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More "Insignificant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shot concocted this morning in my berth: I had always before been trying it in English, which insisted on being either insignificant or fulsome: I cannot think of a better word than COMES, there being not the shadow of a Latin book on board; yet sure there is some other. Then VIATOR (though it SOUNDS all right) is doubtful; it has too much, perhaps, the sense of wayfarer? ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... important movements were caused or checked by economic influence. He uses his imagination to prove that the importance of an event cannot be decided from the extant remains of its place of origin, for if only the ruins of both Sparta and Athens were left, Sparta would be thought to be insignificant and Athens would appear twice as powerful as she really is. Poetical exaggeration is easy and misleading, and ancient history is difficult to ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... friends, but our sons and grandsons will. They may not like us any better, but they will take care to hide their feelings. Strong resentment sometimes drove him into taking up positions he would not in his cooler moments have maintained. "As one citizen of the republic," he wrote, "however insignificant, I have no notion of being blackguarded and vituperated half a century and then cajoled (p. 096) into forgetfulness at the suggestion of fear and expediency, as circumstances render our good-will of importance." Not one of these slights and insults would he have the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... not distinguish himself especially in this line. His distinction lies in the fact that he was the father of Johann Sebastian, and this is quite enough for any one man, even if Gail Hamilton did once protest that the office of male parent was insignificant and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... literal as a translation into prose; this disadvantage I have used my best pains to minimize. I hope it may be said that nothing of real moment has been omitted from the verses; and where lack of metrical skill has compelled expansion, I have striven to make the additions as insignificant as possible. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... which tends, in the most distant manner, to illustrate an obscure passage in the history of our country, cannot we presume, while it affords great pleasure and satisfaction to the student attentively employed in such researches, be deemed either insignificant or uninteresting by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... the comma bacillus. It is certainly an insignificant microbe to be raising so much trouble. Got hold of a report from the Board of Health, saying that, if the epidemic grew worse, the public school buildings should be converted into hospitals. Took it over to the Deputy Division Superintendent to protest. Schoolhouses are scarce ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... event, every one who had any sense of what was due to his or her own dignity, hastened to show this august couple the respect which all republicans who have a large income derived from business, feel for English royalty. New York gave a dinner, at which the most insignificant person present was worth at least a million dollars, and where the gentlemen who sat by the Princess entertained her for an hour or two by a calculation of the aggregate capital represented. New York ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to the practically recognized constitution of cognitive consciousness. We may therefore pass it by without further notice here.] It is to be feared that the reader may consider this formula rather insignificant and obvious, and hardly worth the labor of so many pages, especially when he considers that the only cases to which it applies are percepts, and that the whole field of symbolic or conceptual thinking seems to elude its grasp. Where the reality is either a material thing or act, or a state ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... vent with but little restraint. Agnes might have been the wife of a traitor, but he was out of Edward's way; the daughter of a traitress, but she was equally powerless; linked with treason, but too much crashed by her own misery to be sensible of aught else. Surely she was too insignificant for him to persevere in wrath, and alienate by unmerited severity yet more the hearts which at such moments he felt he valued, despite his every effort to ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... pursuit of knowledge, endowments began to arise which soon enhanced the splendour of universities though they lessened their mobility and their freedom. The mendicant convents at Paris and Oxford prepared the way for secular foundations, at first small and insignificant, like that which, in the days of Henry III., John Balliol established at Oxford for the maintenance of poor scholars, but soon increasing in magnitude and distinction. The great college set up by St. Louis' confessor at Paris for the endowment of scholars, desirous of studying ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... and continued to dictate a letter. When he had finished, he sent his clerk out of the room and, motioning Mr. Jacks to take a seat by his side, leaned back in his own chair with the air of one prepared to relax for a moment. He was a man of somewhat insignificant presence, but he had keen gray eyes, half the time concealed under thick eyebrows, and flashing out upon you now and then at least ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again in a few days. This explosion completely destroyed the slight roof, as well as the wood and glass front, but did scarcely any other damage to the mill, and had no action on the other mills further than drenching their beds with water. The other two explosions were insignificant. ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... from one mode of life to another perfectly different has ever seemed to me a great trial of a man's moral courage; besides that the fact of quitting for ever any thing, no matter how insignificant or valueless, is always attended with painful misgivings. My bachelor life had its share of annoyances and disappointments, it is true; but, upon the whole it was a most happy one—and now I was about to surrender it for ever, not yielding ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... circumstances—when we had been discussing marriage, and he suddenly leaned forward and exclaimed: 'I was married once myself'—we were able to detach him from his classification and regard him for a moment as an unique being, a soul, however insignificant, with a history of its own, once for all. It is these moments which we prize, and which alone are revealing. For any vital truth is incapable of being applied to another case: the essential is unique. Perhaps that is why it is so neglected: because it ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... no idea of even a battle with Alexander, and as to defeat, he did not contemplate the remotest possibility of it. He regarded Alexander as a mere boy—energetic and daring it is true, and at the head of a desperate band of adventurers; but he considered his whole force as altogether too insignificant to make any stand against such a vast military power as he was bringing against him. He presumed that he would retreat as fast as possible before the Persian army came near him. The idea of such a boy coming down at break of day, from narrow defiles of the mountains, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cutting, and the canvas, heavy with water, tried my strength severely; but I succeeded before nightfall in getting it all spread out on the beach to dry. We were both very tired when we knocked off for supper, and we had done good work, too, though to the eye it appeared insignificant. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... may regard the things I have presented to their view as ugly or insignificant, because they lack the higher qualities of sentiment; others may over-value them for precisely the same reason. They seem to me noteworthy as the first unmistakable sign of a change in modern Europe which was inevitable and ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively insignificant. It may have been but a broken column, a lonely pool with a star-beam on its quiet surface,—yet it awes us. We remember it when phantasmal pictures of bright Damascus, or of colossal pyramids, of bazaars in Stamboul, or lengthened caravans that defile slow amidst ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Bel, "soon became sadly bewildered, for there were so many people all talking at once, and they pushed against and jostled her as if she were very small and insignificant indeed, and she began to think that her mother was right, and that she was only a child; and she grew frightened and wished herself at home again. But she kept fast hold of the hand of her brother whom the saints loved, and felt that as long ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... uncontrollably. Gratton whipped back and stared at her; Summerling and Jarrold were mystified. She looked so little like laughter! And, as both had cause to regard the situation, there was so little call for laughter. But they could have no clue to Gloria's thoughts. Her wedding! With that insignificant little grey man in his cheap wrinkled clothes to officiate; with that unshaven, leering, dirty man to witness! Holy matrimony! Gloria Gaynor's wedding! She was near madness with the hideous, cruel travesty of such weddings as ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... no more comparison between her and my son, than between anything in the world; however, if it is so, it is so, and I mean to say no more about it, and to be sure he's as contented to think so as if he was as mere an insignificant animal as could be." ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... in the palm of his hand. Taken alone, each one was insignificant, proved nothing whatever. Taken all together, they assumed vast proportions, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... did not dare. Then I was too poor a man, too insignificant to dare to lay bare to you the thoughts, the fears, the ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... serious handicap than that imposed upon it by shipping rings and railway companies, which exploit the Imperial needs of transport for their own purposes, which hamper the ready flow of Imperial trade, and, for an insignificant percentage, turn the British seamen off the water in favour ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Jack Benson, by some strange chance, happened to remember that slight metallic sound of something falling to the floor while Millard was speaking. Now, Jack bent over, holding the candle to aid him in his hunt. Ah! There it was! Yet how utterly insignificant—nothing ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... beginning to be old enough to feel the impulse of that insatiable and reckless ambition which seemed to form such an essential element in the character of every son and daughter in the whole Ptolemaic line. She was insignificant and powerless where she was, but at the head of the army she ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... battle gained, Abdel-Rhaman took Bordeaux by assault and delivered it over to his army. The plunder, to believe the historians of the conquerors, surpassed all that had been preconceived of the wealth of the vanquished: "The most insignificant soldier," say they, "had for his share plenty of topazes, jacinths, and emeralds, to say nothing of gold, a somewhat vulgar article under the circumstances." What appears certain is that, at their departure from Bordeaux, the Arabs were so laden with booty that their march became less rapid and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... selfishness there are in the home life! Every day brings the choice between selfishness and self-sacrifice. Shall I take for myself the choicest apple? or shall I share in that which is not so agreeable? These may appear to be very insignificant questions. But, boys and girls, do you know that the habitual decisions at which you arrive in childhood, determine largely whether or not you will live by principle later on? "As the twig is bent, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... left in all its solitary sublimity. Amidst the awful roaring of the impetuous torrents, the noise of human instruments and the bustle of workmen, even the blowing up of the rocks when grand masses trembled in the darkened air, only resembled the insignificant ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Est, whichever name rightly belonged to it, was in itself so insignificant as a 'benefice,' that its present rector, vicar, priest and patron had bought it for himself, through the good offices of a friend, in the days when such purchases were possible, and for some ten ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the positive statement that this was the promised Son. By what guessing or critical legerdemain one who claims loyalty to the word of God and ordinary intelligence can attempt to sweep away these definite and determinate statements, and crowd some insignificant worm of the dust into the place given to him who was in the beginning, who was with God and who was God, we ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... was greatly increased by this new cabal, as the Regent instantly perceived the necessity of opposing their authority to the probable pretensions of the Princes, neither of whom attempted to disguise their discontent at the insignificant position to which they had been reduced at Court. To Jeannin, in particular, the Queen expressed in unmeasured terms the confidence which she placed in his zeal and loyalty; she called him her friend, her arm, and her head, and assured him that she ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... sigh, Heselton leaned back to gaze at the stars and contemplate the vastness of the universe, compared to which even Big Joe was an insignificant dot. ...
— A Matter of Magnitude • Al Sevcik
