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More "Aloof" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... young chief of the Onondagas, have hearts that beat alike. The Onondagas do well to keep aloof from the white man's quarrels for the present, and to sit at peace, though watchful, in the vale of Onondaga, but your hopes are with our friends the English and you in person fight for them. We Mohawks know whom to hate. We know that the French have robbed ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... more than eighteen years without them, Kitty! My poor friends are not happy, and we are. To leave well alone is a golden rule worth all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my dear,—a place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped,—always kept rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who adored the shrew-mice. Cats are domestic animals, your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts: you can't find a better model, any Kitty, than the ladies ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peculiar light, what passed before his eyes, even the most indifferent deeds and men; he pronounced a just criticism on everything with a sort of honest dejection and candid disinterestedness. His judgment, which was almost wholly disassociated from hope, held itself aloof and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... pleasure, perhaps morbid, in seeing his predictions fulfilled; and it may have been a consolation to the gloomy heart of Hedrick, sorely injured by Laura's offensive care of her treasure, to find the grouping upon the porch as he had foretold: Cora and Mr. Corliss sitting a little aloof from the others, far enough to permit their holding an indistinct and murmurous conversation of their own. Their sequestration, even by so short a distance, gave them an appearance of intimacy which probably accounted for the rather absent ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... like that of Germany, holds aloof, individuals, especially Dr. Dohrn, of the Naples Zoological Station, will send ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... the young man picked up from his new roommate, Tom Anstey, a soft-eyed, soft-voiced, helpful and sunny young man from Virginia. Anstey was one of the best-liked men in his class, but the new plebes at first held almost aloof ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... with difficulty, should have the powerful support of Mr. Blaine and of those Republicans of whom he was the leader and favorite. So I thought it best that he should be consulted in the matter of the selection of a Cabinet officer from New England and that I should keep aloof. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... was, she thawed toward him as he held himself more aloof, until she actually came to the point of addressing him directly, with a flicker of a smile for good measure; and, although he responded with stiff civility, he felt his blood pulse faster, and suddenly conceived the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... and sent down the great merchant ship, with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors, until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... reproach me," said he. "I shall never cease to reproach myself for letting her go where she did." And yet his heart told him that he had only acted according to his deliberate design of keeping aloof from all Margaret's pursuits and amusements that were not shared with her sister. And as for the risk, he had seen fifty people walking across the ice this very morning. Judging by the event, however, he very ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... "The church was hidden down through the Catholic and Protestant ages and is just now again coming out and standing aloof and clear for God and her blessed founder, Jesus Christ. Oh, praise God! it is all so plain now. ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... me. I hovered aloof. It was only half past nine when she came—half an hour too early—but already a carriage was waiting, and a man, disguised in hat and cloak and flowing beard, stepped forward and accosted her at once. What he said to her I don't know, but he persuaded her, evidently with reluctance, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... cavaliers, but you can read all about her ancestors in any history of America. She has such a strong sense of humour and the fitness of things, that she has adapted herself to the present, instead of remaining aloof and going to the wall as she told me so many of her friends and ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... Parliament of Man. It was felt that our place and power among the nations of the earth had not been given us for naught, and that, as the weal of mankind is to a considerable degree determined by international politics, we had no right longer to hold ourselves aloof from this field. The feeling was emphasized by the annihilation of space between us and other nations, brought about through steam navigation and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... They grew gradually to bewildering shapes and colors, for the girls came dressed in gowns woven of brilliant flowers. And the torrents of their beautiful hair floated loose. This time they held themselves grouped close; they kept themselves aloof, high. But again came the sinuous interplay of flower-clad bodies, the flashing evolution of rainbow wings, the dazzling interweaving of snowy arms and legs. It held the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... was some little distance from the post. All three of the herds were holding beyond it, a polite request having reached them to vacate the grazing-ground of the cavalry horses. Lovell still insisted that we stand aloof and give the constituted authorities a free, untrammeled hand until the inspection was over. The quartermaster and his assistants halted on approaching the first herd, and giving them a wide berth, we rode for ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... of early drinkers at Sim Ripson's dropped their glasses, yet did not go briskly out to work as usual. In fact, they even hung aloof, in a most ungentlemanly manner, from Jerry Miller, who had just stood treat, and both these departures from the usual custom indicated that something unusual was the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... he planned to destroy looked him in the eye, smiling. The thing smiled in the full knowledge of good and evil, the fact that it had chosen evil, the fact that it was lost forever. It was no contagious smile, but a smile aloof and dreadful. So a man, impaled, may smile, when agony has passed beyond the usual human passions—and even so the legless man smiled upward at the smiling bust of himself. And he found that he could not destroy the bust: for the act would have about it too ominous ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... path near the newly erected Mission Station at Mafulu was being opened some of these creepers had to be cleared away, and the Mission Fathers had the utmost difficulty with the natives, only two or three of whom could be persuaded to help in the work, whilst the others stood aloof and afraid. In the same way, when the Fathers wanted to cut down some of the special palms, only two natives were induced to help in this, and even they only did so on the condition that the Fathers themselves made the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... of posterity by one of his most distinguished successors—to cultivate free commerce and honest friendship with all nations, but to make entangling alliances with none. A strict adherence to this policy has kept us aloof from the perplexing questions that now agitate the European world and have more than once deluged those countries with blood. Should those scenes unfortunately recur, the parties to the contest may count on a faithful performance ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... very grateful old party, yet it has so much to be grateful for that, it has hardly enough gratitude to go round. He and his two sons can best keep their reverence for the grand old Party undisturbed, by remaining on the farm, aloof from the few millions of others who confidently believe that patriotism will be sooner or later rewarded ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... "and it was wrong as well as foolish to hide yourself from your friends. However independent we may be in this world, all must, to a certain extent, rely upon others. There is scarcely a man who can stand aloof from the rest and say, 'I want nothing of you.' I can understand your feeling in shrinking from asking a favor of me, or of the fathers of the other boys who are, like myself, deeply indebted to you for the great service you have rendered their sons. I can admire ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... main:{12} Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed: Mountains, ye mourn in vain Modred, whose magic song Made huge Plinlimmon{13} bow his cloud-topt head. On dreary Arvon's shore{14} they lie, Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale: Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail; The famished eagle{15} screams, and passes by. Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,{16} Ye died amidst your dying country's cries— No more I weep. They ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... evidently disappointed, excused him with much kindness, and Miss Minchell alluded directly to his blue lapels as evidence that even now he held himself somewhat aloof from ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone, that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in his hand, as if still bent on his duty, in the midst of that awful warring of the elements. Captain Truck called for a trumpet in his turn, and fearful of consequences he waved it to the other to keep more aloof, The injunction was either misunderstood, the man-of-war's man was too much bent on his object, or the ocean was too uncontrollable for such a purpose, the corvette driving up on a sea quite abeam of the packet, and in fearful proximity. The Englishman ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... interest was supported at Madrid by the great influence of his mother over the family of Ferdinand, who, in fact, regarded Miguel with peculiar complacency, because he had destroyed a constitutional government. The other sovereigns of Europe however, still kept aloof from any communication with the usurper. It was contended by the Portuguese refugees, and the ministers of Don Pedro, that they ought to drive Miguel from his throne by positive interference. These applications were especially made to the British ministry; but though Lord Aberdeen admitted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... standard of well-being is set by the best-off of the competitors, for he it is who determines the current standard of technique and industry, the methods of production, the minimum of labour and skill. We cannot, as we have already seen, keep aloof from world-competition, for Germany needs cheap goods. We must therefore try to keep step so far as ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... through the throng, to carry afar the news of defeat. Flight was all that was left to the troops of Antiochus or the priests of Bacchus, and few succeeded in making their escape, for many Jews who had stood aloof from the struggle joined in the pursuit. The very women caught up stones from the path to fling at the flying foe; children's voices swelled the loud shout of triumph. The altar of Bacchus was thrown down with ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... happened to Pascal, had broken some spring in this young man's nature, or so changed its mode of action as to account for the exceptional remoteness of his way of life. But how could any conceivable antipathy be so comprehensive as to keep a young man aloof from all the world, and make a hermit of him? He did not hate the human race; that was clear enough. He treated Paolo with great kindness, and the Italian was evidently much attached to him. He had talked naturally and pleasantly with the young man ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of sympathetic pity and wonder, but Lark is always haughty and nearly contemptuous. It is different with the rest of the class. It is nothing important to them. The twins are popular in the class, you know, and the others, realizing that they dislike me, hold aloof on their account." ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... applied to, remained sullenly aloof: the Emperor's letter to the Jats fell into the hands of Ghazi-ud-din, the Captain-General, who returned it to him with violent menaces. The alarmed monarch began to fall back upon his capital, pursued at a distance by his rebellious general. ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... power of their allegiance and of their courage. If he joined the Politiques at their price, the price of declaring himself Catholic, the Huguenots would be offended if not alienated. So he neither absolutely refused nor said yes; and the chief Catholic nobles in the main stood aloof, watching the struggle between Huguenot and Leaguer, as it worked out ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... at Mandy Ann, who had at first been appalled at the advent of the baby, and for a while kept aloof even from Ted, when the "Hatty" was in. Then she rallied and, like Jake, was ready to do battle with any one who hunched their shoulders at Miss Dory. She had two good square fights with Ted on the subject, and two or three more with some of her own class near the clearing, and as she came ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... mill administration building, he found the general manager waiting. Through the door into the conference room beyond he could see the superintendents of the various departments, with Graham rather aloof and detached, and a sprinkling of the most important foremen. On his desk, neatly machined, was the first tentative shell-case made in the mill machine-shop, an experiment rather ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that he should treat it as a tribute to the importance of social work. Three times he was offered a seat in the Cabinet, but he refused each time, because official position would fetter his special work. He kept aloof from party politics, and was only roused when great principles were at stake. Few of the leading politicians satisfied him. Peel seemed too cautious, Gladstone too subtle, Disraeli too insincere. It was the simplicity and kindliness of his relative Palmerston ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... march of intellect to boot, they do contrive to come pretty near to the honest folks before the mast in the article of ingenious ferocity. The captain, of course, and, generally speaking, all the officers keep quite aloof, pocketing up their dignity with vast care, and ready, at a moment's warning, to repress any undue familiarity. As things proceed, however, one or two of the officers may possibly become so much interested in the skylarking scenes going forward as to approach ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Nobody would go near the house. The doctor found them both on the floor insensible, down with typhus fever, shut up with the pigs and cows, the room and its odour defying description. The neighbours kept strictly aloof. Dr. Croly swept and garnished, made fires, and pulled the patients through. "Sure, you couldn't expect us to go near whin 'twas the faver," said the neighbourly Achilese. Mr. Salt, the Brum-born mission ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... conveys the general impression of a peevish little stream breaking against great calm cliffs. All this frantic excitement and expenditure of energy is so apparently purposeless and futile, the calm cattle seem so aloof and superior to it all, so absolutely unaffected by it. They are going slowly, to be sure; their gait may be maddeningly deliberate, but evidently they do not intend to be hurried. Why not let them ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... soil; O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend. And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend; 70 A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep Lead the slow votary up the winding steep; Ten thousand piers, now join'd and now aloof, Bear on their branching ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... princes, of the blood, and just above that of the peers even of the oldest creation. This gave us all exceeding annoyance: it was the greatest injury the peerage could have received, and became its leprosy and sore. All the peers who could, kept themselves aloof from the parliament, when M. du Maine, M. de Vendome, and the Comte de Toulouse, for whom this arrangement was specially made, were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the birth of this third baby, her self no longer set towards him, helplessly, but was like a tide that scarcely rose, standing off from him. After this she scarcely desired him. And, standing more aloof from him, not feeling him so much part of herself, but merely part of her circumstances, she did not mind so much what he ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... abruptly the orchestra caught hold of him, shook him and dragged him back. It was playing something which he had heard before—on a street barrel-organ, and which he disliked now with an intensity for which he could give no reason. It was perhaps because he wanted to remain aloof and indifferent, and because it would not let him be. It destroyed his isolation. His pulse caught up its beat like the rest. His personality lost outline—merging itself into the cumbrous uncouth being ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... that modern English thought should so long hold aloof from familiar communion with Christian writers of other ages and countries. It is rarely indeed that acquaintance is shown with such authors, though a bright example to the contrary was set by Sir William Hamilton. Sir Charles Lyell (in his "Principles of Geology," ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... intuitively, a correct judgment on a subject so complex, and disposed only to act knowingly, would be unwilling to make so hasty a decision, and consequently be disinclined to attend such meetings. Many intelligent men, therefore, stood aloof, while the most intemperate assumed, as usual, the name of the people; pronounced a definitive and unqualified condemnation of every article in the treaty; and, with the utmost confidence, assigned reasons for their ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... they been possessed with such restless yearning. To the very last, Gilbert's eyes wandered from time to time towards the slender figure in the cavalcade before him, hoping for the chance of a word or look; but Martha's finer instinct told her that she must yet hold herself aloof. She appreciated the solemnity of the revelation, saw that much was yet unexplained, and could have guessed, even without Miss Lavender's mysterious hints, that the day would bring forth other and ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... produced an effect the reverse of what they expected. The venerable face of the Imam, the attitude in which he had expired, with one hand pointed as if to heaven, was more impressive to those who crowded round the body than his fearless enthusiasm had been,—and thousands who till then had held aloof, now joined his followers in venerating him as a prophet. Of this first warrior-priest of Daghestan, Schamyl was the favorite disciple and the most trusted soldier. Kasi-Mullah was not killed until Schamyl ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... hour, keeping aloof from the others, quite contented with each other, and Gretel had exclaimed, "Ah, Hans, how beautiful! How fine! To think that we both have skates! I tell you, the stork brought us ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... me, that he found me grown to his liking; "beautiful, graceful, and agreeable," says he, and condescended to praise even my black hair and pale face, after which I would not have exchanged it against the golden hair of Helen. But still held aloof except when I was in company with others. And I took note that, of all the ladies that came and went at Moor Park, there was not one but hung upon his talk, and held up her head when he came near, spreading out all her graces. Mr Swift had always that power with ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... on the step outside, looking over the plain of waters, with her head in her hand. Mrs. Armadale was in a rocking-chair, just within the door, placidly knitting. Mr. and Mrs. Lenox, somewhat further back, seemed not to know just what to do with themselves; and Madge, holding a little aloof, met her sister's eye with an expression of despair and doubt. Outside, at the foot of the steps, where Mrs. Barclay sat, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... arrayed against each other, sending up great clouds of dust as they ran toward each other, locked horns and engaged in desperate conflict. It was noticed, however, that the muleys kept well out of harm's way, standing aloof from the herd and looking on ready to run at the shake of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... is a long while since I saw one man look at another as young Mayford did at our Sam tonight. I wish she were out of the way. Sam and Mayford are both desperately in love with her, and one must go to the wall. I wish that boy of mine was keener; he stayed aloof from ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... removed the diffidence that had affected her; their relations were less matter of fact and more romantic, and she felt toward him as any woman feels who knows an admirer pursues her—breathless with the wonder of it, but holding aloof, tantalizing, whimsical, and ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... year, with the hand of winter again pressed firmly upon the land, it seemed time could do no more; that the adaptation of the exotic to his new surroundings was complete. Already the past life seemed a thing interesting but aloof from reality, like the fantastic exploits of a hero of fiction, and the present, the insistently active, vital present, the sole ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... labor of the imagination which is not mere arbitrariness, but the exercise of disciplined power—combining and constructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the fullest obedience to knowledge; and then, in yet more energetic alliance with impartial Nature, standing aloof to invent tests by which to try ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the Father: but we should hold as suspected or as heretics and of bad sentiments the rest who depart from the principal succession, and meet together wherever they please.... From all such we must keep aloof, but we must adhere to those who both preserve, as we have already mentioned, the doctrine of the apostles, and exhibit, with the order of the presbytery, sound teaching and an inoffensive conversation." [585:1] "The order of the presbytery" ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Achilles fell, nor any man might dare From forth the Trojan gateway to draw nigh; But, as the woodmen watch a lion die, Pierced with the hunter's arrow, nor come near Till Death hath veil'd his eyelids utterly, Even so the Trojans held aloof ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... who had followed Mayor Morrison into the State House, had been holding aloof, politely, from a conference which seemed to have no bearing on the political situation. They hurried behind and overtook Stewart and the young lady at the head of the stairway; their ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... that Medora's tears were checked in the ghastly fear of disasters yet to come to her father-in-law. Now and again she glanced anxiously over her shoulder at an oblong black aperture in the dusk which betokened the open door of the shed-room. Some one lurked there, evidently cherishing all aloof a grief, an anger, a despair ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... between the Eleans, Argives, and Mantineans, when she declared herself content with the first alliance, which was defensive only, and which bound them to help each other, but not to join in attacking any. The Corinthians thus stood aloof from their allies, and again turned their thoughts ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... Hodden held somewhat aloof from his fellow-passengers; but, finding perhaps that there was no general desire to intrude upon him, he condescended to become genial to a select few. He walked the deck alone, picturesquely attired. He was a man who ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... Aloof from the group was a man of medium height, stoutly built and worn of face, whose expression was one of eager impatience. The face, caricatured a hundred thousand times, was hawklike, the eyes bright and searching, the chin out-thrust. He had ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... I don't believe it. The jealousies that divide that group are too unmanageable. If he were a Parnell! But he lacks just the qualities that matter—the reticence, the power of holding himself aloof from irrelevant things and interests, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and reserved, shrinking from publicity and holding himself aloof from the human side of war. He was constitutionally unable to make a dramatic gesture before a multitude, or to say easy, stirring things to officers and men whom he reviewed. His shyness and reserve prevented him also from knowing as much as he ought to ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... phlegmatic host. He has a great deal of common sense; he thoroughly understands the landowner's conditions of life, the peasant's, and the tradesman's. He could give sensible advice on difficult points, but, like a cautious man and an egoist, prefers to stand aloof, and at most—and that only in the case of his favourite customers—by remote hints, dropped, as it were, unintentionally, to lead them into the true way. He is an authority on everything that is of interest or importance to a Russian; ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... obedience, faith, adhesiveness; As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... had hitherto been unable fully to arouse them, the Athenians began to realize their danger. At the instance of the great orator they formed a treaty with the Thebans, and the two states prepared to defend themselves from invasion; but most of the Peloponnesian states kept aloof through indifference, rather ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... already at the door, and Frank joined him, to prepare all that would be required, while the young chief looked on, eager and smiling, but standing aloof from the Hakim as if in perfect confidence as to the result, but feeling a superstitious ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... The next day there was a great overhauling, by Preston and his mother and Daisy, of the stores of finery which Mrs. Randolph put at their disposal. Mrs. Randolph herself would have nothing to do with the arrangements; she held aloof from the bustle attending them; but facilities and materials she gave with unsparing hand. Daisy was very much amused. Mrs. Gary and Preston had a good deal of consultation over the finery, having at the same time the engravings spread ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... her face, and moved that foot whereon he had set her shoe, gently back and forth as though the leather was stiff to her ankle, and I saw that she looked at it from under her heavy hair. But Mistress Marian still held aloof, and chewed upon her dark locks like a heifer on its cud. And her eyes were every whit as dark and solemn as a very cow's. Then the young lord laughed again, and cried out, "Ha! the ox-eyed June!" or some such apery, and went and kneeled before her in mock fashion, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... kept strangely aloof. Of late years John Barton had had a repellent power about him, felt by all, except to the few who had either known him in his better and happier days, or those to whom he had given his sympathy and ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the pride of his heart. And the stern mother, of whom she had stood so much in awe, who at first had passed her by as a thing not to be noticed, and had then sent out to her that she might be warned to keep herself aloof, now hardly knew in what way she might sufficiently show ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a blessed hand of wedlock. My brother gone: my man excessive unruly: Lord and Lady L—— on his side, without inquiring into merits, or demerits: lectured by Dr. Bartlett's grave face: Emily standing aloof; her finger in her eye: and now my Harriet renouncing me: and all ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... came forward and added her congratulations to his. The children gazed at Pollyooly with deep respect. Only the nurses and the mothers held aloof; an earthquake shock would hardly have astonished and confused them more than had this smacking of royalty. Had any one but the little cousin of the Honourable John Ruffin smacked, they would have been unable to refrain from an outburst ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... well above Dickens, and, in the opinion of the present writer, it places him above even Balzac. But there are points wherein, according to that same opinion, he approaches much nearer to Balzac and Dickens than to the other and greater artistic creators: while in one of these points he stands aloof even from these two, and occupies a position—not altogether to his advantage—altogether by himself in his class of artistic creation. All the six from Thackeray to Shakespeare—one might even go farther back and, taking a more paradoxical example, add Rabelais—are, even in extravaganza, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... cautiously withheld his allegiance, although he had not testified his hostility by any overt act. While the queen was hesitating as to the course she should pursue in reference to the marquis, who still kept himself aloof in his fortified castle of Xerez, he suddenly presented himself by night at her residence in Seville, accompanied only by two or three attendants. He took this step, doubtless, from the conviction that the Portuguese faction had nothing further to hope in a kingdom ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Serapion held aloof. Excepting that he wore a beard and robe, his appearance even had nothing in common with them; and his talar was not like theirs, embroidered with hieroglyphics, tongues, and flames, but of plain white stuff, which gave him the aspect of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and through it, and over it, and under it, with an eye that was predetermined to pry out a secret. Then he felt of every wheel, lever, cam, ratchet, drum, and other portion within reach of his fingers. Everything was immovable. Then he stood aloof from the machine, folded his arms, pursed up his lips, and cocked an eye at it, as if, by the mere force of intellect, he would compel the dumb thing to give ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... are deceived themselves; some make it their sport to do ill offices; others do them only to receive thanks; there are some that would part the dearest friends in the world; others love to do mischief, and stand off aloof to see what comes of it. If it be a small matter, I would have witnesses; but if it be a greater, I would have it upon oath, and allow time to the accused, and counsel, too, and hear it over ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... aggressive. In fact, though he was reckoned among Lucas's party, because of his abstinence from all cult of saints or images, and the persecution he had suffered, he did not join in their general opinions, and held aloof from their meetings. And Tibble Steelman, as has been before said, lived two lives, and that as foreman at the Dragon court, being habitual to him, and requiring much thought and exertion, the speculations of the reformers were to him more like an intellectual ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... doing his best to get the bill promulgated by himself (though in accordance with a decree of the senate and on a point of religion) rejected. Messalla as yet is strongly for severe measures. The loyalists hold aloof owing to the entreaties of Clodius: bands of ruffians are being got together: I myself, at first a stern Lycurgus, am becoming daily less and less keen about it: Cato is hot and eager. In short, I fear that between the indifference of the loyalists and the support of the disloyal it may be the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder, A dreary sea now rolls between; But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... it seemed, the two belligerent forces paused to get their second breath. Up to that time, the battle had raged with varying fortune. Victory, that appeared about to perch first on one banner, and then on the other, held aloof, as if disdaining to favor either. The odds, indeed, had been rather with the confederates than against them, for Stuart managed to out-number his adversary at every critical point, though Gregg forced the fighting, putting Stuart on his defense, and ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... playing a game. He had prided himself on being a Boer, and spoken coldly of the British. He had also, I gathered, imparted many things calculated to deceive. So he left Germany with good marks, and in Switzerland had held himself aloof from the other British wounded, on the advice of Blenkiron, who had met him as soon as he crossed the frontier. I gathered it was Blenkiron who had had him sent to St Anton, and in his time there, as a disgruntled Boer, he had mixed a good deal with Germans. They ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... authority, and had exemplified with remarkable and varied skill, a new or at least a very greatly altered kind of literary criticism. And this had already threatened incursions into domains from which men of letters as such had generally kept aloof, or which, if they had touched, they had touched not as men of letters. Something of Socrates, something of Addison, something of Johnson, mingled in Mr Arnold's presentation of himself as, if not exactly an arbiter, at any rate a suggester of elegances ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... the municipal officers and commanders of the National Guard, for never before has such supreme authority and such great dignity fallen upon men previously so submissive and so insignificant.