"Practised" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Every evening with sinking hearts they took stock of the widening hole in their purse. They tried to stint themselves: but they did not know how to set about it: that is a science which can only be learned by years of experimenting, unless it has been practised from childhood. Those who are not naturally economical merely waste their time in trying to be so: as soon as a fresh opportunity of spending money crops up, they succumb to the temptation: they are always going to economize next time: ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... very much pleased to find that it was very easy to draw one foot behind the other and make a courtesy, and she was quite proud of her new accomplishment when she had practised it ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... would allow that human beings had been eaten there; and, indeed, it always seemed like an insult to tell so affectionate, intelligent, and civilized a class of men, that such barbarities had been practised in their own country within the recollection of many of them. Certainly, the history of no people on the globe can show anything like so rapid an advance. I would have trusted my life and my fortune in the hands of any one of these people; and certainly had I wished for a favor or act ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of Abyssinia lived only to know the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security. Every art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition. The sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of public life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... Christian family of his acquaintance is at least interesting. It is unlikely that he took up poetry for the first time in his old age. His mastery of all kinds of metre—heroic and lyric—prove the practised hand. The probability is that in the years of repose after a busy career his desire to redeem an unspiritual past suggested for the exercise of his natural gifts a field hitherto unoccupied by any of the writers of his age. ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... partake of plain, nutritious food, and health will be your reward. There is one way of destroying health, which, fortunately, is not as common among girls as boys, and which must be mentioned ere this chapter closes. Self-abuse is practised among growing girls to such an extent as to arouse serious alarm. Many a girl has been led to handle and play with her sexual organs through the advice of some girl who has obtained temporary pleasure in that {389} way; or, perchance, chafing has been followed ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... the gun-deck, I saw the pale and determined countenances of the guns' crews, as they stood motionless at their posts, with set lips unsmiling, contrasting with the careless expression of sailors when practised at "fighting quarters" on a man-of-war. This ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... out of several fabriques as an evil workman; the two wash-balls that I carry in my pocket are not of my own making. In kurtzen, I know little more of soap-boiling than I do of tailoring, horse-farriery, or shoe-making, all of which I have practised." ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... so much about my captain, and the horrid cruelties which he had practised, that I had some doubts whether I had not better set off home again. When I asked their opinion, they said, that if I did, I should be taken up as a deserter and hanged; that my best plan was to beg his acceptance of a few gallons of rum, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the wooden cross beside the tobacco-field was put there to mark the spot where somebody died, in accordance with an old and beautiful custom still much practised in these rural districts of France; but the thought of the laid table at the auberge changes the train of ideas, so, following in the wake of the last goose, I, too, take refuge from the night ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... those excellent talents with which Nature had furnished him, were improved by study and experience. When I was in England the king depended much on his counsels, and the government seemed to be chiefly supported by him; for from his youth he had been all along practised in affairs; and having passed through many traverses of fortune, he had with great cost acquired a vast stock of wisdom, which is not soon lost when it is purchased so dear. One day when I was dining with him there happened to be at table one ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... a moody day with him, for he had looked to spend it differently. As he walked up the shingle his thoughts were hanging about a cottage in the Place du Vier Prison. He had hoped to loiter in a doorway there, and to empty his sailor's heart in well-practised admiration before the altar of village beauty. The sight of Guida's face the day before had given a poignant pulse to his emotions, unlike the broken rhythm of past comedies of sentiment and melodramas of passion. According to all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... appealed to former capitulations and to the right of nations; but they were only answered by fresh outrages. When one victim sunk beneath such treatment, "Tis well," was said to the survivors; "there is one rebel less." Acts of retaliation had been but rarely practised by the Americans; and the English, like other tyrants, mistook their mildness and generosity for timidity. Five hundred Americans, in a half-dying state, had been carried to the sea-shore, where the greatest number of them soon expired, and the ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... years of age, practised in all manly sports and warlike exercises, braced by daily use to support fatigue in mind and body, and every day rendered him more qualified to be the leader of his own people in the desperate warfare which lay between them ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... of Mr. Kirkham's system are thus publicly given, with the greater pleasure, on account of the literary empiricisms which have been so extensively practised in many parts ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... do not know how far one is justified in calling it the pivot or the corner-stone of a progressive civilization. These terms involve a criticism of metaphors that may take us far away from the question in hand. Birth Control is no new thing in human experience, and it has been practised in societies of the most various types and fortunes. But there can be little doubt that at the present time it is a test issue between two widely different interpretations of the word civilization, and of what is good in life and conduct. The way in which men and women ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... in sending to himself