... Bay, moreover, he found a Chilian schooner, the Montezuma, and a Brazilian brig, the Intrepido. He attached the former to his service, and accepted the volunteered aid of the latter. With this augmented but still insignificant force, very defective in some important respects, he returned to Valdivia. "The flag-ship," he said, "had only two naval officers on board, one of these being under arrest for disobedience of orders, whilst the other was incapable of performing the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... bodily of the frame of mind in which a schoolboy stands before his master. But apart from an incidental recollection of this kind, I found it most difficult to believe with, any reality of belief, that such a poor and insignificant creature as I, could really belong to, really form a part of, an assembly which, notwithstanding the prosaic character of its entire visible equipment, I felt to be so august. What I may term its ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... engaged in private business at present, that I have not had time to thank you for the favour of your letter: nor can I now answer it to your satisfaction. My life has been too insignificant to afford materials interesting to the public. In general, the lives of mere authors are dry and unentertaining; nor, though I -have been one occasionally, are my writings of a class or merit to entitle me to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of the concierge! He was a locksmith by trade. He and his wife and their children lived in two little dark rooms by the archway—an insignificant fragment of the house. He was away from home about fourteen hours every day, except Sundays, when he washed the courtyard. All the other duties of the concierge were performed by the wife. The pair always ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... universal lover, and too little of an enthusiast, that he has an irritating and ungentlemanly habit of seeing blemishes in the greatest, a pottering and peddling fancy for discovering beauties in the most insignificant; that he lacks the exclusiveness and the fastidiousness of intellectual aristocracy, the fervour and rapture of aesthetic passion. To this, one can answer little more than, "It may be so." Certainly the critic of this ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... for rehearsal, discloses the whole strength of a very fair company of Spanish actors. None of them bear the conventional air of strolling players; the men are moustached, and fashionably attired, and the women, from leading lady to insignificant super, are elegantly dressed. Apropos of supers, El Marquesito assures me it is no easy matter to secure the invaluable services of a genuine white for these purposes. A white lady is not to be had for love or money; and when fairies are required ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... little compositions lately. They are insignificant, but it is impossible to find a technical error in them. Such precision was remarkable for a child who had no idea of the science of harmony. About that time some one had the notion that I should hear an orchestra. So they took me to a symphony concert and my mother ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... insignificant customers father measured off great quantities of white goods for the two ladies; and I strained my ears to hear every word that was said. They asked father if he was going to New York soon? He said, in about ten days. Then Mrs. Marigold confided to him that they wanted him to purchase ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... without risk or inconvenience spare. In this way, at an expense very much less than that which he incurred in building and decorating Versailles or Marli, he succeeded in making England, during nearly twenty years, almost as insignificant a member of the political system of Europe as the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anything more incredible. The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. The prisoner was asked the question, 'Where did you get the stuff ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... productions of Ceylon, as it is asserted that they are valueless in their natural state. Nevertheless, I do not imply that they must necessarily remain useless. Where Nature simply creates a genus, cultivation extends the species, and from an insignificant parent stock we propagate our finest varieties of both animals and vegetables. Witness the wild kale, parsnip, carrot, crab-apple, sloe, etc., all utterly worthless, but nevertheless the first parents of ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... shoots up to B, in a steep and massive peak—a kind of Matterhorn of heat, which dwarfs the portion of the diagram C D E, representing the luminous radiation. Indeed the idea forced upon the mind by this diagram is that the light rays are a mere insignificant appendage to the heat-rays represented by the area A B C D, thrown in as it were by nature for ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... he soon settled the difficulty by calling it 'Wypers.' Etaples was also another stumbling block, but 'Eatables' soon revealed Tommy's way out of another difficulty. Ploegstreete, which for centuries has been an insignificant hamlet, is now known throughout the British Army as 'Plug Street'; well known for possessing some of the ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... This shelter afforded to Gutenberg sheds everlasting lustre on Nassau and its prince. We meet in history with instances where a generous hospitality has given happiness and immortal fame to the most insignificant potentates and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... forgotten that in every boarding school of the A. M. A. the regular ongoing of the domestic work of the institution, nearly all of which except the cooking and washing is done by the students, furnishes no insignificant or ineffectual training in the ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... apparently insignificant circumstance, Dr. Smith eventually educed and reduced to successful practice the method of reducing dislocations by the manoeuvre, a system as useful as it is simple, and as scientific as the principle of flexion and leverage on which it depends. Had this incident been related to a stupid man, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... impaired health except they are chargeable to his service. Medical theories are set at naught and the most startling relation is claimed between alleged incidents of military service and disability or death. Fatal apoplexy is admitted as the result of quite insignificant wounds, heart disease is attributed to chronic diarrhea, consumption to hernia, and suicide is traced to army service in a wonderfully devious and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... examine her face, she had not one feature but what was pretty; yet, from that constant uneasiness which appeared in her countenance, it gave you so little pleasure to look at her, that she seldom had common justice done her, but had generally hitherto passed for a little insignificant plain girl, though her very face was so altered since she was grown good natured, and had got the better of that foolish fretfulness she used to be possessed of, that she appeared from her good-humoured smiles quite ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... to the turn of the Sacian nation to enter the course, a private man, of no apparent importance in respect to his rank or standing, came forward as the champion; though the man appeared insignificant, his horse was as fleet as the wind. He flew around the arena with astonishing speed, and came in at the goal while his competitor was still midway of the course. Every body was astonished at this performance. ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... what else there is to attract attention, and we may notice one star shining very brilliantly, almost like a little lamp, rather low down in the sky, in that part of it where the sun has lately set. It is so beautifully bright that it makes all the others look insignificant in comparison, yet it is not really large compared with the others, only, as it comes nearer to us than anything else in the sky except the moon, it looks larger than it has any right to do in ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... question in perfect innocence, but his answer (the difference in distance was insignificant) and his manner offered me a clue to the simple truth. He took the ship to a port where he expected to be confirmed in his temporary command from lack of a qualified master to put over his head. Whereas Singapore, he surmised justly, would be ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... but not till near midnight did the army halt with the feeling that it had placed safe distance between it and our adversaries. Then we 'broke ranks for rails,' and, with coffee and pipes, sat beside the cheering blaze recounting the incidents of the engagement. Our little encounter, so insignificant beside the story of great battles, was yet full of interest to us, and some were missing from our ranks who would never again respond to their country's call. To them and theirs it was the great battle of the Rebellion; to us, who ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... youth. We are either growing better or worse all the time. We rarely stand still. To the musician work is the great sculptor of individuality. As you work and as you think, so will you be. No deed, no thought, no hope is too insignificant to fail to influence your nature. As through work we become better men and women, so through work do we become better musicians. Carlyle has beautifully expressed this thought in "Past and Present" thus: "The latest ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... town being collected into one place, can easily combine together. The most insignificant trades carried on in towns have, accordingly, in some place or other, been incorporated; and even where they have never been incorporated, yet the corporation-spirit, the jealousy of strangers, the aversion to take apprentices, or to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... and over. "Mr. Overton was evidently considerably excited when he sent it, and somewhat incoherent in consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I dare say, by the time I have looked through the TIMES, and then we shall know all about it. Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... faintly conceive the delight and astonishment of naturalists at large when the barramunda first 'swam into their ken' in the rivers of Queensland. To be sure, in size and shape this 'extinct fish,' still living and grunting quietly in our midst, is comparatively insignificant beside the 'dragons of the prime' immortalised in a famous stanza by Tennyson: but, to the true enthusiast, size is nothing; and the barramunda is just as much a marvel and a monster as the Atlantosaurus himself would have been if he ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... and going. A certain little runnel of verse flowed no more through the pages of "The Firefly," and in a month there was not the shadow of Tom upon his age. But the print of him was deep in the heart of Letty, and not shallow in the affection of Mary; nor were such as these, insignificant records for any one to leave behind him, as records go. Happy was he to have left behind him any love, especially such a love as Letty bore him! For what is the loudest praise of posterity to the quietest love of one's own generation? For ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... advert to them as specimens of that style of thinking which has a natural tendency to induce an atheistic frame of mind.[227] The profession of such sentiments is a symptom rather of incipient danger, than of confirmed disease. But that danger is far from being either doubtful or insignificant. For should the distinction between "truth and error" be obliterated or even feebly discerned, should it come to be regarded as a matter of comparative indifference whether our beliefs be true or false, should it, above all, become our prevailing habit to "call good evil, and evil good," ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... him came two soldiers of the guard, dragging between them an insignificant-looking little Filipino ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... through the forest. As they proceeded their talk was all of tigers; for in India, though there be bigger and more splendid game in the land, its traditional animal never fails to interest, and to Wargrave on his way to his first tiger-shoot all other topics were insignificant. ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... When we limit our vocational teaching to a mere mastery of technique, there is no guarantee that the process which we teach to-day may not be discarded in five or ten years from to-day. Even the narrower technical principles which are so extremely important to-day may be relatively insignificant by the time that the child whom we are training takes his place in the industrial world. But if we can arm the individual with the more fundamental principles which are fixed for all time; and if, in addition ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... come. The great political concussion was not favourable to art. Abstract ideas united with the passions of the hour produced poetry which was of the nature of a declamatory pamphlet. Innumerable pieces were presented on the stage, but their literary value is insignificant. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... inability of England to feed these few million Jews I'd answer: "I don't know how you can be so silly!" Why, the whole human race, friends, can find room on the Isle of Wight—the earth laughs at the insignificant drawings upon her made by the small infantry called Man. Then, why do we suffer, friends? We do suffer, I suppose? I was once at Paris, and at a place called 'the Morgue' I saw exposed young men with wounded temples, and girls with dead ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... many a rogue has done before him, and found half a hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his capital ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... government, and affecting the public credit. After a long trial he was found guilty of treason, and received the sentence of death usually pronounced on such occasions; but whether he earned forgiveness by some material discovery, or the minister found him so insensible and insignificant that he was ashamed to take his life, he escaped execution, and was pardoned, on condition of going into perpetual exile. The severity of the government was much about the same period exercised on Dr. Shebbeare, a public writer, who, in a series of printed letters to the people of England, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... solo, the showy caprices, fantaisies and transcriptions. Being obliged to write this kind of music, the young composer sought for new forms in fingering and novel harmonic effects, even in his most insignificant productions. Thus among the early piano works, the Eclogue, Op. 3, and the Ballade, Op. 9, are to be found innovations which should attract the pianist and musician ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... manner born to realise the sort of extravagant, nightmare effect that many of our social customs have in the eyes of our untutored American cousins. The inherent absurdities that are second nature to us exhale for them the full flavour of their grotesqueness. The idea of an insignificant boy peer taking precedence of Mr. John Morley! The idea of having to appear before royalty in a state of partial nudity on a cold winter day! The necessity of backing out of the royal presence! The idea of a freeborn Briton having to get out of an engagement ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... a sunbeam bursts through a crack in the door into the dusty room, how a whirling column of dust seems circling round; but this was not poor and insignificant like common dust, for even the rainbow is dead in colour compared with the beauty which showed itself. Thus, from the leaf of the book with the beaming word "Believe," arose every grain of truth, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... him (and do not think that I here speak in terms of exaggeration), I have seen him deeply moved by the perils of his friends. Simple and natural as he was, I have seen his features betray his emotions at the story of their misfortunes, and he was ever ready to confer with them on the most insignificant details as well as on affairs of the utmost importance. In the adjustment of quarrels, he was ever ready to soothe turbulent spirits with a patience and good nature that one would little have expected from a disposition so excitable, nor from a character so lofty. What a contrast ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... one can run for cover when unheralded gales and sudden squalls catch one in the open. The Atlantic coast of Labrador is dangerous indeed, but there Nature has providentially distributed innumerable safe harbor retreats, and the tide is insignificant compared with that of Ungava Bay. "Nature exhausted her supply of harbors," some one has said, "before she rounded Cape Chidley, or she forgot Ungava entirely; and she just bunched the tide ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... this insignificant stranger into our home seemed a disturbing and restless evil in my eyes. Naturally my stepmother was beside herself with ecstacy, but why should she have expected the rest of the household to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... said Ali, laughing quietly. "My ideas are pretty well-known; but I am too insignificant a fellow for what I say to be noticed. Now ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... came on the hills, through which and the dividing valleys we proceeded for two miles, thence emerging into a narrow valley in which Nowshera is situated, drained by the river of Mysoor, which is an insignificant running stream. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... did not make up my mind to achieve something in Paris, she would lose all faith in me. She said, moreover, that she absolutely refused to be a witness of my misery and grief as a wretched literary man and insignificant conductor of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was comparatively new, but this remained almost unchanged by the ravages of time and of fire. Here great trials had taken place. Here great battles had been won—battles which had changed the destinies of the nation. Brunford, which had seemed so important to him a few years ago, was now only an insignificant manufacturing town. It had but little history, little meaning; but London—London was everything. There, in Westminster Abbey, close by him, kings had been crowned and monarchs were buried. There, too, the great ones of the world had come. Men whose names were imperishable ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... concerning our navy, and the destination of the squadron to which we had belonged, we were also called forward by two and three at a time as we stood according to our rank. He then asked most of us some very insignificant questions, and took some to be Portuguese because they had black hair, and others to be Swedes because their hair was light. He judged none of us to be English excepting the captain, the second lieutenant, the ensign of the soldiers, and myself. But assuring him we were all English, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... spite of their fire and smoke, appear but insignificant pigmies compared to that mighty mountain which rises in their neighbourhood—the majestic Chimborazo. We could see far off its snow-white dome, free of clouds, towering into the deep blue sky, many thousand feet above the ocean; while on the other side its brother, Tunguragua, shoots ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... which now very rarely take the tone towards Americans formerly habitual with them. Their change of tone is the most obvious change which I think Americans can count upon noting when they come to England, and I am far from reckoning it insignificant. It did not happen of the newspapers themselves; it must be the expression of a prevalent mood, if not a very deeply rooted feeling in their readers. One hears of their interest, their kindness, not from the Americans alone; the English ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... not about to abuse the reader's patience with a prolonged enumeration of the many additional conspiring circumstances,—insignificant in themselves and confessedly unimportant when considered singly, but of which the cumulative force is unquestionably great,—which an examination of 99 MSS. of the Gospels brought to light.(429) Enough has been ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... new pride, in the love which now made all other matters of life so insignificant, Mayo was afraid of himself; he knew his limitations in the matter of submission; even then he felt a hankering to walk aft and jounce Julius Marston up and down in his hammock chair. He did not believe he could stand calmly in the presence of Alma Marston ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... little town, cut in two in its entire length by a broad, paved street. Its modest inhabitants cannot possibly look any more stupid or insignificant ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... little seacoast town of Shelbourne. Here they sold their ponies and arms, and renting a little house, went busily to work cleaning and preparing the damaged plumes for market. When the task was finished and the last plume sold, they found themselves the happy possessors of the not insignificant sum of $3,200, which divided between them gave each a capital ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... is a moral problem; Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one. The whole alone has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event, the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly artificial mechanism which is named the state. So far Polybius was certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was "trop bonne," and that he felt perfectly well. Madame appealed to me—Dr. John following her movement with a slow glance which seemed to express languid surprise at reference being made to a quarter so insignificant. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... residences still inhabited had a dreary, if not a mean, aspect. Some of them—and Marcian's dwelling was one—had been built in latter times with material taken from temple or portico or palace in ruins; thus they combined richness of detail with insignificant or clumsy architecture. An earthquake of a few years ago, followed by a great inundation of the Tiber, had wrought disaster among these modern structures. A pillar of Marcian's porch, broken into ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... therefore, assume that he intends this evening to consult the spirit of my dead mother again, and this would be an excellent opportunity for getting on the track of the matter, if you do not object to opposing the most powerful force in the Empire, for the sake of such an insignificant ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... see at a time—the one before and the one behind. So small and insignificant the schooner seemed on the long Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward and down into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... that an Austrian force had been reported approaching from the south, moving on Krupanie, and that it had seemed so insignificant that a small detachment of third reserve troops had been sent to hold it back. But this enemy force now developed into ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... industries, too insignificant or unorganized even for municipal operation, might be left ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... perceive, therefore, that Lisconnel lies out of the way, on the route to no places of importance, and as its own ten or a dozen little houses are, I fear, collectively altogether insignificant, it has small reason to expect many visitors. The Widow M'Gurk said one day that you might as well be living at the bottom of the boghole for any company you got the chance of seeing; but this was ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the animal, but merely that he is inferior in some one respect, or that he depends less upon instincts and thus has a greater need of training. If the child learns at this early stage that there is no person or no creature too insignificant to teach him something, he will have learned one of the most valuable lessons in life. The child may not be able to tell why the wild hog has lost its tusks, but he will enjoy thinking about it. He can observe or find out in other ways that the domesticated ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... while his coarse, black hair was combed straight down over a pair of small, piercing, dark eyes. The complexion, or such of it as was visible through the mask of wiry hair, was swarthy, his form thin and insignificant. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... has been the hero of the day on my premises, and he has placed me under ever-lasting obligations to him," added the colonel. "With a very insignificant force we had cleaned out the ruffians from the house when the approach of the main body of the gang was announced by my servants, who had been scouting beyond the hills. The coming of the cavalry has probably saved my mansion and my life. As the villains supposed, I have a considerable ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... Clarges Street, who received me, on my first coming to London with my wife, with a burst of scorn, mollified presently, and as soon as she came to know Theo (who she had pronounced to be an insignificant little country-faced chit), fell utterly in love with her, and would have her to tea and supper every day when there was no other company. "As for company, my dears," she would say, "I don't ask you. You are no longer du monde. Your marriage has put that entirely out of the question." So she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him," she said, pointing with her fat finger at my insignificant self and addressing her family. "If only I had such a husband or a son, instead of you lumps that God has tied to me like clogs to the heels of a she-ass, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... condolence, he said to them by way of banter, as if the affair had already faded from his memory, "And I heartily condole with you on the loss of your renowned countryman, Hector." He so much affected to depreciate Germanicus, that he spoke of his achievements as utterly insignificant, and railed at his most glorious victories as ruinous to the state; complaining of him also to the senate for going to Alexandria without his knowledge, upon occasion of a great and sudden famine at Rome. It was ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... on the part of Greece is worrying the rest of the Powers. She is too small and insignificant to attempt to brave the wrath of Europe alone, and there is an uneasy feeling that some one of the great nations must ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... The story, to a woman's mind, was full of pathos, and, though barren of great incidents, was not without a due richness of colouring if looked at by appreciative eyes. Nor were the results of Laura Secord's brave deed insignificant. Had the Americans carried Beaver Dams at that juncture, the whole peninsula was before them—all its supplies, all its means of communication with other parts of the Province. And Canada—Upper Canada, at least—would have been ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... in the successive attempts to roll back the wave of conquest upon the Alleghanies. The redskins were pushed from Ohio into Indiana, from Indiana into Illinois, from Illinois and Wisconsin into Iowa and Minnesota; the few tribal fragments which by treaty arrangement remained behind formed only insignificant "islands" in the midst of the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... else can impart; and certainly a collection of household curios cannot be complete without some musical instrument, although but a humble example. It may be a moot point among collectors whether the insignificant whistle or primitive call can be regarded as sufficiently musical to rank in this category. It is certain, however, that it is one of the commonest of sound producers; if there is a boy in the home there is almost sure to be a whistle in the house. Few trouble about the scientific ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... which he may have given weeks and weeks before? The magistrate, however, remembers it; and twenty times, if need be, he brings it up again. And as the small snowflake may become an irresistible avalanche, so an insignificant word, uttered at haphazard, forgotten, then recalled, commented upon, and enlarged may ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... that this movement is making no progress; that while the movements along other lines are largely succeeding, there has been no advance along this line. Twenty-five years ago, with insignificant exceptions, women could not vote anywhere. To-day they have school suffrage in twenty-three States, full suffrage in Wyoming, municipal suffrage in Kansas, and municipal suffrage for single women and widows in England, Scotland and most of the British provinces. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... public at large, not only as to its merits, but as to the very appearance of the light, Some few thousand people had gone out to Menlo Park, and had there seen the lamps in operation at the laboratory or on the hillsides, but they were an insignificant proportion of the inhabitants of the United States. Of course, a great many accounts were written and read, but while genuine interest was aroused it was necessarily apathetic. A newspaper description or a magazine article may be admirably complete ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... with a serious repulse. Great numbers of the inhabitants from the surrounding country had crowded into the town with their valuables, and Tippoo, expecting a rich booty, attacked the town; but although its fortifications were insignificant, the little garrison was commanded by Captain Flint, the officer who had so bravely defended Wandiwash in the previous war, and two assaults ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... the signal to depart. Every lady had her attendant gentleman. Orangine and Roussette were obliged to content themselves with two insignificant princes who were neither so young nor so handsome as Prince Charmant. Orangine and Roussette were so sulky that even these princes declared they would never wed ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... been manufactured for thousands of years by the wasp;—to the levers, joints, and pulleys of the human body, of which the mechanist has as yet only made imperfect imitations;—and to the saw of an insignificant insect, (the saw-fly) which has never yet been ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... over House of Lords.] largely unreal, over her constitution and her liberties, even while foreign wars and complications were still being debated; and in the middle of it all, suddenly, from a local labour dispute, putting by all thought of the constitution, feeling as comparatively insignificant the fear of invasion, all England stood shuddering on the verge of frantic civil war;[Footnote: The Railway strike.] and all Ireland, when the moment of possible freedom was given, when England might have been hardly able to save ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... a mark on the figures at the first of the month, and when you are studying the almanac it will remind you of your duty to society. People east here, that is, business men in your class, change their shirts every week or two. Try and look out for these little matters, insignificant as they may seem, because the public has some rights that it is dangerous for a man ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... students, they well knew that this must be the final consummation, but then it looked a great way off. That they really loved the young men, no one can doubt. It would not be strange for a little shop-girl to even adore a talented university student, however insignificant he might be to other people. To her he is everything that is great and noble. These girls knew well that they were not wives, but mistresses, yet when the day of separation came, it was like parting husband and wife. But there was no use ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... the rigging, the decks are awash. It is hard to say whether it is raining, for the spray cut off by the wind makes rain a somewhat insignificant event. As he makes his way up on to the bridge, not a very lofty climb, he looks to see what sail is set, and judges so far as he can the force of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... recent times. It is true we can draw no comparison between the result of their respective labors. The hundreds, which in the old time were deemed a respectable if not an extensive collection, would look insignificant beside the ostentatious array of ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... friends should advise. And I heartily wish his Grace had entirely stifled that comedy, if it were possible, than do an injury to our friend's reputation, only to get a hundred or two pounds to a couple of, perhaps, insignificant women. It has been printed here, and I am grieved to say it is a very poor performance. I have often chid Mr. Gay for not varying his schemes, but still adhering to those he had exhausted; and I much doubt whether the posthumous Fables will prove equal to the first. I think it is incumbent ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... of such reforming zeal in the Church, and in the world. Even among those who in private lament prevailing evils there is a singular contentment and tolerance even of those which might be at once removed. This is grievously common in large centres of population, where each individual feels insignificant among such vast multitudes, and loses the sense of individual responsibility in the vastness of the crowd which surrounds him. How many professing Christians, for example, deplore drunkenness and impurity, while they shrink from any kind of open protest, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... contended and rejoiced; Amid the glories of the house of life Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld: Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love Fall insignificant on my closing ears, What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind In our inclement city? what return But the image of the emptiness of youth, Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice Of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The mighty Captain of this warship accepts the advice of the insignificant pilot—who happens to know the channel. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... few men with working talent. They know how to deal with the facts before them, to put things into a practical shape, and they value men only as they can forward the work. But some new man comes there, who has no capacity for helping them at all, is insignificant, and nobody in the committee, but has a talent for speaking. In the debate with open doors, this precious person makes a speech, which is printed, and read all over the Union, and he at once becomes famous, and takes the lead ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... prudent to withdraw to some little distance for a time, lest the irritated and wronged bees should set upon them and take an ample revenge. Had they known their power, this might easily have been done, no ingenuity of man being able to protect him against the assaults of this insignificant-looking animal, when unable to cover himself, and the angry little heroes are in earnest. On the present occasion, however, no harm befell the marauders. So suddenly had the hive tumbled that its late occupants appeared to be astounded, and they submitted to their fate ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... that happened at Craythew on Sunday evening threw such insignificant details as these into the shade, and brought out the true character of the chief actors, amongst whom Margaret ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... One insignificant detail struck his eye—a weighty cane of Mr. Meeker's stood in an angle of the half-opened door to the hall, across the floor from where Jannie and he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... common end of every system studied by the Hindus is the ascertainment of the means by which perpetual exemption from the necessity of repeated births may be won."15 In comparison with this aim, every thing else is utterly insignificant. Prahlada, on being offered by Vishnu any boon he might ask, exclaimed, "Wealth, virtue, love, are as nothing; for even liberation is in his reach whose faith is firm in thee." And Vishnu replied, "Thou shalt, therefore, obtain freedom from existence."16 All true Orientals, however ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of the quarrel had been an insignificant something that speedily lost itself in the torrent of angry words that burst from the lips of the irate husband and wife, until by night it would have been difficult for either the man or the woman to tell exactly what had been the first point of difference. By that time, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... that yesterday was the last time I spoke to her. We spoke only a few insignificant words that I have forgotten, and today I have ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... you forgot," she interrupted, "or you could never have forgotten mine, but then one can't be too hard on a person for forgetting such mere trifles, I don't blame you, yours is so insignificant, that ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... discharge is sent through the tube, there proceeds from the anode—that is, the wire which is connected with the positive pole of the battery—certain bands of light, varying in colour with the colour of the glass. But these are insignificant in comparison with the brilliant glow which shoots from the cathode, or negative wire. This glow excites brilliant phosphorescence in glass and many substances, and these "cathode rays," as they are called, were observed and studied by Hertz; and more ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... he could, watching all the time with fascinated eyes Annabel moving gracefully about amongst her guests, always gay, with a smile and a whisper for nearly everybody. Grudgingly he admired her. To him she had always appeared as a mere pleasure-loving parasite—something quite insignificant. He had pictured her, if indeed she had ever had the courage to do this thing, as sitting alone, convulsed with guilty fear, starting at her own shadow, a slave to constant terror. And instead he found her playing the great lady, and playing it well. She knew, or guessed his mission too, for ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... war-stricken peoples of Europe opportunity to resume their normal industrial life seemed to me the first and greatest task to be accomplished. It was in my judgment superior to every other object of the Paris negotiations. Compared with it the creation of a League of Nations was insignificant and could well be postponed. President Wilson thought otherwise. We were very far apart in this matter as he well knew, and he rightly assumed that I followed his instructions with reluctance, and, he might have added, ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... condemnation, has been in a recent case, held by this Court, and on other occasions.[174] What is the number of military persons that shall constitute such a case it may be difficult to define. In the former cases there were many, in the present they are fewer in number; number alone is an insignificant circumstance in the considerations on which the principles of law on this subject are built; since fewer persons of high quality and character may be of more importance than a much greater number of persons of lower condition. To send out one veteran general of France to take command of ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... herself to remaining a marvel of ancient art, which one ought to put under glass so as to preserve her intact, slumbering amid the sovereign pomp of her annals; next Genoa, which is absorbed in trade, still active and bustling, one of the last queens of that Mediterranean, that insignificant lake which was once the opulent central sea, whose waters carried the wealth of the world; and then particularly Turin and Milan, those industrial and commercial centres, which are so full of life and so modernised that tourists disdain them as not being "Italian" cities, both ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... streams, which, rising near the summit, course down the steep slopes and finally discharge through Canyon Chelly into the great Chinlee valley, which is the western of the two valleys referred to above. The eastern slope is more pronounced than the western, and its streams are so small and insignificant that they are hardly worthy ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... Insignificant as was the hold, it was evident that something like feudal discipline was kept up. Two men, armed with pikes, were stationed on the wall, while two others leant in careless fashion against the posts of the open gate. On the approach of Archie an elderly man, with a long white beard, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... among his fellow-craftsmen. They alone can take a serious interest in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting of dull and insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will say, "Why do you not write a great book? paint a great picture?" If his guardian angel fail him, they may even persuade him to the attempt, and, ten to one, his hand is coarsened and his style ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ineffectual attempts, could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently to reach the latch without being seen by his royal master. The mission on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the Susunan himself inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out of the dodok posture. When it is necessary for an inferior to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with his hams upon his heels until he is out of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... time to make him understand what had been wrong, but even when he did comprehend he seemed to be annoyed with me for waking him out of a pleasant dream, probably about damper and mutton, for the saving of so insignificant a thing as his hair, which would have soon ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth. This is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which I recently became acquainted, "The Practice of the Presence of God, the Best Ruler ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... the most insignificant, were worked afresh for the purpose, and thus, not merely faithful representations, but also lucid and intelligible explanations ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... substitution as a necessity for the continued life of the Review. For, says he, "you will oblige the public much more by giving them an account of such books as are worthy of their regard than by filling your paper with all the insignificant literary news of the time, of which not an article in a hundred is likely to be thought of a fortnight after the publication of the work that gave occasion to it." He then proceeds to a review of contemporary continental literature, which he ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... for the apprehension of a great purpose should fix the thoughts upon the faultless performance of their duty, no matter how insignificant their task may appear. Only in this way can the thoughts be gathered and focussed, and resolution and energy be developed, which being done, there is nothing which may not ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... only what he had "seen" by Divine illumination. His visions are not (with insignificant exceptions) authenticated by any marvellous signs; he simply asserts that he has been allowed to see into the heart of things, and that the very Being of God has been laid open to his spiritual sight.[348] His was that type ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... He was clerk in the office of Bordin, procureur of Chatelet. In 1798 he lent one hundred crowns in gold to Monegod his life-long friend. This sum not being repaid, M. Alain found himself almost insolvent, and was obliged to take an insignificant position at the Mont-de-Piete. In addition to this he kept the books of Cesar Birotteau, the well-known perfumer. Monegod became wealthy in 1816, and he forced M. Alain to accept a hundred and fifty thousand ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... daily life in which we are involved by the thousand superfluous wants of modern "civilization," one is prone to assume that existence is complete only when it reckons to the good an incalculable number of petty incidents, each more insignificant than the last. Why lose time in thinking or dreaming? We must live at fever heat, must agitate, and be infatuated for inanities, must create imaginary ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... pioneer. He came to Victoria in 1859 and is one of the best informed men in the city concerning the history and material development of this portion of the province, and he himself has taken no insignificant part in affairs of a general public nature. He has written many reminiscences of early days in Victoria and is a ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... painful part of his life in those days was in his visits to his mother. These were agony to him, feeling as he did more and more how utterly insignificant and helpless he was; but he had one satisfaction to keep him going and make him look forward longingly for the next meeting—paradoxical as it may sound—so as to suffer more agony and despair, for he could plainly see that his mother clung to him now as her only ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... will be generally allowed, the Governor of the world, should not have an important relation to all other existences; much less, that the relation which He bears to man, the most noble existence of which we have any actual experience, should be of an insignificant character. Looking, too, upon man as a free and moral agent, accountable, as conscience declares, for his actions to his fellow-men, it seems almost certain that he must be also responsible for his acts in relation to the Deity. The general belief of mankind, in all ages and in all ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... Christian faith bids each person in his life, and all in common, to be diligent in the works of love, humility, patience. It teaches that one be not intolerant of another, but rather render him his due, remembering that he whose condition in life is the most insignificant can be equally upright and blessed before God with the occupant of the most significant position. Again, it teaches that man must have patience with the weakness of his fellow, being mindful of how others must bear with his own imperfections. In short, it says one must manifest to another the ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... argue with a guest," returned the Nome King. "But you will pardon me if I am not yet satisfied that you are stronger than my famous magic. However, I beg you to believe that I bear you no ill will, King Rinkitink; but it is my duty to destroy you, if possible, because you and that insignificant boy Prince have openly threatened to take away my captives and have positively refused to go back to the earth's surface and let me alone. I'm very tender-hearted, as a matter of fact, and I like you immensely and would enjoy ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... present state, and in the protection of it through the present war, that no man can doubt, but Providence has some nobler end to accomplish than the gratification of the petty elector of Hanover, or the ignorant and insignificant king of Britain. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... lack of character spread.