—Formerly the subordinates of an intendant or sub-delegate, appointed, maintained, and ill-used by him, kept aloof from transactions of any importance, unable to defend themselves except by humble protestations against the aggravation of taxation, concerned with precedence and the conflicts of etiquette,[3116] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to purchase 'gur' (coarse sugar), of which all the females partake, as a sacred offering to the sex. No member of the other sex presumes to partake of it, and during the chorus all the men stand aloof in respectful silence. This custom prevails all over India, or over all parts of it that I have seen; and yet I have witnessed a Governor-General of India, with all his suite, passing by this interesting group, without knowing ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... this, threw toward him a piteous look of appeal, and then approached him, in search after sympathy. The two were soon engaged in conversation, while Ashby, whom this ludicrous figure had very forcibly affected, stood aloof watching him, with a smile on his face which he ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... nearest to them, so near as to seem only a few million miles away in the great emptiness into which everything had resolved itself, shone the sun, a ball of red-tongued fires. The Angel was but a voice now; the bishop and the Angel were somewhere aloof from and yet accessible ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... yet a third Delhi, hard by these two; yet curiously aloof: official, Anglo-Indian Delhi, of bungalows and clubs and painfully new Government buildings. Little scope here for imaginative excursions, but much scope for thought in the queer sensation, that beset him, of seeing his father's people, as it ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... is "always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."[B] In his earlier works, especially, Browning is creative rather than reflective, a Maker rather than a Seer; and his creations stand aloof from him, working out their fate in an outer world. We often lose the poet in the imaginative characters, into whom he penetrates with his keen artistic intuition, and within whom he lies as a necessity revealing itself in their actions and words. It is not easy anywhere to separate ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... a distance from a moral precept, and therewith bring souls under the law. Thus he did with some of old; he did not make the Galatians fall from Christ by virtue of one of the ten words, but by something that was aloof off; by circumcision, days, and months, that were Levitical ceremonies; for he knows it is no matter, nor in what Testament he found it, if he can therewith hide Christ from the soul—'Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I detest them!" She pointed toward a sand-bar upon which stood several of these abominable birds and an adjutant, solemn and aloof. "At Lucknow they were red-headed. I do not recollect seeing one of them fly. But I admire the kites; they look so much ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... what commerce can men with monsters find? Not daring to approach their wounded foe, Whom her courageous son protected so, They charge their muskets, and, with hot desire Of fell revenge, renew the fight with fire; Standing aloof, with lead they bruise the scales, And tear the flesh of the incensed whales. 210 But no success their fierce endeavours found, Nor this way could they give one fatal wound. Now to their fort they are about to send For the loud engines which their isle defend; But what those pieces framed to batter ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... house-serfs—at best, a person of the working class. Pasinkov was extremely courteous and gentle to everybody, though he never sought the society of any one. If he were rudely treated, he was neither humiliated nor sullen; he simply withdrew and held himself aloof, with a sort of regretful look, as it were biding his time. This was just how he behaved with me. About two months passed. One bright summer day I happened to go out of the playground after a noisy game of leap-frog, and walking into the garden I saw Pasinkov ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... my prognostics had deceived me. This hope was strengthened by reflecting that the billet received was written in a different hand from that of my friend. Meanwhile I continued my search. Seated on a bench, silent and aloof from the crowd, his eyes fixed upon the floor, and his face half concealed by his hand, a form was at length discovered which verified all my conjectures ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... might be Vaudemont's manner to Camilla whenever occasion threw them alone together, he certainly did not make his attentions glaring enough to be remarked. His eye watched her rather than his lip addressed; he kept as much aloof as possible from the rest of her family, and his customary bearing was silent even to gloom. But there were moments when he indulged in a fitful exuberance of spirits, which had something strained and unnatural. He had outlived Lord Lilburne's short liking; for since he had resolved no longer ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... little known man of about twenty-eight years, when General Harney called all the western bands of Sioux together at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, for the purpose of securing an agreement and right of way through their territory. The Ogallalas held aloof from this proposal, but Bear Bull, an Ogallala chief, after having been plied with whisky, undertook to dictate submission to the rest of the clan. Enraged by failure, he fired upon a group of his own tribesmen, and Red Cloud's father and brother fell dead. ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... rid of him, the Bundist gave him the address of a man who kept aloof from Polish politics—a bourgeois cousin of his, Belchevski by name, who might just as well be killed off in ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... love I stood aloof My heart was steeled and I was beauty-proof; Yet I, unscathed in many a peril past, Lo! here am I defeated at ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... sat through three of our Quarterly Conventions for me,—always voting judiciously, by the simple rule mentioned above, of siding with the minority. And I, meanwhile, who had before been losing caste among my friends, as holding myself aloof from the associations of the body, began to rise in everybody's favor. "Ingham's a good fellow,—always on hand "; "never talks much, but does the right thing at the right time"; "is not as unpunctual as he used to be,—he comes early, and sits through to the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... greasy buckskin from neck to foot, and with a fox-skin cap.'" The prisoners were at once sent by these raiders to Fremont, who was at that time on the American River. He immediately disclaimed any part in the affair. However, instead of remaining entirely aloof, he gave further orders that Leese, who was still in attendance as interpreter, should be arrested, and also that the prisoners should be confined in Sutter's Fort. He thus definitely and officially entered the movement. Soon thereafter Fremont started south through ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... wish to be on good terms with you; and yet, Elwood, you feel out of sorts with me, and, in spite of all I can do, seem disposed to keep yourself aloof." ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... cuddled by this friendly baby, and Jan laid her cheek against the fluffy golden head; but all the time she was watching Tony. He reminded her of someone, and she couldn't think who. He maintained his aloof and unfriendly attitude till Ayah came to take the children to their second breakfast. Little Fay, however, refused to budge, and when the meekly salaaming ayah attempted to take her, made her strong little body stiff, and screamed vigorously, clinging ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... to Carlton Terrace and was closeted for some time with the late Prime Minister. He had been engaged during that and the last two previous days in lending his aid to various political manoeuvres and ministerial attempts, from which our Duke had kept himself altogether aloof. He did not go to Windsor, but as each successive competitor journeyed thither and returned, some one either sent for the old Duke or went to seek his counsel. He was the Nestor of the occasion, and strove heartily to compose all quarrels, and so to arrange matters that a wholesome, moderately Liberal ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of the estate was to leave the clothes of his family drying on the fence. Taniera was still the friend of the house, still fed the poultry, still came about us on his daily visits, Francois, during the remainder of his stay, holding bashfully aloof. And there was stranger matter. Since Francois had lost the whole load of his cutter, the half ton of copra, an axe, bowls, knives, and clothes— since he had in a manner to begin the world again, and his necessary flour was not yet bought or paid for—I proposed to advance him ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passed much as the first. Clara saw but little of the Mother Superior, who kept herself much aloof from the community, in her own apartments, which were furnished very differently ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... I'll be free to write and write, And give my soul to sheer delight, Till joy is almost pain; To stand aloof and watch the throng, And worship youth and sing my song Of faith and hope again; To seek for beauty everywhere, To make each day a living prayer That life may ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... "Glory!" "Hallelujah!" "The Blood—the Blood!" while the shepherd in the ingle-nook slowly knocked out the ashes of his pipe against the heel of his boot. He was a free-thinker, an ex-Chartist, and held himself aloof from these emotions, though privileged, as an old retainer, to watch them. His face was impassive as ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was due to events transpiring in Central Europe. As will appear in Chapter XII. of this work, the Czar and de Giers became convinced, early in the year 1887, that Bismarck was preparing for war against France, and they determined to hold aloof from other questions, in order to be free to checkmate the designs of the war party at Berlin. The organ usually inspired by de Giers, the Nord, uttered an unmistakable warning on February 20, 1887, and even stated that, with this aim in ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... from the odium and responsibility of so violent a measure. My note will force them to take their ground. If the answer is that they intended only a suggestion which I may follow or not, as I choose, I will remain, but keep aloof until I receive your directions. If, on the other hand, I am told to depart, I will retire to Holland or England, and there wait the President's orders. In either case the derangement will be extremely expensive and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... aloof from these burghers, for Master Gottfried wisely desired to give them time to be tamed before running risk of offence, either to, or by, their wild shy pride; and their mother contrived to time her meetings with her old companions ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... along the shores piled high with broken ice and snow, through a misty air to distant mountains that lifted themselves imperiously aloof, white spires against the sky,—over a forest all draped in winter robes; shore, mountains, and forest alike were chill and hushed and desolate. The lake spread its forty-odd miles in a boomerang curve from Roaring Springs to Fort Douglas, a cold, lifeless gray. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... amongst them and sat me down at the end of the table, and prayed them to think I was one of them, and but a foreman." Nor let us, whilst recalling Bacon's bounteous hospitalities, fail in justice to his great rival, Sir Edward Coke—-who, though he usually held himself aloof from frivolous amusements, and cared but little for expensive repasts, would with a liberal hand place lordly dishes before lordly guests; and of whom it is recorded in the 'Apophthegmes,' that when any great visitor dropped in upon him for pot-luck without notice he ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... were pressing on towards her, when it occurred to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman's interest in the lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place, aloof from the crowd, and where we should be less observed. I advised my companion, therefore, that we should not address her yet, but follow her; consulting in this, likewise, an indistinct desire I had, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... he resolved to answer his friends' summons, and meet them on their return from Sicily. They had wished to have him with them in Greece, but always his departure was postponed; habits of solitude and characteristic diffidence kept him aloof ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... men looking at my shoulder, which the horse's hoof must have barely grazed, though no more, or I should have been in a worse plight. Still the shoulder was a sorry sight enough, and the great black woman with the little fair baby in her arms stood aloof looking at it with ready tears, and the baby herself made round eyes like stars, though she knew not half what it meant. I felt the hot red of shame go over me at my weakness at a little pain, after ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... took her by the hand. Lady Caroline's eyebrows contracted a little, but she did not interfere. She seemed to hold herself resolutely aloof—for a time—and listened, Janetta thought, as if she were present at a very interesting comedy of ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of it unto Vasudeva, he might be irritated with thee. Feed thou by every means in thy power those that are dear and devoted to thy lord and always seek his good. Thou shouldst, however, always keep thyself aloof from those that are hostile to and against thy lord and seek to do him injury, as also from those that are addicted to deceit. Foregoing all excitement and carelessness in the presence of men, conceal thy inclinations by observing silence, and thou shouldst not stay ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ago—it seems like a year!—I was of some assistance to refugees fleeing from Mexico into the States. They were all women, and one of them was dressed as a nun. Quite by accident I saw her face. It was that of a beautiful girl. I observed she kept aloof from the others. I suspected a disguise, and, when opportunity afforded, spoke to her, offered my services. She replied to my poor efforts at Spanish in fluent English. She had fled in terror from her home, some place down in Sinaloa. Rebels are active there. Her father was ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of it. I am an ungrateful daughter. You love me so much! You have indulged me so! I ought to give in. I can not, and your grief will kill me. I suffered so yesterday, out driving, feeling papa so far away. I kept feeling as if he were holding himself aloof in an effort to forget, and now you are crying.... Mama, it is terrible! I must make myself give you back your happiness—at least your peace of mind. Alas!—I can not give you back your happiness, for I think that I shall die if I cannot have ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... attached itself to the lodestar of the policeman's uniform; but even at this indignity, his reaction was curiously impersonal. It was as though the spiritual part of him and the material part had got a divorce; and the spiritual part, which was the plaintiff, stood coldly aloof, watching the material part tramping down Main Street, with a flat-footed policeman beside it, a voluntary escort behind, and rumour flying on ahead to all the newspapers. He was actually too humiliated ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... inns, where they form a community by themselves, the Dean artist sets up his own vine and fig-tree and has a temporary home, if ever so small and mean. The farm-houses and cottages of the Dean are filled with lodgers, all dining at separate tables and living as aloof from each other as the true Briton always lives. There are advantages in this aloofness, but it certainly lacks the camaraderie, the jolly good-fellowship, of those picturesque auberges and osterie where twenty or thirty of one calling are gathered together ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the trucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood aloof from the rest, pushed open a door for her with his staff. Margaret had a quick memory for faces; she thought she had seen this one before, as she passed,—a dark face, sullen, heavy-lipped, the hair cut convict-fashion, close to the head. She thought, too, one of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... disturbed no whit his placid mind. He was in no hurry. He assumed Elise as his own whenever he chose to say the word. He regarded her in much the same way as a half-hungered epicure a toothsome dinner, holding himself aloof until his craving stomach should give the utmost zest to his viands without curtailing the pleasure of his palate by ravenous haste. He served Pierre with diligence and fidelity. The Blue Goose would sooner or later come to ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... a trifle dazed, startled by the vastness of the domain to which he was heir apparent, Bonbright returned to the aloof quiet ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... thrust out with shame and insult such as no lady ever yet forgave. But, thank Heaven, I am not at your mercy at all. He to whom nature has drawn me all these years is my father—Oh, papa, come to me; is it for you to stand aloof? It is into your hands, with all the trust and love you have earned so well from your poor Grace, I give my love, my veneration, and my heart and soul forever." Then she flung herself panting on his bosom, and he cried over her. The next moment he led her to the house, where he ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... majesty of their numbers against their emigrant oppressors. But, though encouraged by some old transportationists amongst the magistrates, and by the government press, the scheme was too monstrous for success. The respectable expirees stood aloof, and even detested an organisation founded on the reminiscences of crime. A few noisy meetings and inflammatory speeches were sufficient to open the eyes of most to the gulf of caste into which their own protectors ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... up no decent girl on the street and I should keep aloof from them. A decent girl would resent ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... scenes. I painted the scenes, copied out the parts, prompted, made up the actors' faces; and I was entrusted, too, with various stage effects such as thunder, the singing of nightingales, and so on. Since I had no proper social position and no decent clothes, at the rehearsals I held aloof from the rest in the shadows of the wings ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... common world, he loved that daringness of character which also made itself, among common things, aloof and alone. He did not, or he would not see, that that very isolation put her yet more from him than from the vulgar. Far as the poles—far as the night from day, his solitude was divided from hers. He was solitary from ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... after our perilous passage through the gorge, he quite took me into his confidence, talking to me and consulting with me as if I were a man of his own age, while Esau hung aloof looking jealous and answering in a surly way whenever he ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... apparently, that she could not visit home. And as spring passed and the summer came on, the little girl budded and opened like a rose. To the pretty school-teacher she was a source of endless interest and wonder, for while the little girl was reticent and aloof, Miss Saunders felt herself watched and studied in and out of school, and Hale often had to smile at June's unconscious imitation of her teacher in speech, manners and dress. And all the time her hero-worship of Hale went on, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... you ask. A great deal, I can assure you; for I began to fear that it was not the old nurse who had returned to us, but some strange being, who, having assumed her appearance, had not been able altogether to imitate her manner. So I kept myself aloof, and felt afraid to venture too close; but she grew thinner and paler, and my mother relieved her from all care of ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... to power with the avowed intention of liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for with his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to stand aloof on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds as still uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was untenable. "Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away," his advisers told him. "With the serf she cannot endure," he answered And twenty-two millions ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... party from the woods Will chase the other with much injury forth. Then it behoves, that this must fall, within Three solar circles; and the other rise By borrow'd force of one, who under shore Now rests. It shall a long space hold aloof Its forehead, keeping under heavy weight The other oppress'd, indignant at the load, And grieving sore. The just are two in number, But they neglected. Av'rice, envy, pride, Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all On fire." Here ceas'd the lamentable sound; And I continu'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... his footstool. Shielded from the heat by his palm, Canute's face was in the shadow, and the giant shape of the son of Lodbrok was a blot against the flames, but the glare lay strong on Sebert of Ivarsdale, revealing a picture that caused one spectator to catch her breath in a sob. Equally aloof from English thane and Danish noble, the Etheling in the palace of his native king stood a stranger and alone, while his swordless sheath showed him to be also a prisoner. He bore himself proudly, one of his blood could scarcely have done otherwise, but his fine face was ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... security, but also to maintain the respect due to royalty, represented in his person. Barnave and Petion hastened to enter the king's carriage, to share his danger, and shield him with their bodies. They succeeded in preserving him from death, but not from outrage. The fury of the people, kept aloof from the carriages, found vent further off; and all persons suspected of feeling the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... celibate was an anomaly in nature's reckoning. He had thought himself immune from the ordinary passions of humanity. The strangest part of it was a saddened gladness that he was not. Somehow, he did not want to be a spiritual superman. He would rather love and struggle and suffer than stand aloof, thanking God that he was not, like the Pharisees, as other men. Sitting moodily by his rusty stove he confessed to himself that a man who would gladly give up his hopes of eternal salvation for the privilege of folding Sophie ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... measures to elude suspicion, and your guardian tracked me to the attic, where the finishing touches were being put on. Unluckily Belmont was never a favourite among the artists, and he explained to me that it was because he was proud, reticent, and held himself aloof from their club life and social haunts. Taking advantage of his personal unpopularity, your magnanimous guardian organized a cabal against him. No sooner was the painting exhibited, than a tirade of ridicule and abuse was poured upon it, and the journal most influential ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... modern Spanish mind at its most enlightened. He is the Spaniard of education and worldly wisdom, detached from the mediaeval imbecilities of the old regime and yet aloof from the worse follies of the demagogues who now rage in the country. Vastly less picturesque than Blasco Ibanez, he is nearer the normal Spaniard—the Spaniard who, in the long run, must erect a new structure ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... ridiculous that I should have thought of that, but everybody who has ever been with Nature in her mighty solitudes, aloof from the tides of life, knows that the soul of man is susceptible down there to signs which would seem childish amid the noise ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... soon come to understand that and her personal pride kept her aloof from any chance of snubs. But she would want a wider world presently that was not bounded by a grandfather or a fortune ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... inapplicable to the complex conditions of society to-day? On the one hand, Tolstoy would have us follow the example of Jesus to the letter, and rigidly practise the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, even to the extent of refusing to resist wrong and possess property, and of holding aloof from all culture and enterprise, and the interests of life generally. On the other hand, philosophers like Paulsen and Bradley, perceiving the utter impracticableness of Tolstoy's contentions, yet at the same time recognising his attitude as the only consistent ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... into it, and through it, and over it, and under it, with an eye that was predetermined to pry out a secret. Then he felt of every wheel, lever, cam, ratchet, drum, and other portion within reach of his fingers. Everything was immovable. Then he stood aloof from the machine, folded his arms, pursed up his lips, and cocked an eye at it, as if, by the mere force of intellect, he would compel the dumb thing to give up ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... haven't. They keep strictly aloof from everybody. I made an attempt to speak to each one of the party in a friendly way at the table, but they gave me such a cold reception, I had to withdraw ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty
... eyes were shut and sunken) came about him, holding on to him, touching him with soft, sensitive hands, smelling at him, and listening at every word he spoke. Some of the maidens and children, however, kept aloof as if afraid, and indeed his voice seemed coarse and rude beside their softer notes. They mobbed him. His three guides kept close to him with an effect of proprietorship, and said again and again, "A wild ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... expressed the strongest opinion that unless you had some insuperable objection you ought to yield. All of us who belong to the R.S. have but one wish, which is that it should stand before the public as containing all that is best and worthiest in British Science. As long as men like you stand aloof, that cannot be said. Lately we have been exposed to some very ill-natured attacks: we have been told that we are professional, and not discoverers. Well, this is all the more reason for your not holding aloof from us. I wish ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... (Compare Tim.) Yet even the body may be preserved for ages by the embalmer's art: how unlikely, then, that the soul will perish and be dissipated into air while on her way to the good and wise God! She has been gathered into herself, holding aloof from the body, and practising death all her life long, and she is now finally released from the errors and follies and passions of men, and for ever dwells in the company ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... the feast for thee is dight, And the cloths for thy coming fashioned my glorious hall make bright. Knowst thou not how the sun of the heavens hangs there 'twixt floor and roof. How the light of the lamp all golden holds dusky night aloof? How the red wine runs like a river, and the white wine springs as a well, And the harps are never ceasing of ancient deeds to tell? Thou shalt come when thy heart desireth, when thou weariest thou shalt go, And shalt say that no such high-tide the world shall ever know. ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... faith in God and such righteous life as is implied though not expressed, insured happiness to the other. The proud self-sufficiency of the rich man, who lacked nothing that wealth could furnish, and who kept aloof from the needy and suffering, was his besetting sin. The aloofness of the Pharisees, on which indeed they prided themselves, as their very name, signifying "separatists," expressed, was thus condemned. The parable teaches the continuation of individual existence after death, and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... week ago—it seems like a year!—I was of some assistance to refugees fleeing from Mexico into the States. They were all women, and one of them was dressed as a nun. Quite by accident I saw her face. It was that of a beautiful girl. I observed she kept aloof from the others. I suspected a disguise, and, when opportunity afforded, spoke to her, offered my services. She replied to my poor efforts at Spanish in fluent English. She had fled in terror from her home, some ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... are faint shades leaving no impression on the memory; but there is another spirit, clad in the sombre garb of a Carmelite nun, who, standing aloof, looks with the calm eyes of peace on the motley throng. It is Louise, the youngest sister of all, who, deeply grieved by her father's infatuation for the Du Barry—an infatuation which, beginning within a month of Marie Leczinska's decease, ended only when on his ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... a feudal court, a council of the King's tenants; it became, after 1295, a national assembly. Edward's plan was that the three estates—clergy, barons, and commons: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work—should be represented. But the clergy always stood aloof, preferring to meet in their own houses of convocation; and the archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots only attended because they were great holders of ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... friend politely to understand that I did not care for such pretty endearments; and, soon comprehending the force of my objection, he very sensibly desisted from bestowing further attention upon me, and thenceforth kept his handsome person reasonably aloof. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... too high thou sayest. Easy, but vain, thy cry! A boon above all gold is that thou prayest, An unreached destiny, As of the blessed land that far aloof Beyond the north wind lies; Yet doth your double prayer ring loud reproof; A double scourge of sighs Awakes the dead; th' avengers rise, though late; Blood stains the guilty pride Of the accursed who rule on earth, and Fate Stands ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... who had no love for him, cried out that he, had paddled him long enough already. Two Indians, however, took pity on him, and brought him to the place of encampment, where Du Gay tried, to excuse himself for his conduct, but Accau was sullen and kept aloof. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... are flocking to their investigation, and are going out to try their tentative knowledge in College Settlements and City Missions and Children's Aid Societies. The best instincts of generous youth are becoming enlisted in these living themes. And why should our daughters remain aloof from the most absorbing work of modern city life, work quite as fascinating to young women as to young men? During many years of listening to college sermons and public lectures in Wellesley, I always noticed a quickened attention in ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... polished and eloquent sentences; and we know him to be very great and wise and pure, and, be it said with bated breath, very dry and cold.... In death as in life, there is something about Washington, call it greatness, dignity, majesty, what you will, which seems to hold men aloof and keep them from knowing him. In truth he was ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... college boys, and then murmured because one, a dark-eyed youth of twenty, withheld from her the homage she claimed as her just due. In a fit of pique she besieged a staid, handsome young M.D. of twenty-seven, who had just commenced to practice in the city, and who, proudly keeping himself aloof from the college students, knew nothing of the youth she so much fancied. Perfectly intoxicated with her beauty, he offered her his hand, and was repulsed. Overwhelmed with disappointment and chagrin, he then left the city, and located himself at Laurel Hill, where now we find ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... for, I am not alone, says he, but I, and the Father that sent me.[60] I cannot fear but that I shall always be with thee and him; but whether this disease may not alien and remove my friends, so that they stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off,[61] I cannot tell. I cannot fear but that thou wilt reckon with me from this minute, in which, by thy grace, I see thee; whether this understanding, and this will, and this memory may not decay, to ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... the foreigners: in this, they succeeded for a time; and the Canton men were in hopes they should secure the northern trade for their own capital, as of yore; but they calculated beyond their mark. The Shang-Hae men listened to the tales that were told them, and kept aloof for some time, till they saw that the Europeans were quite determined not to leave their harbour without effecting sales. Suddenly they changed their minds, and said to the Canton men: "If the 'Fan-quis' are such a wicked ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... slightly aloof from the others, but evidently amused by the tale with which De Soto was regaling them. She was smiling; Barnes saw the sapphire lights sparkling in her eyes, and experienced a sensation that ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... forgiven his own loss of the tiara. Yet even now they seemed to shrink from the creation of an antipope. Urban precipitated and made inevitable this disastrous event. He was now alone; the Cardinal of St. Peter's was dead; Florence, Milan, and the Orsini stood aloof; they seemed only to wait to be thrown off by Urban, to join the adverse faction. Urban at first declared his intention to create nine cardinals; he proceeded at once, and without warning, to create twenty-six.[65] ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... any Hopes by beholding the Persons of beautiful Women, or warming my self into Ambition from the Successes of other Men, this World is not only a meer Scene, but a very pleasant one. Did Mankind but know the Freedom which there is in keeping thus aloof from the World, I should have more Imitators, than the powerfullest Man in the Nation has Followers. To be no Man's Rival in Love, or Competitor in Business, is a Character which if it does not recommend you as it ought to Benevolence among those ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had from three to six meals a day and an unlimited amount of pie and peanuts besides, but after all he was not particularly happy. Time hung heavy on his hands sometimes—the more so as the boys, resenting his living in luxurious idleness, held aloof, and would have nothing to do with him. He had been quite a leader among them, and it galled him to be so left out and ignored. He began to think that he should not be sorry when his ill-gotten money was gone. He was thinking after this fashion one day as he strolled aimlessly ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... much agitated and some of them seriously convulsed. Destructive wars ensued, which have of late only been terminated. In the course of these conflicts the United States received great injury from several of the parties. It was their interest to stand aloof from the contest, to demand justice from the party committing the injury, and to cultivate by a fair and honorable conduct the friendship of all. War became at length inevitable, and the result has shown that our Government is equal to that, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... who, seeing the tables so suddenly turned against him, made the signal for assistance. I clapped my hands, shouted "Bravo! lay on, Johnny—go it—you have done it now—you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb;" but the ushers began to muster round, the boy hung aloof, and Pagoda, uncertain which side the neutrals would take, laid down his arms, and surrendered ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, who own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sympathises as he views them round, far as the eye can reach; though he keeps aloof from them in his own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... frantic to renew his assault upon his wife, got up and withstood and held him back, averring that the lady was in no wise to blame for what had happened, but only he, who, witting that things lost their virtue in the presence of women, had not bidden her keep aloof from him that day; which precaution God had not suffered him to take, either because the luck was not to be his, or because he was minded to cheat his comrades, to whom he should have shewn the stone as soon as he found it. And so, with many words they hardly prevailed ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... when the little life was completed, not upon the threshold of a better country, but in the midst of the Land of Darkness,—that region in which the souls of men are left by God to their own devices, and the Father stands aloof, and hides His face and calls them not, neither persuades them more. Over this story the little Pilgrim had shed many tears; for she knew well, being enlightened in her great simplicity by the heavenly wisdom, that it was pain and grief to the Father ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... came and went through Pontiac, shunned and unrepentant. His silent, gloomy endurance was almost an affront to Pontiac; and if the wiser ones, the Cure, the Avocat, the Little Chemist, and Medallion, were more sorry than offended, they stood aloof till the man should in some manner redeem himself, and repent of his horrid blasphemy. But one person persistently defied Church and people, Cure and voyageur. Parpon openly and boldly walked with Pomfrette, talked with him, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... divorced his wife. On this question Piso, from friendship for P. Clodius, is doing his best to get the bill promulgated by himself (though in accordance with a decree of the senate and on a point of religion) rejected. Messalla as yet is strongly for severe measures. The loyalists hold aloof owing to the entreaties of Clodius: bands of ruffians are being got together: I myself, at first a stern Lycurgus, am becoming daily less and less keen about it: Cato is hot and eager. In short, I fear ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Thirty-four members voted for this motion, five declining to vote. A motion that three members of the Opposition should enter the government was not so generally supported, eleven members, including Alexander Mackenzie and Oliver Mowat, voting in the negative. The Lower Canadian Reformers held aloof, and in the subsequent debate in the ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... sullen. There is generally a "colored car" attached to every train; for you will find the tender-hearted Abolitionist, in despite of his African sympathies, when it is a question of personal contact or association, quite as earnest in keeping those "innocent blacknesses" aloof, as the haughtiest Southerner. On the present occasion there was no such distinction of races. I do not think the contraband was conscious of the effect produced by his lordly presence; it was probably simple accident which brought him so often in my neighborhood; but, wherever ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... after this that the "Centenary"—mispronounced in every manner conceivable—began to obsess the town. Superior and aloof persons, like the Orgreaves, had for weeks heard a good deal of vague talk about the Centenary from people whom intellectually they despised, and had condescended to the Centenary as an amiable and excusable affair which lacked interest for ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... alone somewhere in its wild fastness, aloof from the little things of life. He seemed to epitomize vividly the meaning of a song she ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... mingle with the mere pleasures and boyish frolics of the students, who were, for the most part, two or three years younger than he. He fancied that the gentlemen of the common-room of his college slighted him on account of his birth, and hence kept aloof from their society. It may be that he made the ill will, which he imagined came from them, by his own behaviour, which, as he looks back on it in after-life, he now sees was morose and haughty. At any rate, he was as tenderly grateful ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only made any striking appeal to my dulled intelligence at that time. These were: the aloof attitude of Dr. Stacey, who seemed carefully to avoid me; and a curious circumstance which the second officer mentioned in conversation one evening as we strolled up and ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... that unlucky story about the fox-hunt, and ever since Hammond's return she had been as it were on her best behaviour, refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal under the Fraeulein's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude herself upon the amusements of her brother and his friend. She was not one of those ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... triumph swelling, 35 Now on love and mercy dwelling; And she, from out the veiling cloud, Breathed her magic notes aloud: And thou, thou rich-hair'd youth of morn, And all thy subject life was born! 40 The dangerous passions kept aloof, Far from the sainted growing woof: But near it sat ecstatic Wonder, Listening the deep applauding thunder; And Truth, in sunny vest array'd, 45 By whose the tarsel's eyes were made; All the shadowy tribes ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... recommending Prince James to a confessor at Naples, who was a parish priest. This priest was Armanni's informant. He advised the Prince to lodge with Corona, and here James proposed to Teresa. She at first held aloof, and the priest discountenanced the affair. The Prince ceased to be devout, but later chose another confessor. Both priests knew, in confession, the secret of his birth: the Prince says so in his will, and ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... told her mother of her new friend. She had wished to keep in character, and a princess, she felt, was rather secretive and aloof. But now the renewed closeness she felt to her mother opened ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... the Lincolnian snappy and headlong manner was the fruit of study and deliberation. Apparently holding aloof from politics after his return from Washington, in 1849, Lincoln was earning a great name at the bar. His popularity was the wider as he did not disdain poor clients and often won a case without permitting any remuneration. There came to Lincoln ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... interpreted these words, and Donna Polixena's father, dashing his hand on his hilt, broke into furious invective, while the Marquess continued to nurse his outraged feelings aloof. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the turn of the tide. The wave of the reconquest of the Netherlands ebbed from that moment. Parma took no more towns from the Hollanders. The Catholic peers and gentlemen of England, who had held aloof from the Established Church, waiting ad illud tempus for a religious revolution, accepted the verdict of Providence. They discovered that in Anglicanism they could keep the faith of their fathers, yet remain in communion with their Protestant fellow-countrymen, use the same liturgy, and pray in ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Meshach's cigars, in his way of calling a woman fine, in the dry, aloof masculinity of his attitude towards Hannah, gave Twemlow to reflect that in the fundamental deeps of experience New York was perhaps not so far ahead of the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... ancestors; but the peasant-noble preferred through life that rustic obscurity in which his character had been formed and his habits fixed, to the splendors of a court or the turmoils of ambition. He kept aloof from the capital; and it was only on the field of Flodden, to which he led in person his hardy tenantry, that this de Clifford exhibited some sparks of the warlike fire inherent ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... following the floating green robe of Smain, she rested her eyes, and her soul, on countless mingling shades of the delicious colour; rough, furry green of geranium leaves, silver green of olives, black green of distant palms from which the sun held aloof, faded green of the eucalyptus, rich, emerald green of fan-shaped, sunlit palms, hot, sultry green of bamboos, dull, drowsy green of mulberry trees and brooding chestnuts. It was a choir of colours in one colour, like a choir of boys all with treble ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... passionately; we should have expected that he would at once have sought for those who could best have told him the details of the truth. St. Paul, however, did nothing of the kind. He went for a year into Arabia, and when at last he returned to Jerusalem, he rather held aloof from those who had been our Lord's companions, and who had witnessed his ascension. He saw Peter, he saw James; 'of the rest of the apostles saw he none.' To him evidently the proof of the resurrection was the vision which he had himself seen. It was to that which he always ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... negotiating and sending to the Senate this series of Mondel or world treaties. All the Nations of the world were agreeing to these treaties among themselves, and it would have been a rather remarkable condition if the United States, of all the great Nations, should have remained aloof. I do not believe that Mr. Root had any difficulty in obtaining the consent of the signatory powers to the treaties, with the stipulation that the special agreement should come to the Senate for ratification; but for some reason or other, at the time when the first treaties were ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the incessant passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening the children of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and Ephraim's sons held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never descending to take part in them. At the back of the house stood a small brick enclosure, in which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people after the custom of the Jews. Once the rude door of the square was suddenly ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... soup in the pipkin knows why it bubbles and boils. For it cannot see the fire. But to them she did not seem old; her strength and eagerness were still upon her, and that silver needlework with which time broiders all men had in her its special beauty, setting her aloof in the unabandoned dream which the young so often desert as their youth deserts them. Those of her age, seeing that unyouthful gleam of her hair combined with the still-youthful dream of her eyes, felt as though they could not touch her; for no man can break ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... and even nodded, but her eyes were busy elsewhere. She was watching the movements of Lord Henry, who had not yet spoken to her, and who, apparently in animated conversation with Sir Lionel Borridge, had hitherto held himself aloof. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... he was, she reflected, to pit himself against such men as the Bishop and the Spanish Admiral! From her window she saw the two walking in the garden with bent heads, aloof from the yawning crowd, and now appearing beyond the line of Florence yews, now vanishing behind them. On which she came near to worshipping them. Had they not brought to Ireland, to Kerry, to Morristown, the craft and skill in counsel, the sagacity and courage, which had won for ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... every colour you use; but the white and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colours should be continually passing one into the other, being all evidently companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your purple into blue and your blue into green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You should, however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colours; and this especially by never ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... eldest son of the emperor, Edward marched through the Vermandois, the Soissonais, and the Laonnais, burning and devastating, without meeting any serious resistance. Philip of Valois timidly held aloof in ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... which the Seminoles were to remove), and freely submitting and assenting to said treaties in all their provisions. This paper received the signatures of eight principal chiefs, among them Fueta Susta Hajo and eight subchiefs. Five of the principal chiefs, Jumper among them, stood aloof and would not sign. Miconopy, who was absent, sent word by Jumper that he would not abide by the treaty. Upon this the agent said he would no longer regard Miconopy as a chief, and said his name ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... was speaking in hard, aloof accents, after the manner of one who, having been interrupted in her work by unwelcome intruders, is still determined to perform her duty toward them, as a matter of distasteful necessity. Shades of the obsequious landladies of the South! The tired guests quailed before the severity ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fair nor saintly, but who, groaning under a deep sense of infirmity and manifold imperfection, feels the want, the necessity, of religious support; who cannot afford to lose any the smallest buttress, but who not only loves Truth even for itself, and when it reveals itself aloof from all interest, but who loves it with an indescribable awe, which too often withdraws the genial sap of his activity from the columnar trunk, the sheltering leaves, the bright and fragrant flower, and the foodful or medicinal fruitage, to ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... loving scrutiny of her sister's eyes, and the gentle probing of her questions, which would fix her own motives on a pin-point and hold them up unbecomingly to the light; but she had a foolish, generous loyalty that urged her to keep Waitstill quite aloof from her ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this lies the centre, the essential germ of the whole interpretation: He was not tempted with Evil but with Good; with inferior forms of good, that is, pressing in upon him, while the higher forms of good held themselves aloof, biding their time, that is, God's time. I do not believe that the Son of God could be tempted with evil, but I do believe that he could be tempted with good—to yield to which temptation would have been evil in him—ruin to the universe. But does ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... of the sweet young face to the little feet in their clicking high-heeled shoes. Thus from the beginning he thought of her in superlatives. And thus did Gloria, like the springtime coquetting with an aloof and silent wilderness, make her bright entry ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... a favorite cafe, which during the whole time the Empire lasted was also frequented by Protestants without a single dispute caused by the difference of religion ever arising. But from this time forth the Catholics began to hold themselves aloof from the Protestants; the latter perceiving this, gave up the cafe by degrees to the Catholics, being determined to keep the peace whatever it might cost, and went to a cafe which had been just opened under the sign of the "Isle of Elba." The name was enough to cause them to be ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Commodore Porter commanded the United States squadron in these seas; much good was done in preventing new acts of piracy; but these wretches kept aloof and did not venture to sea as formerly, but ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Kenneth stood aloof. For the first time in his life, he felt that Patty had intentionally slighted him. He had asked her to come to the pergola for flowers, and she had refused. Then a few minutes later she had accepted a similar invitation from that stupid young Roland. Kenneth was obliged ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... a spark of great interest in the servants' hall. The newly engaged maids accepted him for his youth and sharp manners, as an innovation which they rather fancied than otherwise. Borkins alone stood aloof. It seemed to the man that here, in Dollops' lithe, young form, in the very ginger of his carrotty hair, in the stridency of this cockney accent—which Cleek had endeavoured to eradicate without a particle of success—was ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... a small crowd of early drinkers at Sim Ripson's dropped their glasses, yet did not go briskly out to work as usual. In fact, they even hung aloof, in a most ungentlemanly manner, from Jerry Miller, who had just stood treat, and both these departures from the usual custom indicated that something unusual was the matter. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... aspect of our Lord's life more pathetic than that of His profound loneliness. I suppose the most utterly solitary man that ever lived was Jesus Christ. If we think of the facts of His life, we see how His nearest kindred stood aloof from Him, how 'there were none to praise, and very few to love'; and how, even in the small company of His friends, there was absolutely none who either understood Him or sympathised with Him. We hear a great deal ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... off in a series of the hysterical shrieks which always followed when Mrs. Parrott found herself at a loss for words. Long before Dr. Harpe's appearance it had begun to dawn upon Crowheart that in holding aloof in unfriendly suspicion the loss had been theirs, for it was being borne in even upon their ignorance that Van Lennop's sphere was one in which they ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the bottom, gliding smoothly over. They brought no stereotype to her smile, no dissonance to what she found to say. When at last she and Arnold sat down together her standpoint was still superior, and she herself was so aloof from it all that she could talk about it without bitterness, divorcing the personal pang from a social manifestation of some dramatic value. In offering up her egotism that way she really only made more subtle sacrifices to it, but one could hardly expect such a consideration, just then, to give ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... unmolested. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? For the rest, the school absorbed most of her thoughts, and paid back interest in cheerfulness. The children were beginning to show signs of loyalty, and a teacher who has won loyalty has won everything. Myra alone stood aloof, sullen, impervious ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the colonial and commercial system; the Catholic landowners legally dispossessed by the operation of the penal laws; the Catholic peasantry deeply penetrated with an insurgent and vindictive spirit; and the Imperial Government standing very much aloof, and leaving the country to the tender mercies of the Undertakers and some Protestant churchmen. The Anglo-Irish were bitterly discontented with the mother country; and the Catholic native Irish were regarded by their Protestant oppressors with exactly that combination ...
— Burke • John Morley
... understanding arrived at through speech. Huber observed that when a new comb was being constructed a number of the largest working-bees, that were full of honey, took no part in the ordinary business of the others, but remained perfectly aloof. Twenty-four hours afterwards small plates of wax had formed under their bellies. The bee drew these off with her hind-feet, masticated them, and made them into a band. The small plates of wax thus prepared were then glued to the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... may be at a distance from a moral precept, and therewith bring souls under the law. Thus he did with some of old; he did not make the Galatians fall from Christ by virtue of one of the ten words, but by something that was aloof off; by circumcision, days, and months, that were Levitical ceremonies; for he knows it is no matter, nor in what Testament he found it, if he can therewith hide Christ from the soul—'Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the first time he had mentioned her. His voice was coldly aloof, but his hand began moving restlessly again over his coat in search ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... again. She suffering, resisting, and I standing aloof! But what could I do? She had repelled me—she would repel me. Were I to dare to speak, and so be refused, the separation would be final. She had said that the day might come when she would ask help from me: she had made no movement towards the request. I would gladly die to serve her—yea, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... attitude of yours is merely passive, sullen, negative, as it mainly is, despairing of our capacity and anticipating a future of gloom, it is no game for man or woman. It is certainly the opposite of that for which I plead. Do not stand aloof, despising, disbelieving, but come in and help—insist on coming in and helping. After all, we have shown a good deal of courage; and your part is to add a greater courage to it. There are glorious years lying ahead of you if you choose to make them glorious. God's ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... him. Ricciardetto followed Rinaldo; and Uliviero coming up at the same moment, the rapture of the whole party is not to be expressed. They almost died for joy. After a thousand embraces, and questions, and explanations, and expressions of astonishment (for the infidels held aloof awhile, to take breath from the horror and mischief they had undergone), Orlando refreshed his little band of heroes, and then drew Rinaldo apart, and said, "O my brother, I feel such delight at seeing ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... were her relations with Max Errington! At the beginning of their acquaintance he had held himself deliberately aloof, but since that evening at Adrienne de Gervais' house, when they had formed a compact of friendship, he had, apparently, completely blotted out from his mind the remembrance of the obstacle, whatever it might be, which ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... present spake; "If he go forth, remain not you behind, But of our soldiers best a thousand take, To guard his person and your own assigned; Yet let him meet alone the Christian knight, And stand yourself aloof, while ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... but he could say little more than we knew. He says nothing could be more exemplary than Kendal's whole conduct in India, he only regretted that he kept so much aloof from others, that his principle and gentlemanly feeling did not tell as much as could have been wished. He has always been wrapped up in his own pursuits—a perfect dictionary ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beauty: she Now in air floats high and free. Takes the sun and makes the blue;— Late with stooping pinion flew Raking hedgerow trees, and wet Her wing in silver streams, and set Shining foot on temple roof: Now again she flies aloof, Coasting mountain clouds and kiss't By the evening's amethyst. In wet wood and miry lane, Still we pant and pound in vain; Still with leaden foot we chase Waning pinion, fainting face; Still with grey ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will take your sisters," and then she made some natural inquiries about Lapham's affairs. "Oh, I hope it will come out all right," Corey said, with a lover's vague smile, and left her. When his father came down, rubbing his long hands together, and looking aloof from all the cares of the practical world, in an artistic withdrawal, from which his eye ranged over the breakfast-table before he sat down, Mrs. Corey told him what she and their son ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stood aloof, the latter listening to the former's sneering remarks, some of which reached Glyn and made him feel hot; while just in the midst of the loudest cheering, Wrench the man-servant made his appearance, followed by a big tom-cat which passed most of its time in the pantry rubbing ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... kept pretty much aloof. He had the air of a man who wrestles with a problem. Cluff fussed and fretted and privately cursed the country and all its concessions. Between calls and the telephone, Sherwen was kept constantly busy. But a few minutes before six, central, in the blandest Spanish, regretted ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... classical spirit could not readily commend itself; till, after a more attentive perusal, they had got the better of their prejudices, and either acquired or affected a truer taste. A few others stood aloof, merely because they had long before fixed the articles of their poetical creed, and resigned themselves to an absolute despair of ever seeing any thing new and original. These were somewhat mortified to find their notions disturbed by the appearance ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... made use of his matchless gifts and well-balanced mind to help forward the regeneration of the human chaos which was both the cause and the result of the Revolution. Above all, had the "Liberty loving" British nation been true to her declared principles, she would either have kept aloof from the conflict that was raging or found some honourable means of co-operating with him, and thereby earned a share of the glory that will be eternally attached to his name in the great effort of extinguishing thraldom and ameliorating ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... speedily settled these little matters, as I was fast approaching my fortieth year, I began to alter my style, and live in a manner more befitting my rank and revenues; yet I still held much aloof from all intimacy ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the conversation, asking himself uneasily what punishment the girl would award him for his faux pas of the afternoon. Would she be haughty? She didn't look the kind of little thing to be haughty! Would she be cold and aloof? Somehow, glancing at the irregular, piquant little profile, he could not imagine her aloof. Would she snap? Ah! Now he was not so certain. He saw distinct possibilities of snap, and then, just ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... hands, at one side of his master, while on the other, observing the work of the sailors with a supercilious air, leaned a familiar and ridiculous figure. Dressed as if for a court ball at Versailles and holding his lorgnette a few inches from his nose, Osterbridge Hawsey remained elegantly aloof from anything so degrading as hard work. He looked on with a superior smile as the black sails were unfurled, the anchor was heaved dripping from its bed, and the hard-pressed dirty crew made all speed to go in advance of the oncoming ship. Still others ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... her son and her daughter-in-law to take the cares of household management off her hands. This left her free, as she expressed it, to be a child again, to hold aloof from things immediate and transitory, reserving her thoughts and contemplations for what is general and eternal. She found a poet's pleasure in abstracting herself from human life, saying: "There are hours when I escape from myself, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Hebrew men and women praying fervently in Egyptian temples. Even if Mesu should induce them to acknowledge his God, the experienced sage clearly foresaw that they would speedily turn from the invisible Spirit, who must ever remain aloof and incomprehensible, and return by hundreds ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were similar, and their lives so far had fitted into each other without a single crevice. The Cumberlands were grim and unbending, it is true, and after that one concession to fraternal feeling, made no more; they held themselves rigidly aloof from the pair, and invested all intercourse with paralyzing formality. Ethel did not care a pin for them or their opinion; if they chose to be old-fogyish and disagreeable, they were quite welcome to indulge their fancy. As long as society smiled upon her, Madam Ethel was superbly indifferent ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... constantly, never once saw Ethel, never heard her name mentioned, and had not the faintest idea that she was so near. She, on the other hand, feeling now sure that he was utterly false and completely forgetful, proudly and calmly held aloof, and kept out of his way with the most jealous care, until at last she staid indoors altogether, for fear, if she went out, that she might meet him somewhere. For such a meeting she ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... And no one knows the cause. Mysteriously, With gloomy silentness, the several corps Marshal themselves, each under its own banners. 