an invitation to the ball. Undoubtedly he had practised fraud in sending invitations to his tailor and his dancing-mistress. On the day after the ball, beneath his great glory, he had trembled to meet Mr Duncalf's eye, lest Mr Duncalf should ask him: "Machin, what were you doing at the Town Hall last night, ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... fact, the Rendell girls had claim to one great distinction—promiscuous accomplishments had been discarded in their case, and each had been brought up to do some one thing well. Maud was musical, and practised scales two hours a day as a preliminary before settling down for another two or three hours of sonatas and fugues. Elsie locked herself in her bedroom for a like period, and the wails of her violin came floating downstairs like ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... course I did so, and in a short time we found ourselves in a large courtyard, with stables, &c., full of horses and Beloochees; right under the windows of the citadel. These men cried out for "aman," or "mercy;" but the soldiers recollecting the treachery that had been practised at Ghuzni in a similar case were going to shoot the whole kit of them. Not liking to see this done, I stopped their fire, and endeavoured to make the Beloochees come out of their holes and give themselves ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... you are reminded constantly of Prayer, hard work, tidiness, regularity, self-control: you are practised in these things, and the great underlying principles of life are brought before you so that not one of you has any excuse for being careless and unconscientious in the holidays. Also you are most of you communicants, and you know that it is impossible to ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... when he was only 22 years of age, Mr. Bruce was called to the bar. He practised at the Chancery bar, and attended the Oxford Circuit for two years. He withdrew from practice in 1843, but still retained his name on the rolls of Lincoln's Inn. In 1847, four years after this withdrawal, he received the appointment of Stipendiary Magistrate at Merthyr-Tydvil ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... were simple-hearted, pious, and contented to live as their forefathers had done; and the place seemed like a quiet little world within itself. None of the gross vices always to be found in large communities were practised there. On the Sabbath-day, when its only bell sent its voice distinctly over the valley, the humble dwellers met in the single church, not only bound together by the tie of human brotherhood, but by the sweeter ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... met this restraint with practised raillery. "What you all afraid of? It ain't poisoned! I got more where this come from." She turned to the younger people. "Come ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in September 1625, leaving then behind him a widow called Joan." It has been conjectured [rather foolishly] that he was a Roman Catholic, from a statement made by one of his biographers that, while he practised medicine in London, he was much patronised by persons of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... was asked, it was not always given; but in the Eighteenth Century courage was seldom wanting. To the common citizen a violent death was (and is) the worst of horrors; to the ancient highwayman it was the odd trick lost in the game of life. And the highwayman endured the rope, as the practised gambler loses his estate, without blenching. One there was, who felt his leg tremble in his own despite: wherefore he stamped it upon the ground so violently, that in other circumstances he would have roared with pain, and he left the world ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... my word, never." "Die," cries Balfour of Burley to the villain in "Old Mortality." "Die, hoping nothing, believing nothing—" "And fearing nothing," replies the other. This is the old and honourable fine art of bragging, as it was practised by the great worthies of antiquity. The man who cannot appreciate it goes along with the man who cannot appreciate beef or claret or a game with children or a brass band. They are afraid of making fools of themselves, and are unaware that that transformation ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... countrymen have hitherto taken in the subject, a better judge than a Frenchman or a German of the value of the assertions I have ventured to make. Anybody who knows what Roman jurisprudence is, as actually practised by the Romans, and who will observe in what characteristics the earliest Western theology and philosophy differ from the phases of thought which preceded them, may be safely left to pronounce what was the new element which had begun ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... lure pleasure-loving and frivolous townspeople within, and also as a tantalization to the children of the saints who were not allowed to enter the tent of the wicked. Fired by that bewildering and amazing performance, he daily, after the wonderful sight, practised walking on rails, on fences, on fallen trees, and on every narrow foothold which he could find, as a careful preparation for a final feat and triumph of skill on his mother's clothes-line. In an evil hour, as he sat one Sunday in the corner of his father's ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... should be a refined hospitality, such as the gentle old codger had practised with them, and to facilitate this there should be a pair of high-backed settles, one under each window. The book-counter should stretch the whole length of the store, and at intervals beside it, against the book-shelving, should be set old-fashioned chairs, but not too ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... administered through an administrative system which differentiated the government from the despotisms of the East. Human life was protected, except in the sense that human sacrifices were common, the victims being often prisoners of war. Slavery was practised, but strictly regulated. The Aztec code was, on the whole, stamped with the severity of a rude people, relying on physical instead of moral means for the correction of evil. Still, it evinces a profound respect for the great principles ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... was gratified that the girl had died young, but grieved for the boy. Although he had avoided the gallery of late, his practised imagination had evoked from the throngs of history the high-handed and brilliant, surely adventurous career of the third Earl of Teignmouth. He had pondered upon the deep delights of directing such a mind and character, and had caught himself envying the dust that was older still. When he ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... difference between local and standard time is longitude expressed