[785] Slavery proved a great corrupter of both slaves and owners. It was the chief cause of the downfall of the state which had been created by it. It made cowards of both owners and slaves. "The woes of negro slaves were insignificant, like a drop to an ocean, in comparison with the sufferings of ancient slaves, for the latter generally belonged to ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... only to spring back into sight with a ghastly life-like motion. Stonor cautiously straddled the log, and groped beneath it. His principal anxiety was that log and all might come away from the jam and be carried down, but there was little danger that his insignificant weight would disturb so ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... home and friends, rushing to her doom! Passengers and crews alike had by that time, doubtless, become so familiar with whistling gales and heaving seas, that they had ceased to fear them; but some among them had yet to learn, when too late, that the dangers of the deep are insignificant compared with the perils of ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... first a carpenter, and the son of a carpenter, born and reared in English Yorkshire, in a village too insignificant to appear on any but a county map. Faulby is about twenty miles from York, and there John Harrison was born in 1693, when William and Mary reigned in England. He was thirty-five years of age before he was known beyond his own neighborhood. He was noted there, however, for being a most skillful ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... cause of all our evil days is the inability of England to feed these few million Jews I'd answer: "I don't know how you can be so silly!" Why, the whole human race, friends, can find room on the Isle of Wight—the earth laughs at the insignificant drawings upon her made by the small infantry called Man. Then, why do we suffer, friends? We do suffer, I suppose? I was once at Paris, and at a place called 'the Morgue' I saw exposed young men with wounded temples, and girls with dead mouths twisted, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... the tube was not moved from under the mercury, and as it formed part of the flask, and there was neither cork nor india-rubber, any introduction of air was consequently impossible. The small quantity of air introduced during the impregnation was insignificant and it might even be shown that it injured rather than assisted the growth of the organisms, inasmuch as these consisted of adult individuals which had lived without air and might be liable to be damaged or even destroyed by it. Be this as it may, in a subsequent ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... did lose the old hole!" exclaimed the wronged young lady. "What does it amount to if you lose one insignificant hole when there are ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... there too, and the flaxen-haired Faustula—Livia, gay even, through excess of life—Faustula sad and almost terrified at the scene, and clinging to Julia as to her haven of safety. The Caesars were also there, insignificant as always, but the youngest, Vabalathus, armed for the war; the others are not to be drawn away from the luxuries and pleasures of the city. Antiochus, sullen and silent, was of the number too, stalking with folded arms apart from the company, or else arm ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... beating, now, like a trip-hammer. Even the next day's graduation, and the entrance into the Army looked insignificant to him compared with the question of his fate that was now seething in his brain and which he must now ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... proverb which says, "Every hair has its shadow." So. in like manner, every lady, however insignificant her social position may appear to herself, must exercise a certain influence on the feelings and opinions of others. If, therefore, the art of dressing appears either too irksome or too frivolous to such of the fair ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... practically no interstate business save such as was conducted by water, and this the National Government at once proceeded to regulate in thoroughgoing and effective fashion. Conditions have now so wholly changed that the interstate commerce by water is insignificant compared with the amount that goes by land, and almost all big business concerns are now engaged in interstate commerce. As a result, it can be but partially and imperfectly controlled or regulated by the action of any one of the several States; ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to escape if we could; but the question was, In what direction should we fly? The desert was terminable on the east by the Nile; on the north, by the barbarous empire of Morocco, or by Algiers, Tripoli, or Tunis; while to the south were hordes of savages of whom we knew nothing, with only one insignificant French settlement where we might expect a kind reception: and we should undoubtedly have many hundred miles of an almost barren region to traverse, either to the east or to the north or south, with but a bare possibility of escaping on board some vessel which ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... but insignificant orders; such as guarding the castle, guarding every lodging, allowing none of M. de Gesvres's guards to occupy a single ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... I have nothing special to say. They are what they are, and I am by now too hardened a sinner to feel ashamed of insignificant indiscretions. And as to their appearance in this form I claim that indulgence to which all sinners against themselves ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... still the rule by which the Chinese regulate all the relations of life. No every-day ceremony is too insignificant to escape notice, and no social or domestic duty is beyond its scope. No work of the classics has left such an impression on the manners and customs of the people. Its rules are still minutely observed, and the office of the Board ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... ago, without taking thought, mechanically he crumbled on the cloth a bit of the gilded bread which was placed near his napkin. As a viand, a mere bit of fancy, insignificant in such a repast, it made him think of the naif phrase of the great lady concerning the starving wretches—"Let them eat cake." Nevertheless, this little cake is bread all the same—bread made of flour, which in turn is made of wheat. Great heaven! yes, it is bread, simply bread, like the loaf ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... written. This is evident from the fact, among others, that the same exceptions recur, and are mentioned over and over again, in the grammarians, and that so much is made of comparatively, and confessedly, insignificant points. Such, we may be sure, would not have been the case had exceptions been numerous. Then we have the authority of Quintilian—than whom is no higher. He speaks of the subtleties ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... Shelbourne. Here they sold their ponies and arms, and renting a little house, went busily to work cleaning and preparing the damaged plumes for market. When the task was finished and the last plume sold, they found themselves the happy possessors of the not insignificant sum of $3,200, which divided between them gave each ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the Headquarters men, the coroner busied himself with a preliminary examination of the clerks. The coroner was a small, fussy individual, smooth-shaven, with reddish-brown hair brushed back in pompadour fashion. Because of his small stature and insignificant appearance he was compelled to adopt a brisk air of command, lest witnesses presume ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... are you making so much noise about?" demanded one of the second classmen. "You come in with a roar, and all you bring with you is—-just a poor, insignificant little freshie." ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... rendered in English as "tailing the bull." It is only in the very large cities of Mexico where a regular plaza de toros, or arena for the bull-fight, is to be found; but in every tillage, however insignificant, the spoil of bull-tailing may be witnessed, as this only requires an open plain, and as wild a bull as can be procured. The sport is not quite so exciting as the bull-fight, as it is less perilous to those engaged in it. Not unfrequently, however, a gored horse or a mutilated ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... woman, with hard eyes, low, unintelligent forehead, and sneering yet self-indulgent mouth, had been for five years the mistress of her fate. The slave had feared to speak lest she should say the wrong thing, had hesitated before taking the most insignificant step, knowing that Mrs. Ellsworth's sharp tongue would accuse her of foolishness or worse. But now Annesley wondered at her bondage. If only the man upstairs could escape, never again would she be afraid ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Magalang, there are the remains of the vast temple of that name; and about a mile distant, on the nearer bank of the Prago river, is the small and externally insignificant temple of Mendoet. Inside this latter is a vaulted chamber, the roof of which springs from walls twenty feet in height, and rises to sixty feet in the centre, covering a ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... from the sea, or things connected with it; so that in the very act of minding your own affairs you are training yourselves to enter the lists of naval combat. (4) Again, no other power in the world can send out a larger collective fleet, and that is no insignificant point in reference to the question of leadership. The nucleus of strength first gained becomes a rallying-point, round which the rest of the world will gladly congregate. Furthermore, your good fortune in this department ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... therefore, seeing that Decimus was not inclined to yield, left him to the charge of his brother Lucius, and himself proceeded against Caesar and Hirtius. The two armies faced each other for a number of days and a few insignificant cavalry battles occurred, with honors even. Finally the Celtic cavalry, of whom Caesar had gained possession along with the elephants, withdrew to Antony's side again. They had started from the camp with the rest and had gone on ahead as if intending to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... one point on which she was exquisitely sensitive. The slightest encroachment of any other European power even on the outskirts of her American dominions sufficed to disturb her repose and to brace her paralysed nerves. To imagine that she would tamely suffer adventurers from one of the most insignificant kingdoms of the Old World to form a settlement in the midst of her empire, within a day's sail of Portobello on one side and of Carthagena on the other, was ludicrously absurd. She would have been just as likely to let them take possession of the Escurial. It was, therefore, evident that, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... besides which Cide Hamete Benengeli was a historian of great research and accuracy in all things, as is very evident since he would not pass over in silence those that have been already mentioned, however trifling and insignificant they might be, an example that might be followed by those grave historians who relate transactions so curtly and briefly that we hardly get a taste of them, all the substance of the work being left in the inkstand from carelessness, perverseness, or ignorance. A thousand ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lasted two or three weeks, during which period Sir Luke and Lady Tallant conscientiously improved their acquaintance with the new sphere of their labours. They visited hospitals, inspected public buildings, inaugurated social schemes, and, to the strains of 'God Save the Queen,' performed many other insignificant public functions, from which, as often as not, their guest, Lady Bridget, basely ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the fact take one for the other. Every time a body is perceived, as I previously explained, there are images which affix themselves to the sensation unnoticed. We think we perceive when we are really remembering or imagining. This addition of the image to the sensation is not a petty and insignificant accessory; it forms the major part, perhaps nine-tenths, of perception. Hence arise the illusions of the senses, which are the result, not of sensations but of ideas. From this also comes the difficulty of knowing exactly what, under certain circumstances, is observation or perception, where ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... tormented with the onrush of business as Thou art this day. They wish to see, judge, and command everything; hence the affairs of their states are entangled for a century to come. But were some insignificant scribe to go from Egypt to those kings, explain their errors of management, and give them our official system, our pyramid, in a year's time Judaea and Phoenicia would fall into the hands of the Assyrians, and in a few tens of years powerful armies, coming from ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... doubt. Verily as the illustrious Hari had slain the Nagas in the great lake, he, by sight alone, is capable of slaying those Asuras called the Nivatakavachas, along with their followers. But the slayer of Madhu should not be urged when the task is insignificant. A mighty mass of energy that he is, it swelleth to increasing proportions, it may consume the whole universe. This Arjuna also is competent to encounter them all, and the hero having slain them in battle, will go back to the world of men. Go thou at my request to earth. Thou ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... forgive me, I pray! I will render to you all my treasure. Just see those precious stones lying there! Grant me my life! What would you do with such an insignificant little fellow? You would not notice me between your teeth. See, though, those two children, they would be delicate morsels, and are as plump as partridges; I beg of you to take them, good Mr. Bear, and let ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... never was curious about nothing so insignificant,' said Ellen. 'All I wish is, that that boy may not be running into ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... emperor took no effect; but it served to rekindle the war between France and England before the expiration of the truce. This war was not distinguished by any more remarkable instances than the foregoing. After mutually ravaging the open country, and taking a few insignificant castles, the two kings concluded a peace at Louviers, and made an exchange of some territories with each other [c]. [MN 1196.] Their inability to wage war occasioned the peace: their mutual antipathy engaged ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... Gallician, north-west regions. Which was perfectly successful,—Lord Cobham leading;—and made much noise among mankind. Filled all Gazettes at that time;—but now, again, is all fallen silent for us,—except this one thrice-insignificant point, That there was in it, 'in Handyside's Regiment,' a Lieutenant of Foot, by name STERNE, who had left, with his poor Wife at Plymouth, a very remarkable Boy called Lorry, or LAWRENCE; known since ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk's or a squirrel's nest. He waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part of his armor. On the day I speak of he looked for the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination of the florets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He drew out of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the plants that should bloom on this ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... unsmiling, sunburnt company of very few words indeed. Even the children were silent and as if contemptuous of each other and of their elders. Fyne muttered sometimes deep down in his chest some insignificant remark. Mrs. Fyne smiled mechanically (she had splendid teeth) while distributing tea and bread and butter. A something which was not coldness, nor yet indifference, but a sort of peculiar self-possession ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... ill learned, who made such a fuss about trifles, and set such hard tasks, and made such unreasonable rules, behold! they were just as anxious and troubled as if Lobelia had been one of their own number, instead of the most insignificant freshman in the whole school. Miss Boyle was not simply a mathematical machine, Rose Barclay found out. She really cared about them, cared enough to call them into her room, and want to hear all about that last walk, when Peggy had killed the ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... adventuress and filled Russia with foreigners. Such is the Old Believers' explanation of the portentous phenomenon of a Russian czar engaged in destroying the institutions of Holy Russia. In the midst of the nineteenth century the incidents of Peter's career, whether insignificant or important—his vices not less than his glory—are used as proofs of his infernal mission. The remarkable victories with which he recovered from terrible disasters were miracles wrought by the help of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... mighty Captain of this warship accepts the advice of the insignificant pilot—who happens to know the channel. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sized orchards in proper locations and proper soil, of proper varieties, with proper care in handling, are good investments, and, as proof of my confidence, I am planting orchards both in the north and south. The adjective "proper" which I have used here may seem insignificant at the start but, believe me, before you have begun to clip the coupons off your orchard bonds this adjective will loom up as important as Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. In fact you will wonder how it has been possible for anyone to forecast ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the cause of it. Her feelings were complicated. He, the most important man in Hampton, the self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and unattainable head of the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill, of which she was an insignificant unit, at times became for her just a man—a man for whom she had achieved a delicious contempt. And the knowledge that she, if she chose, could sway and dominate him by the mere exercise of that strange feminine force within her was intoxicating ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Ettrick, Grant Duff, Connemara, and others. Excepting the King's they all looked rather dark against so much marble-white wall space. Overhead, I am told, there was once a line of crystal chandeliers, which must have given a perfect finish to the room; but these have been improved away for rather insignificant modern lights, and all over the roof are these hideous whirling electric fans which spoil the whole effect of the classic Georgian style—the swinging punkah can at least be good to look at, and even tolerable, if it is ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... coil. When the discharge is sent through the tube, there proceeds from the anode—that is, the wire which is connected with the positive pole of the battery—certain bands of light, varying in colour with the colour of the glass. But these are insignificant in comparison with the brilliant glow which shoots from the cathode, or negative wire. This glow excites brilliant phosphorescence in glass and many substances, and these "cathode rays," as they are called, were observed and studied by Hertz; and more deeply by his assistant, Professor Lenard, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... road on leaving Uri takes a long bend of some miles to the right to a point where the Haji Pir River is crossed, and then sweeps back along its right hank to a spot almost opposite the dak bungalow, we thought that a short cut down to the water, which from our height seemed quite insignificant, and thence up to the road on the other side, would be a desirable stroll. As we walked down the steep path into the nullah a brace of red-legged partridges (chikor) rose in a great fuss, and sailed gaily across the river, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... How insignificant, how miserable and wretched in the midst of this expanse of sky and earth, seemed the huddling bunch of dejected buildings, and yet the whole interest of heaven above and earth around centred in those straggling shacks, for they ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... object of Henry's policy. For this purpose the primary condition was that none of his subjects should be sufficiently powerful to challenge his authority and raise the standard of revolt, as the King-Maker and others had done in the past. The old nobility were practically wiped out. Insignificant husbands were chosen for the daughters of York. The blood of the Plantagenets ran in the veins of the house of Buckingham; but it was only in the last generation that the De la Poles had mated with the royal house, and ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... safe the chance of Pauline's being killed during the flight on the following day was insignificant. He must give up all hope of wealth from the permanent control of her estate. As the evening wore on Owen began to feel how he had unconsciously relied on this hope. He doubled his evening dose of morphine, but it neither soothed his disappointment ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... interested in different things," and "Milly doesn't care for ideas, you know." Mrs. Fredericks, who considered herself to be in the flood-tide of the modern intellectual movement, had few moments to spare for her insignificant friend. Milly realized this with a touch of bitterness. "I can't do anything for her in any way. I can't help on her game." She knew that these ambitious, modern, intellectual women, with whom she had been thrown, had no use for ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... vegetables are grown. Occasionally a considerable planting of bananas will be found, while many villages are buried beneath the shade of coconut trees, but in comparison with rice the cultivation of other crops becomes insignificant. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of food stuff, as well as of plants and trees used in household industries, are planted in prepared land; while many of wild growths are utilized. The following list is doubtless ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... it is doubtful if a young ash is anywhere to be found; if so it is an accident. The ash is even rarer than the rest. In their places are put more laurels, cedar deodaras, various evergreens, rhododendrons, planes. How tame and insignificant are these compared with the oak! Thrice a year the oaks become beautiful in ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... and halting effort it seemed to me, for all that we had paid him twenty-five thousand dollars for his services—pointing out how neither Dillingham nor Hawkins was worthy of belief, and how the case against us rested entirely upon their testimony and upon that of the clerk, who was an insignificant and unimportant witness injected simply for the sake of apparent corroboration. Faugh! I have heard Gottlieb make a better address to the jury a thousand times, and yet this man was supposed to be one of the best! Somehow throughout the trial he had seemed to me to be ill at ease and sick of his ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... course there was a great deal of miserable struggle even then, but I remember it as insignificant compared with the hours of contented work. I seldom did anything in the mornings except think and prepare; towards evening I felt myself getting ready, and at last I sat down with the first lines buzzing in my head. And I used to read a great deal at the same time. Whilst ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... operations. Desertion was fairly common among the Turks about this time, partly because rations were poor, but mainly because they had no stomach for the fight that they knew to be imminent. In so far as this raid affected us, our trenches were badly smashed by the artillery, but our casualties were insignificant. ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... can come in to dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening, the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery soul',—contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the scheme of 'making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.' ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... that all the creeds of men which limit the divine favour are false. With whatsoever panics worms of the dust may have struck their fellow worms by challenging them to a decision of their weak, insignificant notions at a tribunal of an omnipotent judge, such solemn appeals can have but little effect on the humble mind who leans not to his own wisdom, and who views every thing already decided in the ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... any thing of an air distinguishable it will please. There are at present a host of composers in France whose fame will probably be not so long as their lives; Paris is inundated every year with a number of insignificant ballads which just have their day, and if perchance there should be one or more that are really clever amongst the mass of dross which comes forth, after a twelvemonth no one would think of singing it because ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... syphilis, then, as a serious but by no means hopeless constitutional disease. Dismiss chancroid as a relatively insignificant local affair, seldom a serious problem under a physician's care. Separate syphilis from gonorrhea for the reason that gonorrhea is a problem in itself. Against its train of misfortune to innocence ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... could not see. Far away on the port bow a long gray shape lay—a moored vessel. To starboard were faint blurs, indistinguishable, insignificant; ahead, a black dot with a faint comet-like tail—the pursued cutter—and ahead of that, again, a streak across the blackness, with another dot slightly to the left ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... was a fresh in it; and as we had had rain, and saw that the clouds hung on the mountains behind us, we were in hopes the supply the river was receiving came from Laidley's Ponds. On the following morning the waters of the Darling were half-bank high, and from an insignificant stream it was at once converted into a broad and noble river, sweeping everything away on its turbid waters at the rate of these or four miles an hour. The river still continues to rise, and is fast filling ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... composition was completed. "M. de Buffon gives reasons for the preference he shows as to every word in his discourses, without excluding from the discussion even the smallest particles, the most insignificant conjunctions," says Madame Necker; "he never forgot that he had written 'the style is the man.' The language could not be allowed to derogate from the majesty of the subject. 'I made it a rule,' he used to say, 'to always fix upon the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... is heavy, and even the merest pebble has a perceptible weight, yet the entire planet, toward which both gravitate, floats more lightly than any feather. In literature somewhat analogous may be observed. Here also are found the insignificant lightness of the pebble and the mighty lightness of the planet; while between them range the weighty masses, superior to the petty ponderability of the one, and unequal to the firmamental float of the other. Accordingly, setting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... unending roar of rifles and crash of shells, that I merely mechanically wake at the appointed hour, mechanically perform my duty and as mechanically fall asleep again. My ego has been crushed out of me, and I have become, doubtless, quite rightly so, an insignificant atom in a curious thing called a siege. No mortal under such circumstances, no matter how faithful to an appointed task, can put pencil to paper, and attempt to sketch the confusion and smoke around him. You may try, perhaps, as I have tried, and then, suddenly, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... honors to General Greene, who, by his prudence, wisdom, and valor, had, with such insignificant forces and miserable equipments, achieved so much for the cause of liberty. He never gained a decided victory, yet his defeats bad all the effect of successes, and his very retreats strengthened the confidence of his men and weakened that ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... asked "What is all this fuss that is being made about negroes? What does it amount to? And where will it end?" These questions imply that those who ask them consider the slavery question a very insignificant matter they think that it amounts to little or nothing and that those who agitate it are extremely foolish. Now it must be admitted that if the great question which has caused so much trouble is insignificant, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... remonstrance rang out on deck—to be echoed in clamour. His cigarette stopped behind, on the taffrail, carefully placed at precisely the height of his head, its little glowing tip the only spot of light on the decks. No matter whether or not it were noted; no precaution is too insignificant to be important when life and death are ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... blinded us and fled! I have since then contended and rejoiced; Amid the glories of the house of life Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld: Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love Fall insignificant on my closing ears, What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind In our inclement city? what return But the image of the emptiness of youth, Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice Of discontent ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last, feeling about in the darkness. His hands encountered smooth, blank walls, on each side of the door. He dared not step forward lest he should run against machinery or meet with some cavity in the flooring. And reflecting that the small, insignificant gleam which it would make could scarcely be noticed from outside, he struck a match, and carefully holding it within the flap of his outstretched jacket, looked around him. A first quick glance gave him ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... join the Colonial Dames because it meant raking over the bones of all my ancestors—whom may the Saints rest! Most Southern relationships amount to no relationship at all, and Harriet's is too insignificant to mention." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Infinite Intelligence which knows all that is hidden in that darkness, and all that man will discover therein, how poor a thing is the telephone or phonograph, how insignificant are all his 'great discoveries'! This thought should imbue a man of science with humility rather than with pride. Seen from another standpoint than his own, from without the circle of his labours, not ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... or spirituality the less spiritual, for such a doctrine; and I must believe it even on the hypothesis of you spiritual folks; for you generally affirm that the Belief of a Future Life does not really exercise any thing more than an insignificant influence on human nature; the hopes and the fears of that so distant a morrow are too vague to be operative. Now, if it be so, immortality can be no more a ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the society of the lively, attractive ladies of New York? Of course there are exceptions, where active and superior minds become highly cultivated by their own persevering exertions; but the aids offered by ladies' schools are comparatively insignificant. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... could he suppose the human race would be nearer, by the veriest fraction of a millimetre, to universal liberty, equality, and prosperity, through his insignificant death? Modesty, and a natural instinct of self-preservation alike answered, "never a jot." Whereupon with pertinacious, if furtive, activity he sought means of escape. And, at length, after months of hiding and anxious flitting, found them in the shape of a doubtfully seaworthy, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... that many people live and die without, consciously at least, recognising this relation. The thought of death may have had a very small place in their lives, and when death itself comes it may, for various reasons, be a very insignificant experience to them. It may come in a moment, suddenly, and give no time for feeling; or it may come as the last step in a natural process of decay, and arrest life almost unconsciously; or it may come through ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... to regard as unendurable. But in this time of discouragement there were cases brought to my notice, the severity of which fairly humbled me in the dust, filling my heart with thankfulness at the exemption extended to us, and showing me that afflictions are really great or insignificant only by comparison. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Skinner. And we wondered precisely what George Moore means when he says that Stevenson is all right except when he tries to tell a story. According to Moore, a story is not a story if it keeps you up half the night; "it is only the insignificant book that cannot be laid down," he ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the Chaplain twelve hundred, the Purser of a line-of-battle ship receives thirty-five hundred dollars. In considering his salary, however, his responsibilities are not to be over-looked; they are by no means insignificant. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... hippopotamus and crocodile hunting is a piece of soft steel about eleven inches long, with a narrow blade or point of about three-quarters of an inch in width, and a single but powerful barb. To this short, and apparently insignificant weapon, a strong rope is secured, about twenty feet in length, at the extremity of which is a buoy or float as large as a child's head formed of an extremely light wood called ambatch (Anemone mirabilis), that is about half the specific ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... strange thing, how a man's physical body may be his fortress or his enemy. All the world has at times beheld those whom an insignificant figure and an ill-modelled face handicapped with a severity cruel to the utmost. A great man but five feet high, and awkward of bearing, has always added to his efforts at accomplishing great deeds the weight ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... perception in his feeling for Savina; carried along in the tempestuous flood of her emotion, he yet had time to linger over and enjoy the occurrences by the way. He liked each day for itself, and she regarded it only as an insignificant detail of their unity. All her planning, her dress and ardor and moods, were directed to one never-lost-sight-of end; but he disposed his attention in a hundred channels. Lee began to be aware of the tremendous single economy of women, the constant bending back of their ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Mutiny, in which Roberts and many another British soldier was to be plunged, had its immediate cause in a strange thing—greased cartridges! How so insignificant a thing could have started so great a trouble is one of the strange, true stories of history. There were, of course, other contributory factors, but this was the match ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... of any one type,—that of the 'Crocodilia', has persisted from at least the commencement of the Mesozoic epoch up to the present time with so much constancy, that the amount of change which it exhibits may fairly, in relation to the time which has elapsed, be called insignificant. And the imperfect knowledge we have of the ancient mammalian population of our earth leads to the belief that certain of its types, such as that of the 'Marsupialia', have persisted with correspondingly little change through a similar ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... expressed in the camp of Borealis, which appeared like a herd of small, brown houses, pitifully insignificant in all that immensity, and gathered together as if for company, trustfully nestling in the hand of the earth-mother, known to be so gentle with her children. On the hill-sides, smaller mining houses stood, each one emphasized ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... been severely taken to task by some insignificant writers of our day for the above passage, let us, not for his vindication, but excuse, take a moment's glance at Speght's edition (1602,) which, in Dryden's day, was in high esteem, and had been at first published on the recommendation of Speght's "assured and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... one near the east end of the wing, which is twenty-seven feet in diameter, was three stories in height. The floor-beams are removed, but the remains show this plainly. The interior is nearly filled up, but it was originally over twenty-five feet in depth. The ruins of the other estufa are insignificant compared with this, and it probably consisted of but one low room. Facing the center of the court are remains of what were three circular rooms. At the end of the wings, outside of the building, are faint outlines of other circular ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... breathlessly ten minutes late, was very thin, badly dressed and insignificant-looking, wore her hair short, and could not see you if you were more than four feet away from her. She had been on various lonely and distant travelling excursions, about which she had written books, had ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... points were given in Sampson's favour, and some against him; and the upshot was, that, instead of being desired to travel for a time in foreign parts, he was permitted to grace the mother country under certain insignificant restrictions. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... garden, separated on the further side by a low hedge from the old ivy-covered church. On the back steps of the church, Sextoness Jane was shaking out her duster. She was old and gray and insignificant looking; her duties as sexton, in which she had succeeded her father, were her great delight. The will with which she sang and worked now seemed to have in it something of reproach for the girl stretched out idly in ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Foreign affairs were mingled with domestic politics, and the Democratic and Federalist parties became avowedly organized. Washington was for a time allowed to keep aloof from the contest—not for a long time. A circumstance insignificant in itself increased the bitterness of the contest out of doors. Democratic societies had been formed on the model of the Jacobin clubs of France. Washington regarded them with alarm, and the unmeasured expression of his sentiments on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... A purple pourpoint, crimson breeches, an amber-colored cloak, and a huge hat with a blue feather set off a figure of extravagantly martial presence. Where the face of the first-comer was pale, insignificant, and timid, that of the second-comer was ruddy, assertive, and bold. The only point in common with his predecessor was that he, too, swung at his side a monstrous rapier. The sight of this whimsical stranger was ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... poorhouse was about a mile and a half. For the first half mile Deacon Pinkerton kept silence. Then he began to speak, in a tone of cold condescension, as if it were a favor for such a superior being to address an insignificant child, about to ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... did not appear to be quite satisfied with the conduct of Perth, and, reaching over the shoulder of the second master, he took the paper from the atlas. Of course this act produced a sensation among the boys; the most insignificant event creates a sensation in the school-room. Mr. Mapps lowered the pointer, and intimated by his actions that he did not intend to proceed till order was restored. Perth was confounded this time, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... be remembered that an Austrian force had been reported approaching from the south, moving on Krupanie, and that it had seemed so insignificant that a small detachment of third reserve troops had been sent to hold it back. But this enemy force now ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... "Radial Paralysis" and "Brachial Paralysis," there is to be found in veterinary literature a discussion of conditions which vary in character from the almost insignificant form of paresis to the incurably affected conditions wherein the whole shoulder is ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... strength, and the absence of drill was of no consequence whatever in such an engagement. They were perfectly sheltered from the enemy's fire while engaged in calmly shooting him down, and their loss, up to the moment when the British rushed among them, was altogether insignificant. Their casualties took place after the position was stormed and on their retreat along the peninsula, and amounted in all to 145 killed and captured and 304 wounded. It may be said that both sides fought well; but, from the circumstances under which they ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... ejaculated bitterly, "that we should have been compelled to strike to such an insignificant craft as that!" pointing to the schooner. "But," he added, "you did not fight fair; you never gave us a chance. Had you but once fairly come within range of our guns we would have blown you out of ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... millions from the civil list. The first chamber, however, refused its assent to these resolutions, the law of censorship was retained, and the saving in the expenditure of the crown was reduced to an extremely insignificant amount. In the autumn of 1832, Prince Otto, the king's second son, was, with the consent of the sultan, elected king of Greece by the great maritime powers intrusted with the decision of the Greek question, and Count Armansperg, formerly minister of Bavaria, was ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... after he had studied those few bold words in the telegram, trying to squeeze the utmost meaning out of the brief sentence. "You see, Captain Winstanley does not say that your mother is dangerously ill, or even very ill; he only says ill. That might mean something quite insignificant—hay-fever or neuralgia, ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... what had been expected to lead off a large defection from the colonial clergy were numerically insignificant; but very far from insignificant was the fact that in Connecticut a sincere and spontaneous movement toward the Episcopal Church had arisen among men honored and beloved, whose ecclesiastical views were not tainted ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... they had their representatives, and hand in hand with the liberal and counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, they began a furious and insane campaign against the proposed demonstration, as soon as they heard of it. All their forces were marshalled against us. We had an insignificant minority in the Council and withdrew. The demonstration ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... youth. She looked as though she were four-and-twenty, but in truth she was no more than eighteen. When seen beside her aunt, she seemed to be no more than half the elder lady's size; and yet her proportions were not insignificant. She, too, was tall, and was as one used to command, and walked as though she were a young Juno. Her hair was very dark,—almost black,—and very plentiful. Her eyes were large and bright, though too bold for a girl so ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Siberia, where much ethnological work yet remains to be done, and where a tendency toward this form of numeration has been observed to exist. But the total number of Asiatic vigesimal scales must always remain small—quite insignificant in comparison ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... low. I've seen him forget, just once, and turn on a man, humiliate him, wound his pride, crush him under foot and think no more of the matter than if he had stepped on a worm. And I've seen that man, the most insignificant of the politician's followers, work and plot and scheme to overthrow him; and in the end succeed. The big man never knew what struck him. He thought it was luck, chance, a turn of the wheel. He never dreamed that it was his own character hitting back. I've seen it so often, I'm a fatalist. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... that now overshadows us does not arise from real grievances. Plotters for disunion avail themselves of the weakness of the executive to precipitate revolution. South Carolina has taken the lead. The movement would be utterly insignificant if confined to that state. She is still in the Union, and neither the President nor Congress has the power to consent to her withdrawal. This can only be by a change in the constitution or the acquiescence of the people of the other states. The defense of the property of the United States and the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was but an insignificant town in comparison with what it has since become, although from its confined situation it is unlikely ever to attain to any great size. It is the port of the capital of the province, Christchurch, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... more; and so, drenched, chilled, and weary, the lonely lad crept back into the "shanty." How dreary it was to be its sole occupant! If he only had some one to talk, plan, and consult with! He felt so helpless and insignificant there in the dark, drifting down the great river on a raft that, without help, he was as incapable of managing as a baby. What ought he to do? What should he do? It was so hard to think without putting his thoughts into words. Even Elta's presence and counsel ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... whether you prefer the word Mozart-Gesellschaft [Mozart Society] or Mozart-herein for the Publication of the Complete Works of Mozart, or any other title.) Together with this I repeat that certainly there is no need to fear any loss in this matter, but that probably there will be a not insignificant gain. This gain, according to my ideas, should be formed into a capital, until the edition is completed, to be then employed, or perhaps not till later, by the Society of Austrian Lovers of Music for some artistic ...
— 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
... official report, there was a reconnaissance in force under General Ducrot in the direction of Bougival and Rucil. The Mobiles, we are told, behaved well, but the loss on either side was insignificant. Our amateur strategists are divided as to the expediency of taking Versailles, with the whole Prussian quartier-general, or reopening communications with the provinces by the way of Orleans. The relative advantages ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... upon their victim, until at length the slight wound becomes a sore of great magnitude, and never heals. Mortification at length ensues, and the death of the snake is then certain. You can see that if the insects are weak and insignificant, nature teaches them a method of avenging their wrongs, and they are not ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... it. The world of tape measures and calico counters seemed so far away; the interior of his quondam lodgings in a by-street of Islington, so unfamiliar and impossible. He felt himself swallowed up in this new and bewildering existence, of which he was so insignificant an atom, the existence where tragedy reared her gloomy head, and the shadows of great things loomed around him. Down there in the cold restless waste of black waters—what was it that he saw? The sweat broke out upon his forehead, the blood seemed turned to ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one might as well say that Romeo and Juliet is a dramatic study of pharmacy because the catastrophe is brought about through an apothecary. Duels are not sex; divorce cases are not sex; the Trade Unionism of married women is not sex. Only the most insignificant fraction of the gallantries of married people produce any of the conventional results; and plays occupied wholly with the conventional results are therefore utterly unsatisfying as sex plays, however interesting they may be as plays ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... introduced the new Military Service Bill, establishing compulsion for all men married or single, Colonel CRAIG made a vain appeal to Mr. REDMOND to get the measure extended to Ireland. Nothing would do more to show the world that the recent rebellion was only the work of an insignificant section ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... and pressure of the time (to repeat Hamlet's phrase) is such that thoughtful men—and of such the Club is exclusively composed: men of great heart, men of nice susceptibility—are continually oppressed by the fumbling, hasty, and insignificant manner in which human contacts are accomplished. Let us even say, masculine contacts: for the first task of any philosopher being to simplify his problem so that he can examine it clearly and with less distraction, the Club makes a great and drastic purge by sweeping away altogether the enigmatic ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... to reason, justice, and nature, must those act, who apply this, the severest of human punishments, to the most insignificant offence! yet such is the custom with the Africans: for, from the time, in which the Europeans first intoxicated the African princes with their foreign draughts, no crime has been committed, no shadow of a crime devised, that has not immediately been ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... himself and other friends should advise. And I heartily wish his Grace had entirely stifled that comedy, if it were possible, than do an injury to our friend's reputation, only to get a hundred or two pounds to a couple of, perhaps, insignificant women. It has been printed here, and I am grieved to say it is a very poor performance. I have often chid Mr. Gay for not varying his schemes, but still adhering to those he had exhausted; and I much doubt whether the posthumous Fables will prove equal to the first. I think it is incumbent upon ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... the average woman would not have ventured, and she stood now courageously intent only upon having the way of what she felt was right and justice. There came to me as I looked at her a curious sense that I and all my friends were very insignificant creatures; and it was so, I think, in sooth, she ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... what changes they passed, or when they were endowed with the power of giving light to the universe, the Bible nowhere declares; but on the fourth day, it tells us, they were made lights, or, literally, light-bearers, to this earth. The comparatively insignificant place allotted to the stars, in the narrative of this earth's formation, corresponds, with the strictest propriety, to the nature of the discourse; which is not an account of the system of the universe, but of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the property," he said, "the house looked very differently. It was stuck full of little insignificant windows that affected me like staring eyes; its two or three inches of cornice stole timidly out, as if ashamed of itself, over the side, and the whole wore an awkward and sheepish air. It made me uncomfortable every ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Fields, "you have suffered loss. I have a hundred thousand dollars which I have forced you to present me with. That is a large sum, though to us who are so familiar with millions it seems small, almost insignificant; but, in reality, it has a great importance. You now see, my friends, what a part of your money-making mechanism may achieve. There is no bank, even of third-rate importance, in this city, whose receiving ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... to public estimation as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of resources within himself to support his borrowed dignity, he dwindled into a paltry exciseman, and shrunk out the rest of his insignificant existence in the meanest of pursuits, and among the vilest of mankind." And then on he goes, in a style of rhodomontade, but filled with living indignation, to declare his right to a political opinion, and his ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... produced no woman of greater or more incontestable genius. She has left but one book behind her, a novel, called "Wuthering Heights," a curious title, which seems to suggest a storm on a mountain peak. She was the daughter of an English clergyman, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who was the most insignificant, selfish, lethargic, pretentious creature the mind can conceive. There were only two things in life that seemed of importance to him—the purity of his Greek profile, and solicitude for his digestion. As for Emily's unfortunate mother, her whole life would seem to have been ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... up in battle array, and threw forward their muskets; but as there were only a dozen of them, they presented a very insignificant group compared with the crowds of Esquimaux who appeared on the ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the eye; the mudbank in the river; the hen in the road! Just think of the outcome of such insignificant incidents. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... immediate impression of her had been that she was dressed in mourning, but during the few moments she stood talking with our friend I made more discoveries. The figure from the neck down was meagre, the stature insignificant, but the desire to please towered high, as well as the air of infallibly knowing how and of never, never missing it. This was a little person whom I would have made a high bid for a good chance to paint. The head, the features, the colour, the whole facial oval and radiance ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... appearance but rather attractive in its way, is that the comparative critic becomes too much of a universal lover, and too little of an enthusiast, that he has an irritating and ungentlemanly habit of seeing blemishes in the greatest, a pottering and peddling fancy for discovering beauties in the most insignificant; that he lacks the exclusiveness and the fastidiousness of intellectual aristocracy, the fervour and rapture of aesthetic passion. To this, one can answer little more than, "It may be so." Certainly the critic of this kind will very rarely be able ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... away: there was no evading that. An insignificant boy thousands of miles away had sent out a cry for help, and she, the proud and blessed, who had always considered herself quite as spunky as another person, had bolted in a panic. And she had bolted too fast, it seemed, to consider even that, with that cry, there had come a new element ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... swathed in the mists of legend and doubt, was discovered the most reverend, because most ancient record of the new dispensation which dethroned that mountain, and silenced the thunders of the pedagogue law! Is it not possible that yet, in some ancient convent, insignificant to the eye of the traveller as modern Nazareth would be but for its ancient story, some one of the original gospel-manuscripts may lie, truthful and unblotted from the hand of the very evangelist?—Oh lovely parchment!' I thought—'if eye of man might but see thee! if lips ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the winds of adversity howl about our dwelling, we shall find it will stand, being founded on a ROCK. But if we build upon "the sands" of fame or self-aggrandizement, and, like the towering oak, lift our insignificant heads in proud defiance of the coming storm, we may expect that our superstruction will fall! "And great will be ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... a small member of a large organization has an excellent effect upon the mind. From the presence of numbers a certain dignity gathers round many things that would in themselves be insignificant. Ideas of corporate life with its obligations and responsibilities are gained. Honoured traditions and ideals are handed down if the school has a history and spirit of its own. There are impressive and solemn moments in the life of a large school which remain in the memory as something ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... horn, but the horse did not look fit to carry "gear," and seemed to require two men to hold and coax him. There were many loafers about, and I shrank from going out and mounting in my old Hawaiian riding dress, though Dr. and Mrs. H. assured me that I looked quite "insignificant and unnoticeable." We got away at nine with repeated injunctions from the landlord in the words, "Oh, you should ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Revolution, however, the men from the sea-coast region formed but an insignificant portion of the western pioneers. The country beyond the Alleghanies was first won and settled by the backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their own leaders, obeying their own desires, and following their own methods. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hands. This stands for him, undertakes to represent him, though, from its partial nature, it can only typify certain aspects or functions of him. A Gothic cathedral is an attempt at a universal expression of humanity, a stone image of society, in which each particle, insignificant by itself, has its meaning in the connection. It was the fresh interest in the attempt that gave birth to that wonderful architecture. This is the interest it still has, but now only historical, since the discovery was made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... members of each class were received in the order of their seniority. We change our Ministers with every Administration. So the Minister of the United States is likely to be among the juniors. He might have to wait all day, while the representatives of insignificant little States were received one after another. If, before the day ended, his turn came, some Ambassador would arrive, who would get there, perhaps, five minutes before it was time for Mr. Lincoln to go in, he had precedence at ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... which nothing can, upon a superficial view, be considered more insignificant, was, a few years back, of very considerable value, far surpassing the value of many things acquired by difficulty and danger, and for which the breadth of oceans are traversed, through storms and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... nature of the land and the lack of water they would not be in the possession of the people at all, but would long ago have been taken by the nearest hacienda. Indeed, possibly they may be upon the territory claimed by such, but of too insignificant a nature to be disturbed. Let us survey briefly these poor dwellers on Nature's waste places. We have ridden for hours under the sun and wind; our faces are scorched and our lips are cracked. "Is there no sombra where we ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... emotion, "I shall never be able sufficiently to testify my gratitude to the generous King of France. I am a poor, insignificant woman, who can thankfully accept but never requite ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... informed the moment the Captain put in an appearance. But, alas! what is friendship—even friendship reinforced by gratitude—beside love? As the poets have often remarked, in language not here to be attained, its power is insignificant, and its claims go to the wall. On fire with the emotions excited by the Countess's message, the Count forgot both Dieppe and all that he owed to Dieppe's intercession; the matter went clean out ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... of a perfectly similar kind has existed in the Shetland Islands, which furnishes a striking example, perhaps the only one now existing, of the very lasting propagation by sympathy of this species of disorders. The origin of the malady was very insignificant. An epileptic woman had a fit in church, and whether it was that the minds of the congregation were excited by devotion, or that, being overcome at the sight of the strong convulsions, their sympathy was called forth, certain it is that many adult women, and ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... past seemed those events! And as to my mother's anger against Winifred, that anger and cruel scorn of class which had concerned me so much, how insignificant now seemed this and every other obstacle in love's path! I looked up at the moonlit sky; I leaned upon a gate and looked across the silent fields where Winifred and I used to gather violets in spring, hedge-roses in summer, mushrooms in ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... certain, legal proofs were apparently lacking; but in consequence of this glaring infraction of the rights of both author and publisher, on December 28th, 1838, Balzac became a member of the Societe des Gens-de-Lettres. This Society, which was insignificant when he first joined it, owed everything to his reputation, and to the energy with which he worked for its interests. On October 22, 1839, he spoke at Rouen in its behalf, in the first action brought by it against literacy piracy. Later in the same year he was elected President, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... long breath as he saw with me that the gig's crew were on board the cutter, and that the boat was being hoisted up, while, at the same time, with the speed to be seen on a man-of-war, even if it be so insignificant a vessel as a revenue cutter, sail was being hoisted, and she was off ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... of the Brotherhood of Science, I desire to contribute, in however insignificant a degree, to the Great Cause of Learning. I will therefore, with Your Permission, read" (loud cries of 'No! No!' 'Put him out!' etc., to which of course I paid no attention,) "the following papers: 'An ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... undersized, insignificant-looking chap toddling aimlessly along the street a few blocks away from the station. We grappled with him and hustled him back to the crowd. He slept with us on the floor, and no one paid any further attention to him, except to remark that he talked to himself a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... safe? If they could thus roast them slowly to death, why not kill them at once, by throwing the waxen image in the fire? Who can have given such power to the devil? Is it the Almighty, to satisfy the revenge of an insignificant woman, or the jealousy of lovers ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Aeliana (third series, 1914, xi. 279-310); see also a short account by myself in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London (xxvi. 185-9). The discoveries were comparatively few; they comprised some ill-preserved and mostly insignificant buildings on the north side of the site, some ditches, and a stretch of the road leading to the north (Dere Street). Among small objects were an interesting but imperfect altar to 'Panthea ...', a bronze 'balsamarium' showing a puzzling variety of barbarian's ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
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