religions of the world, there is one that interests us more immediately to-night, Imean the division into Non-Missionary and Missionary religions. This is by no means, as might be supposed, aclassification based on an unimportant or merely accidental characteristic; on the contrary, it rests on what is the very heart-blood in every system of human faith. Among the six religions of the Aryan and Semitic world, there are three that are opposed ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... seems to have become early the custom not to fill up the senators' places immediately on their falling vacant, but to revise and complete the roll of the senate on occasion of the census, consequently, as a rule, every fourth year; which also involved a not unimportant restriction on the authority entrusted with the selection. The whole number of the senators remained as before, and in this the -conscripti- were also included; from which fact we are probably entitled to infer the numerical falling off of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... like this is preserved the greater part of what we have left of the hard shrewd sense and the simpler manner of those homespun old worthies who planted the seed of the Republic. In our great cities we are cosmopolitans; but here we are Americans of the primitive type, or as nearly as may be. It was unimportant settlements like the one we are describing that sent their quota of stout hearts and flintlock muskets to the trenches on Bunker Hill. Here, too, the valorous spirit which had been slumbering on its arm for half a century started up at the first shot ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... on the 18th Callao surrendered. The resistance of the Peruvians was so far broken that Chile left only a small army of occupation to deal with the remnants of their army. The last engagement took place at Caxacamara in September 1882, when the Peruvians won an unimportant success. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... more Isabelle had learned from Cairy, who had heard the gossip among men. Woodyard was too unimportant a man to occupy the public eye, even when it was a question of a "gigantic steal," for more than a few brief hours. By the time the Woodyards had returned from that journey to Europe, so hastily undertaken, the public had forgotten about ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... of his dignities Columbus was tenacious. He regarded everything else as unimportant in comparison. He would not admit that there was any question that he was the viceroy of the Indies, and all this discussion ended in the postponement of all consideration of his claims till, after his death, it was too late for them to ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... was contrived by Mr. Dutton, who had lived a few years at Paris in early youth, and had made himself acquainted alike with what was most worth seeing, and the best ways and means of seeing it, so that as little time as possible was wasted on the unimportant. It was one of the white days of Nuttie's life, wanting nothing but her mother's participation in the sight of the St. Michael of the Louvre, of the Sainte Chapelle, of the vistas in Notre Dame, and of poor Marie Antoinette's cell,—all ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he finds the word most descriptive of the process to be forgery. "The main point is that practically all the experts assure you that in scores of material points the Old Testament history has been discredited, and has only been confirmed in a few unimportant incidental statements; and that the books are a tissue of inventions, expansions, conflations, or recensions dating centuries after ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Italy had lasted for three years without any decisive result on either side. Here and there some unimportant advantages had been gained by the imperialists, which had then been balanced by some equally trifling defeats. The campaign had opened unfortunately. Against the advice of his generals, Victor Amadeus had given battle to General Catinat, near the abbey of Staffarda, and in spite of all that his ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... down; and there at our feet the world lay like a map, with its fields, woods, hamlets and church-towers, the great rich plain rolling to the horizon, till it was lost in haze. How infinitely minute and unimportant seemed one's own life, one's own thoughts, the schemes of one tiny moving atom on the broad back of the hills. And yet my own small restless identity is almost the only thing in the world of which ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... brought that bill forward, although I may differ from them on some minor points, entitled to the strongest support of Parliament. The right honourable gentleman, the Member for the University of Cambridge, has attempted to divert the course of the debate to questions comparatively unimportant. He has said much about the coal duty, about the candle duty, about the budget of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. On most of the points to which he has referred, it would be easy for me, were ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of subtended angle, then, the telescopic vision with strong magnifying powers showed itself superior to the naked eye vision. This result is not unimportant. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Bishop would probably have passed on without investigating the matter. A head of a house hates above all things to get a name for not minding his own business in unimportant matters. Such a reputation tells against him when he has to put his foot down over big things. To have invaded the senior day-room and stopped a conventional senior day-room 'rag' would have been interfering with the most cherished rights of the citizens, the freedom which is the ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... religious sense as a whole. Even this is not infallible; and it cannot be claimed that the Canon of the Christian Sacred Books is infallible. But experience has shown that the mistakes, so far as there have been mistakes, are unimportant; and in practice even these are rectified by the natural gravitation of the mind of man to that which it finds most nourishing and ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... old name of the Jubbulpore country, and may be a relic of the domination of the Chedi kings of Tewar. The name of the Chaurasias is probably derived from the Chaurasi or tract of eighty-four villages formerly held by the Betul Korku family of Chandu. The last two subdivisions are numerically unimportant. The Bhoyars have over a hundred kuls or exogamous sections. The names of most of these are titular, but some are territorial and a few totemistic. Instances of such names are Onkar (the god Siva), Deshmukh and Chaudhari, headman, Hazari (a leader of 1000 horse), Gore (fair-coloured), ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... shoulder- stripe plainly bifurcating over the fore leg. In the common mule it likewise sometimes bifurcates. When I first noticed the forking and angular bending of the shoulder-stripe, I had seen enough of the stripes in the various equine species to feel convinced that even a character so unimportant as this had a distinct meaning, and was thus led to attend to the subject. I now find that in the E. burchellii and quagga, the stripe which corresponds with the shoulder-stripe of the ass, as well as some ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... intervals between eating, disturbs the functions of the intestine. The use of ripe fruits, such as apples, pears, grapes, figs, and prunes, in proper quantities, is sometimes very beneficial. Trivial or unimportant as these hygienic suggestions may appear, yet were they observed, constipation, as well as most of the diseases incident to it, would be obviated. A large proportion of the cases will yield to the foregoing hygienic ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Ten to one, in your case, reader, it is unnecessary, because sensible people are more numerous than foolish! Howbeit, whether right or wrong, Will Osten had, as we have said, acquired the by no means unimportant knowledge of where to hit and how to hit. He had also the good sense to discern when to hit, and he invariably acted on the principal that—"whatever is worth ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... under Gen. Sullivan, had, on their arrival at Tioga Point, found the Indians in some force there, with whom they had had some unimportant skirmishes before our arrival. Upon the junction of these two bodies of troops, Gen. Sullivan assumed the command of the whole, and proceeded up the Tioga. When within a few miles of the place now called Newtown, we were met by a body of Indians, and a number of troops well known in those ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... not go out that day, but continued to walk to and fro in the darkened room. Toward nightfall he grew feverish, and rang frequently the bell that summoned the banksman. He had only some casual order, some message, some unimportant explanation. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... more, which, if he had a high opinion of woman, even his anxiety to make his character of Adam consistent would not have demanded. An amiable temper on the part of a wife, with her own natural softness, and an inclination to yield in unimportant matters, will not only increase love, but power; for in this respect, agreeably to the opinion of ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... physical qualities. You must have lungs, not bellows; and an active heart, not an assortment of sluggish auricles and ventricles. You must have legs, not shanks. Their shape is unimportant, except that they must not interfere at the knee. You must have muscles, not flabbiness; sinews like wire; nerves like sunbeams; and a thin layer of flesh to cushion the gable-ends, where you will strike, if you tumble,—which, once for all be it said, you must never do. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... attempted by poison one day and by the sword the next; he is exposed to as many dangers as there are men to whom he is dangerous, and he is sometimes destroyed by the plots of individuals, and at others by a general insurrection. Whole communities are not roused to action by unimportant outrages on private persons; but cruelty which takes a wider range, and from which no one is safe, becomes a mark for all men's weapons. Very small snakes escape our notice, and the whole country does not combine to destroy them; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... the nature of the country continually reproduces, has shown me under what great disadvantages the "voyageur" labors for want of a timely initiation into those minor details of prairie-craft, which, however apparently unimportant in the abstract, are sure, upon the plains, to turn the balance of success for or ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... passages suggest the ecclesiastical touch. Afterwards the Maid did not remember having dictated "body for body," which is quite unimportant. But she declared that she had not said: "I am chief in war" and that she had dictated: "Surrender to the King" and not "Surrender to the Maid."[890] Possibly her memory failed her; it was not always faithful. Nevertheless she appeared very certain of what she said, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... outpouring and communication. Enough for us that the voice which spoke was God's, and that that which descended was the Spirit of God. As to all other questions, they may be amusing and interesting, but they are insoluble, and therefore unimportant. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... forgotten and unimportant, the Captain deferred lifting anchor for a whole week. I called myself unpretty names for thinking that I could not even see her without danger. I despised myself for the judgment that accused me of being such a scamp as to think I would do anything to rob her of the protection ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... possible to see through comets as through a flame. The earliest evidence to be met with of stars having been seen through comets is that of Democritus (Aristot., 'Meteor.', i., 6, 11), and the statement leads Aristotle to make the not unimportant remark, that he himself had observed the occulation of one of the stars of Gemini by Jupiter. Seneca only speaks decidedly of the transparence of the tail of comets. "We may see," says he, "stars through a comet as through a cloud ('Nat. Quaest.', ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... I judge from the sentence that she is rather feeble. There is a good deal of unimportant chat about a lady they have met in Florence. She is the daughter of a Louisiana planter; very beautiful and fascinating; is a niece of Mrs. Graham's, and will spend part of next winter with ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... that Don had but two recitations that morning, for he was in no condition for such unimportant things. His mind was too full of what was before him. At dinner it was easy enough to obey Danny's command and eat lightly, for he was far too worried to want food. The noon meal was eaten early in order that the players might have an hour for digestion before they went to ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... to allow him to escort her, which was obviously the proper thing. When she refused again, and went off, like any nobody, alone, he returned to his chambers, leaving Rosalie to the unimportant persons whose business it was ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... priest a wicked look and said sarcastically: "Indeed, my ward is to be neither a sea-faring man nor a business man—but a priest, I suppose, in which case you would inherit the not unimportant property which has been left him by his father?—Oh, do not look so angry—holy intentions of such a sort as that are not unheard of. That is another reason for my taking the boy away from your influence. Here is the official proof that I am his guardian, ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... enjoyed special attention and consideration; and since her incomprehensible refusal of his offer to throw up the Frontier, had even regarded herself as something of a heroine, if an unwilling one. Now, all of a sudden, she felt deserted, unimportant, and more or less "out of it all." The past fortnight seemed an uplifted dream, from which she had awakened to find herself sitting among the dust and stones of prose and hard facts. Yet she could ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... a design for an engraved gem. A remarkably fine stone has just come into his hands, and he should much like to begin to work upon it. These proofs of Buonarroti's liberality to brother artists are not unimportant, since he was unjustly accused during his lifetime ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... said, "the amount of Greek which your sister knows or doesn't know will always be a very unimportant matter; she has things that are so infinitely more valuable to give to the world. And deserves so much better things for herself," he added, drawing together his texts for ...
— Different Girls • Various
... purchased, or made, small and unimportant presents for Neale O'Neil. Neale had remembered each of them with gifts, all the work of his own hands; a wooden berry dish and ladle for Tess' doll's tea-table; a rustic armchair for the Alice-doll, for ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... harm. But—there might come the terrible moment when she had to face Richard with the confession. Yes, she had known him before. Yes, they had entered into a tacit compact. Yes, she had kept from Nina's father a secret that, while it might be unimportant, certainly ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... dies in the night. You see that girl with the baby—the one on our left—she'd have had that baby just the same if the Long Parliament were still sitting. None of your laws could have made her have that baby, or stopped her. You are simply fussing in an unimportant way, raising silly little clouds of dust which will settle down again at once. She's keeping the world going and she probably doesn't even know the name of ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... least, one-third of the whole of one side of the gallery. Two hundred and fifty boys and young men, with their attending masters and ushers, could not but fill a large space, and, of course, would form no unimportant feature in the audience. Mr Root and the little boys were always placed in the lower and front seats. There we sat, poor dear little puppets, with our eyes strained on the prayerbooks, always in the wrong place, during the offertory, and, after the sermon had begun, repeating the text ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... into Portugal, following the carriage conveying his prisoner to the seaport of Lisbon, where he anticipated no difficulty in finding a ship captain who would be willing to carry Conyngham to England. All this, however, had been frustrated by so unimportant a person as Concepcion Vara, and the carriage ordered for nine o'clock to proceed to Talavera now stood in the courtyard of the hotel, while the Baronet in his lonely apartment sat and wondered what he ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... connection with the General Government. After Judge Douglas has established this proposition, which nobody disputes or ever has disputed, he proceeds to assume, without proving it, that slavery is one of those little, unimportant, trivial matters which are of just about as much consequence as the question would be to me whether my neighbor should raise horned cattle or plant tobacco; that there is no moral question about it, but that it is altogether ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... perceived the fit and proper way of getting what she wanted. "In the course of her intent efforts her mind seemed so absorbed with the object of desire that it was never focussed on the means of attaining that object. There was no deliberation, and no discrimination between the important and the unimportant elements in her behaviour. The gradually increasing facility of her performances depended on the apparently unconscious elimination of useless movements." This may be called learning, but it is learning at a very low level; it is far from learning ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... strophe form, the rhyme scheme, the accent, the melody, except for Heine's superiority, are the same in both. As to length, the two poems are exactly equal, each containing, by an unimportant but interesting coincidence, precisely 117 words.