5 Tiefenbach's corps makes threatening movements; only The Pappenheimers still remain aloof In their own quarters, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... color is fast disappearing. The colored people have themselves contributed to prolong this feeling, by keeping aloof from the society of the whites."—James ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Schwerin told them, "has promised to stay over here for the present to organise this undertaking. I, alas! am bound to remain always a little aloof, but the time may come, and very soon, too, when I shall be a free lance. On that day I shall throw my lot in with yours, to the last drop of my blood and the last hour of my liberty. Until then, trust Oscar ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conditions of society, about duty and pleasure, philosophy and morality—articulate voices reaching us from a distance from which we never heard before the faintest whisper; and instead of thrilling with delight at this almost miraculous discovery, some critics stand aloof and can do nothing but find fault, because these songs do not represent to us primitive men exactly as they think they ought to have been; not like Papuas or Bushmen, with arboraceous habits and half-animal clicks, not as worshipping stocks or stones, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... had flown by since Miriam and Long Robin had divided themselves from the tribe; and they had long since returned, though still keeping aloof in part from the rest—still forming, as it were, a separate party of their own. Long Robin had dealings with the robbers of the King's highway; he often accompanied them on their raids, he and some of the men with him. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... you see,' he continued, 'you will spare me nothing by holding me aloof, will you not let me come and gladden myself while I may in your presence? And then when my time is up it may be more possible to judge—' (there was a faint 'Oh no,' but he heeded it not) '—whether you can bear ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to summon De Launay, to point out to him the glories of the landscape and to let its purity and strength sink into him for the salvation of his manhood. But he remained aloof, lost, she surmised, in the buffet, drinking illicit liquor with ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Londonderry openly advertises himself as a coal-merchant, and the brothers-in-law of the Princess Louise are in the wine trade and stock-broking business,—and all the old knightly blood of England is mingling itself by choice with that of the lowest commoners—what's the use of my remaining aloof, and refusing to go with the spirit of the age? Besides, Marcia loves me, and it's ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... their own severity on others; and now the Court party was revenging itself by indulging in extreme licentiousness. Its amusements were cruel and vicious, and the Puritans did nothing to improve them, but denounced them altogether and held themselves aloof. It was Addison's task to refine the taste of his contemporaries and to widen their outlook, so that the Puritan and the man of the world might find a common ground on which to meet and to learn each from the other; it was his endeavour 'to enliven morality with ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... heavy impassivity, consoling himself with the contention that its final end was cleanness. And one of his most valuable assets, outside his stolid heartlessness, was his speaking acquaintanceship with the women of the underworld. He remained aloof from them even while he mixed with them. He never grew into a "moll-buzzer." But in his rough way he cultivated them. He even helped some of them out of their troubles—in consideration for "tips" which were to be delivered when ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... rest of the evening. A very pleasant evening it was, spite of this new element; which was got rid of as much as possible by means of the window recess, where Janetta and David encamped composedly, a little aloof from the rest. ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the ambulances in their arrondissements. Their conduct is almost universally blamed. The enlistment of the Amazons, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government, still continues. The pretty women keep aloof from the movement; the recruits who have already joined are so old and ugly that possibly they may act upon an enemy ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of oo in food, hoof, mood, rood, roof, soot, aloof, and from the sound of oo in book, good, nook, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... part in the world of spirit which, in the material world was played by the fisher who, first on the coast of Tyre the old, fished up the purple-yielding murex. Until the precious liquor, filtered by degrees, and refined to proof, is flasked and priced, and salable at last, the world stands aloof. But when it is all ready for the market, the small dealers, "put blue into their line", and outdare each other in azure feats by which they secure great popularity, and, as a result, fare sumptuously; while he who fished the murex up was unrecognized, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... like a woman's. He loved them, and they responded to his love and bloomed and bore for him. He walked downtown to the business district, always alone, a shy and unimpressive figure, and sat brooding and aloof in one of the tilted-back cane chairs under the portico of the old Richland House, facing the river. He took long solitary walks on side streets and byways; but it was noted that, reaching the outer outskirts, he invariably turned back. In all those dragging years it is doubtful if once ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... both Tostig and Harold Hardrada being among the slain. But four days later Duke William landed at Pevensey. Harold marched southward with the utmost haste, bringing with him the men of Wessex and East Anglia, and the earldoms of his brothers; but the two earls, Edwin and Morcar, held aloof and kept back the men of the north, although some of the men of Mercia, in the earldom of Edwin, followed their king to the fatal struggle which was fought out from nine in the morning till past nightfall, on October ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... he soon had to send him from Paris, as Ney, sore at heart, and discontented with himself and with both sides, uttered his mind with his usual freedom. Ney was first ordered to inspect the frontier from Dunkirk to Bale, and was then allowed to go to his home. He kept so aloof from Napoleon that when he appeared on the Champ de Mai the Emperor affected surprise, saying that he thought Ney had emigrated. At the last moment Marshal Mortier fell ill. Ney had already been ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... induced men to respect each other's possessions? It may still be put, without much hope of finding an answer to it, in the form of any inquiry into the reasons which led one composite group to keep aloof from the domain of another. But, if it be true that far the most important passage in the history of Private Property is its gradual elimination from the co-ownership of kinsmen, then the great point of inquiry ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... in military, some in fashionable civil attire, strolled up towards the crowd, but stood somewhat aloof and outside of it. The market people pressed closer and closer round the platform, listening with mouths open and eager eyes to the sermon, storing it away in their retentive memories, which would reproduce ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of the same group (as regards language and descent) as the Iroquois (Irokwa), but in those days held aloof from the five other tribes who had formed a confederacy[22] and alliance under the name of Ongwehonwe—"Superior Men". The Iroquois (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the Adirondaks and Catskills descended ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... from their work of vengeance; they were mad with their sufferings. As well might a man try to snatch her prey from a puma robbed of her whelps, as to turn them from their purpose. With the men it was otherwise, however. Some of them mingled in the orgie indeed, but more stood aloof watching with a fearful joy the spectacle in which they did not share. Near me was a man, a noble of the Otomie, of something more than my own age. He had always been my friend, and after me he commanded the warriors of the tribe. I went to ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... aboard, from the captain down. His laughing, half-aloof manner was very taking; and his ironical comments on the various points of discussion, somehow, conveyed no sting. He was continually accepting gifts of newspapers—of which there were a half a thousand or so brought aboard—with every appearance of receiving a favour. These ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... kind of compromise, mostly in favor in Louisiana. Political excitement was at its very height, and it was constantly asserted that Mr. Lincoln's election would imperil the Union. I purposely kept aloof from politics, would take no part, and remember that on the day of the election in November I was notified that it would be advisable for me to vote for Bell and Everett, but I openly said I would not, and I did not. The election of Mr. Lincoln fell ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... provinces of his Netherland dominions as he was with the language of their peoples. He spoke and wrote only Castilian correctly, and during his four years' residence at Brussels he remained coldly and haughtily aloof, a foreigner and alien in a land where he never felt at home. Philip at the beginning of his reign honestly endeavoured to follow in his father's steps and to carry out his policy; but acts, which the great ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... to be cuddled by this friendly baby, and Jan laid her cheek against the fluffy golden head; but all the time she was watching Tony. He reminded her of someone, and she couldn't think who. He maintained his aloof and unfriendly attitude till Ayah came to take the children to their second breakfast. Little Fay, however, refused to budge, and when the meekly salaaming ayah attempted to take her, made her strong little body stiff, and screamed ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... being summoned by Master Freake to a discussion with their lordships, with whom was Margaret, aloof and icy. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... painfully as he toasted the dry looking, grayish meat on a sharpened stick, as if a part of him knew very well what manner of animal he had killed. And yet, far inside him, another person he could not understand stood aloof watching in amazement. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... that such distinction exists, at least so far as Boston society is concerned. Consequently as time went on and I could achieve prominence in no other way, I sought consolation for the social joys denied by my betters in acquiring the reputation of a sport. I held myself coldly aloof from the fashionable men of my class and devoted myself to a few cronies who found themselves in much the same position as my own. In a short time we became known as the fastest set in college, and our escapades were by no means ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... flurried, palisaded, barricaded; no hair of you shall be harmed." After a day or two, the flurry of Saxony subsided; Prussians, under strict discipline, molest no private person; pay their way; keep well aloof, to south and to north, of Dresden (all but the necessary ammunition-escorts do);—and require of the Official people nothing but what the Law of the Reich authorizes to "Imperial Auxiliaries" in such case. "The Saxons themselves," Friedrich observes, "had some 40,000, but scattered about; King ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... eat him, urged the Greeks to his defence, 330 The host of Troy first shook the Grecian host; The body left, they fled; yet of them all, The Trojan powers, determined as they were, Slew none, but dragg'd the body. Neither stood The Greeks long time aloof, soon as repulsed 335 Again led on by Ajax, who in form And in exploits all others far excell'd. Peerless AEacides alone except. Right through the foremost combatants he rush'd, In force resembling most some savage boar 340 That in the mountains ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Government of that day, and their being wholly different in their habits, customs, and language from the Chinese who formed the bulk of the town population, it is not to be wondered at that the Chinese felt themselves estranged from them, and kept themselves ever aloof. There were, however, some Chinese of the lowest class who sought to embroil themselves with them, so as to bring the convicts into trouble, but the convicts always avoided a quarrel. They therefore sought other means, and in 1852 they ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... He had no associates; indeed from his earliest days he had kept aloof from boys of his own age. It was not that he was morose, or proud or ill-tempered, but he appeared to have no sympathy with them, and thus, though possessed of many qualities which would have won him friends, he had not a single friend of his ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... Indian from starvation, and that the Indians looked upon them with a certain veneration and would kill them only in case of the direst need. Our compunctions against eating carrion birds had entirely disappeared, and the course of the whiskey jacks in holding aloof from camp when they were most needed used to make ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... prying eyes. Moreover, Adam Lambert, the blacksmith, and the old woman who kept house for him, both belonged to the new religious sect which Judge Bennett had so pertinently dubbed the Quakers, and they kept themselves very much aloof from gossip and ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... made his appearance,—which, it seemed, he was careful not to do,—it is difficult to say what might have been his reception. But contrary to the expectations of all, Woodburn, who had been thoughtfully pacing up and down the road, a little aloof from the rest, during the discussion, now came forward, and, in a firm and manly manner, opposed all the propositions which had been made in ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... as tools to a bare- faced scheme of aggression. If not, let them beware: Syracuse was fighting in a righteous cause, and must prevail in the end; help was coming from Peloponnesus, and if the Camariaeans stood aloof, the day would come when they would ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... night guessing what subject she would choose for a morning confab, apple culture would not have been on the list. He had thought that perhaps the day would bring a torrent of questions about old friends, but she seemed more aloof than ever. The pearl in his scarfpin was a splendid specimen; he roughly calculated that it represented an expenditure of at least a hundred dollars; and she had flung it at him as carelessly as though she were tossing cherries ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was glad. In such sensitive purity had she grown up, so completely had he succeeded in holding aloof from her whatever could disturb her childlike innocence, that her soul was like a shining pearl to ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence—as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. Do not resist ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... Blackwood and Peter should scoff at Whigs. The scorpion which delighted to sting the faces of men, probably at this time founded a reputation which has stuck to him for more than seventy years after Dr. Peter Morris drove his shandrydan through Scotland. Sir Walter (then Mr.) Scott held wisely aloof from the extremely exuberant Toryism of Blackwood, and, indeed, had had some quarrels with its publisher and virtual editor. But he could not fail to be introduced to a man whose tastes and principles were so closely allied to his own. A year after the appearance of Peter's ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Dutchman and Pole, the mutual superiorities of Sephardi and Ashkenazi, the grotesque incompatibility of Western and Eastern Jew, the cynicism and snobbery of the prosperous, the materialism of the uneducated adventurers in unexploited regions. He stands so high and aloof that all specific colorings and markings are blurred for him into the common brotherhood, and, if he is cynic enough to suspect them, he is philosopher enough to recognize that all nations are compact of incongruites, vitalized by warring elements. Nor has he any sympathetic perception ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the aunt called a "season" of baking. It was the only occasion in the week when Mrs. Croom was sure to stay for some length of time in the same place with Susannah beside her. Ephraim brought down his books to the hospitable kitchen, and sat aloof at a corner table. He said the sun was too strong upon his upper windows, or that the rain was blowing in. The first time that Ephraim sought refuge in the kitchen Mrs. Croom was quite flustered with delight. She always coveted more of her son's society. But when he came a third time ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... food, nor hunger felt, Till those days ended; hungered then at last Among wild beasts. They at his sight grew mild, 310 Nor sleeping him nor waking harmed; his walk The fiery serpent fled and noxious worm; The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof. But now an aged man in rural weeds, Following, as seemed, the quest of some stray eye, Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve Against a winter's day, when winds blow keen, To warm him wet returned from field at eve, He saw approach; who first ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... and in other foreign lands grew prosperous. They were industrious and they had brains and a special gift for trade. Before long they had money to lend, and they often demanded unjust rates of interest. This too made them unpopular. So the more proudly and contemptuously they held aloof from Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, and all other foreigners the more frequently they heard themselves called "Jewish ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... proceed side by side. Just as the stricter purists in the one field are, in the other, generally inclined, even if themselves unmusical, to uphold plain-song and the Elizabethans and only such modern work as is inspired by something like a similar spirit, aloof and strong, so those whose religious mentality is of a more pliable type are, if musically indifferent, generally inclined to uphold the practical accommodation afforded by the inclusion of at any rate a certain quantity of music that is consciously adapted to the more immediately ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... naturally of a very great daring and enterprising courage, whose good fortune is continually marred by such persuasions, that he keep himself close surrounded by his friends, that he must not hearken to any reconciliation with his ancient enemies, that he must stand aloof, and not trust his person in hands stronger than his own, what promises or offers soever they may make him, or what advantages soever he may see before him. And I know another, who has unexpectedly advanced his fortunes by following ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Artemis make women's travail light; No devastating curse of fell disease This city seize; No clamour of the State arouse to war Ares, from whom afar Shrinketh the lute, by whom the dances fail— Ares, the lord of wail. Swarm far aloof from Argos' citizens All plague and pestilence, And may the Archer-God our children spare! May Zeus with foison and with fruitfulness The land's each season bless, And, quickened with Heaven's bounty manifold, Teem grazing flock and fold. Beside the altars of Heaven's hallowing ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... not the strongest; strangers step in to aid where relatives sometimes stand aloof, and watch a fatal struggle. Remember Irene; who is nearer to you, she or your grandfather? Such a friend Mr. Clifton is to me, and go to him I will at all hazards. Drop the subject, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... substance, truth, or taste. Yet their poetry was admired, praised not less than Goethe and Schiller were praised by their contemporaries, and it lived beyond the seventeenth century. There were but few men during that time who kept aloof from the spirit of these two Silesian schools, and were not influenced by either Opitz or Hoffmannswaldau. Among these independent poets we have to mention Friedrich von Logau, Andreas Gryphius, and Moscherosch. Beside ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... for five hundred pounds. The Duke pressed all their hands, passed his arms round all their shoulders, patted all their backs, and sent away some with wages, and some with promises. From this traffic Pitt stood haughtily aloof. Not only was he himself incorruptible, but he shrank from the loathsome drudgery of corrupting others. He had not, however, been twenty years in Parliament, and ten in office, without discovering how the government ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... butcher's brave cerulean garb Flutters before his face, The cleaver dints his little roof Of furrowed wood; remote, aloof He sits superb and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... tricks with his carrier-tricycle among the trains and taxis of Paris, with solemn abuse (so they say) for the pedestrians, fleeing like bewildered hens across the big streets and squares. Corporal Bertrand, who keeps himself always a little aloof, correct, erect, and silent, with a strong and handsome face and forthright gaze, was foreman in a case-factory. Tirloir daubed carts with paint—and without grumbling, they say. Tulacque was barman at the Throne Tavern in the suburbs; and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... advancing towards Lima, from which, indeed, he was removed but a few days' march. Greatly perplexed, Blasco Nunez now felt the loneliness of his condition. Standing aloof, as it were from his own followers, thwarted by the Audience, betrayed by his soldiers, he might well feel the consequences of his misconduct. Yet there seemed no other course for him, but either to march ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... they believed in, perhaps because it seemed so unreal!—because the ordeal by fire seemed so vague, so far away in that ghostly bourne which is called the future, and which remains always so inconceivably distant to the young—star-distant, remote as inter-stellar dust—aloof as death. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... they differed from the others. Sam Pretty Cow and Shorty he could hobnob with as of yore,—Sam in particular giving him much pleasure with his unbroken reserve, his unreadable Indian eyes and his wide-lipped grin. The others were like Duke, Tom and Al,—slightly aloof, a bit guarded ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... might be less simple and less easily classified. Rich and idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such situations; and there might even be one in which a woman naturally sensitive and aloof would yet, from the force of circumstances, from sheer defencelessness and loneliness, be drawn into a tie inexcusable by ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... unfettered. The republic of Cracow, until about ten years ago, enjoyed a certain degree of liberty. It could have become the asylum of Polish literature and science; but it became only too soon the battlefield of political passions and combats. Some of her scholars however kept themselves entirely aloof from the strife. Macherzinski's and Muczkowski's learned works, already mentioned above; a history of Polish Literature by Wisznewski; and a new Polish Dictionary, by Trajanski; were the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... four great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment, High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled. Flaming aloof, as it were the pillar by night in the Desert Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers, Fell on the withered brows of the old men, and Israel's mothers, Fell on the bloom of youth, and the earnest ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... inclination, to light loves and absurd amusements. And the art which reflected this life was called upon to give gaiety rather than thought, costume rather than character. Yet if the Venetian art had lost all connection with the grave magnificence of the past, it had kept aloof from the academic coldness which was in fashion beyond the lagoons, so that though theatrical, it was with a certain natural absurdity. The age had become romantic; the Arcadian convention was in full force, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... summoned to Bragton—"You will hear something over there, and it will relieve your spirits." So instigated he did go across, and found all the accustomed members of the club congregated in the room. Even Larry Twentyman was present, who of late had kept himself aloof from all such meetings. Both the Botseys were there, and Nupper and Harry Stubbings, and Ribbs the butcher. Runciman himself of course was in the room, and he had introduced on this occasion Captain Glomax, the master of the hunt, who was staying at his house that night,— perhaps with ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Locke tried to comfort her. Yet she could not forget what had happened between him and Zita just before the meeting, and, woman-like, she now held aloof. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... they met at dinner at a neighbouring house, and were introduced by name. That of the young man seemed strange to the ladies; not so theirs to him. He turned pale when he heard it, and remained silent and aloof the rest of the evening. They met again and often; and for some weeks—nay, even for months—he appeared to avoid, as much as possible, the acquaintance so auspiciously begun; but, by little and little, the beauty of the younger ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... IV.,[212] and called while he lived "the White Rose," had more than once endeavoured to excite an insurrection in the eastern counties; but Lady Salisbury was never suspected of holding intercourse with him; she remained aloof from political disputes, and in lofty retirement she was contented to forget her greatness for the sake of the Princess Mary, to whom she and her family were deeply attached. Her relations with the king had thus continued undisturbed until his second marriage. As ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... was man enough to do his work himself. In glorious moments when he was rather sure that Galton was far from unsatisfied with his progress, and Ann had looked more than usually distracting in her aloof and sober alluringness,— it was her entire aloofness which so stirred his blood,—he sometimes stopped scribbling and lost his head for a minute or so, wondering if a fellow ever COULD "get away with it" to the extent of making enough to—but ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... make life amiable and indolent, were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel, and to decide. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the treasury trembled at the name of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... This gave her a sort of majesty in the young man's dazzled eyes. He was giddy with joy and pride. It had seemed to him impossible that he could ever win this queen of his every thought; and it became her, as a queen still, to stand almost aloof, reluctant, although in all the sweetness of consent she had been made to yield. It was her part, too, in nature and according to all that was most seemly, to bring him back to the consideration of that invading sea of common life which surrounded his ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Roland Clewe kept himself aloof. He had done all that he wanted to do, he had shown all that he cared to show; now he would let other people investigate his facts and his reasonings and argue about them; he would retire—he had ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... halted. Their master was Monsieur de Vibourg, whose estate lay near the place at which they halted on the preceding night; and who was going for a short visit, to friends, at the next town at which they would arrive. If questioned as to his politics, they were to say that he held aloof from the matter, for he considered that undue violence was exercised towards the Huguenots; who, he believed, if permitted to worship in their own way, would ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... declared that he had no will in his possession. At this time he kept aloof from the house and showed no disposition to meddle with the affairs of the family. Indeed, all through these trying days he behaved honestly, if not with high feeling. In recounting the doings of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... fear that the ignorant and vicious would swarm to the polls while the intelligent and virtuous would stand aloof, is fully met by the fact that the former class has never asked for the suffrage or shown interest in its seeking, while the hundreds of thousands of petitioners are from our best and noblest women, including those whose efforts for the amelioration of the wrongs and sufferings of others ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... indeed they are not of good but of evil, and of that evil from which we daily pray to God to deliver us. And albeit we see them sometimes counterfeit devotion, yet never did old ape make pretty moppet. Hence, mastiffs; dogs in a doublet, get you behind; aloof, villains, out of my sunshine; curs, to the devil! Do you jog hither, wagging your tails, to pant at my wine, and bepiss my barrel? Look, here is the cudgel which Diogenes, in his last will, ordained to be set by him after his death, for beating away, crushing the reins, and breaking the backs of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Thorne, in low, swift whisper, "a few days, a week ago—it seems like a year!—I was of some assistance to refugees fleeing from Mexico into the States. They were all women, and one of them was dressed as a nun. Quite by accident I saw her face. It was that of a beautiful girl. I observed she kept aloof from the others. I suspected a disguise, and, when opportunity afforded, spoke to her, offered my services. She replied to my poor efforts at Spanish in fluent English. She had fled in terror from her home, some ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... and slept. Boswell's unconscious art is wonderful, and so is the result attained. This book has arrested, as never book did before, time and decay. Bozzy is really a wizard: he makes the sun stand still. Till his work is done, the future stands respectfully aloof. Out of ever-shifting time he has made fixed and permanent certain years, and in these Johnson talks and argues, while Burke listens, and Reynolds takes snuff, and Goldsmith, with hollowed hand, whispers a sly remark to his neighbour. There have they sat, these ghosts, for seventy years now, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... presentation of the fact of Nina's innocence you call up the objection you desire to anticipate by side glances at the worldly and 'knowing' reader's opinions. In a word I feel as if you were not engrossed by your subject, but were sufficiently aloof from it to contemplate it as a spectator, which is an error in art. Many of the remarks are delicately felt and finely written. The whole book comes from a noble nature, and so it impresses the reader. But ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... students might be granted: young children are generally able to learn the sounds of a foreign language by imitation; students of college age can hardly ever do this well, and careful phonetic instruction is absolutely necessary with them. Whoever wishes to keep aloof from phonetic terms may do so; but not to know or not to apply phonetic principles is bad teaching pure and simple. The use of phonetic transcription, however, is a moot question. Its advantages are obvious enough: ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... woman's. He loved them, and they responded to his love and bloomed and bore for him. He walked downtown to the business district, always alone, a shy and unimpressive figure, and sat brooding and aloof in one of the tilted-back cane chairs under the portico of the old Richland House, facing the river. He took long solitary walks on side streets and byways; but it was noted that, reaching the farther outskirts, he invariably turned back. In all ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... practice was unutterable mental torture. His mind was on his studies, to which his bulldog purpose shackled him; he begrudged the time spent on Bannister Field; he was stolid, silent, aloof. He scarcely ever spoke, except when addressed. He reported for practice at the last second, went through the scrimmage like a great, dumb, driven ox, doing as he was ordered; and when the squad was dismissed ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... It's Joe. He's my brother." The little girl, in spite of her evident satisfaction at the accomplishment of her purpose, yet kept quite aloof from the boy. Nor did the fact that he refused the money appear to bring her anything ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... time aloof from her husband, a woman makes overtures of a very marked character in order to attract his love, she acts in accordance with the axiom of maritime law, which says: ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of them, he did hope that when the Bill came into Committee they would agree to consult together, and try and come to some understanding as to the best mode of dealing with the question, that it was absurd to be standing aloof at such a moment; to which Ellenborough replied that he perfectly agreed with him, was anxious to do so, and intended to advise his friends ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... years will probably set our party more firmly on their legs; the invalidity of our opponents vouches pretty surely for that, apart from the fact, which is nevertheless the principal point, that powerful talent is developing in our midst, and many others who formerly stood aloof from us are drawing near to us and agreeing with us. Consequently it seems to me that it is not to your interest to conclude at once a contract for too many years with Kahnt, unless, which is scarcely likely, he were to make you such an offer that you would be satisfied with it under the most ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... troubled with waking, by his physicians was appointed to use unguentum populeum to anoint his temples; but he so distasted the smell of it, that for many years after, all that came near him he imagined to scent of it, and would let no man talk with him but aloof off, or wear any new clothes, because he thought still they smelled of it; in all other things wise and discreet, he would talk sensibly, save only in this. A gentleman in Limousin, saith Anthony Verdeur, was persuaded he had but one leg, affrighted ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... copy out the parts, and prompt and make up. And I also had to look after the various effects such as thunder, the singing of a nightingale, and so on. Having no social position, I had no decent clothes, and during rehearsals had to hold aloof from the others in the darkened ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... picture silently, for he remembered with disturbing emotion that he had felt what Jake suggested when he first met Clare Kenwardine. She was frank, but somehow remote and aloof; marked by a strange refinement he could find no name for. He was glad that Jake did not seem to expect him to speak, but after a few moments the latter wrapped up the portrait and took it away. When he came back he lighted ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... priests of other Buddhist sects had their share in these bloody affairs, as was natural at such a time, yet Zen monks stood aloof and simply cultivated their literature. Consequently, when all the people grew entirely ignorant at the end of the Dark Age, the Zen monks were the only men of letters. None can deny this merit of their having preserved learning and prepared ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... wisdom of all these latter times, in princes' affairs, is rather fine deliveries, and shiftings of dangers and mischiefs, when they are near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them aloof. But this is but to try masteries with fortune. And let men beware, how they neglect and suffer matter of trouble to be prepared; for no man can forbid the spark, nor tell whence it may come. The difficulties ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... Then, again, it was equally true that he had very much changed within the period that had succeeded the disappearance of George Talboys. He had grown moody and thoughtful, melancholy and absent-minded. He had held himself aloof from society, had sat for hours without speaking; had talked at other points by fits and starts; and had excited himself unusually in the discussion of subjects which apparently lay far out of the region of his own life and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Melesigenes, Maeonides, Homer—the blind schoolmaster, and poet, of Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos, Athens, or whatever place—has, by the help of Lycurgus, Solon, Pisistratus, and other learned ancients, been made up of many poets or Homers, and set so far aloft and aloof on old Parnassus, as to become a god in the eyes of all Greece, a wonder in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... their opinions respecting the treaty. It may well be supposed that persons feeling some distrust of their capacity to form a correct judgment on a subject so complex, would be unwilling to make so hasty a decision, and consequently be disinclined to attend such meetings. Many intelligent men stood aloof, while the most intemperate assumed, as usual, the name of the people—pronounced a definitive and unqualified condemnation of every article in the treaty, and, with the utmost confidence, assigned reasons for their opinions which, in many instances, had only an imaginary existence, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... pass on, and it is now quite a month since Ringwood and Florence carried Sir Adrian's senseless form from the haunted chamber, and still Florence holds herself aloof from the man she loves, and, though quite as assiduous as the others in her attentions to him, seems always eager to get away from him, and glad to escape any chance of a tete-a-tete with him. This she does in defiance of the fact that Mrs. Talbot never approaches ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... before in secret thought. When her eye caught the phrase "the days at Mallowe" in the middle of a sheet, she was almost frightened at the rush of pleasure which swept over her. Men who were less aloof from sentimental moods used such phrases in letters, she had read and heard. It was almost as if he had said "the dear old days at Mallowe" or "the happy days at Mallowe," and the rapture of it was as much ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... joined by several foreign chevaliers, amongst whom was an Italian knight, who had excited the attention and curiosity of many of the younger Spaniards from the mystery environing him. He was never seen without his armor. His helmet always closed, keeping surlily aloof, he never mingled in the brilliant jousts and tournaments of the camp, except when Arthur Stanley chanced to be one of the combatants: he was then sure to be found in the lists, and always selected the young Englishman as his opponent. At first this strange pertinacity ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... democratic Government is definitely established as in England now, the alternatives for trust are either to hold aloof in despair awaiting the debacle, to resist to the bitter end with a result like that which Stephenson said would occur if a cow attempted to stop his locomotive, or to try humbug and flattery. You do not flatter ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... years, and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of neglected and unappreciated wives. A woman can forgive a beating, but to be forgotten—never. She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained character. Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof; concentration on an idea ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... theodolite, against such forces of Nature as would daunt anything but the resolute human heart—it is curious to come across small corners of the world where the law of nations seemingly does not run, and the current of the modern world sweeps by, leaving them in a backwater, strangely aloof and undisturbed. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... done under many difficulties. For twenty years, as President of Cornell University and Professor of History in that institution, I was immersed in the work of its early development. Besides this, I could not hold myself entirely aloof from public affairs, and was three times sent by the Government of the United States to do public duty abroad: first as a commissioner to Santo Domingo, in 1870; afterward as minister to Germany, in 1879; finally, as minister to Russia, in 1892; and was also called upon by the State ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Hebrew-reading public, in which he disclaimed all pretensions of Messiahship for himself or for his colleague Dr. Theodor Herzl.' We have thus this extraordinary situation. Many orthodox Jews stood aloof from the Zionistic movement because it was not Messianic, while many unorthodox Jews joined it just because of the movement's detachment ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... Hittites. Entering their territories unexpectedly, he was at first unopposed, and succeeded in taking a large number of their towns. But the troops of Ben-hadad soon appeared in the field. Phoenicia, apparently, stood aloof, and Hamath was occupied with her own difficulties; but Ben-hadad, having joined the Hittites, again gave Shalmaneser battle; and though that monarch, as usual, claims the victory, it is evident ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... the fashion at Qantuck station and few people are allowed to depart, unattended. However, Mr. Barrett's fame, and his manifest wish to hold himself aloof from the people about him had had their effect, and he went trudging down to the station the next afternoon quite by himself. On the platform, to his surprise, he found Mrs. Holden ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... with playful words, promising to be more discreet in the future, and keep aloof from the Earl, and in a short time they were back in the ballroom, and he, at least, was dancing as merrily as if there was no such ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... purposes, which he would have been more ashamed to avow for himself than I should be to avow for him. It was all vague and vast, and it came out of the books that he read, and that filled his soul with their witchery, and often held him aloof with their charm in the midst of the plays from which they could not lure him wholly away, or at all away. He did not know how or when their enchantment began, and he could hardly recall the names of some ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... was a virgin, and in all that city of a million sinful souls, she alone held aloof from the sins of ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... Kipling's place in the world of letters is unique. He sits quite aloof and alone, the incomparable and inimitable master of the exquisitely fine art of short-story writing. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson has perhaps written several tales which match the run of Mr. Kipling's work, but the best of Mr. Kipling's tales ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and his family, who had come so warmly to welcome the strangers, were now hovering aloof, silent and suspicious, their spirits dashed by the contemptuous looks of Lady Vale-Avon and the Duchess. Standing in semi-darkness, the landlord's face was a blur of brown shadow, featureless, save for a pair of enormous eyes burning with an emotion ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... situation in that way. He was, moreover, entirely devoid of personal ambition, and had no vulgar longing for personal power. After resigning his commission he returned quietly to Mount Vernon, but he did not hold himself aloof from public affairs. On the contrary, he watched their course with the utmost anxiety. He saw the feeble Confederation breaking to pieces, and he soon realized that that form of government was an utter failure. In a time when no American statesman except Hamilton ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... put the MIND, MOTION, AND MATTER. For no man shall enter into inquisition of nature, but shall pass by that opinion of Democritus, whereas he shall never come near the other two opinions, but leave them aloof for the schools and table-talk. Yet those of Aristotle and Plato, because they be both agreeable to popular sense, and the one was uttered with subtilty and the spirit of contradiction, and the other with ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... also took long walks, but they never exchanged aught but the merest civilities of good-days and nods with the neighbors whom they met, unless indeed the Squire had some matter of business to discuss. Then Evelina stood aside and waited, her fair face drooping gravely aloof. She was very pretty, with a gentle high-bred prettiness that impressed the village folk, although they looked ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... uttered these words sat rather aloof from the rest; he was dressed in a long black surtout. I could not see much of his face, partly owing to his keeping it very much directed to the ground, and partly owing to a large slouched hat, which he wore; I observed, however, that his ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the king's daughters various trinkets for sale. The girls, with one exception, all examined his wares with unfeigned interest. Observing this circumstance Odysseus shrewdly concluded that the one who held aloof must be none other than the young Achilles himself. But in order further to test the correctness of his deduction, he now exhibited a beautiful set of warlike accoutrements, whilst, at a given signal, stirring strains of martial music were heard ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... agreements were made with Germany's allies in the Triplice, Austria and Italy. Treaties with Switzerland and Belgium, Servia and Rumania, followed. Russia held aloof for a time, but as a great grain-exporting country she too found it advisable to come to terms. With France there was no need of an agreement, since she was bound by the Treaty of Frankfurt, concluded after the war of 1870, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Liberation. For the great liberal movement of the thirties and forties he had neither sympathy nor comprehension.—FRIEDRICH RUeCKERT (1788-1866), endowed with a fatal facility of lyric expression, a virtuoso for whom no tour-de-force was too difficult, lived most of his life aloof from the political and social movements of his time. In his youth his Sonnets in Armor had done sturdy service in the national awakening against Napoleon, but his maturer years were devoted to domestic and academic interests. Every impression of his life, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... those who thought they knew best pronounced him more like Gideon Hayle in his regard for "folks just as folks" than were either the twins or the sister, from all three of whom his impulses kept him amiably aloof. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... live in a garret aloof, And have few friends, and go poorly clad, With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof, To keep the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... villagers were almost all asleep, now and then the laugh of some rioters was heard breaking in upon the stillness of night. She had not seen her lover for many days; from the time that her marriage was determined upon, the young warrior had kept aloof from her. She had seized her opportunity to tell him that he must meet her where they had often met, where none should know of their meeting. She told him to come when the moon rose, as her father would be tired, and her mother wished to sleep ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... holding forth for the edification of his more discreet companions, to whom he seemed to afford considerable amusement, if the peals of laughter with which his sallies were received might be considered any proof. A little aloof from this party, but within hearing, stood a youth of about seventeen, of whom nothing was remarkable, but that his countenance wore a very sedate and determined expression. He seemed struggling with a determination not to indulge ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... the contagious beds of the unfortunate Daltons, gave singular and noble proof of the most heroic devotedness, absolutely turned from the common road, on her way to their cabin, rather than meet the funeral of a person who had died of fever, and on one or two occasions kept aloof from men who she knew to be invalids by the fact of their having handkerchiefs about their heads—a proof, in general, that they had been shaved or blistered, while laboring under ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... presently I mentioned you and Colonel Rizzio among the interesting people I had met. He declared you were a true gentleman—spoke feelingly—a stranger at The Pleiad, though not to the Island. I explained how you had kept aloof on the ship coming down, how you seemed to be the prey of some devouring grief.... All that I said, he regarded with that terribly bright attention of his. It made me think of a pack of hounds tossing and tearing at a morsel, the way his faculties caught my sentences, hounds playing a hare at the ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... openly to her on the subject. It seemed to be understood between them that it should be dropped. And there was occasionally a weight of melancholy about Lady Harcourt, amounting in appearance almost to savage sternness, which kept all inquiry aloof. Even her grandfather hesitated to speak to her about her husband, and allowed her to live unmolested in the quiet, still, self-controlling mood which she seemed to have adopted ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... thoughts, Sir Roger de Launay, whose taciturn and easy temperament disinclined him for argument and kept him aloof from discussion whenever he could avoid it, sat alone one evening in his own room which adjoined the King's library, writing a few special letters for his Majesty which were of too friendly a nature to be dealt with in the curt official ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... other's mind? Or what commerce can men with monsters find? Not daring to approach their wounded foe, Whom her courageous son protected so, They charge their muskets, and, with hot desire Of fell revenge, renew the fight with fire; Standing aloof, with lead they bruise the scales, And tear the flesh of the incensed whales. 210 But no success their fierce endeavours found, Nor this way could they give one fatal wound. Now to their fort they are about to send For the loud engines which their isle defend; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... scenes, and will be surrounded with many dangers and temptations to which you have hitherto been a stranger. Seek to be strong against everything that is evil; aim at the highest mark, and press towards it. Much of your future depends upon how you begin—therefore begin well; hold yourself aloof from everything with which your conscience tells you you should not be associated, and then all your bright dreams may, ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... prodigal sky and duneland with their winding roads that have no end, his ever-shadowy stretches of cloud upon ever-shadowy stretches of land that go their austere way to the edges of some vacant sea. They suggest, too, those less remote but perhaps even more aloof spaces of solitude which were ever Courbet's theme in his deeper hours, that haunting sense of subtle habitation, that acute invasion of either wind or soft fleck of light or bright presence in a breadth of shadow, as if a breath of living ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... thou canst guild thy honours Borne[136] from the reeking breasts of Affricans, When I aloof[137] stood wondering at those Acts Thy sword writ in the battaile, which were such Would make a man a souldier but ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... awoke with a sigh of simultaneous satisfaction, completely rested and restored. Ten minutes later we were engaged in a brisk debate in which the question before the house was, stated boldly, Should we or should we not "go native?" In other words, should we hold ourselves aloof, live contrary to the customs of the country and mortally offend our hosts,—to say nothing of our hostesses,—or should we fulfil our destinies, take unto ourselves island brides and eat our equatorial ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... common foe. The Halictus does not care about her neighbour's affairs. She does not visit another's burrow; she does not allow others to visit hers. She has her tribulations, which she endures alone; she is indifferent to the tribulations of her kind. She stands aloof from the strife of her fellows. Let each mind her own business and leave things ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Contemptuously aloof from the idols of the market-place, contemptuously indifferent to the tyranny of public opinion, with the fixed principle in his mind—almost his only fixed principle—that the majority is always wrong, Remy de ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... train; but the butchers and the men of their faction murmured loudly, and treated the peace as treason. Outside, it was little more than nominal; the Count of Armagnac remained under arms and the Duke of Orleans held aloof from Paris. A violent ferment again began there. The butchers continued to hold the mastery. The Duke of Burgundy, all the while finding them very much in the way, did not cease to pay court to them, Many of his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... good faith, the four other republics have offered to name President Iglesias of Costa Rica as the first President of the Diet which is to govern the republic. But Costa Rica still holds aloof from the combination. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... correct, he would appear to endorse whatever he left uncorrected, and thus make himself responsible, not only for any interpretation that might be placed on his poems, but, what was far more serious, for every eulogium that was bestowed upon them. He could not stand aloof as entirely as he or even his friends desired, since it was usual with some members of the Society to seek from him elucidations of obscure passages which, without these, it was declared, would be a stumbling-block to future readers. But he disliked being even to this extent ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... one of them. In the midst of the fun and laughter, Olga sat rather silent. Max, drily humorous, took his customary somewhat supercilious share in the general conversation, but he made no attempt to draw her into it. She almost wished he would do so, for she felt as if he purposely held aloof from her. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... to yourself, or whether, under the pretence of aiding one of the parties in a nation, you act in such a manner as to aggravate its calamities and accomplish its final destruction. In truth, it is not the interfering or keeping aloof, but iniquitous intermeddling, or treacherous inaction, which is praised or blamed by the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... men they are who will be taking up the blood-suit. And Thord," she said, "my husband, is not much of a warrior; but the counsels of us women are mostly guided by little foresight if anything is wanted. Yet I am loath to keep aloof from you altogether, seeing that, though I am but a woman, you have set your heart on finding some shelter here." After that Vigdis led him to an outhouse, and told him to wait for her there, and put a lock on the door. Then she went to Thord, and said, "A man has come here ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... minutes passed in this fashion, Leroux expecting each to bring a sudden outcry. He was disappointed. The searchers returned, Exel noticeably holding himself aloof and Cumberly ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... who has been abused as much as you have been abused at sea has good reason to stand up for your rights when you are abused the moment you reach shore," barked a harsh voice. Colonel Gideon Ward, backed by the faithful Eleazar Bodge, stood safely aloof on a huge bowlder, his gaunt frame outlined against the morning sky. "Are you the commander of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... statement of the views and acts of the two contending parties. In one sense I have tried to identify myself with each, so as to comprehend thoroughly their motives; but in another and higher sense I have endeavored to stand aloof, and relate with impartiality ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... president to the baker, from the member of congress for whom he had voted to the barber, from the hotel proprietor to the bartender. The negroes of the town, feeling that their race was humiliated in Pop, began to hold aloof from him. No serious-minded person who learned of his delusion gave ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... rose. He narrowed his eyes and surveyed it as it lay in his palm, and then made as if to toss it into the pool. But he checked the gesture. He set his chin in his hands and communed aloud with himself after the fashion of those who hold aloof from mankind: ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... of the city is in itself unique. Chosen originally for the strength of its position, it yet presents none of the features which should mark the metropolis of a powerful people. It seems to stand aloof from the world, exempt from its passions and aspirations, and shunning even its thrift. Confronting us with its towering portal, overlaid with colossal hieroglyphics, the majestic ruin, of the watt ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... lieutenants—though they had marked the ease and ability with which Loring handled what was probably his first case as judge advocate, nevertheless agreed that he was "offish" toward the general run of "the line," held himself aloof as though he considered himself of superior clay, didn't drink, smoke, swear, or play cards, and was therefore destitute of most elements of soldier companionship as then and there defined. It was resented, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... haggard brow. A great fear was upon him, and he gripped my hand with the cold grasp of death itself. In that darkened room it seemed to me I saw the angel of peace standing by the bed, but it stood aloof, as one often offended. It seemed to me at the head of the bed the demon of eternal darkness bent over, whispering to him: 'It is too late! it is too late!' The dying man looked at me—oh, such a look! ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... two showers during the day, and the sky, all the time, was dark and lowering, which was unfavorable for the celebration; but all were glad enough that the rain kept aloof till the ceremonies were nearly over. The speeches delivered at the dinner, which appeared in the papers next morning, are undoubtedly very eloquent. I noticed in the remarks of Robert Burns, in reply ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... who had laid cheerfulness upon them as a duty becoming more and more sad and keeping aloof from them, imagined that he was tortured ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... really of the same group (as regards language and descent) as the Iroquois (Irokwa), but in those days held aloof from the five other tribes who had formed a confederacy[22] and alliance under the name of Ongwehonwe—"Superior Men". The Iroquois (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the Adirondaks ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... diminished the penalties in force against the press, referred to a jury all offences of that class, and liberated the journals from the censorship,—measures which in their eyes appeared too confident. The right-hand party held dexterously aloof, rejoicing to see the Ministers at issue with reviving opponents who were likely soon to become their most ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Nordau, the vice-president of the Congress, found it necessary to address an article to the Hebrew-reading public, in which he disclaimed all pretensions of Messiahship for himself or for his colleague Dr. Theodor Herzl.' We have thus this extraordinary situation. Many orthodox Jews stood aloof from the Zionistic movement because it was not Messianic, while many unorthodox Jews joined it just because of the movement's ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... The King to fair Clorinda present spake; "If he go forth, remain not you behind, But of our soldiers best a thousand take, To guard his person and your own assigned; Yet let him meet alone the Christian knight, And stand yourself aloof, while they two fight." ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Mr. Cannon had ruled. Una and Mr. Schwirtz deigned to accompany them on picnics, even grew interested in their new conceptions of the presidential campaign and croquet and food, yet held rather aloof, as became the ancien regime; took confidential walks together, and in secret laughed enormously when the green generation gossiped about them as though they were "interested in each other," as Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent had ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... nobles and dragging knights and gentlemen away to prison; and if it were in my power I would gladly upset their design, were it not that I know that, for my lady's sake, it were well to hold myself altogether aloof from ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... idea?" he said, "'Achilles in his Tent'... that is the device of the hidden part of my business—you observe the parallel, do you not?' Achilles holding himself aloof from the army and young men like yourself who prefer the gentle pursuits of peace to the sterner profession of war! Clients of mine who have enjoyed a classical education have thought very highly of the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... no other plan could be hit upon. Some were against it. Hot arguments prevailed on both sides, and a few personal compliments rather tending to break the peace, had been exchanged. The senior boy held himself aloof from acting personally: it was his place they were fighting for. Tom Channing and Huntley were red-hot against what they called the "sneaking," meaning the underhand work. Gerald Yorke was equally for non-interference, either to the master ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to remain aloof from people, and like their good parts, without being eternally troubled with the dull process of their everyday lives.... All I can say is that standing at Charing Cross, and looking East, West, North and South, I can ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... strangers, and the poor and old and sorrowful, and young children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons—all furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves—all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others take the seats of the boats—all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake—all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbours—all the vast sweet love and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... princes, the Normans of Lower Italy and Sicily, the Lombard communes, all contributed in varying degrees to the defeat of the Henries and the Frederics. The German princes brought Henry IV to his knees at two critical moments in the reign; the majority of them held obstinately aloof from the Italian wars of Barbarossa; and Frederic II, who endeavoured to buy their neutrality by extravagant concessions, found himself confronted by German rebels and pretenders towards the close of his career (1246-1250), when the Italian situation appeared to be ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... her mother of her new friend. She had wished to keep in character, and a princess, she felt, was rather secretive and aloof. But now the renewed closeness she felt to ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... has been abused as much as you have been abused at sea has good reason to stand up for your rights when you are abused the moment you reach shore," barked a harsh voice. Colonel Gideon Ward, backed by the faithful Eleazar Bodge, stood safely aloof on a huge bowlder, his gaunt frame outlined against the morning sky. "Are you the commander of those men?" ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... coldly whispering round, Scowl'd they aloof in that disastrous hour? On keen Misfortune's agonizing wound Did foul Ingratitude her ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... reflection, was, when now qualified with a slight inaccessibility and a more matured beauty, the very being to make him satisfied with life. Day after day proved to him, by her silence, that it was no use to think of bringing her round by holding aloof; so he gave in, and called upon her again, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... had not the simplicity of Hippocrates: he had great faith in drugs and collected plants from all parts of the known world, for the sale of which he is said to have had a shop in the neighborhood of the Forum. As I mentioned, he was an eclectic, held himself aloof from the various schools of the day, calling no man master save Hippocrates. He might be called a rational empiricist. He made war on the theoretical practitioners of the day, particularly the Methodists, who, like some of their modern followers, held that their ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... first was stayed, and boards were done aside, Great beakers there they set afoot, and straight the wine they crowned. A shout goes up within the house, great noise they roll around The mighty halls: the candles hang adown from golden roof All lighted, and the torches' flame keeps dusky night aloof. And now a heavy bowl of gold and gems the Queen bade bring And fill with all unwatered wine, which erst used Belus king, 729 And all from Belus come: therewith through the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... external circumstance surrounding the forsaken body. Browning took measures that his wife's grave should be duly cared for, given more than common distinction; but Florence became a place from which even for his own sake and the sake of her whose spirit lived within him he must henceforth keep aloof. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the year, with the hand of winter again pressed firmly upon the land, it seemed time could do no more; that the adaptation of the exotic to his new surroundings was complete. Already the past life seemed a thing interesting but aloof from reality, like the fantastic exploits of a hero of fiction, and the present, the insistently active, vital present, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... with him brought that which was needed; and so we two knelt, and there came one or two Welshmen, gently, and knelt also, unlike our Saxons, who would have stood aloof, with bared heads indeed, ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... important information on the subject which seemed adequate to change his views or modify his action," but he "turned the conversation to other topics." In fairness he adds that "personally Benedict XV. had been careful to keep aloof from Buelow and his band," and has neither said nor done anything blameworthy with the sole exception of the interview and message which he was reported to have given "to an American-German champion of militarism at the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... my innermost Me Fearless, aloof and free Of the least breath of love or hate, And not disconsolate At the sick load of sorrow laid on men; If I could keep a sanctuary there Free even of prayer, If I could do this, then, With quiet candor as I grew more wise I could look even ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... have confessed. She had hitherto believed that Ephie—affectionate, lazy little Ephie—accepted her individual peculiarities as an integral part of her nature: it had not occurred to her that Ephie might be standing aloof and considering her objectively—let alone mentally using such an unkind word as rudeness of her. But Ephie's fit of ill-temper, for such it undoubtedly was, made Johanna see things differently; it hinted at unsuspected, cold scrutinies in the past, and implied a somewhat laming care of one's ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... tender chorus rose aloof,— That song the Lombards there, dying of thirst, Send up to God, "Lord, from the native roof." O'er countless thrilling hearts the song has burst, And here I, whom its magic put to proof, Beginning to be no longer I, immersed Myself amidst those ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment, High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled. Flaming aloof, as it were the pillar by night in the Desert Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers, Fell on the withered brows of the old men, and Israel's mothers, Fell on the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... seatmate's evident wish to be left to his thoughts. She had no wish to break through his reserve. But she wondered, a bit gravely, what he was thinking, and she did wish she could make things brighter for him, the superior young man who for all his nice courtesy and friendly smiles held himself so aloof and was so evidently subject to the blues. She thought she knew what troubled him. She could understand that. She was not always so contented as her quiet cheery manner proclaimed; sometimes, in the middle of the night, she awoke crying for the gift that ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... sacrifice the bull and then in safety you—communicate."{39} "Sanctity"—the quality of awfulness and mystery—rather than divinity or personality, may have been what primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which he venerated in "their silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their limited doings."{40} When we use the word "spirit" in connection with the pagan sacramental practices of Christmastide, it is well to bear in mind the possibility that at the origin of ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... his presence, "How contemptible in my eyes is the human being who has a friend, and who comprehends all the significance of that sacred feeling, friendship, and yet is not magnanimous enough to hold himself aloof from slyness! As if anything could be hidden!" As I said these last words I smiled contemptuously. But David paid no attention. At last I asked him directly whether our watch had run long after we buried it, or whether it had stopped at once. He answered, "How the deuce should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... rode with the drag, was President of the Archery Club, played whist, gave and received a great deal of hospitality, and made some lifelong friendships. Among his contemporaries was Ruskin, of whom his recollection was certainly depressing. "He seemed to keep himself aloof from everybody, to seek no friends, and to have none. I never met him in anyone else's rooms, or at any social gathering. I see him now, looking rather crazy, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... ultimate fate. The power of life and death was known to be in the admiral's hands, but no one thought that such power would be exerted up on a delinquent of so high a grade. The other captains kept aloof from Philip, and he knew little of what was the general idea. Occasionally when on board of the admiral's ship, he ventured to bring up the question, but was immediately silenced; and feeling that he might injure the late commodore (for whom he had a regard), he would ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... forth and was slaying men and overthrowing warriors. When she saw his prowess, her heart was drowned in the love of him and she said to herself, "I have no need of the idol and care for naught save this Gharib, that he may lie in my bosom the rest of my life." Then she cried to her men, "Hold aloof from him and leave him to himself!"; then, going up to him she muttered certain magical words, whereupon his arm became benumbed, his forearm relaxed and the sword dropped from his hand. So they seized him and pinioned him, as he stood confounded, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... the thickets holding a knotted rag behind his back, and that when the glades were dense and the moss-chinks filled with the singing people who lived for blood? The elders of the village nodded their heads sagely, and commended the hunter for holding aloof from the inert body, for the foolishness of this man was past belief, and—well, his people were swift and cruel in their vengeance, and sometimes doubted an Indian's word, wherefore it were best to pay no heed to their ways and say nothing. But ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... State as a champion of Mrs. Eaton. As to the views of the Vice-President upon the all-absorbing question, we have no information. Not being one of the official advisers of the President, he probably kept entirely aloof from a controversy no doubt in ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... chewing the cud of yesterday's philosophic reflections. The situation conveys the general impression of a peevish little stream breaking against great calm cliffs. All this frantic excitement and expenditure of energy is so apparently purposeless and futile, the calm cattle seem so aloof and superior to it all, so absolutely unaffected by it. They are going slowly, to be sure; their gait may be maddeningly deliberate, but evidently they do not intend to be hurried. Why not let them take ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... dress with no blood on it!' she wailed. And so wailing she voiced the deep lament, old as the moan of forests and falling water, that goes up through the centuries to the aloof and silent sky, and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the picture silently, for he remembered with disturbing emotion that he had felt what Jake suggested when he first met Clare Kenwardine. She was frank, but somehow remote and aloof; marked by a strange refinement he could find no name for. He was glad that Jake did not seem to expect him to speak, but after a few moments the latter wrapped up the portrait and took it away. When he came back he lighted ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... flocked from England, France, Geneva, and the German states, to see how far the Venetians would move away from Rome, believed that he was at heart a Calvinist. In reality Sarpi had more of the eighteenth century than of the sixteenth in his turn of mind, and stood far aloof from the doctrines over which his contemporaries contended, and the expectations entertained of his countrymen were illusory. The city was placed under an interdict, and the orders that were faithful to Rome departed across the Lagoon, singing hymns. The Pope looked about for ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... that persons feeling some distrust of their capacity to form, intuitively, a correct judgment on a subject so complex, and disposed only to act knowingly, would be unwilling to make so hasty a decision, and consequently be disinclined to attend such meetings. Many intelligent men, therefore, stood aloof, while the most intemperate assumed, as usual, the name of the people; pronounced a definitive and unqualified condemnation of every article in the treaty; and, with the utmost confidence, assigned reasons for their ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... come on deck at night, where they would stand, their hands clasped together, watching the beautiful constellations, and gazing over the dark ocean which they believed to be their beloved brother's grave. The other passengers, respecting their grief, kept aloof from them, and allowed them the part of the deck they chose to themselves. The old captain and Mr Paget were the only people who spoke to them on such occasions, and then only to advise them to retire to their cabins, when the late hour made it desirable. Sometimes, notwithstanding ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the earth embellish themselves with ornaments, they shine resplendent in their persons with (brilliant) decorations; they keep aloof every adversary: the waters ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... conspicuous or to do commonplace things. He was sensitive about what they said or did. For example, he did not like to see John Drew walk up and down Broadway. He spent a fortune sheltering Maude Adams from all kinds of intrusion. With her especially he exhausted every resource to keep her aloof and secluded. He preferred that she be known through her work and not through her personal self. It was ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... he found a recluse: a man who made no fresh acquaintanceships; who held the whole tourist tribe in horror, and who even kept himself aloof from such of the neighbouring families as might be considered his equals in social position. It was quite evident to Mr. Deedes that he might reside close to Bon Repos for twenty years, and at the end of that time not have succeeded in addressing ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... some in military, some in fashionable civil attire, strolled up towards the crowd, but stood somewhat aloof and outside of it. The market people pressed closer and closer round the platform, listening with mouths open and eager eyes to the sermon, storing it away in their retentive memories, which would reproduce every word of it when they sat round the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... stream lazily trickles amid sand and sea-slime to the little estuary formed by the sea at its mouth. Between almost perpendicular cliffs the village lies like a solitary enclosure, where the inhabitants are separate and alone—aloof from the busy world—their horizon confined to a mere segment of vision. The same ever-rolling sea hath swung to and fro for ages in the same narrow creek, at the sides of which rise a cluster of huts, dignified ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Literature—that a natural turn for reading, and intellectual pursuits, probably preserved me from the moral shipwreck so apt to befall those who are deprived in early life of the paternal pilotage. At the very least my books kept me aloof from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloons, with their degrading orgies. For the closet associate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the noble, though silent discourse of Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Crown seemed then to have obtained some of the most splendid objects of state ambition. None of the continental powers of Europe were the enemies of France. They were all either tacitly disposed to her, or publicly connected with her; and in those who kept the most aloof there was little appearance of jealousy; of animosity there was no appearance at all. The British nation, her great preponderating rival; she had humbled; to all appearance she had weakened; certainly had endangered, by cutting off a very large, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Never in my life will I enter the house of a Lorrigan!" Mary Hope brushed a palm against her forehead, straightened herself as if she resented her weakness, wished to hold herself aloof from him. She did not look at Lance, but stared across the narrow valley ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... instead of working at her trade—she held herself aloof from people, and stayed by herself. She did not go regularly to kirk and meeting. She had spent good money having the 'Allan Campbell' put in order, yet she would neither lend nor hire the boat when it was ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... frank," I exclaimed, "I am at a loss to understand your kindness. In the city we are suspicious of strangers and stand aloof from them; but you treat me as if I had brought a cordial letter of introduction from one ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Church, or who repudiate what they suppose Christ to stand for, do so with spiritual weapons which they have borrowed from him. But it does make a great difference whether the young men and women of our day give their conscious and intelligent allegiance to Christianity or hold aloof in misunderstanding. Without them the Christian movement will mark time on old issues. With them it will dig new irrigation channels and string the wires ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... was in sight from Riviere's quarters, and he soon learned that it belonged to a royalist widow and her daughters, who all three held themselves quite aloof from the rest of the world. "Ah," said the young citizen, "I see. If these rococo citizens play that game with me, I shall have to take them down." Thus a fresh peril menaced this family, on whose hearts and fortunes such heavy ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... corner of the deck, dropped her bag on a seat, and leant idly over the rail. She was in no hurry to go below, and held instinctively aloof from the groups of fellow-passengers and their friends. She was alone, and her heart ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... obtained permission from the Governor to make a raid upon these Igorrote-Chinese and appropriate their treasure-yielding territory. After a seven days' march the Spanish gold-seekers and troops arrived at the deposits, where they took up their quarters without resistance. The natives held aloof whilst mutual offers of peace were made. When the Spaniards thought they were in secure possession of the neighbourhood, the natives attacked and slaughtered a number of them. The commander of the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... concealment,—for if any of thy co-wives were to speak of it unto Vasudeva, he might be irritated with thee. Feed thou by every means in thy power those that are dear and devoted to thy lord and always seek his good. Thou shouldst, however, always keep thyself aloof from those that are hostile to and against thy lord and seek to do him injury, as also from those that are addicted to deceit. Foregoing all excitement and carelessness in the presence of men, conceal thy inclinations by observing silence, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Don't talk nonsense, man. I am horribly sorry for you, as sorry as I can be for a man who is my friend, but who has never trusted or confided in me; but I stand now toward the admiral and Myra in such a position that I cannot keep aloof and see them insulted—well, I will not say that—see their feelings hurt by the reckless conduct of a man who ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... others. He was not at all in sympathy with present-day business methods, but he did not see any particular reason why he should constitute himself a reformer. Although still in the prime of life, he cared nothing for society and held aloof from it. If he went to the trouble to keep in touch at all with people of his own set, it was simply for business reasons. What he seemed to delight in most was the life of Bohemia, with its easy camaraderie, its lax moral code, its contempt for the conventions. He enjoyed the ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... that Robin hight, Renown'd for pinching maids by night, Has bent him up aloof; And full against the beam he flung, Where by the back the youth he hung To sprawl ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... to hold aloof. She used to wonder why she had not packed her bag that night and got out. She used to shiver when she remembered Felicity's dance. One couldn't touch pitch and not be denied. There were, it seemed, an overwhelming number of such proverbs, ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... honours in the shape of decorations, for having as they said by my conduct prevented a European war. My own country alone stood aloof from me. The Admiralty went so far as to tell me that if I did not immediately return to England, my name would be erased from the list of naval officers. An officer of high rank, a member of the Board of Admiralty, wrote to me a semi-official letter, in which he said, 'Unless ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... I used to design the scenery and copy out the parts, and prompt and make up. And I also had to look after the various effects such as thunder, the singing of a nightingale, and so on. Having no social position, I had no decent clothes, and during rehearsals had to hold aloof from the others in the darkened wings and shyly ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... she now asked herself. Were the words prophetic? she wondered. And from that moment her thoughts took a new departure, and she was able, as it were, to stand aloof and look back at herself as she had been, and forward to herself as she might yet become. In this quiet hour of retrospect she was quite ready to confess her sins. She was sincerely sorry she had deceived the Tenor. But why was she sorry? Why, simply because he had found her out; simply ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Robinson!" And in this way the time passed on the quay at Colico, till the boat came and took us away. I should have preferred to pass my time in making myself agreeable to the younger lady; but the younger lady stood aloof, turning up her nose, as I thought, ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... sopranos do with their voices. Sometimes castanets are not used; cymbals supplant them, or tambourines, or even fingers. Once, by some esoteric witchcraft, the dancers seemed to tap upon their arms. The effect was so stupendous and terrifying that I could not project myself into that aloof state of mind necessary for a calm ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... that we played our part in the World War and later took ourselves aloof and apart, unmindful of world obligations, give scant credit to the helpful part we assume in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... the blood, and just above that of the peers even of the oldest creation. This gave us all exceeding annoyance: it was the greatest injury the peerage could have received, and became its leprosy and sore. All the peers who could, kept themselves aloof from the parliament, when M. du Maine, M. de Vendome, and the Comte de Toulouse, for whom this arrangement was specially made, were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... imitated the Italian Palladio or the French Mansart, and when the feebler painters followed the degenerating taste of the public,— then the leading classes took to French fashions, and wigs came into use. Rembrandt's pictures show us sufficiently that he kept aloof from this deplorable but fated change, and we must imagine him moving within the classes which remained loyal to the solid habits of the first period of ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... at the river and at the long lances of light streaming from the East, then at the English youth, abstracted, aloof. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... fro. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, and while he was at the far end of the room from her with his back toward her, he wheeled and rushed madly at her. Involuntarily the girl shrank back, extending her open palms toward the frightful creature as though to hold him aloof but a man upon either side of her, the two who had conducted her into the apartment, seized ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the conversion or spiritual satisfying of thousands, into a parable of the feeding of thousands with five loaves. But have not the truly devout and conscientious thinkers rights of their own in the community? Must they really hold themselves aloof from the church, because they have too deep a reverence for the true teaching of Christ? Grand and beautiful as are St. Peter's in Rome, St. Mark's in Venice, or the Cathedral at Milan, it is heartbreaking ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... moreover, came to power with the avowed intention of liberating the serfs, which intention he carried out, and paid for with his own life in due time. Russia had been the only country to stand aloof on the slave question, thus branding herself in two worlds as still uncivilized. The young Czar knew that such a position was untenable. "Without the serf the Russian Empire must crumble away," his advisers told him. "With the serf she cannot endure," he answered And twenty-two millions ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... there, over the stretching sands. Only the daughter of Alcinoues stayed, for in her breast Athene had put courage and from her limbs took fear. Steadfast she stood to meet him. And now Odysseus doubted whether to make his suit by clasping the knees of the bright-eyed maid, or where he stood, aloof, in winning words to make that suit, and try if she would show the town and give him clothing. Reflecting thus, it seemed the better way to make his suit in winning words, aloof; for fear if he should clasp her knees, the maid might be offended. Forthwith ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... with a peculiar accent—everything they said must be barbarous; but she was pleased once more to eat off plate, and to find herself in rooms which, though grotesque and comfortless, yet wore an air of state, and whose vastness enabled her to keep aloof from those with whom she never willingly came in contact. It was therefore with regret she saw the day of her departure arrive, and found herself once more an unwilling inmate of her only asylum; particularly as her situation now required ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... highly born and nurtured, and there seemed to her delicate mind a something rude and unfeeling in the manner with which her too officious friends and neighbors would touch upon the sources of grief which were to her so sacred. And therefore, perhaps unwisely, she held herself aloof from them, replying to their different queries with that calm and easy dignity which effectually precluded all approach to familiarity, and engendered a dislike in the minds of those who were little accustomed to meet one who ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... was a star becoming familiar to their gaze and their desires. Whatever the negroes have done in the path of advancement, they have done largely without white aid. But politics and white pride have kept the white people aloof from offering that earnest and moral assistance which would be so useful to a people just starting from infancy into ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Odysseus answered him: 'Yet will the twain not long keep aloof from the strong tumult of war, when between the wooers and us in my halls is held the trial of the might of Ares. But as now, do thou go homeward at the breaking of the day, and consort with the proud wooers. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... blood-stained month between Prairial and Thermidor—and was thoroughly aware of the doings of the Committee. His partisans have now fallen back on the singular theory of what they style moral absence. He was present in the flesh, but standing aloof in the spirit. His frowning silence was a deadlier rebuke to the slayers and oppressors than secession. Unfortunately for this ingenious explanation of the embarrassing fact of a merciful man standing silent before ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... fortnight had refused his face, and sent wet skies to weep in sympathy with the hungering column, now that the troopers no longer cared a rap whether he sulked or shone, came forth in all his glory to surround and beam upon and shower congratulation as do mundane friends who hold aloof when days are dark and troublous, yet swarm like bees when dazzling and unexpected prosperity bursts upon the lately fallen. Merrily rang the reveille as "jocund day" came riding o'er the misty mountain-tops. With joke and song and laughter answered the war-worn men, scores of whom had alternately ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... and fig-tree, Alfred returned to the United States, where he became first a clerk, and afterward a prosperous merchant. His natural organization unfitted him for conflict, and though his peculiar experiences had imbued him with a thorough abhorrence of slavery, he stood aloof from the ever-increasing agitation on that subject; but every New Year's day, one of the Vigilance Committees for the relief of fugitive slaves received one hundred dollars "from an unknown friend." As his pecuniary means increased, he purchased several slaves, who had been in his employ ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the kingdom are symbolized by the souls of martyrs, &c., living again and reigning with Christ. The symbol includes, with the martyred saints, those who had stood aloof from the worship of the beast and his image, and those who had not received his mark; who are shown by a parallel scripture to represent all who are redeemed to God "out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation," 5:9, 10. Some of these were symbolized, under the fifth seal, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... in the harness room. Even Magnus Derrick condescended to enter and drink a toast. Presley and Vanamee, still holding themselves aloof, looked on, Vanamee more and more disgusted. Dabney, standing to one side, overlooked and forgotten, continued to sip steadily at his glass, solemn, reserved. Garnett of the Ruby rancho, Keast from the ranch of the same name, Gethings of the San Pablo, and Chattern of the Bonanza, leaned ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... ended; sparks of fire surrounded him, and after turning four times round in a circle he suddenly disappeared! Franconnette's friends at once held aloof from her. They called out to her, "Begone!" All in a maze the girl shuddered and sickened; she became senseless, and fell down on the floor in a swoon. The young people fled, leaving her helpless. And thus ended the second fete which began ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... beheld in glad amaze What Nero's guilty eyes, aloof, Drank in from off his golden roof— ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... sometimes expressed that the geologist should hold himself aloof from the business or applied phases of his profession, because of the danger of being tainted with commercialism. This argument would apply to the engineer as well as to the geologist. To carry such ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... separate people, called Akombwi, or Mapodzo, and rarely—the women it is said never—intermarry with any other tribe. The reason for their keeping aloof from certain of the natives on the Zambesi is obvious enough, some having as great an abhorrence of hippopotamus meat as Mahomedans have of swine's flesh. Our pilot, Scissors, was one of this class; he would not even cook his food in ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... a mirthful tone of mind Comedy must hold them as much as possible aloof from all moral appreciation of its personages, and from all deep interest in their fortunes, for in both these cases an entrance will infallibly be given to seriousness. How then does the poet avoid agitating the moral feeling, when the actions he represents are of such a nature as must give rise ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... are a haughty and independent race of people, whose commercial policy it is to prohibit, as much as possible, every species of manufactures[8] and bullion; and encourage the importation of food, and raw produce; holding themselves aloof from Europeans, and particularly jealous of Great Britain, on account of the proximity of her Indian empire; exacting upwards of 1,000l. in fees and port dues[9] on each foreign vessel that enters Canton, the only harbour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... morning after our perilous passage through the gorge, he quite took me into his confidence, talking to me and consulting with me as if I were a man of his own age, while Esau hung aloof looking jealous and answering in a surly way ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... some anti-luxury movement, the formation of some league or guild among the middling classes (where alone intellect is to be found in quantity), the members of which would bind themselves to stand aloof from all the great, silly, banal, ugly, and tedious luxe-activities of the time and not to spend more than a certain sum per annum on eating, drinking, covering their bodies, and being moved about like parcels from one spot of the earth's surface to ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... complaint. To such his manly classical spirit could not readily commend itself, till, after a more attentive perusal, they had got the better of their prejudices, and either acquired or affected a truer taste. A few others stood aloof, merely because they had long before fixed the articles of their poetical creed, and resigned themselves to an absolute despair of ever seeing anything new and original. These were somewhat mortified to find their notions disturbed by the appearance ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... landing on the island, when, far out at sea, the crew of a small fishing-craft saw a column of smoke curling upward from the haunted shore. Was it a device of the fiends to lure them to their ruin? They thought so, and kept aloof. But misgiving seized them. They warily drew near, and descried a female figure in wild attire waving signals from the strand. Thus, at length, was Marguerite rescued, and restored to her native France, where, a few years later, the cosmographer ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... since there was hardly room for five men in the first room. But he had another purpose. He wanted to separate himself from the others, just as Allister always did. Even in a crowded room Allister would seem aloof, and Andrew determined to make ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... conjugate aegroto wherever you find a convenient spot to do it in." The poor boy silently and with difficulty arose, collected his books, and, slinging on his satchel, looked to his schoolfellows, as if he had said, "Which of you will afford me a place where to lay my aching head?" All, however, kept aloof from him; he had caught the contagion, and the contagion, they knew, had swept the people away in vast numbers. At length he spoke. "Is there any boy among you," he inquired, "who will bring me home? You know I am a stranger, an' far from my ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... quest failed, trouble came upon the mind of the wretched culprits. And when sure tracks of our kine were nowhere to be seen, dismal panic filled our guilty hearts. That is why, dreading the penal stripe of the rod, we thought it doleful to return to our own roof. We supposed it safer to hold aloof from the familiar hearth than to bear the hand of punishment. Thus we are fain to put off the punishment; we loathe going back and our wish is to lie hid here and escape our master's eye. This will aid us to elude the avenger of his neglected ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... was the goddess of their idolatry. It deified reason, and sought to control the passions. It longed for the realms of truth and love. It believed in the divine, and detested the gross. Hence the philosophers were not eager for outward rewards, and kept aloof from the demoralizing pleasures of the people. They attired themselves in a different garb, lived retired, and studied the welfare of the soul. Mind was adored, and matter depreciated. They were esoteric men who ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... little girl of five, and two younger ones. They had been fighting for a knife, and in the struggle, the second, Johnnie, had cut his finger—not very badly, but he was frightened at the sight of the blood; and Hester, who might have helped, and who was really sorry, stood sullenly aloof, dreading the scolding her mother always gave her if either of the little ones hurt themselves ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... from any maiden's thoughts To contradict her aged father's will. Therefore, since he to whom I must obey Hath given me now unto your royal self, I will not stand aloof from off the lure, Like crafty dames that most of all deny That which they most desire ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... them, finished his drink in a gulp and stared at the newcomer. The old stare, the aloof stare, an aristocrat looking at an underling as though wondering what made the fellow tick. He said, finally, "I see you have been ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... furnished either "commercially" with slab-like chairs and unyielding settees, or "home-like" with the melancholy bric-a-brac of other summers—crossed tennis rackets, fit-form couches, and depressing Gibson girls. With a feeling of guilt they looked at a few really nice houses, aloof, dignified, and cool—at three hundred a month. They went away from Rye thanking the real ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... true," said the other, half frightened at the effect his words had produced upon the prisoner, who now stepped away from him and stood aloof, withdrawing his wrists from the operation which Leonard Hust ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... reason of that hostility, which had been daily growing in this past week since Monmouth had come to turn the brains of women of all ages. The Misses Pitt, he apprehended, contemned him that he, a young and vigorous man, of a military training which might now be valuable to the Cause, should stand aloof; that he should placidly smoke his pipe and tend his geraniums on this evening of all evenings, when men of spirit were rallying to the Protestant Champion, offering their blood to place him on ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... heart, Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof Falls of his palace, and the storied woof Long woven of many a year with life's whole art Is rent like any rotten weed apart, And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt, And hardly saved by pity. Woe are we That once we loved, and love not; but we know The ghost of love, surviving yet in show, Where scorn has passed, is vain ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... incident in a frightful reign of terror. The emperor kept aloof from his capital, but he filled Rome, and the whole empire, in fact, with spies and informers. The slightest accusation or suspicion was sufficient for the blood-thirsty tyrant. On a mere unproved charge Roman nobles of the highest ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Government and had continued to keep alive their own legislative assembly. Despite Walker's efforts to persuade them to take part in the election of delegates to the constitutional convention, they resolutely held aloof. Yet, as they became convinced that he was acting in good faith, they did participate in the October elections to the territorial Legislature, electing nine out of the thirteen councilors and twenty-four out of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... a bout-drinker, having at intervals these bouts of three or four days of brandy-drinking, when he was drunk for the whole time. He did not think about it. A deep resentment burned in him. He kept aloof ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... in a struggle rendered futile by the equality of the combatants. Edward Beechinor had his money, his superior age, and the possible advantage of being a dying man; Mark Beechinor had his youth and his devotion to an ideal. Near the window, aloof and apart, stood the strange, silent girl whose aroused individuality was to intervene with such effectiveness on behalf of one of the antagonists. It was early ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... gray eyes softened; pride, that had made the love in them brilliant, faded until they grew almost sombre. Silent, her aloof gaze remained fixed on the horizon; her lips rested on each other in sensitive curves. There was no sound save the curling ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... who made part of it, gossiped pleasantly as they rode after the hearse about the news of the morning; and the sole surviving member of her family, whom chance had brought to her door on her burial-day, stood aloof from the hired mourners, and moved not a step to follow her to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... had nothing to do with this charter, we might have some sort of Epicurean excuse to stand aloof, indifferent spectators of what passes in the Company's name in India and in London. But if we are the very cause of the evil, we are in a special manner engaged to the redress; and for us passively to bear with oppressions committed under the sanction of our own authority is in truth and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... case. The means by which I got rid of that, I must employ on the present occasion. Parmeno is coming with the servants; it is far from convenient that he should be here under present circumstances, for he was the only person to whom I trusted the secret that I kept aloof from her when I first married her. I am afraid lest, if he should frequently hear her cries, he might find out that she is in labor. He must be dispatched by me ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... at each end of the bridge like a grenadier sentry, and giving Petrak, who had the wheel, a stern look as he passed. Buckrow was at the port end of the bridge, with a glass to his eyes scanning the rim of the sea; but Meeker, or Thirkle, kept aloof from his men, and he might well have been an admiral on the bridge of ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... at this unusual generosity, yet she was, she realized, more startled than surprised. For had not little Rose been the one creature Martin had loved and to whom he had enjoyed giving pleasure? It had been charming—the response of the big, aloof man to the merry child of seven, but that child was now a woman, and, in all probability, a beautiful one. Wasn't there danger of far more complicated emotions which might prove even uprooting in their consequences? Mrs. Wade blushed. Really, she chided herself sternly, she wouldn't ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... where the strange missionaries live, and beyond even to marvellous Simla, where the streets are paved with silver, and anyone, look you, can get service with the Sahibs, who ride about in two-wheeled carts and spend money with a spade. Presently, grave and aloof, walking very heavily, the lama joined himself to the chatter under the eaves, and they gave him great room. The thin air refreshed him, and he sat on the edge of precipices with the best of them, and, when talk languished, flung pebbles into the void. Thirty miles away, as the eagle flies, lay ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... say those who hunted well. Memba Sasa, in his profession as gunbearer, had to accompany those who hunted badly. In them he took no pride; from them he held aloof in spirit; but for them he did his conscientious best, upheld by the dignity ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... no mean tribute, coming from one who held himself aloof from all the personal advantages belonging to the society whose rules he did not recognize. The opinion to which the Irish members of Parnell's following were amenable was not made at Westminster; it did not exist there—except, and that in its ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... my own," said the Editor, watch in hand, "and I see him very distinctly. Powerfully built, with a boyish face and a wealth of fairish hair over one side of the noble brow. Aloof but vigilant. Restive but determined. Quick to praise but quicker to blame. Adaptive, volcanic, relentless and terribly immanent—terribly. That is my god. A king, no doubt, but"—here he sighed—"by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... thou hast much to tell, Some curious tender tale, Thy kindness I with joy accept, To rest beneath thy roof; For now I see an evening storm Is sweeping o'er the vale, And here in this thy airy nest I well can sleep aloof." ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... prosecution of the War of 1812. They had made the Commonwealth. They understood its Government. They knew it was a part of themselves, their own organization. They had not acquired the state of mind that enabled them to stand aloof and regard government as something apart and separate from the people. It would never have occurred to them that they could not transact for themselves any other business just as well as they could transact for themselves ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... themselves and bear along in their course—in their plans and pleasures and daily doings—the force of all the life of the place. If any expedition of consequence is afoot, they are the expedition; others may join in, or hold aloof, or be passed by; in which last cases, it is only in a feeble, rippling fashion that they go their ways and seek some separate pleasure in by-nooks and eddies, while the gay hum of the main channel goes whirling on. At Outledge this party ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... at the Guildhall, in the City of London, when the war was still in its early days, I asked my fellow-countrymen with what countenance, with what conscience, had we basely chose to stand aloof, we could have watched from day to day the terrible unrolling of events—public faith shamelessly broken, the freedom of a small people trodden in the dust, the wanton invasion of Belgium and then of France by hordes who leave behind them at ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... every time And rich and wicked justly flayed. Old men are tearful When I show them what they might have been. And others, not so old, Bask in the sunshine of my fairy tales. The lovers see new ways to woo; And wives see ways to use old brooms. Some nights I see the jeweled opera crowd Who seem aloof but inwardly are fond of me Because I've caught the gracious beauty of their pets. Then some there are who watch my changing face To catch new history's shadow As it falls from day to day. And at the ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... speculator be a man of substance, he employs similar means in his defence. Free fights occur on market-days, ending in many a broken head—sometimes in slaughter. The battle is directed by Gomasthas (bailiffs) on either side, with the full knowledge of their masters, who keep discreetly aloof from the fray. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... calling for more tactful handling. Conward's eye had not failed to appraise the charm of the young woman's appearance. He would gladly have ingratiated himself with her, but he was conscious of a force in her personality that held him aloof. And that consciousness made him desire the more to gain her confidence. . . . However, this was a business transaction. He did not seize upon Mrs. Hardy's remark that the house seemed perfectly satisfactory; on the contrary, he insisted on showing other houses, which he quoted ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... his hair uncombed. He looked haggard about the eyes and quite old. Carrie noticed this, and it did not appeal to her. She wanted to be good-natured and sympathetic, but something about the man held her aloof. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... later he had read almost a column account of a flood down the Mississippi. The A. P. had collected items from St. Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis, Cairo, Natchez, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, and fired them into the aloof East. New York, Boston, Bangor, Utica, Albany, and other important centres had learned for the first time that a "levee"—whatever that might be—had suffered a cravasse; a steamboat and some towbarges had been wrecked, that Cairo was registering 63.3 on the gauge; that some Negroes had ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... bend Round curtained talk of friend with friend, While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain 120 Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane! Now the kind nymph to Bacchus born By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted opon her natal morn By him with fire, by her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the Xavarian I thought I could discern division into factions ere we had reached Helium. There were those who gathered about Carthoris and myself whenever the opportunity presented, while about an equal number held aloof from us. They offered us only the most courteous treatment, but were evidently bound by their superstitious belief in the doctrine of Dor and Iss and Korus. I could not blame them, for I knew how strong a hold a creed, however ridiculous ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he was very weak. It seemed as if a great sweetness came close to his face, and he could have sworn that something wet and hot fell lightly on his forehead; but when he opened his eyes, the girl was sitting aloof, her face in ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... many of the warm-hearted Californian sons of the South who were attached to the Union. Cut off in a distant land, they held aloof from approving secession. Grateful for the shelter of the peaceful land in which their hard-won homes were made, it was only after actual war that the ties of blood carried them away and ranged them under ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... agitation and prolonged suspense,—when Romanism and Reform, the Crescent and the Cross, despotic power and constitutional freedom, were contending for mastery, and no government or nation could stand wholly aloof from a contest in which the fate, not of empires alone, but of civilization, was involved. Spain, during that period, was the bulwark of the Church against the attacks of the Reformers, and the bulwark of Christendom against the attacks of the Moslem. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of a bold, eccentric, and violent temper. It is not to the credit of Bacon that when Essex, through his rashness and eccentricities, found himself arraigned for treason, Bacon deserted him, and did not simply stand aloof, but was the chief agent in his prosecution. Nor is this all: after making a vehement and effective speech against him, as counsel for the prosecution—a speech which led to his conviction and execution—Bacon wrote an uncalled-for ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... friendship for P. Clodius, is doing his best to get the bill promulgated by himself (though in accordance with a decree of the senate and on a point of religion) rejected. Messalla as yet is strongly for severe measures. The loyalists hold aloof owing to the entreaties of Clodius: bands of ruffians are being got together: I myself, at first a stern Lycurgus, am becoming daily less and less keen about it: Cato is hot and eager. In short, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... men, who had followed Mayor Morrison into the State House, had been holding aloof, politely, from a conference which seemed to have no bearing on the political situation. They hurried behind and overtook Stewart and the young lady at the head of the stairway; their ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Vasudeva, he might be irritated with thee. Feed thou by every means in thy power those that are dear and devoted to thy lord and always seek his good. Thou shouldst, however, always keep thyself aloof from those that are hostile to and against thy lord and seek to do him injury, as also from those that are addicted to deceit. Foregoing all excitement and carelessness in the presence of men, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Others, shocked at first at hearing the old watchwords and traditions of their homes decried and put aside, found themselves, when they least expected it, passing from the letter to the spirit, from the technical and formal theory to the wide and living truth. And thus, though many of course held aloof, and not a few became hostile, a large number, one by one, some rapidly, others slowly, some unreservedly, others with large and jealous reserves, more and more took in the leading idea of the movement, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... the same stock, and had had much the same associations as her schoolmates, so one can hardly say why she so hated mean gossip and so instinctively held herself aloof ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wife brings all that is best into a man's life; it is she who weaves sweet dreams into his dull sleep. You know nothing of all this as yet; and your worthy old friend—to whom my greetings—has held aloof from it all his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lose our majority we are prepared to retire; to strengthen us we must have the entire confidence of the Governor-General exhibited most unequivocally—and also his patronage—to be bestowed exclusively on our political adherents. We feel that His Excellency has kept aloof from us. The opposition pronounce that his sentiments are with them. There must be some acts of his, some public declaration in favour of responsible government, and of confidence in the Cabinet, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... father suddenly; and the appearance of cowardice and prevarication displeasing Dr. May further, rendered his tone louder, and frightened Tom the more, giving his manner an air of sullen reserve that was most unpleasant. At school it was much the same—he kept aloof from Norman, and threw himself more into the opposite faction, by whom he was shielded from all punishment, except what they chose themselves ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... of excitement. Charlotte jumped up and followed Eddy, but he re-entered the room dancing aloof with the telegram. In spite of her efforts to reach it, he succeeded in tearing it open. Charlotte was almost ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... gentleman-like habits, aristocratical sprinklings, and the march of intellect to boot, they do contrive to come pretty near to the honest folks before the mast in the article of ingenious ferocity. The captain, of course, and, generally speaking, all the officers keep quite aloof, pocketing up their dignity with vast care, and ready, at a moment's warning, to repress any undue familiarity. As things proceed, however, one or two of the officers may possibly become so much interested in the skylarking scenes going forward as to approach a little too near, and laugh ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... salvation. And she herself, when she was compelled, entered into the war, and built walls and ships, and fought with the Lacedaemonians on behalf of the Parians. Now the king fearing this city and wanting to stand aloof, when he saw the Lacedaemonians growing weary of the war at sea, asked of us, as the price of his alliance with us and the other allies, to give up the Hellenes in Asia, whom the Lacedaemonians had previously handed over to him, ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... private need, at the mercy of circumstances. Befoulment had so far eaten into his name, that, with occasionally the best of desires, and always the greatest of energies, there stood a blight over both. He felt that a moral leprosy incrusted him, which repelled the good, and kept aloof the prudent. The contemned inferior, in moral standing, of those that surrounded him, it was difficult to be honest, and impossible to be independent. By a sort of law of nature, too, his tarred repute attracted to it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... His place is now so well defined that death—which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author makes upon his generation—cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his successes were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... un-Hayesboro-like way, and all the boys are in business for him in different states, except the oldest one, who is Congressman from this district, and one other who is in a Chicago bank. Yes, I know I have the most satisfactorily aloof family in the wide world. I can just go on feeding on their love and depend upon them not to interfere with any of my plans for living life. However, if anything happens to me I can be sure that their love will spring ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... old limits of Assiniboia, as soon as it became a part of Canada. Some of the Hudson's Bay Company's employes were not in their hearts pleased at the transfer, and the probable change in their position in a country where they had been so long masters. Although these men stood aloof from the insurrection, yet their influence was not exercised at the commencement of the troubles, in favour of peace and order, or in exposing the plans of the insurgents, of which some of them ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... at the back of his visit to us that night I cannot even now imagine. Neither is it clear why he held aloof from me, who am his superior in practically the same service. There we are, from the commencement, confronted with a very singular happening, but scarcely so singular as the denouement. Wolff vanished from your house that night ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the tide. The wave of the reconquest of the Netherlands ebbed from that moment. Parma took no more towns from the Hollanders. The Catholic peers and gentlemen of England, who had held aloof from the Established Church, waiting ad illud tempus for a religious revolution, accepted the verdict of Providence. They discovered that in Anglicanism they could keep the faith of their fathers, yet remain in communion with their Protestant fellow-countrymen, use the same ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Pegasius of Ilium alone laid down his office for a priesthood; but he had always been a heathen at heart, and worshipped the gods even while he held his bishopric. The Christians upon the whole stood firm. Even the heathens were little moved. Julian's own teachers held cautiously aloof from his reforms; and if meaner men paused in their giddy round of pleasure, it was only to amuse themselves with the strange spectacle of imperial earnestness. Neither friends nor enemies seemed able to take him ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... this off. These burdens are real, and little by little they kill the victims of this evil and unnatural way of life. And the psychology created by years of this kind of thing makes true meekness seem as unreal as a dream, as aloof as a star. To all the victims of the gnawing disease Jesus says, "Ye must become as little children." For little children do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from what they have without relating it to something else or someone else. Only ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... one cavalier in particular appears to hold himself aloof, neither speaking to his neighbors nor mixing in the throng. As he does not look like a "sulky swell," rendered taciturn by an overweening sense of his own importance, he is probably either a new resident in the ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... wait in vain for the sounds that rise From the tread of his horse's hoof, And still the mists hide his form away And forever he stays aloof; His shining face and his eyes so bright In the shades of the distance hide, And out of the night with the stars bedight He hath never approached ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... That hushed the stormy main: Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed: Mountains, ye mourn in vain Modred, whose magic song Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head. On dreary Arvon's shore they lie, Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale; Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail; The famished eagle screams, and passes by. Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, Ye died amidst your dying country's cries— ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... neutral. While including all Jews, it dare not identify itself with any section of them. It dare not be either a movement of the classes or of the masses. While holding scrupulously aloof from the issues which divide modern Jewry as part of modern humanity, it must keep its eye fixed on one point, the securing of a Jewish center for the Jewish people as a whole, in which the ills that afflict humanity may be cured in the prophetic ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... to form, intuitively, a correct judgment on a subject so complex, and disposed only to act knowingly, would be unwilling to make so hasty a decision, and consequently be disinclined to attend such meetings. Many intelligent men, therefore, stood aloof, while the most intemperate assumed, as usual, the name of the people; pronounced a definitive and unqualified condemnation of every article in the treaty; and, with the utmost confidence, assigned reasons ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... whole subsequent course of European history. Alexander the Great had died too soon to permit him to engage in any plan of conquest in the West. In the wars of his successors the Romans had stood aloof. Now they were brought into conflict with a Greek monarch, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who was a relative of Alexander, and had married into the royal family of Egypt. He was a man of fascinating person and address, a brilliant and famous ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Club, played whist, gave and received a great deal of hospitality, and made some lifelong friendships. Among his contemporaries was Ruskin, of whom his recollection was certainly depressing. "He seemed to keep himself aloof from everybody, to seek no friends, and to have none. I never met him in anyone else's rooms, or at any social gathering. I see him now, looking rather crazy, taking ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... a wide distance between rudeness and reserve. You can be courteously polite and at the same time extremely aloof to a stranger who does not appeal to you, or you can be welcomingly friendly to another whom you like on sight. Individual temperament has also to be taken into consideration: one person is naturally austere, another genial. The latter ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... I will not say, doctor, 'I've seen, and sure I ought to know.' But I have been in America, and I have found there, what many others will testify, a very numerous class of persons who hold opinions very like your own: persons who altogether keep aloof from public life, because they consider it abandoned to the rabble; but who are as refined, as enlightened, as full of sympathy for all that tends to justice and liberty, as any whom you may ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the subject of war, human government, and church and family government. The more I reflect upon the subject the more difficulty I find, and the more decidedly am I of opinion that we ought to hold all these matters aloof from the cause of abolition. Our good friend, H. C. Wright, with the best intentions in the world, is doing great injury by a different course. He is making the Anti-slavery party responsible in a great degree for his, to say the least, startling opinions.... ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... orders for a horse to be saddled and brought round to the inn door directly after dinner. This was a move I had not expected and it threw me a little aback, for although I had thus far managed to hold myself so aloof from Mr. Blake, even while keeping him under my eye, that no suspicion of my interest in his movements had as yet been awakened, how could I thus for the third time follow his order with one precisely similar, without attracting an attention that would be fatal ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... of working at her trade—she held herself aloof from people, and stayed by herself. She did not go regularly to kirk and meeting. She had spent good money having the 'Allan Campbell' put in order, yet she would neither lend nor hire the boat when ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... intimate association with human experiences. On the other hand, it is true that the tendency toward a unitary conception of the divine government of the world is in inverse proportion to such humanization; the more definitely aloof from men the gods have stood (as among the Hebrews and the Persians), the easier it has been for the people to attach themselves to a single deity as all-sufficient. The Romans form no exception to this ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the idea of complimenting him, but the doctor had held himself aloof from all the learned bodies—belonging, as he did, to the church militant and not to the church polemical. He found his time better employed in seeking than in discussing, in discovering rather ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... uphold the principles which he had cherished from boyhood. From year to year, the election of Mr. Ruggles to the State legislature was strongly opposed. Cilley's services in overcoming this opposition were too valuable to be dispensed with; and thus, at a period when most young men still stand aloof from the world, he had already taken his post as a leading politician. He afterwards found cause to regret that so much time had been abstracted from his professional studies; nor did the absorbing and exciting nature of his political career afford him any subsequent opportunity ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Very soon, however, there would be trouble—some child would cry out; there would be blows; nurses would run forward, scoldings, protests, captives led away weeping ... and then Sarah would return slowly to her seat, her gaze aloof, cynical, remote. She would carefully explain to Hortense the reason of the uproar. She had done nothing—her conscience was clear. These silly little idiots. She would break into French, culled elaborately from ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... do think so, myself." Carl said it with a spurious society manner. In Gertie's aristocratic presence he desired to keep aloof from all vulgar persons. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the girl she despised when by so doing she would imperil her own schemes. She was too keenly selfish to cut off her nose to spite her face. Sally could imagine Mrs. Standish as remaining all this while conspicuously aloof, overseeing the search with her habitual manner of weary toleration, but inwardly more than a little tremulous with fear lest the detective or Mercedes chance upon that jewel-case and so upset her claim against the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... that way. He was, moreover, entirely devoid of personal ambition, and had no vulgar longing for personal power. After resigning his commission he returned quietly to Mount Vernon, but he did not hold himself aloof from public affairs. On the contrary, he watched their course with the utmost anxiety. He saw the feeble Confederation breaking to pieces, and he soon realized that that form of government was an utter failure. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... to the Japan of the past—not the barbaric or uncivilised Japan brought into contact with civilisation and suddenly discarding its barbarism, which is, I fear, the conception many persons still have, but, as I have sought to show, a highly civilised country holding itself aloof from European influences and excluding, so long as possible, the European invasion of its shores just because it had convinced itself by painful experience that European ideas and manners and methods were undesirable ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... God honoured his ministry, and he became the founder of a flourishing church in Hare Court, London. His preface bears the date of September, 1688; and, at a good old age, he followed Bunyan to the celestial city, in 1689. It is painful to find the author's Baptist friends keeping aloof because of his liberal sentiments; but it is delightful to witness the hearty affection with which an Independent minister recommends the work of a Baptist; and truly refreshing to hear so learned a man commending most earnestly the work of a poor, unlettered, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... furious. He had not been in college two weeks before he could distinguish the sophomores from the seniors by the look on their faces. He hated the sneering "Sophs," and felt rising in him the desire to fight. But he both feared and admired seniors. They seemed so aloof, so far above him. He was in awe of them, and had a hopeless longing to be like them. And as for the freshmen, it took no second glance for Ken to pick them out. They were of two kinds—those who ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... hall to welcome him, which she did with great kindness; for though he was not of her kin, I believe she loved him better than my father did. But that is saying little, for who was there about her that she did not love? Even those who held aloof from my father as a stubborn Independent had a kindness for my mother, who seemed to understand nought of differences in religion, except ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... responded. "When the Chinese men adopted the Manchu style of wearing the queue, it was stipulated that they should not interfere with the style of the woman's dress, and that no Chinese should be taken to the palace as concubines or slaves to the Emperor. We have therefore always held ourselves aloof from the Manchus. Our men did this to protect us, and as a result no Chinese lady has ever been received at court, except, of course, the painting teacher of the Empress Dowager, who, before she could enter the palace, was compelled ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... not have explained just wherein they differed from the others. Sam Pretty Cow and Shorty he could hobnob with as of yore,—Sam in particular giving him much pleasure with his unbroken reserve, his unreadable Indian eyes and his wide-lipped grin. The others were like Duke, Tom and Al,—slightly aloof, a bit guarded in ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... slowly past it, and peering through the high iron fence, could not help noting an air of unwonted excitement about the place, usually so aloof, so coldly serene. Automobiles standing out in front. People going up and down. They didn't look very cheerful. Just as if it mattered whether anything happened to her ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But Oswald and Dicky were grave and stood aloof. They were old enough to see that being good was all very well, but after all you had to get the boy ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... take a languid interest in the watch—which had a picture of Marie pasted inside the back of the case, by the way. "Ee?" he inquired, with a pitiful little catch in his breath, and held it up for Bud to see the busy little second hand. "Ee?" he smiled tearily and tried to show Cash, sitting aloof on his bench beside the head of his bunk and staring into the fire. But Cash gave no sign that he heard or saw anything save the visions his memory was conjuring in the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... people in northern Greece were either partisans of the Persians, like the Thebans, or were unwilling to make any great sacrifices for the preservation of their independence. In Peloponnesus, the powerful city of Argos and the Achaeans stood aloof. From the more distant members of the Hellenic race no assistance was obtained. Gelon, the ruler of Syracuse, offered to send a powerful armament, provided the command of the allied forces was intrusted to him; ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... said Will; and the boy leaped down in an instant, greatly to his brother's disgust, for he wanted to go on board as well, but held aloof, and whisked his cane about viciously, listening to all that ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... could weep were we not so near port; a group in the stern beside the wheel watches a glorious sunset, which fills the space we sit in under the awning with a dull red and across the light a missionary paces, aloof and alone; a melancholy stooping silhouette against the glorious afterglow—to and fro—to and fro—a lanky, long-haired youth, his hands behind his back, looking into his particular future, a life devoted to convert the gracious, charitable followers of Gautauma ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... wanting peace himself, his fierce dissatisfaction fixes on all that is weak, corrupt and imperfect around him; and instead of a calm and steady co-operation with all those who are endeavoring to apply the highest ideas as remedies for the worst evils, he holds himself aloof in savage isolation; and cherishes (though he dare not own) a stern joy at the prospect of that Catastrophe which is to turn loose again the elements of man's social life, and give for a time the victory to evil;—in hopes that each new convulsion of the world must bring us nearer ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... the Princess Louise are in the wine trade and stock-broking business,—and all the old knightly blood of England is mingling itself by choice with that of the lowest commoners—what's the use of my remaining aloof, and refusing to go with the spirit of the age? Besides, Marcia loves me, and it's pleasant ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... floriculture. But there were lilacs still in bloom, lavender and white, and their perfume stirred memories. The houses in Eden Village were not crowded; for the first quarter of a mile they passed hardly more than a dozen. After that, although they became more neighborly, each held itself well aloof. Then came a small church with a disproportionately tall spire, a watering trough, the Town Hall, and "Prout's Store, Zenas Prout 2nd, Proprietor." Here the gray sidled up to the ancient hitching-post. The boy tossed the reins over the dashboard and jumped out. "You don't need to hold ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... assured of it, ye Dresdeners, all flurried, palisaded, barricaded; no hair of you shall be harmed." After a day or two, the flurry of Saxony subsided; Prussians, under strict discipline, molest no private person; pay their way; keep well aloof, to south and to north, of Dresden (all but the necessary ammunition-escorts do);—and require of the Official people nothing but what the Law of the Reich authorizes to "Imperial Auxiliaries" in such case. "The Saxons themselves," Friedrich observes, "had some 40,000, but scattered ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... disguise. Not anxious to reveal the prosaic facts, she humored him in his imaginations and a web of mystification was thus formed. A strong attraction grew up on both sides and, though for some time Laura Ruemelin maintained the mystery and held herself aloof from him, a relationship was formed and a child born. Thereupon, in 1893, they married. Before long, however, there was disillusion on both sides. She began to detect the morbid, chimerical, and unpractical aspects of his character, and he realized that not only was his wife ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... deep obligations to Literature—that a natural turn for reading, and intellectual pursuits, probably preserved me from the moral shipwreck so apt to befall those who are deprived in early life of the paternal pilotage. At the very least my books kept me aloof from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloons, with their degrading orgies. For the closet associate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the noble, though silent discourse of Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly seek, or put up ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the brain. And thus it chanced, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. 415 Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted—ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining— 420 They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between. But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, 425 The marks of that which once ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Italians to believe that the British fleet will protect them against France, though as a fact we all know that the House of Commons will not allow a British fleet to do anything of the kind. France has wholly given up the Temporal Power, and would not have threatened Italy had Italy held aloof from the Triple Alliance; and, in spite of a recent speech by the Minister of Austria-Hungary which was intended to 'pay out' Italy for her talks with Russia, it is not Austria that would have raised the question. Our Government have given Germany, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... bouquets of flowers sent, it should rather be to the victims of crime, than to the criminal. But when a man is crushed with a sense of guilt, and down on the ground, that is not the time to spurn him; when disgrace is added to trouble, friends must not stand aloof. Many a poor fellow is driven to suicide by this course who might have been saved by kindness ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... things of this world, and would not paint for money, nor for prince's favor; nor would he take places of power and trust in the Church, or else, so great was his piety, they had made a bishop of him; but he kept ever aloof and walked in the shade. He used to say, 'They that would do Christ's work must walk with Christ.' His pictures of angels are indeed wonderful, and their robes are of all dazzling colors, like the rainbow. It is most surely believed among us that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... them, for she was the only god that went among them; the others were not there, but stayed quietly each in his own home among the dells and valleys of Olympus. All of them blamed the son of Saturn for wanting to give victory to the Trojans, but father Jove heeded them not: he held aloof from all, and sat apart in his all-glorious majesty, looking down upon the city of the Trojans, the ships of the Achaeans, the gleam of bronze, and alike upon the slayers and ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... gone by I have given time to the vineyard, but nothing at all of myself. I held myself aloof and apart while Duty, like a stern taskmaster, urged me to the things I hated, merely to please Mother, who had done so much for me that she had the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... so aloof of late that her trouble, never generally known, was nearly forgotten in Marlott. But it became evident to her that she could never be really comfortable again in a place which had seen the collapse of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... last in a pause by the roulette table at the rear of the room. Curious to watch the game in being, he lingered there, head cocked shrewdly on one shoulder, a speculative pensiveness informing his eyes, his interest plainly aloof and impersonal. This despite the fact that his emotions of intestinal felicity were momentarily becoming more intense: the torchlight procession was in full swing, leaving an enduring ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Unattainable in Art" might well be called "The Struggle for the Beautiful." It pictures the unending struggle with the gross and stupid, both objective and subjective, that confronts the champion of the beautiful. Art stands serene, aloof, unassailable in the center of the fray. The panel of "Pegasus" shows the winged steed of the poets controlled by a true aspirant, attended by Music, ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... smiling a little, but sadly. "Except in that old legend, however, I don't think Christianity ever mentions tongs. If you can't love your enemies, and pray for them, and hold out a brotherly hand to them, perhaps it were indeed better to hold aloof and keep as quiet as ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... me, who had been standing all the while aloof, and stretched out her hands towards me, ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... stands aloof from the village and a little above it, is Wanley Manor. The county history tells us that Wanley was given in the fifteenth century to that same religious foundation, and that at the dissolution of monasteries the Manor passed into the hands of Queen Catherine. The ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... small dignities bored him, and he showed a contempt which he could not conceal. The Doctor and the Curate were the only people Pen cared for in the place—even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust of him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from the village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she tried, forsooth, to keep her head up with the great County families. She, indeed! Mrs. Barker at the Factory has four times the butcher's meat that goes up to Fairoaks, with all ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with Engels. We thought it strange that he should be holding aloof from the great struggle, and even I began to lose faith in him. He had told us that the crowing of the Gallican cock would be the sign for the revolution to begin, yet he was silent. It was not till later that I learned from his own lips that he saw ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... joint-commission sailed from San Lucar on November 11, 1516, but in separate vessels, the Jeronymites keeping aloof from Las Casas, who they contrived should not embark on the same ship with themselves. Their vessel reached Hispaniola thirteen days earlier than the other, which had been obliged to stop at Puerto Rico ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... like ordinary mortals, in general society, for the rest of the evening. A very pleasant evening it was, spite of this new element; which was got rid of as much as possible by means of the window recess, where Janetta and David encamped composedly, a little aloof from ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... against their emigrant oppressors. But, though encouraged by some old transportationists amongst the magistrates, and by the government press, the scheme was too monstrous for success. The respectable expirees stood aloof, and even detested an organisation founded on the reminiscences of crime. A few noisy meetings and inflammatory speeches were sufficient to open the eyes of most to the gulf of caste into which their own protectors ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... an institution which the masters of the school wisely connived at, while holding aloof themselves from its proceedings. There was no restraint as to the questions to be discussed or the manner and time of the discussion, provided the rules of the school were not infringed. The management was entirely in the hands of the boys, who elected ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... cushion, of value only for what it has around it. However, it is perhaps for the best. The handle to his name may make him welcome in the camp, for from what I hear there is some dissatisfaction at the way in which the gentry stand aloof ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which in provinces always attaches to ancient birth, won unexpected and general favour to his views. At the rectory they heard of him constantly, not only through occasional visitors, but through Mr. Merton, who was ever thrown in his way; but he continued to keep himself aloof from the house. Every one (Mr. Merton excepted) missed him,—even Caroline, whose able though worldly mind could appreciate his conversation; the children mourned for their playmate, who was so much more affable than their own stiff-neckclothed brothers; and Evelyn was at least more serious ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... worldly, or only seeing the world, or both? and is a man very wrong for being after all only a man? Which is the most reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the struggle of life, calmly contemplating it, or he who descends to the ground, and takes his part in the contest? "That philosopher," Pen said, "had held a great place among the leaders of the world, and enjoyed to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... civil jealousy with which some frontier communities regard the Federal power, heightened in this instance by the uncompromising attitude the Government had taken towards the settlers' severe Indian policy, had kept the people of Logport aloof from the Fort. The regimental band might pipe to them on Saturdays, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... most trusted friends and helpers. His work on behalf of the St. George's Guild had been energetic and sincere: and he had received the support of a number of strangers, among whom were people of responsible station and position. But he was surprised to find that many of his personal friends held aloof. He was still more surprised to learn, on returning from Venice, full of new hope and stronger convictions in his mission, that the caution of one upon whom he had counted as a firm ally had dissuaded an intending adherent from joining in the work. A man of the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... a cup of tea, where he stood aloof from his wife, who was talking with Miss Kingsbury and Mrs. Sewell; Irene was with Miss Nanny Corey. He could not hear what they were talking about; but if Penelope had come, he knew that she would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "I bore aloof from making many acquaintances; yet, ere long, I became pretty extensively acquainted with the people of the place. It went abroad that I was a bard from the mountains, and the rumour affixed to me a popularity which I did not enjoy. A party of young men in the village had prepared ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... introduced avarice, and excessive pleasures a longing for them, amidst luxury and a passion for ruining ourselves and destroying every thing else. But let complaints, which will not be agreeable even then, when perhaps they will be also necessary, be kept aloof at least from the first stage of commencing so great a work. We should rather, if it was usual with us (historians) as it is with poets, begin with good omens, vows and prayers to the gods and goddesses to vouchsafe good success to our efforts in ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off look; and as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to speak to him. Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on the dark background of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable, enticing, with its fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last seen it. "Are you looking for something?" she seemed to say: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... she told Priam the names of the chief Greek warriors, and of Ulysses, who was shorter by a head than Agamemnon, but broader in chest and shoulders. She wondered that she could not see her own two brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and thought that they kept aloof in shame for her sin; but the green grass covered their graves, for they had both died in battle, far away in ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... not. His manner discouraged her. He would begin to ask questions, questions which she could not answer without seriously incriminating herself. But her conscience would not allow her to stand entirely aloof from the tragedy in which her husband's scapegrace son was involved. She felt a strange, unaccountable desire to meet this girl Howard had married. In a quick undertone to ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... not hold himself aloof, for that would attract attention at once. The thing was to join in it and yet not be in it, to make himself little and big according to the requirements of the moment, so as to be at one time unseen, and at another to exert a terrifying effect. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Afric's strand, And crops with dancing head the daisy'd land; With rosy wreathes Europa's hand adorns His fringed forehead and his pearly horns; Light on his back the sportive damsel bounds, And, pleas'd, he moves along the flowery grounds; Bears with slow step his beauteous prize aloof, Dips in the lucid flood his ivory hoof; Then wets his velvet knees, and wading laves His silky sides, amid the dimpling waves. While her fond train with beckoning hands deplore, Strain their blue eyes, and shriek along the shore: Beneath her robe she draws ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... head very high. Later, in consequence of some little indiscretions of her brother at the time when he was set free in the world—the result of the popular superstition held by him that "the world owed him a living,"—she held herself aloof from and ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... was constant in the more positive fashion. When they began to get on in the world, and his business talent brought him into relations with people much above them socially, he yielded to her shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the working class. Pasinkov was extremely courteous and gentle to everybody, though he never sought the society of any one. If he were rudely treated, he was neither humiliated nor sullen; he simply withdrew and held himself aloof, with a sort of regretful look, as it were biding his time. This was just how he behaved with me. About two months passed. One bright summer day I happened to go out of the playground after a noisy game of leap-frog, and walking ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... this that the "Centenary"—mispronounced in every manner conceivable—began to obsess the town. Superior and aloof persons, like the Orgreaves, had for weeks heard a good deal of vague talk about the Centenary from people whom intellectually they despised, and had condescended to the Centenary as an amiable and excusable affair which lacked ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... red, sullen, thundering river, with its swift, changeful, endless, contending strife—for that was tragic. And she rejected the frowning mass of red rock, upreared, riven and split and canyoned, so grim and aloof—for that was barren. But she accepted the vast sloping valley of sage, rolling gray and soft and beautiful, down to the dim mountains and purple ramparts of the horizon. Lucy did not know what she yearned for, she did not know why the desert called to her, she did not ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... shrink from the creation of an antipope. Urban precipitated and made inevitable this disastrous event. He was now alone; the Cardinal of St. Peter's was dead; Florence, Milan, and the Orsini stood aloof; they seemed only to wait to be thrown off by Urban, to join the adverse faction. Urban at first declared his intention to create nine cardinals; he proceeded at once, and without warning, to create twenty-six.[65] By this step ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Bosnia was a retrograde step, since it was causing the Serbs of that province, who until the occupation had been on good terms with the Catholic minority and the Serbs of Croatia—about 40 per cent. of the population—to stand very much aloof from the Croats. This state of things was naturally very pleasing to the Magyar imperialist Ban, Count Khuen-Hedervary, whereas Strossmayer's Yugoslav idea would have, owing to the intermingling of the two religions, a particularly favourable ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... pass to the important fact that this class of the poor, though numerically insignificant by comparison with the poor in general, are yet so much in evidence as the objects of Christian zeal, and the church wastes so much time in coddling them, that the self-respecting poor often hold aloof. It is a common thing to hear a poor man say that he is not going to attend church, and be suspected of {170} trying to get something. It does not increase his respect for Christians to find them easily deceived, and it outrages his sense ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... night," laughed Buckingham. "Yon love-sick fellow, methinks," he continued, pointing to a figure, well aloof beneath the trees, who was watching the scene most jealously. It was none other than Hart, who rarely failed to have an eye on Nell's terrace and who instantly stole ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... disagreeable. There he was certain to find groups of South Harniss youth of both sexes, talking, giggling, skylarking and flirting. Sometimes he joined one or the other of these groups; quite as often he did not, but kept aloof and by himself, for it may as well be acknowledged now, if it is not already plain, that the son of Miguel Carlos Speranza had inherited a share of his father's temperament and self-esteem. The whim of the moment might lead him to favor these young people with his society, but he was far from considering ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... comedians to entertain me. And I, what can I call myself—pure reason? No, a disgusting title. Rather, Unreason, since I am after all the Indifferent One. But all this is a quibble inspired by modesty. I am God. I am that which men have worshipped—the aloof one, the ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... and possess nothing, and pitiless as it is shameless."—And when this day arrives the extortioners will find that they stand alone. For the characteristic of an aristocracy which cares only for itself is to live aloof in a closed circle. Having forgotten the public, it also neglects its subordinates; after being separated from the nation it separates itself from its own adherents. Like a group of staff-officers on furlough, it indulges in Sports without giving itself further concern about inferior ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not doing so he goes against all the principles of the Independents. Ever since they have been in existence they have always stood up for freedom, and we are having the large yellow flag worked with the words, Civil and Religious Liberty. It will be a bad thing for us if he holds aloof. I cannot understand," he continued, getting eloquent, "how a Dissenting minister can make up his mind not to vote against a party which has been answerable for all the oppression and all the wrongs in English history, and for all our useless ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before you. That wisdom is the religion of the cross. And you stand aloof from it; you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, 'I am as the wise men who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth was crucified.' And that is your wisdom! To be as the dead whose eyes are closed, and whose ear is deaf to the work of God that has been since ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... to aid me in keeping aloof from the tyrant of my country, whom instinctively I hated, I confined myself to books and such lore yet more than my natural inclination prompted, though that was strong enough—I had made a solemn vow, rather ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... Frayne paced up and down the dining-room, hearing from time to time what was going on, for he had been sent out of his cousin's room by the doctor. Here he was conscious of the fact that his fellow-pupils all kept aloof, grouping together and talking in low tones. They were discussing the affray, he knew, and a word here and there told him that the causes of the encounter ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... thinking, an important official was aloof. The greater his importance, the greater must be his isolation. The Occeq of Saarkkad himself was never seen except by a handful of picked nobles, who, themselves, were never seen except by their underlings. It was a long, roundabout way of doing business, ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... skilled workers still held aloof from these processions, although their haggard faces bore involuntary testimony to their sufferings. Although privation reigned supreme in their desolate homes, where there was often neither food nor light nor fire, they were too 'proud' to parade their misery ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and Soho seemed more than ever the disenchanted home of rapscallionism. Alone, the Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily painted, with its blue tubs and the dwarf trees therein, retained an aloof and Frenchified self-respect. It was the slack hour, and pale trim waitresses were preparing the little tables for dinner. Soames went through into the private part. To his discomfiture Annette answered his knock. She, too, looked pale and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a definite resolution to remedy matters, Bobby felt better, even though he would have to wait another year. This recovery of spirit was completed the next day. He went with some apprehension to ask Celia to walk again. She had seemed to him so aloof the night before, that he could hardly believe her unchanged. However, she assented to the expedition with alacrity. Hardly had they quitted the hotel grounds when Bobby shot his question ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
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