in time—four minutes, we all know, representing one degree. This, briefly, is the principle on which longitude is found independent of chronometers. The work of the lunarian, though seldom practised in these days of chronometers, is beautifully edifying, and there is nothing in the realm of navigation that lifts one's heart up more ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... to be kind, and sometimes seems to think much of him; but it is all for his music, I am afraid. He is always wanting new things to be learnt and practised, and those take up so much time; and though he does lend us books, they are of no use for study, though they only make the dear boy long and long ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... might have left her something—single golden gleam in her life! Oline was not over-blessed with this world's goods. Practised in evil—ay, well used to edging her way by tricks and little meannesses from day to day; strong only as a scandalmonger, as one whose tongue was to be feared; ay, so. But nothing could have made her worse than before; least of all a pittance left her by ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... fight for us both. And I promise you I am eager enough. As soon as I learnt that you had left him, why, he was delivered into my hand. By heaven, he shall find no mercy now. Already I have him watched. I went to an attorney much practised in these treasonous cheating plots, and of him I have hired trusty fellows who know all the rogues in London and their hiding-holes. You ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... sort of greatness. To be so cultivated and civilised, so wise and so easy, and still make so light of it—that was really to be a great lady, especially when one so carried and presented one's self. It was as if somehow she had all society under contribution, and all the arts and graces it practised—or was the effect rather that of charming uses found for her, even from a distance, subtle service rendered by her to a clamorous world wherever she might be? After breakfast she wrote a succession of letters, as those arriving for her appeared innumerable: her ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... I not only practised an eager acquiescence in their wish to reach the public through the Atlantic, but I used all the delicacy I was master of in bowing the way to them. Sometimes my utmost did not avail, or more strictly speaking it did not avail in one instance with Emerson. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... neighbourhood of hills, ridges, and ranges, which from their extent and elevation were most likely to lead me to it, either in beds of creeks, or rivers, or in water-holes, parallel to them. In an open country, there are many indications which a practised eye will readily seize: a cluster of trees of a greener foliage, hollows with luxuriant grass, eagles circling in the air, crows, cockatoos, pigeons (especially before sunset), and the call of Grallina Australis and flocks of little finches, would ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... most was that excellent sport—now well known to the world, but then practised only in the mountain villages—the species of adventure which has come to be called "tobogganing." I fell heir in a mysterious fashion to a genuine Canadian toboggan, curled and buffalo-robed at the front, flat all the way beneath; and upon this, with Henry on one of the ordinary ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... purpose "to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus, which we now profess, as also the discipline of the churches, which, according to the truth of the said gospel, is now practised among us." In 1656 the law of Connecticut required the applicant for the franchise to be of "a peaceable and honest conversation," and this was very apt to mean ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... Annals, p. 439.] the law officers gave an opinion that the misdemeanors alleged against Massachusetts were sufficient to avoid her patent; and the Privy Council, in view of the encroachments and injuries which she had continually practised on her neighbors, and her contempt of his majesty's commands, advised that a quo warranto should be brought against the charter. Randolph was appointed collector at Boston. ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... keys of St. Peter, I wish I could see it practised on every estate in the land! It is this:—Near a sulphur lake at some distance from my farm-house is a tract of marshy ground, overspread here and there by the ruins of an ancient slaughter-house. I propose to dig in this place several subterranean ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... then set on fire; some, while shearing for this purpose, had the tips of their ears snipt off; sometimes an entire ear, and often both ears were completely cut off; and many lost part of their noses during the like preparation. But, strange to tell," adds Mr. Hay, "these atrocities were publicly practised without the least reserve in open day, and no magistrate or officer ever interfered, but shamefully connived at this extraordinary mode of quieting the people! Some of the miserable sufferers on these shocking occasions, or some ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death in the room as a practised sailor recognises the tempest in the whistle of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... We practised circumcision like the Jews, and made offerings and feasts on that occasion in the same manner as they did. Like them also, our children were named from some event, some circumstance, or fancied foreboding at the time ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... is every thing, and all men can do it nearly equally well. The consequence of this is, that, as experience improves the manner of working, the mechanic arts improve, from age to age, as long as they are encouraged and practised. It is not so with the fine arts, or only so in a very small degree, and from this it arises, that, in sculpture, poetry, painting, and music, the ancients, perhaps, excelled the moderns. In the mechanic arts they were quite inferior. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... what excuse, what preface can atone For crimes which guilty Bayes has singly done— Bayes, whose Rose Alley ambuscade enjoin'd To be to vices, which he practised, kind?" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... thoroughly the scientific side. Miss Merriam, who, I hope, will go to you, is a college graduate, and in college she studied biology and food values and ventilation and sanitation and such matters. Since she has been here she has reviewed all that work under the physicians who lecture here, and she has practised first aid and made a special study of infant requirements. You couldn't have any one better ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... art was seemingly not practised by the hunters of the river-drift period or by men of still earlier date. The only remains of primitive man known are those found in caves and rock shelters. A number of human skulls have been discovered in these situations, and in a few instances skeletons have been exhumed. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... of a washing of feet, practised in those days; of calf-killing and open tents for strangers; so stood perplexed while the brother approached and stood there, like an animate lager-bier barrel, dressed in flannel, with a round hat on top. "Was brauchen Sie?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the upper chamber of an abandoned watch-tower, where he practised all manner of magic, had by means of his art subjected all other animals to his will. One day he assembled a great multitude of them below his window, and commanded that each should appear in his ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... in my life I said nothing at the right time. I just looked at him. There was a dumb misery in my eyes, a mute, humble appeal such as is practised with so much success by dogs. He couldn't resist it. Probably he was thinking of the days when he, too, stood in line waiting impatiently for the final formalities to be run through before the world was ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... not known when she was well off. She had complained, urging upon her lord that he should devote more of his time to his own hearth. It is probable that her ladyship's remonstrances had been less efficacious than the state of his own health in producing that domestic constancy which he now practised; but it is certain that she looked back with bitter regret to the happy days when she was deserted, jealous, and querulous. "Don't you wish we could get Sir Omicron to order him to the German Spas?" she had said to Margaretta. Now Sir ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... it is proved beyond all doubt that the different degree of brightness exhibited by different stars is no test at all of their distance. Of all the stars in our hemisphere whose distance has thus been measured, the nearest to us is one which can only just be discerned by a practised eye on a favourable night, 61 Cygni, whilst the most brilliant star visible in England, Sirius, is at a considerably greater distance. The most competent judges estimate the magnitude of Sirius as about one thousand times that of ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... is slope. Hence its dependence on sericulture. The low stone-strewn roofs of the houses, the railway snow shelters and the zig-zag track which the train takes, hint at the climatic conditions in winter time. Despite the snow—ski-ing has been practised for some years—the summer climate of Nagano has been compared with that of Champagne and there is one vineyard ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... upon him, his heart grew heavy with some strange oppression he could not understand. Ever and anon he turned to his bodyguard and said, "I much fear me that some terrible danger awaiteth our beloved Roland and the noble rear guard. I feel that some treachery will be practised against them." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... description of the new process. By this time every one was talking again. Mr. Feist was in conversation with Griggs, and showed his profile to the barrister, who quietly studied the retreating forehead and the ill-formed jaw, the latter plainly discernible to a practised eye, in spite of the round cheeks. The barrister was a little mad on the subject of degeneracy, and knew that an unnaturally boyish look in a grown man is one of the signs of it. In the course of a long experience at the bar he had appeared in defence of ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Enslaved politically to Byzantium, wherein the so-called Roman State, with Greek subtlety, carried on the principles of the old heathen government and practised a remorseless despotism, the city of the ancient Caesars and the people they fed on "bread and games" ceased to exist, and was changed into the holy city, whose life was the Chair of Peter. From the time of Narses, during all the two hundred years ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... her, used more clemency and favour towards her than in the like matter hath been accustomed; yet cannot these fair words so much abuse [deceive] us, but we do well understand how these things have been wrought. Conspiracies be secretly practised, and things of that nature be many times judged by probable conjectures, and other suspicions and arguments, where the plain, direct proof may chance to fail; even as wise Solomon judged who was the true mother ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... confined to the mountain regions of Italy, i. 425; mainly used as a weapon of malice, ib.; details of the sorcery practised by ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... provoking him to anger; but to be perched up here at a desk, with twenty tender youths hanging on the first word which should fall from his lips, was to say the least, a novel experience. He glanced up towards the far end of the room, in the hopes of being able to catch a hint from the practised Jonah as to how to proceed. But he found Jonah was looking at him suspiciously over the top of his book, and that was no assistance whatever. The boys evidently enjoyed his perplexity; and, emboldened by his recent act of friendliness to the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... 'forgive me if I beseech you to take comfort and consolation from the lips of an old man. I will not preach to you what I have not practised, indeed. Whatever be your grief, be of a good heart - be of a ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... however a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed those few great specimens of the Athenian drama which have been preserved to us, it is indisputable that the art itself never was understood or practised according to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For the Athenians employed language, action, music, painting, the dance, and religious institutions, to produce a common effect in the representation of the highest ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... has ever been done by it so significative of all bestial, and lower than bestial degradation, as the acts the Indian race in the year that has just passed by. Cruelty as fierce may indeed have been wreaked, and brutality as abominable been practised before, but never under like circumstances; rage of prolonged war, and resentment of prolonged oppression, have made men as cruel before now; and gradual decline into barbarism, where no examples of decency or civilization ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... The clicking of the dice ceased, and in a few moments a Maratha appeared at the doorway and entered blinking. No sooner had he set foot within the cabin than he was seized by the Gujarata and gagged, and then, with a rapidity only possible to the practised sailor, he was roped and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... This is a narrow complaint. It might be replied that when a sewer is spreading plague in a town, we cannot wait to remove it till we have a new system of drains, and it may fairly be said that religion as practised in contemporary France was a poisonous sewer. But the true answer is that knowledge, and therefore civilization, are advanced by criticism and negation, as well as by construction and positive discovery. When a man has the talent to attack with effect ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... under the wise and experienced guidance of Oldenbarneveldt, acquired speedily a position and a weight in the Councils of Europe out of all proportion to its geographical area or the numbers of its population. The far-seeing statecraft and practised diplomatic skill of the Advocate never rendered greater services to his country than during these last years of his long tenure of power. A difficult question as to the succession to the Juelich-Cleves duchies arose at the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Malcolm Sage, "examined all the other doors in the house, and I found that of one room, which I after discovered to be Peters', was heavily scored at the bottom. He had evidently practised fairly extensively before putting the plan into operation. He had also done the same thing with the library door, as there were marks of more than one operation. Furthermore, he was wiser than to take the risk of so clumsy a tool as a ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... The philosopher Tsang said, 'I daily examine myself on three points:— whether, in transacting business for others, I may have been not faithful;— whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere;— whether I may have not mastered and practised ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... which my uncle practised, to attract the lady's attention, or at all events, to engage the mysterious gentlemen in conversation. They were all in vain; the gentlemen wouldn't talk, and the lady didn't dare. He thrust his head out of the coach window at intervals, and bawled out to know ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... deliver their goods. It was really quite attractive and sociable, for I came upon a group who seemed to be serenading some mutual acquaintance. I had listened to the children singing at school, and had looked over the song books, and had even practised a few scales. In this way I discovered that I had a very clear tenor voice, so I immediately joined the group. They did not seem particularly anxious to have me do so, and as I now look back, I can see how young and fresh ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism. He wrenched it apart. He lifted ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... veracity of others, until we have learnt certain cautions by our actual experience of mankind. Hence children and inexperienced persons are easily imposed upon by unfounded statements:—and the most practised liar confides in the credulity of those whom he attempts to deceive. Deception, indeed, would never accomplish its purpose, if it were not from the impression that men generally speak truth. It is obvious also, that the ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... war," the Germans preached and practised, and no matter how clement and correct may be the humanity of the Allies, we realize through these pictures what the human race has to face and endure once peace be broken. Is "Christendom After Twenty Centuries" to be even as Christianity was in the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... formalities can establish. But, between different tribes, wars frequently arise on disputed boundary questions, and in consequence of encroachments made by either party. "Land-palavers" and "Women-palavers" are the great causes of war. Veracity seems to be the virtue most indiscriminately practised, as well towards the stranger as the brother. The natives are cautious as to the accuracy of the stories which they promulgate, and seldom make a stronger asseveration than "I tink he be true!" Yet their consciences do not shrink ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... with the missing end of our tunnel. One of us started through on an exploring expedition, and confirmed the suspicions by coming out where the man had broken through. Our tunnel was shaped like a horse shoe, and the beginning and end were not fifteen feet apart. After that we practised digging with our left hand, and made certain compensations for the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Such a method was known in Greece. The physicians of Turkey, too, those long-bearded Eastern sages, had been acquainted with it for many years. The negroes of Africa, ignorant as they were, had likewise practised it, and thus had shown themselves ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of St. Julien well represents the two distinct epochs in which church architecture, as it remains to us to-day, was practised here, and shows, to well-nigh the fullest expression possible, the two principal transformations ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... him reason to suspect he should find me more scrupulous than many others, whom he had made subservient to his purposes. What measure had he for my conscience, but the standard that regulated his own? The caution therefore that he practised with me was only that which the routine of cunning had made habitual. Introductory topics were soon discarded: he began to talk of his niece, and again asked if I did not think her an agreeable handsome young ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... or attending his estimable wife's "at homes." During the last ten days Mr. Iglesias had striven, with rare, pathetic diligence, to cultivate amusement. True, the oak palings had shut him out from Ranelagh; but, with that and a few other exceptions, amusement, as practised in great cities, is merely a matter of cash. Therefore he had dined at smart restaurants, had sampled theatres and music halls, had sat in the Park and watched the world and— in their more decent manifestations—the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... that you have kept the soul alive in England.' Not in England only was this felt. He was sometimes charged with lowering the sentiment, the lofty and fortifying sentiment, of national pride. At least it is a ground for national pride that he, the son of English training, practised through long years in the habit and tradition of English public life, standing for long years foremost in accepted authority and renown before the eye of England, so conquered imagination and attachment in other lands, that when the end came it was thought no extravagance for ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... has become, in 1844. There were such things then, certainly, as men, or women, who were ready to marry anybody who would make them rich; but I do not think theirs was a calling to which either sex served regular apprenticeships, as is practised to-day. Still, the business was carried on, to speak in the vernacular, and ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other's principles, nor experienced in each other's talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... itself in a couple of IOU's written by James Haig of Prettisides in Longwood, co. Wilts, on the back of the title to a New Testament of 1584. There is a curious, almost pathetic form of this habit of writing in books, practised from very early days down to our own, when we may easily remember how Lamb and Coleridge used to fill the blank leaves of a work of common interest, as it kept passing to and fro like a messenger, till the worth of the manuscript matter left that of the printed ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... raising, they could, by excessive driving, day and night, during the boiling season, accomplish the whole labor with one set of hands. By pursuing this plan, they could afford to sacrifice a set of hands once in seven years! He further stated that this horrible system was now practised to a considerable extent! The correctness of this statement was substantially admitted by the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... is. For within there was not a more polished soul upon earth. I have often purposely put him upon arguments quite wide of his profession, wherein I found he had so clear an insight, so quick an apprehension, so solid a judgment, that a man would have thought he had never practised any other thing but arms, and been all his life employed in affairs of State. These are great and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... means, who has money to spend, surrender is not very difficult; he has but to follow the formula. Prostitution among the upper classes does not offend the eye, and it reveals none of the sores which deface prostitution as it is practised among the poor. Marriage, too, does not sit heavily upon the rich. With the poor, however, shame and surrender walk hand ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... respectability. He effected this by picking up a snuff-box which the Scotchman had dropped in taking out his handkerchief. This politeness paved the way to a conversation in which Gawtrey made himself so agreeable, and talked with such zest of the Modern Athens, and the tricks practised upon travellers, that he was presented to Mrs. Macgregor; cards were interchanged, and, as Mr. Gawtrey lived in tolerable style, the Macgregors pronounced him "a vara genteel mon." Once in the house of a respectable person, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Angry Jealousy.—In Fig. 25 we see an interesting though unpleasant thought-form. Its peculiar brownish-green colour at once indicates to the practised clairvoyant that it is an expression of jealousy, and its curious shape shows the eagerness with which the man is watching its object. The remarkable resemblance to the snake with raised head aptly symbolises the extraordinarily fatuous attitude of the jealous person, keenly alert to discover ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... in lieu of diplomatic action, are becoming somewhat of a fad with the Chinese. They have been practised with impunity and considerable success for the past fifteen or twenty years.... We wish to impress upon the Chinese people and Government that these anti-foreign agitations are becoming somewhat of a nuisance, and it is high time the foreign powers ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... hotel she turned as though to dismiss him, but Vickers, who was talking of a change to be made in one of the songs, accompanied her to the parlor above, where they had practised the music in preparation for the concert. Mrs. Conry glanced quickly into the room as they entered, as if expecting to find some ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... earned this description. Something was wrong somewhere; Dora started by refusing, very pointedly, to sit near Charlie Ellerton; and yet, when she found herself between Ashforth and Laing, she was absent, silent, and melancholy. Charlie, on the other hand, painfully practised a labored attentiveness to Mary Travers which contrasted ill with his usual spontaneous and gay courtesy. Miss Bussey wore an air of puzzled gravity, and Laing kept looking at her with a calculating eye. He seemed to be seeking the best grip. Lady ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... career abroad had therefore been unbroken, and, as his stipend had never been great, he had educated his children at the smallest cost, in the schools nearest; which was also a saving of railway fares. Densher's mother, it further appeared, had practised on her side a distinguished industry, to the success of which—so far as success ever crowned it—this period of exile had much contributed: she copied, patient lady, famous pictures in great museums, having begun with a happy natural gift and taking in betimes the scale of her opportunity. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... writers; but, as Voltaire observes, the business of German philosophy is to make philosophy inaccessible; and their treatises had sunk into oblivion. Yet the science itself, if science it is to be called, is so natural, so universally, however involuntarily, practised, and frequently so useful in its practice, that its revival became instantly popular:—a large part of its popularity, however, being due to the novelty of Lavater's system, the animation of his language, and that enthusiastic confidence in his discovery, which is always amongst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... butchers in the north of England score the fat of the closing of the hind-quarter, which has the effect of making that part of both heifer and ox look like the udder of an old cow. There is far too much of this scoring practised in Scotland, which prevents the pieces from retaining—which they should, as nearly ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... twenty-two seconds. The Maoris seemed mostly to cut with a narrower scarf even than the Canadians, both upper and lower cuts sloping downward at a narrow angle. In fairness it must be said that the Maoris had practised about six weeks, the Canadians and Australians ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... a neglected estate, it stands apart from the plot or the play of character, and might be bound up with the volume or omitted like a woodcut. Undoubtedly the art of descriptive writing, which demands poetic feeling and a delicate hand upon the organ of language, is practised finely by the best of our modern novelists, and is a valuable element of their popularity. Yet there are signs that it is already threatened by the inexorable demands of the lower realism, which takes slight account ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... and yet he had only gained Rattlesnake Hill. For in that time Jovita had rehearsed to him all her imperfections and practised all her vices. Thrice had she stumbled. Twice had she thrown up her Roman nose in a straight line with the reins, and, resisting bit and spur, struck out madly across country. Twice had she reared, and, rearing, fallen backward; and twice had the agile ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... short measure. The spinners of wool were paid by a heavy pound, and the article resold by a light pound. Laws were made against such frauds, but laws were little regarded when they conflicted with self-interest. The crime of clipping and "sweating" coin was frequently practised. Pawn-brokers, money-lenders, and sellers of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... God, we shall not be surprised to hear that he took intense pains to study the sacred volume. He incidentally mentions that one page of his Bible had been so worn by use that he could hardly read the words. The energy and thoroughness ever evinced in his professional duties, he also practised in the earnest search for God's truths. He used to apply the text, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," to the soul as well as to the body, to the living Bread of Life as well as to the bread that sustains physical life. At one time he devoted a great deal of time to studying ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... romance with a glance, and who pass through life by waves and by pulsations, like the sirens of the tides. I thought of the fairies of the modern tales, who are always drunk with love if not with wine. I found, instead, writers of letters, exact arrangers of assignations, who practised lying as an art and cloaked their baseness under hypocrisy, whose only thought was to give themselves for profit ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... he practised first with it William almost had a fit, For the ball with sudden whim Started madly chasing him! "That's a game that I'll soon settle," William said; "my clubs are metal; Spoons and other clubs of wood Will be every bit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... himself ready to be a party in proclaiming it. But he found himself to be absolutely ignored and put out of court by his own counsel. They were gentlemen with whom professionally he had had no intercourse, as he had practised at the Chancery, and they at the Common Law Bar. But he had been Solicitor-General, and was a bencher of his Inn, whereas Serjeant Burnaby was only a Serjeant, and Jacky Joram still wore a stuff gown. Nevertheless, he found himself to be "nowhere" in discussing with them the circumstances ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... doctrine of free love, and the Adamite life: for the poor old man became more a debauchee of pain than of pleasure, inflicting upon himself all sorts of penances, to hasten the advent of the kingdom of God on earth. He denied himself food and sleep, rolled himself in snow, practised fumigations and conjurations and self-flagellations, so as to overthrow the legion of demons who, he said, barred the Messiah's advent. Sometimes he terrified me by addressing these evil spirits by their names, and attacking them in a frenzy ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... "Mr. Steele, I practised law in that state for a period of three years. All the records of the office and of the prison register are open to me. Over which of them ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... science of medicine on a level with men who do carpentry on broken limbs, and sew up wounds like tailors, and carve away excrescences as a butcher trims meat? Via! A manual art, such as any artificer might learn, and which has been practised by simple barbers like yourself—on a level with the noble science of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, which penetrates into the occult influences of the stars and plants and gems!—a science locked ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... were practised upon the chieftains, a horrible massacre took place among the populace. At the signal of Ovando, the horsemen rushed into the midst of the naked and defenceless throng, trampling them under the hoofs of their steeds, cutting them down ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... be tempted to imagine that the author has been drawing on a fertile imagination, let him turn to the adventures of one Morrowbie Jukes, as related by Mr. Rudyard Kipling, for a description of this identical method of crow-catching as practised on the banks of an ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... away at last. I daresay he would have practised his English on me till daybreak if I hadn't run away. I went down and found things all quiet, and then I came up and roused old Croasan. He was lying on the settee and the gin-bottle stood on the chest-of-drawers, empty. He raised himself on his elbow ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... answered Arima dryly, "because, you see, you are not accustomed to tracking; moreover, this trail is some days old, and was made while the grass was wet and beaten down by the rain. But it is there, nevertheless, for practised eyes to read, and, being found, can now be easily followed. When the chief passed here he was in a terribly exhausted state, and staggered as he ran, exactly as Mama Cachama described, for just here he stumbled—if your honour will take the trouble ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... with you alway," were absolutely true; they had such faith in His promise to hear them whatever they asked—that they prayed in the assurance that the powers of heaven could work on earth, and would work at their request and on their behalf. The Pentecostal Church believed in prayer, and practised it. ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... Our gentleman, whose name was John Lavender, had until the days of the Great War passed one of those curious existences are sometimes to be met with, in doing harm to nobody. He had been brought up to the Bar, but like most barristers had never practised, and had spent his time among animals and the wisdom of the past. At the period in which this record opens he owned a young female sheep-dog called Blink, with beautiful eyes obscured by hair; and was attended to by a thin and energetic housekeeper, in his estimation above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... moments of release, Which to the soul are as the water-brooks That scantly rise amid a sun-scorch'd waste: These, oft repeated, must at length destroy The thraldom of the flesh, and give at will A freer issue to the practised soul— At lowest gladden it with gleams of bliss, Glimpses of heaven amid this exile time. Yes! thus, my Mabel, shall thy prison'd soul Rise to its sister angels heavenward still; And soon the mortal fetters shall hang ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... played a fair hand at whist. His manner towards ladies was deferential; towards men, dignified without a trace of patronage or self-conceit. All voted him a good fellow. At first, indeed—for he practised small economies, and his linen, though clean, was frayed—they suspected him of stinginess, until by accident the Vicar discovered that a great part of his pay went to support his dead brother's family—a ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "I practised the deaf-and-dumb alphabet on the train. I'm learning fast. We've never had such chrysanthemums before. Next year we shall have some irises—just a few—as fine as they have in Japan. How's ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... 50.] description of the game of platter he, alludes to a game, played with eight dice, on a blanket in precisely this way, but he adds that it was practised by women and girls. La Potherie [Footnote: La Potherie, Vol. III, p. 23.] says that the women sometimes play at platter, but ordinarily they cast the fruit stones with the hand as one ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... the chain over the head of one of those nine grenadiers, and crossing his arms jerked it tight about the man's neck, stifling his cry of warning. 'What chain?' I asked, and you answered,—oh, sir, with a practised readiness,—'The chain he wore about his neck.' Do you remember that? The chain linked your hand-locks, Mr. Wogan. It was your own escape of which you told me. Why did you ascribe ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... all the meaner vices, such as cowardice or lying—no gentleman could live under such an imputation and retain his claim to the name. But it must be admitted that there were higher duties practised wheresoever the obligations of chivalry were fully carried out: the duty of succouring the distressed or redressing wrong, of devotion to God and His Church, and hatred of the devil and ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... monk came to visit his nephew, an inn-keeper, and, after other discourse, enquired into his circumstances. Mine host confessed, that, although he practised all the unconscionable tricks of his trade, he was still miserably poor. The monk shook his head, and asked to see his buttery, or larder. As they looked into it, he rendered visible to the astonished host an immense goblin, whose paunch, and whole appearance, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... and fists reminded him of wrestling, which was practised a great deal in Cornwall, even in those days, and ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... his booits at it were true, An' all seemed to believe him; Though if he lost he needn't rue, But 't wodn't done to grieve him. His uncle lived it Pudsey taan, An' practised local praichin'; An' if he 're lucky, he were baan To ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... when the inferior powers of the soul—like a vigorous and hostile army, which finds itself in its own country practised, expert, and ready—revolt against the foreign adversary, who comes down from the height of the intelligence to curb the people of the valley and of the boggy plains, where, through the baneful presence of the enemies and of such obstacles as deep ditches, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... "But these practised kleptomaniacs are so clever," said his wife, apprehensively, "and it will be so awkward if he suspects ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... him back, and Parwati told him. Now Kartakswami had a Brahman friend who had gone into a far-off country, and Kartakswami met him by accident shortly afterwards. He told the Brahman how the priest had cured himself of leprosy, and how he and Parwati had become reconciled. So the Brahman also practised the same rites for seventeen Mondays. He then set out for a distant country. As he travelled he came to a town. Now it happened that in that town arrangements were being made for the marriage of the king's ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... return to it for a moment. My earlier years were spent in a Lancashire cloth mill. In it I wrought from morning to night side by side with youths of my own age and men who were older. For the most part, young and old, they were practised in almost every conceivable coarse and brutal way of casting their existence as rubbish to the void. But I think I can truthfully say that, while I tried to be loyal to the conditions of contact, and as a comrade in the ranks was not unpopular, yet they knew that neither ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... death, offering that if I would do so, they would take order that I should want no victuals. (M505) There was also a king my neighbour whose name was Saturioua, a subtile and crafty man and one that shewed by proofe that he was greatly practised in affaires. This King sent me ordinarily messengers vnto me, to pray me to deliuer Vtina vnto him: and to win me the more easily, he sent twise seuen or eight baskets of Maiz or of Mast thinking by this means to allure ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... witness-box with alacrity and went through the usual formalities as only a practised hand could. He smiled cynically as he folded his fingers together on the ledge of the box and ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... head, he could distinguish a hollow, pattering, distant sound, in which, at first mistaken for the murmuring of the river over some rocky ledge, and then for the clatter of wild beasts approaching over the rocky hill, his practised ear soon detected the trampling of a body of horse, evidently winding their way along the stony road which had conducted him to captivity, and from which he was but a few paces removed. His heart thrilled ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... had been his school, and stern life his teacher. Still, eminently skilled in those physical accomplishments which men admire and soldiers covet, calm and self-possessed in manner, of great personal advantages, of much ready talent and of practised observation in character, he continued to breast the obstacles around him, and to establish himself in the favour of those in power. It was natural to a person so reared and circumstanced to have no sympathy with what is called the popular cause. He was no citizen in the state—he ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