[56] But the contents of the two poems are not nearly so similar as they apparently seemed, at first blush, to Adolf Strodtmann. The melodious singing, the golden hair and the golden comb ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... quietly; "not because I must, but because I do not consider it worth while to do otherwise. The matter is too unimportant ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... into a post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... attractive, but soon become thin and lose their lower branches; valued chiefly in landscape planting for covering low and boggy places where other trees do not succeed as well. Seldom for sale in nurseries, but easily procured from collectors. Several unimportant horticultural ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... the little girl upon his knees and commenced caressing it, and, after remaining for a few moments in unimportant conversation, took his departure with the promise to call at some ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... and what she says goes, though to be sure, it's out of order, slightly out of order!" As he spoke he took his list out of his pocket and ran his eye over it once more. "Hullo," said he in a surprised tone, "there's one more item on Miss Jane Mackenzie's and it seems to be missing! Comparatively unimportant, but I like to have my things complete. 'One lost Kitten!' Now what can have become ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... broker, Mr. Mittel—ostensibly. In reality, you run what is nothing better than an exceedingly profitable bucket shop. The Weasel has been a customer and also a stool for you for years. How Hamvert met the Weasel is unimportant—he came East with the intention of getting in touch with a slick crook to help him—the Weasel is the coincidence, that is all. I quite understand that you have never met Hamvert, nor Hamvert you, nor that Hamvert was aware that you and the Weasel had anything to do with one another ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the close of the collegiate year, though now Professor Macon was away a large part of the time; yet, as he was constantly sending home cases of specimens, she was usually kept nearly as busy as before. But one day, sitting at her desk with only a few unimportant odds and ends of work before her, her thoughts drifted away, and soon formed themselves into words and sentences which seemed clamoring for definite expression. She seized her pen and some blank paper, setting them down as rapidly as possible, and before she quite ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... It was apparently an unimportant missive which could well have been postponed till the morning, being merely an announcement to a firm of publishers that he would pay a business call later in the week. In less than five minutes it, and another, making an appointment ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... brain in all mammals completely fills the cranial cavity, it is obvious that a cast of the interior of the skull will reproduce the general form of the brain, at any rate with such minute and, for the present purpose, utterly unimportant differences as may result from the absence of the enveloping membranes of the brain in the dry skull. But if such a cast be made in plaster, and compared with a similar cast of the interior of a human skull, it will be obvious that the cast of the cerebral chamber, representing ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... come and he was a mere brigadier pigeonholed in an unimportant office with juniors broadly hinting at his retirement while classmates were leading divisions and even army corps to glorious victory on the field of battle. At least, they would have been leading them to glorious victory if there had ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... a woman in Pontus, who professed to be pregnant by Apollo, which many, as was natural, disbelieved, and many also gave credit to, and when she had brought forth a man-child, several, not unimportant persons, took an interest in its rearing and bringing up. The name given the boy was Silenus, for some reason or other. Lysander, taking this for the groundwork, frames and devises the rest himself, making use of not a few, nor these insignificant champions ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... printed books of an early date, they are few and unimportant—if the subject of them be exclusively considered. There is a woeful want of classics, and even of useful literary performances. Here, however, I saw the far-famed I. de Turrecremata Meditationes of 1467, briefly described ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics, we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... whatever reserves we may utter concerning the Transfiguration. If we are honest, we more or less own what our impressions really are from those other famous works, concerning which our impressions are otherwise altogether and inexpressibly unimportant; it is a question of ethics and not aesthetics, as most of our simple-hearted company suppose it to be; and, if we are dishonest, we pretend to have felt and thought things at first-hand from them which we have learned at second-hand from ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the old New England people the almanac stood next to the Bible in importance. Almost the only knowledge we have of many events of those early days has been obtained from diaries kept in interleaved almanacs. It is true, important facts are often found recorded in connection with trifling or quite unimportant matters. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... rustle of silks and murmur of voices coming up the stairs. Sir Robin sat holding his hat in one hand, vaguely annoyed. Why should one of those meddlesome fine ladies choose for the hour of her empty, unimportant visit his last hour with ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... looked through them and each passed on what he had found to the others. The Signal Clerk might not know where a certain unit was at a given moment. We knew, because we had put together information that we had gathered in the course of our rides and information which—though the Clerk might think it unimportant—supplemented or completed or verified what we ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... day, with unimportant interruptions but no real check, the French ranks marched down the right bank of the stream. On May tenth they appeared before Vienna. Then, as now, it had no efficient fortifications, and its garrison consisted of a citizen militia, strengthened by a small ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... which appear in "Figaro in London," are too small and unimportant to justify the title which the editor gives them of "caricatures;" and relating to political matters which at that time were far more efficiently chronicled by the pencil of H. B., they have lost any interest which they once ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... space- and time-data in the case of the general theory of relativity. As a consequence, I am guilty of a certain slovenliness of treatment, which, as we know from the special theory of relativity, is far from being unimportant and pardonable. It is now high time that we remedy this defect; but I would mention at the outset, that this matter lays no small claims on the patience and on the power of abstraction of ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... conventions, wars, sciences, arts; but only one business is of importance to it, and with only one business is it occupied: it is elucidating to itself those moral laws by which it lives. The moral laws are already in existence; humanity is only elucidating them, and this elucidation seems unimportant and imperceptible for any one who has no need of moral laws, who does not wish to live by them. But this elucidation of the moral law is not only weighty, but the only real business of all humanity. This ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... following considerations. Any one who seriously attempts to write well-sounding English will be aware how delicately sensitive our ear is to the repetition of sounds. He will often have found it necessary to change some unimportant word because its accented vowel recalled and jarred with another which was perhaps as far as two or three lines removed from it: nor does there seem to be any rule for this, since apparently similar repetitions do not always offend, and ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... like that. Frankly, I'm an opportunist; essentially, a practical sort of fellow. I have a great admiration for idealists, but a much greater admiration for results. For instance, I have seldom given my word, even though the matter is unimportant; for I will cheerfully break my word if, later on, it should develop that the keeping of my word would ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... from the interior. It was a sign that the council was not yet assembled, and especially that the religious chiefs had not made their appearance. Those who were present assumed any posture imaginable, provided it gave them comfort. They talked and conversed about very unimportant matters, and laughed and joked. There was no division into separate groups, foreshadowing the drift of opinions and of interests; for no lobbying was going on. Every one seemed to be as free and easy as in his own home or in the estufa among his companions, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... which," returned Paganel. "The word is quite unimportant; I will not even try to find out its meaning. The main point is that AUSTRAL means AUSTRALIE, and we must have gone blindly on a wrong track not to have discovered the explanation at the very beginning, it was so evident. If I had ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... than usual, looking altogether more manly and less cherubic than his wont. "I am a believer myself in the power of the will and holding on." After a pause he added suddenly, "You would be really glad of a small living, no matter where situated, nor how desolate and unimportant, where you would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Language limitations, lack of a knowledge of subject matter, inability to illustrate effectively, and the skeptical attitude of fellow students all militate against successful teaching by a member of the class. Students presenting papers often select unimportant details or give too many details. The rest of the class listen languidly, take occasional notes, and ask a few perfunctory questions to help bring the session to a close. A successful hour is rare. The student who prepared the topic of the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... split into old school and new school. Goethe and the Germans became known. Swedenborg, in spite of his taint of craziness, by the mere prodigy of his speculations, began 'to spread himself into the minds of thousands'—including in no unimportant degree the mind of Emerson himself.[6] Literary criticism counted for something in the universal thaw, and even the genial humanity of Dickens helped to break up the indurations of old theology. Most powerful of all was the indirect influence ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... not the courage of your convictions. Life has no value. Blanche Stroeve didn't commit suicide because I left her, but because she was a foolish and unbalanced woman. But we've talked about her quite enough; she was an entirely unimportant person. Come, and I'll ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... secured by placing the more important points first, in others by placing them last. In this particular outline we have a natural time-order to follow, and emphasis will be determined mainly by the relative proportion to be given to different paragraphs. Do not give unimportant paragraphs too much space. Be sure that the introduction and the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks |
