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Actual   /ˈæktʃəwəl/  /ˈækʃəl/   Listen
Actual

adjective
1.
Presently existing in fact and not merely potential or possible.  Synonym: existent.  "Actual and imagined conditions"
2.
Taking place in reality; not pretended or imitated.  "Filmed the actual beating"
3.
Being or reflecting the essential or genuine character of something.  Synonyms: genuine, literal, real.  "A literal solitude like a desert" , "A genuine dilemma"
4.
Existing in act or fact.  Synonym: factual.  "Actual heroism" , "The actual things that produced the emotion you experienced"
5.
Being or existing at the present moment.



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"Actual" Quotes from Famous Books



... pressure downwards (of which the spectroscope would infallibly give notice) in its gaseous constituents; whereas under the sole influence of the sun's attractive power, their density should be multiplied many million times in the descent through a mere fraction of their actual depth.[594] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... The whole idea is nothing less than atrocious; and, in our judgment, the Adapter's actual purpose in putting it forth is to make his own superlative goodness seem proved ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... App. 119 is best. Push-buttons are handy where used only for experiments, and not for the actual sending ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John

... miles and for all he knew other armies, far to right and left, might be singing it, too. The immense volume of the song drowned out everything, even that tremor in the air, caused by the big guns. John's heart beat so hard that it caused actual physical pain in his side, and presently, although he was unconscious of it, he was thundering out the verses with ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Alluvial deposits have filled up all but its deepest depression, which is known as Birket Nu; but in ages preceding our era it must still have been vast enough to suggest to Egyptian soldiers and boatmen the idea of an actual sea opening into the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... behaved once at Besworth: or, no; you were not there, but he used your name. His mania was, as everybody could see, to marry his children grandly. I don't blame him in any way. Still, he was not justified in living beyond his means to that end, speculating rashly, and concealing his actual circumstances. Well, Mr. Pericles and he were involved together; that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... how memories are retained is a mystery. There are theories that represent sensory experiences as actual physiological "impressions" on the cells of the brain. They are, however, nothing but theories, and the manner in which the brain, as the organ of the mind, keeps its record of sensory experiences has never ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton

... charming autobiography of a little girl of eight years, written literally from her own dictation. Since "Pet Marjorie" I have seen no such actual self-revelation on the part of a child. In the course of her narration she describes, with great precision and correctness, the travels of the family through Europe in the preceding year, assigning usually ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... whether it is actual merchandise or brain vibrations, can be more easily sold with the aid of advertising. Not one half of the businesses which should be exploited are appearing in the newspapers. Trade grows as reputation ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... President Roosevelt repeatedly declared, is the making and maintenance of prosperous homes. That object cannot be achieved unless such of the public lands as are suitable for settlement are conserved for the actual home-maker. Such lands should pass from the possession of the Government directly and only into the hands of the settler who lives on the land. Of all forms of conservation there is none more important than that of holding the public lands for the ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... on more than one thousand children, with only three cases of any trouble from haemorrhage, while four or five out of fifteen adults required either the actual cautery ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... doom. He hoped that Miriam Kirkstone's refusal to confide in him and her reluctance to furnish him with the smallest facts in the matter would turn Mary Josephine's sympathy into a feeling of indifference if not of actual resentment. He was disappointed. Mary Josephine insisted on having Miss Kirkstone over for dinner the next day, and from that hour something grew between the two girls which Keith knew he was powerless to overcome. ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had caused them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as a defaulter, as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had passed; to ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... said Flora; "let it go; we have never had or enjoyed that money, so it cannot matter, and it is not to be considered as the loss of an actual possession, because we ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... of Southwark belongs unquestionably to the Tabard. Not that it is the most ancient, or has played the most conspicuous part in the social or political life of the borough, but because the hand of the poet has lifted it from the realm of the actual and given it an enduring niche in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... generally are much more disposed to value people according to the estimate they form of their industry, and other qualities which more directly lead to the acquisition of property, and to the benefit of the community, than for their present and actual wealth. While they pay a certain mock homage to a wealthy immigrant, when they have a motive in doing so, they secretly are more inclined to look on him as a well-fledged goose who has come to America to be plucked. In truth, many of them are so dexterous in this operation ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... with different eyes. He remembered how, when he was returning home and thinking of her in the silence of the night, he said to himself "If!—" This "if," by which at that time he had referred to the past, to the impossible, now applied to an actual state of things, but not exactly such a one as he had then supposed. Freedom by itself was little to him now. "She will obey her mother," he thought. "She will marry Panshine. But even if she refuses him—will it not be just the same as far as I am concerned?" ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... be recognized, and felt, and acted upon by the large body of Christians? Abstractedly considered, such an interpretation in a religious act of daily recurrence by the mass of unlearned believers would, I conceive, appear to reflecting minds most improbable, if not utterly impossible. And as to its actual bona-fide result in practice, a very brief sojourn in countries where the religion of Rome is dominant, will suffice to convince us, that such subtilties of the casuist are neither received nor understood by the great body of worshippers; and that the large majority of ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... reconciling this belief with the actual occurrence was the odd behavior of the animal. Why had it gone up the gorge, apparently parenti passu, to come tumbling down again in such a confused fashion? Why was it still kicking and stumbling about ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... their state) and hence relying on the truth of Vedic texts thereof perform sacrifices. Some perform (or attain the object of) sacrifices by the mind (meditation), some by words (recitation of particular prayers, or Yapa); and some by acts (actual consummation of the Yatishtoma and other costly rites). The person, however, who seeketh Brahman through Truth, obtaineth his desired objects at home. When however, one's purposes become abortive (through absence of knowledge of Self), one should adopt vows of silence and such like, called Dikshavrata. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... that whatever lay at the exact root of Philip's motives when he conceived the plan of his Order, the actual result of his foundation was not affected. He failed, indeed, to bring back into the world the ancient system of knighthood in its ideal purity and strength. Rather did he make a notable contribution to its decadence and speed its parting. What was brought into existence was a house of peers for ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... wrote, "I cannot imagine what you must think of my silence; but whatsoever you do think cannot be half so terrible as the actual cause of it. I have been in close touch with misery and death, with things so appalling that heart and mind have had room to hold nothing else. Indeed, I am still so horribly nervous and upset that I scarcely ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... of successive forms—that is to say, it would be corruption, not pure and simple, but partial, since a being in act would subsist under the transient form. Thus the ancient natural philosophers taught that the substratum of bodies was some actual being, such as air or fire. But supposing that no form exists in corruptible bodies which remains subsisting beneath generation and corruption, it follows necessarily that the matter of corruptible and incorruptible bodies is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... the stumps near the Graves-Reed cabin, cut while the snow was at its deepest, was found, by actual measurement, to be twenty-two feet in height. Part of this stump ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... and listen to the singular duet sung by those two mousmes: a strange musical medley, slow and mournful, beginning with two or three high notes, and descending at each couplet, in an almost imperceptible manner, into actual solemnity. The song keeps its dragging slowness; but the accompaniment, becoming more and more accentuated, is like the impetuous sound of a far-off hurricane. At the end, when these girlish voices, usually so soft, give ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... only actual female for whom he felt any desire at the earlier period (aged 14 to 16) began to be the cousin who lived in the house. On one occasion he touched her breasts, on another her naked thighs—and that was all! As she grew to puberty, she would have allowed far more liberties, but he contented ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... mine," laughed Waldron, to cover a certain emotion he could not help feeling at sight of the actual operation of a process which might, after all, open out ways and means for the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... there is a great deal more to be said about all this: but I have no time to tell you now. You will read it, I hope, for yourselves when you grow up, in the writings of far wiser men than I. Or perhaps you may feel for yourselves in foreign lands the actual shock of a great earthquake, or see its work fresh done around you. And if ever that happens, and you be preserved during the danger, you will learn for yourself, I trust, more about earthquakes ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley

... Philip Horn." That was something, but it could not have been less. It had been brought by a messenger from Wraxton, Fuguet & Co., and had been delivered to Mrs. Cliff. That lady had told the messenger to take the letter to Edna's salon, and she was now lying in her own chamber, in a state of actual ague. Of course, she would not intrude upon Edna at such a moment as this. She would wait until she was called. Whether her shivers were those of ecstasy, apprehension, or that nervous tremulousness which would come to any one who beholds an uprising from the grave, she did not ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... March (1794) Mr. Sedgwick moved several resolutions, the objects of which were to raise a military force, and to authorize the President to lay an embargo. The armament was to consist of 15,000 men, who should be brought into actual service in case of war with any European power, but not until war should break out. In the meantime they were to receive pay while assembled for the purpose of discipline, which was not to exceed twenty-four days ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... has all the vividness of an actual death-scene, as the husband and children from whom she must part are kneeling by the ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... Meagles's sunshine on the morning of the chance encounter at the Ferry. If Clennam had ever admitted the forbidden passion into his breast, this period might have been a period of real trial; under the actual circumstances, doubtless ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... not been expected to live, in fact it was remarkable that he should have lived so long. But when a man has been preparing for a struggle during many months, he is apt to feel that the actual moment of the battle is indefinitely far off. But now the senator was dead, and John meant to stand in his place. The battle was begun. No one who has not seen some of the inside workings of political life can have any idea of what ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... of glee, and would gladly have chased the chickens, handled the young ducks, and teazed the turkey-gobbler till he was quite in a passion. Hatty checked her as gently as she could, and managed to keep her for some time from doing any actual mischief. ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly

... themselves into an association for maintenance of the peace and good order of society; the prevention and punishment of crime; the preservation of our lives and property; and to insure that our ballot boxes shall hereafter express the actual and unforged will of the majority of our citizens; and we do bind ourselves each to the other by a solemn oath to do and perform every just and lawful act for the maintenance of law and order, and to sustain the laws when properly and faithfully administered. But we ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... have cause to read it in actual fact I pray God never to permit. But so many women are praying for so many men, and daily—. So I am praying beyond that: for myself; for strength, if anything should happen to you, to turn my heart to God. You see, then I can say, 'God keep ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... The actual resistance of insulating oils depends so much on the electrical intensity, on the duration of that intensity, and on the previous history of the oil as to the direction of the voltage to which it has been subjected—to say nothing of the effects of traces ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... The actual treatment of a case of smallpox consists in little more than providing suitable food, in sponging the body to reduce the fever, and in anointing the skin to allay the irritation of the pustules. As in measles, the eyes are badly affected, and a darkened room is essential for the comfort of ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... the difficulties that may arise in actual service due to the failure of staybolts, or in general, due to the use of flat-stayed surfaces, constructional features are encountered in the actual manufacture of such boilers that make it difficult if not impossible to produce a first-class mechanical job. It is practically ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... to understand," said he, after a minute's steady scrutiny, "that this is a photograph of actual children?" ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... personally, was not for Bailey to decide. His duty was to keep his cattle where they belonged and his men out of trouble. And because he was known as level-headed and capable he held the position of actual manager of the Concho—owned by an Eastern syndicate—but he was too modest and sensible to assume any such title, realizing that as foreman he was in closer touch with his men. They told him things, as foreman, that as manager he would have heard indirectly through ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... held down in the bottom of a box during a performance of L'Oncle Sam, sobbing at intervals, "My country! O my country!" While yet another (my new acquaintance, Pinkerton) was supposed to have made the most conspicuous figure in the actual battle. At one blow, he had broken his own stool, and sent the largest of his opponents back foremost through what we used to call a "conscientious nude." It appears that, in the continuation of his flight, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... point of view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable? Is there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the laws of nature? Scarcely; But what this faith makes objective we may hold as subjective truth. The moral being may moralize his sufferings by using natural facts for his own inner education. What he cannot change he calls the will of God, and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... some way, answerable for the condition in which she found you. A swoon produced by a shock indicted on the mind, is a swoon that she doesn't understand. She looks back into her own experience, and associates it with the exercise of actual physical brutality on the part of the man. And she sees, in you, a reflection of her own sufferings and her own case. It's curious—to a student of human nature. And it explains, what is otherwise unintelligible—her ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... animated charms of Paul and Virginia's island. Of Bernardin Saint Pierre's romance as an illustration of the spot, Mr. Pike dryly observes that writers when about to draw largely on their imaginations should be careful to conceal the actual whereabouts of their stories: we live in an age of exploration that is sure to "display their ridiculous side when reduced to fact." There was, however, a foundation in fact, quite enough for the purpose of a prose poem, in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... circuit of the cube, and at the end of it looked at each other in perplexity. Never, save in the middle of an ocean, in the doldrums, did any man ever see such a totally barren spot. Not a tree, much less a sign of human occupation; there was not even the slightest mound. The planet was, in actual fact, as smooth and as bare as a ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... camp, which have hitherto lain fallow, owing to their being intersected by canadas, and difficult to get at, can now be treated by the motor plough, with the result that their value will rapidly rise. In an actual case near the Central Cordoba Railway, people are to-day offering $118 per hectarea for land which was bought two years ago for $25 per hectarea, but during the two years it has been thoroughly ploughed and ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... when Kenneth was buried there he might lie beneath Bute soil the overplus was deposited in the garden of Kirkton house, where the heap is still preserved." [Dixon's "Gairloch."] The same writer states distinctly that Kenneth came from Bute, that he was the actual purchaser of the estate, that he resided in the proprietor's house at Kirkton, that he officiated in the old church there, some remains of which are still to be seen, and, he adds - "a loose stone may be seen ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... acquiring a general tendency to putridity in their juices and muscular substances, from want of air and exercise, excess of feeding and bad food, and the dirt in which they live. A brute, no more than a human being, can digest above a certain quantity of food, to convert it into actual nourishment; and good chyle can only be produced from wholesome food, cleanliness, air, and exercise. To be well fleshed rather than fat, is the desirable state of animals destined for slaughter. There will always be with ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... apologies to any who have, or think they have, an ancestor in this book. He has drawn the foregoing with a very free hand, and in the Maryland scenes has made use of names rather than of actual personages. His purpose, however poorly accomplished, was to give some semblance of reality to this part of the story. Hence he has introduced those names in the setting, choosing them entirely at random from the many prominent families ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... between the twentieth and the thirtieth of this month, and make good to me the main expenses of a journey to you, I should hope, in some few days, I might unite the interest of the stage with my own, and give the piece that proper rounding-off, which, without an actual view of the representation, cannot well be given it. On this point, may I request the favour of your Excellency's decision soon, that I may be prepared for ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... onward the happy day, and was as anxious as might be expected to abridge the period of mourning which had put him in possession of so many charms and amiable qualities, of which he had been only, as it were, the heir apparent, not the actual owner, until then. The gentle Blanche, every thing that her affianced lord could desire, was not averse to gratify the wishes of her fond Henry. Lady Clavering came up from Tunbridge. Milliners and jewelers were set to work and engaged to prepare the delightful paraphernalia of Hymen. Lady Clavering ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a fascinating, yet withal tormenting, insecurity in the intercourse preceding an actual Declaration of Love. It may be the ante-chamber to an earthly paradise. It may but prove to be a fool's paradise. George Eliot describes two of her characters as being "in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... bread-winner, a long illness, a failure in the City, or any one of a thousand other causes which might be named, will bring within the first circle those who at present imagine themselves free from all danger of actual want. The death-rate in Darkest England is high. Death is the great gaol-deliverer of the captives. But the dead are hardly in the grave before their places are taken by others. Some escape, but the majority, their health sapped by their surroundings, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... frequently meant a part of it, occupying a distinct portion of the territory, a potential microcosm or nucleus of a clan, having limited autonomy in the conduct of its own immediate affairs. The constitution of this organism, whether as contemplated by the law or in the less perfect actual practice, is alike elusive, and underwent changes. For the purpose of illustration, the fine may be said to consist, theoretically, of the "seventeen men" frequently mentioned throughout the laws, namely, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... especially appropriate for Thanksgiving Day, but has the further merit of not requiring a great deal of preparation beforehand, and is therefore not too great a tax upon a busy woman's time. Before this greatest feast day of the year, the hostess is usually so fully occupied in planning the actual bill of fare, that a game which requires nothing more than pencils, and sheets of paper with the following riddles either plainly written or typewritten upon them, will be found a boon indeed. An hour's time is usually allowed for guessing ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... speculative dreams of universal freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic news of a handful of patriots arrayed against the tyranny of the British Crown. Here were the theories of the new philosophy translated into the reality of actual experience. "No taxation without representation," "No privileged class," "No government without the consent of the governed." Was this not an embodiment of their dreams? Nor did it detract from the interest in the ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... must do so on one of two ground: either he must maintain the general proposition that various degrees of idealization are essentially incompatible within the limits of a single artistic composition, or else he must hold that the contrast between the two sets of characters in the actual play is itself of a grossness to offend the sense of literary propriety in an audience. If any one is prepared without qualification to maintain the former of these two propositions, he is welcome to do so, and he will be perfectly entitled to ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... applied to any popular ballads, it would be applied with most justification to a large number of these ballads of Scottish and Border tradition. 'Some ballads are historical, or at least are founded on actual occurrences. In such cases, we have a manifest point of departure for our chronological investigation. The ballad is likely to have sprung up shortly after the event, and to represent the common rumo[u]r of the ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various

... call in a London drawing-room, and you must say nothing that would not be possible and indeed suitable in that milieu. To attempt to arouse any interest or show any intelligence is wrong, but then neither must you betray any sign of actual imbecility. Anything that approaches gibbering cannot be too ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... wary and more helpless. Its heaviness and clumsiness do not fit it well for a life of rapine against shy woodland creatures. Its vast strength and determined temper, however, more than make amends for lack of agility in the actual struggle with the stricken prey; its difficulty lies in seizing, not in killing, the game. Hence, when a grisly does take to game-killing, it is likely to attack bison, moose, and elk; it is rarely able to catch deer, still less sheep or antelope. In fact these smaller game ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... this case the cause of the trouble is evident, the Indians have no theory to account for it. It may be remarked, however, that when one dreams of being bitten, the same treatment and ceremonies must be used as for the actual bite; otherwise, although perhaps years afterward, a similar inflammation will appear on the spot indicated in the dream, and will be followed by the same fatal consequences. The rattlesnake is regarded as a supernatural ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... demur at longer sending Blakely's meals from mess, now reduced to an actual membership of two. Sandy was a "much married" post in the latter half of the 70's, the bachelors of the commissioned list being only three, all told,—Blakely, and Duane of the Horse, and Doty of the Foot. With these was Heartburn, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... Washington, the Virginia planter, to catch, in something of its actual grandeur, the vision of a Republic stretching towards the setting sun, bound and unified by paths of inland commerce. It was Washington who traversed the long ranges of the Alleghanies, slept in the snows of Deer Park with no ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... am going next week on a tour of the eastern cities and when I return shall be prepared to face the situation. My goods at present will not sell for the actual cost of manufacturing. Van Buren's message has just made its appearance. It is opposed to banks and may operate unfavorably to business, but how it can be ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... quite seriously, that she had never been quite the same woman since she lived by Griffith's blood; she was turned jealous; and moreover it had given him a fascinating power over her, and she could tell blindfold when he was in the room. Which last fact, indeed, she once proved by actual experiment. But all this I leave to such as study the occult sciences in this profound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... came the proverb so much in use at that time, Que l'aze le saille! The which proverb is really so much coarser in its actual wording, that out of respect for the ladies I will not mention it. But this was not the only clever thing that this great and noble vicar achieved, for before this misfortune he did such a stroke of business that no robbers dare ask him how many angels he had ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... of America do enact, That the President of the Confederate States be authorized to present to Hemha Micco, or John Jumper, a commission, conferring upon him the honorary title of Lieutenant Colonel of the army of the Confederate States, but without creating or imposing the duties of actual service or command, or pay, as a complimentary mark of honor, and a token of good will and confidence in his friendship, good faith, and loyalty to this government...."—Statutes at Large of the Provisional ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... hold a parsonage, and no one to make contracts as such. Harvard College had no power to settle a minister in Marshpee, nor had the Overseers any such power. Their supervision was temporal and not ecclesiastical. Besides, the actual Congregational society which subsisted in Marshpee, when Mr. Fish was sent there, in 1811, was composed of a majority of whites. Mr. Fish himself testified before the Committee, that the church at Marshpee, ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... definite unsoundness of animal and vegetable substances, and any condition of the intellect. Timber is said to be unsound, and although we may be little acquainted with the cause by which it is produced, yet its actual state of rottenness is evident:—a horse is unsound, in consequence of some morbid affection that can be pointed out by the veterinarian:—a dentist can detect an unsound tooth:—a physician, from certain well marked ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam

... attracted emigrants in large and undesirable numbers. The commercial reaction and foreign competition, aided by the bounties, hit the merchants hard, and in 1815 bankruptcy trod fast on the heels of bankruptcy. In the following winter actual starvation menaced the residents, and many owed their lives to the generosity and energy of Captain David Buchan, commander of H.M.S. Pike, who put his men on short rations for the relief of the inhabitants. In an address of thanks, which was presented to him when the crisis ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... country do not carry such weapons. But they struck the butts of their rifles on rocks, and made a great clatter as if preparing for a bayonet charge, and cheered again and again for a good deal more than their actual numbers, while crags on each hand tossed the shouts to and fro in a mighty tumult. This was apparently too much for the small number of Boers who held the crest. Letting off bullets in rapid succession, until the magazines were exhausted, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... actual removing of our guilt is not the necessary and immediate result of his death' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... who now began to be as intoxicated and as ambitious as the general; "whenever Napoleon dies, I have more hope, more: claim, and more right than you to the throne. I am in actual service; and had not Bonaparte been the same, he might have still remained upon the half-pay, obscure and despised. Were not most of the Field-marshals and generals under him now, above him ten years ago? May I not, ten years hence, if I am satisfied ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the cure only smiled at politics and turned the conversation back to family matters. He had a natural gift for divining men's, women's, children's personal wants, and every one's distinctively from every other one's. So that to everybody he was an actual personal friend. He had been a long time in this region. It was he who buried Bonaventure's mother. He was the connecting link between Bonaventure and the ex-governor. Whenever the cure met this man of worldly power, there were questions asked and answered ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... planned and schemed to shield him, not so much from the world, as from himself. Yet he had seen, almost from the first, that their pursuit of contentment was born of their common and ever-increasing terror of the future. Each left unuttered the actual emptiness and desolation of life, yet each nursed the bitter sting of it. Day by day he had put on a bold face, because he had long since learned how poignantly miserable his own misery could make her. And, above all things, he ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... the historical facts—laying greater stress only upon the three fundamental epochs of Rumanian history: the formation of the Rumanian nation; its initial casting into a national polity (foundation of the Rumanian principalities); and its final evolution into the actual unitary State; and shall then pass on to consider the more recent internal and external development of ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... remain longer uncorrupted than in towns, whether large or small. Nor is it proved that in former times the country possessed any advantage in these respects, as compared with our own days and with the modern town. The entire fable of rural innocence appears to rest, not upon an actual comparison between town and country, but rather upon the more lively interest felt in town life, and especially in the life of the great towns: in towns, immorality has been more carefully studied and more often described; and on account of ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... against the inhabitants of it, for they think it is a matter of course that the people should defend their country and resist invaders. But in a civil war, the men of each party feel a special personal hate against every individual that does not belong to their side, and in periods of actual conflict this hatred becomes a rage ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the actual course of a boat in such circumstances, and what possible incidents the adventure might have, Dickens hired a steamer for the day from Blackwall to Southend. Eight or nine friends, and three or four members of his family, were on board, and he seemed to have no care, the whole of that summer day ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... Paige, laying down the paper, "there was no eyewitness to the actual assault; and only three people have any personal knowledge of the event—Mr. Edwards, the defendant's father, the accused himself, and the complainant. Mr. Lamoury, his counsel tells me, is in no condition to appear. But I have here," ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... for what was perhaps even harder to forgive. And if they could forgive trespasses like these, they who were of human passion and resentments, surely the reader of all hearts would forgive. That moment of agony short though it might have been in actual duration, when the murderous weapon split through the bone and scattered the brain, surely brought punishment and therefore atonement for the frailties of ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... other writer: and why not of Shakspeare, to whom they are ascribed in the MS.? Some verses by Sir J. C. Hobhouse originally appeared as Lord Byron's: and there are {524} numerous instances, both ancient and modern, of a similar attribution of works to other than their actual authors. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various

... speculation as to who would finally bear off the honors, and make the first string of players. Being a substitute was as much as some of them had any desire for, for as such they might share in the glory, and have only a small measure of the actual work. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... me; some one who secretly put every thing in my way, who paid these artists first and then sent them to me, and influenced all the journals in my favor. I should be sure of this if it were not a more incredible thing than the actual result itself. As it is I am simply perplexed and bewildered. It is a thing that is without parallel. I have a company such as no one has ever before gathered together on one stage. I have eminent prima donnas who are quite willing to sing second and third parts without ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... abrupt or too near for proper respect, and his snarling growl was unpleasantly frequent. Dogs have two growls: one deep-rumbled, and chesty; that is polite warning—the retort courteous; the other mouthy and much higher in pitch: this is the last word before actual onslaught. The Terrier's growls were all of the latter kind. I was a dog-man and thought I knew all about Dogs, so, dismissing the porter, I got out my all-round jackknife—toothpick—nailhammer-hatchet-toolbox-fire-shovel, a specialty of our firm, and lifted the netting. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... thus put in circulation, upon the best of all possible security, that of actual property, to more than four times the amount of the bonds upon which the notes are issued, and with numeraire continually arriving at the bank to exchange or pay them off whenever they shall be presented for that purpose, they will acquire a permanent ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... "Holy Roman Empire of the German nation," the great political institution of the middle ages, was now established. In theory it was the union of the world-state and the world-church,—an undivided community under Emperor and Pope, its heaven-appointed secular and spiritual heads. As an actual political fact, it was the political union of Germany and Italy, in one sovereignty, which was in the hands of the German king. The junction of the two peoples was not without its advantages to both. It was, however, fruitful of evils. The strength of Germany was spent in endless struggles ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... Duke, still red, but determined not to say anything. He had not promised Claudius not to say he could have vouched for him, had the Doctor stayed; but he feared that in telling Margaret this, he might be risking the betrayal of Claudius's actual destination. It would ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... But even the poorest dreaming has its influences, and the result of hers was that the attentions of Liftore became again distasteful to her. And no wonder, for indeed his lordship's presence in the actual world made a poor show beside that of the painter in the ideal world of the woman who, if she could not with truth be said to love him, yet certainly had a powerful fancy for him: the mean phrase is good enough, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... of profanity are not allowable if they are the mere expression of the author, but any foul or profane expression may be quoted. An author should not be charged with the impropriety of his characters who are merely taken from actual life. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... to refute solipsism, of course assumes and confirms it; for all these cans and musts touch only your idea of yourself, not your actual being, and there is no thinkable world that is not within you, as you exist really. Thus idealists are wedded to solipsism irrevocably; and it is a happy marriage, only the name of the lady has ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... have said; and being unmarried, they are young ladies, of course. One of them, however, is three-and-thirty, counting by actual years—the peerage gives it in cold blood. It is the Lady Gwendoline Drexel. Her companion is the Honorable Mary Howard, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... of the hand. "You will be glad to hear, since you take an interest in the girl, that Providence overruled her aim and Shadbolt escaped with a mere graze of the jaw—so slight, indeed, that, taking a merciful view, we decided not to consider it an actual wound, and convicted her only of the attempt. By the way, Mr. Leemy, where ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Trail," and hour on hour, about the camp-fire on the round-up, Eaton would play to the dreamy delight of the weary men. The leading spirit of those evenings was Bill Dantz, who knew a hundred songs by heart, and could spin an actual happening into a yarn so thrilling and so elaborate in every detail that no one could tell precisely where the foundation of fact ended and the Arabian dome and minaret of iridescent ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... state is this: Some reader made a remark about not publishing any of Verne's works. I say you should. Why should any such great author be disregarded in so good a magazine? And is it not interesting to note that some of his stories have become actual realizations? Even Poe's should be published. All those dead authors whose stories would be considered good were they living. Why should any person ask not to have such good stories in your magazine? Perhaps there are some people who would enjoy them, but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... Boulogne. But before we got so far, the woods resounded with the howling of mobs, and we heard, "Vive le roi" vociferated, mingled with "Down with the King,"—"Down with the Queen;" and, what was still more horrible, the two parties were in actual bloody strife, and the ground was strewn with the bodies of dead ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... October Jones made a statement to Assistant District Attorney Osborne which was in large part false, and in which he endeavored to exonerate himself entirely from complicity in any of the crimes, and in which he charged the actual administration of the chloroform to Patrick. Four days later Osborne sent for him and told him he had lied, upon which Jones became confused, continued to persist in some of his statements, qualified others and withdrew still others. He was completely unnerved ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... "Yes, actual papyrus. You can find but little of that in existence at the present day. It is only to be found here and there in museums. I know it perfectly well, however, and saw what it was at the first glance. Now, I hold that a sensation ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... further from the Harringtons—not even the echo of a "thank you" had reached him. Pleasantville for a day or two had been full of rumors as to the express robbery, but Bart decided to say very little about it, and only his intimate friends knew the actual circumstances. ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... seaward faces of the former. As a consequence of this fact, the whole of this face is not, as it is in the case of the fringing reef, covered with living coral polypes. For, as we have seen, these polypes cannot live at a greater depth than about twenty-five fathoms; and actual observation has shown that while, down to this depth, the sounding-lead will bring up branches of live coral from the outer wall of such a reef, at a greater depth it fetches to the surface nothing ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... to be aware of the employment of the other. One to trace out as much of the past of this man Percy, as may be. The other to perform the same office for Davlin. Of course, they would not be advised of the actual reason for these researches, and so their investigations would in no way interfere with Madeline's pursuit of the game at Oakley. I don't think we could improve upon the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... been nipped effectually sooner or later, for no one ever dreamed of standing up for long against Miss Eliza, or of being so rash as to contemplate such as actual disobedience. Although her stature was that of a child and her figure slight in proportion, she concentrated as much energy and leadership in those four feet eleven inches, as if ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... 1808, No. xxxiv. p. 193]. Fletcher of Saltoun also feared the ruinous results of the Union, though he was less precipitate in his conduct than the Earl of Wigton. We need scarcely say how entirely such apprehensions were falsified by the actual results. ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... her. Her new and detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him. The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected by an army of associations. The manifestations of his actual presence were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her memory was in league with her. But when the melting mood came over her, her conscience resisted and rose against ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... challenged each to mortal combat. Indeed, he had never been known to do anything less. Barney was a challenger first and a cook incidentally. But, ancient and modern tradition through, there never was chronicle of actual encounter in which the fierce little cook ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... gives us not only of the fruit of an orderly and well-stored mind on the great subject before us, but— and this is the more important—he tells us of the actual work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of ordinary men and women, as he has witnessed the results of that work amidst his many labours for the Salvation and Holiness of the people. It is for them he writes. It is to them, living the common ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... shy. Letty was not clever in any way, and very timid—her pleasures were of a kind that her life made impossible for her. She liked beautiful things, she liked soft lovely colours, and gentle voices and tender music. Rough tones really hurt her, and ugly things caused her actual pain. Sometimes when her mother told her to go out and walk with the others, she just begged to stay at home, without being able to say why, for she could not have explained how the sight of the dark, grey streets of houses dulled her, how the smoke-dried grass that ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth

... annoyance as she took her stand behind her husband's chair; it was plain from the glance she cast at Soane that she resented the presence of a witness. Even Dr. Addington, with his professional sang-froid and his knowledge of the invalid's actual state, was put out of countenance for a moment. Then he signed to Sir George to be silent, and ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... is simply reversed; with Shakespeare, for instance, or with Tennyson, who exhibit a marked predilection for Anglo-Saxon words. It is nevertheless to be observed: first, that the constitution of the vocabulary with its majority of Franco-Latin words is an actual fact; then that in a page of ordinary English the proportion of words having a Germanic origin is increased by the number of Anglo-Saxon articles, conjunctions, and pronouns, words that are merely the servants of the others, and are, as they should be, more numerous than their masters. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... had to be provisioned; and everything the settlers could spare was eagerly bought at an unusual price. The gold changed hands. Then, in their hasty departure, the soldiers disposed of everything outside of actual necessities in the way of accouterment and camp equipage. The army found the people in poverty, and left ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage

... heart and the actual master of the establishment. Yet all this really wonderful designer received was forty-five dollars a week. He knew his value, and he saw that the two brothers were rapidly getting rich, but he was a quiet man, unaggressive ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... seemed, I was awakened by Peter, who shook me and proclaimed it time to be stirring if we meant to see the sunrise from the summit. The moon was still resplendent as we started across the three miles or 'league of heaven' that still lay between us and the actual cone. This league traversed, we plunged down a gully and crossed a stream whose waters danced in the silver moonlight until the eyes were dazzled, then swept in a pearly shower down numberless ledges ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... could reach the Jews themselves; and when they ventured to come near the Romans, they became sufferers themselves before they could do any harm to the ether, and were drowned, they and their ships together. As for those that endeavored to come to an actual fight, the Romans ran many of them through with their long poles. Sometimes the Romans leaped into their ships, with swords in their hands, and slew them; but when some of them met the vessels, the Romans caught them by the middle, and destroyed at once their ships and themselves ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... outright in a fight over the possession of females. Fur seal and Stellar sea-lion bulls, and big male orang-utans, frequently are found badly scarified by wounds received in fighting during the breeding season, but of actual deaths we ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... penalty upon their subjects. Some who have not this authority are sent out to the provinces called "provinces of the senate and the people",—namely, such quaestors as the lot may designate and men who are co-assessors with those who hold the actual authority. This would be the correct way to speak of these associates, with reference not to the ordinary name but to their duties: others call these also presbeutai, using the Greek term; about this title enough has been said in the foregoing ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... I have had a liking for more than one form of sport, but an actual passion for salmon and trout fishing. Perhaps the following little confidence will give some idea how keen the passion has been. The best salmon and trout fishing in Great Britain ends in September. The best salmon fishing begins again in March. In my opinion the very best of all is ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey

... is almost always denounced by its advanced guards, by hatred or greed well known to those under whose eyes the whole matter has passed. But in the case of the Cibots, no one save the doctor had any interest in discovering the actual cause of death. The little copper-faced tailor's wife adored her husband; he had no money and no enemies; La Cibot's fortune and the marine-store dealer's motives were alike hidden in the shade. Poulain knew the portress and her way of thinking perfectly ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... the minutes of the action, and a list of the killed and wounded on board this ship; also enclosed you will receive for your information a statement of the actual force of the enemy, and the number killed and wounded on board their ships, as near as ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... during the sitting of the Commission. His old friends, the Triggers, and Piles, and Spiveycombs, clung to him as closely as ever. Every man in Percycross knew that the borough was gone, and there really seemed at last to be something of actual gratitude in their farewell behaviour to the man who had treated the place as it liked to be treated. As the end of it all, the borough was undoubtedly to be disfranchised, and Mr. Griffenbottom left it,—a ruined ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... well as the enmity of all desert travellers. The Krooman explained himself by saying, that should a caravan of a hundred men arrive at the well, they would not now interfere in behalf of Golah, but would only recognize him as a slave. On the contrary, had they found him engaged in actual strife with the robbers they would ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... good aim. The shadow fell. But as it had reached the end of the right wing of the chateau, it fell on the other side of the angle of the building; that is to say, we saw it about to fall, but not the actual sinking to the ground. Bernier, Arthur Rance and myself reached the other side twenty seconds later. The shadow was ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... been most scientifically skinned and the skin cured, stuffed with dry grass, stitched up, and the head joined to it again by an Indian whose services the young captain had contrived to secure; and when the Nonsuch sailed out of the Gulf of Paria on the eventful Saturday which saw the actual beginning of her great adventure, the skin—measuring thirty-four feet eight and a half inches from snout to tail—gracefully, if somewhat gruesomely, adorned the forward bulkhead of her ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... inasmuch as the sides of the vessel prevent the instantaneous passage of the external ether. In the second, both vessels are full, one of ether, and the other of air mixed with ether; so that there is no actual expansion of the space, and consequently no derangement of the quantity ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... partly built by a syndicate of Denver capitalists, who were under the hallucination, then prevalent, that any railroad penetrating the mountains in any direction, and having Denver for its starting point, must necessarily become at once a dividend-paying carrier for the mines, actual ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... to those terrific tarantula-dances, called revulsions, as our own. Before urging his "restraints," the President ought to have inquired a little into the history of such restraints; and he would then have saved himself from the absurdity of patronizing remedies which an actual trial had proved ludicrously inapt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... pleased to reserve the high dignity of Admiral of the Fleet as a reward for services. Under this impression, permit me to solicit the favour of being allowed to contend for that distinction, not by reference again to opinions, which may prove fallacious, but by actual experimental proof of the safety and facility of assailing fortifications by my secret plans. By them, the damage and loss of life sustained by the allied squadron in their late attack on the fortifications of Sebastopol might ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... appalled. It was her first encounter with the abysmal hatred of which some of these loud lovers of mankind are capable. Jake's theories had been merely absurd or annoying before, but now they grew monstrous, for they seemed to be confirmed by an actual crime. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... would be utterly superfluous and would make the exact measurement impossible if the material on which the judgment is to be based were of the same kind of which the evidence in the courtroom is composed. The trial by jury in an actual criminal case may involve many picturesque and interesting details, but the mental act of judging is no different when the most trivial objects ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... planted on Friday mornings grew and flourished until "Noblesse oblige" became a natural and an actual attitude towards life. Social service of some sort or other, after one left school, was an established fact like unlimited tea-parties and dancing partners. And Miss Meredith and many of her staff made it the business of their lives to see that it should be social service ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... fat is known to occur in the small intestine. By this process the fat is separated into minute particles which are suspended in water, but not changed chemically, the mixture being known as an emulsion. While this is believed by some to be an actual process of digestion, the advocates of the solution theory claim that it is a process accompanying and aiding the conversion of fat into ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... recovered his consciousness about noon the same day, but did not have the slightest recollection of his mad orgy, the only actual sufferers from which were Morris Jones, who really had been more frightened than hurt, and the helmsman, Jim Chowder, who, in lieu of having his arm broken, as he had at first cried out, had only a slight bullet graze through the fleshy part of it; so, considering the skipper fired off no ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... near Cawkwell Hill (the hill par excellence of chalk), comes the water supply of Horncastle and Woodhall. They extend for a length of some 45 miles, with a width of some six miles to eight. The actual depth of the chalk is not exactly known, but a boring made through it, near Hull, reached the Oolite beneath at 530ft. We may perhaps, therefore, put the average at 500ft. {94a} Doubtless, at one period, this cretaceous formation extended over the whole tract ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... listened to anything quite like the account that Achilles Alexandrakis gave them that day, in the gloomy room of the red-fronted house overlooking the lake, of the land of his birth. They scarcely listened to the actual words at first, but they listened to him all lighted up from far away. There was something about him as he spoke—a sweeping rhythm that flew as a bird, reaching over great spaces, and a simple joy that ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... abrupt and impatient, for with whatever grace such a man yields to his better instincts the actual carrying out of their conditions is a severe trial. For one thing it is a species of emotional nakedness, invariably repugnant to the self-contained. Ned Trent, observing this and misinterpreting its cause, hugged the little revolver to his side with grim satisfaction. The interview was likely ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... and plans, 70 And larger destinies seem man's; You conjure from his glowing face The omen of a fairer race; With one grand trope he boldly spans The gulf wherein so many fall, 'Twixt possible and actual; His first swift word, talaria-shod, Exuberant with conscious God, Out of the choir of planets blots The present earth with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... could be. That it was eternal they both knew, but they had always supposed there were intermissions. Then the cook's family, which had hitherto been moderately healthful, began to show signs of invalidism, though no such calamity as actual dissolution ever set its devastating step within the charmed circle of her relatives. Cousins fell ill whom she alone could comfort; nephews developed maladies for which she alone could care; and, according to Thaddeus's record, John had been compelled on penalty of a fine to attend the funerals ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... nodded her head in thorough agreement. She did not trouble to go into articulate apologies to her guest for the actual misdeeds of her servant. The sisters were now on a plane of intimacy where such apologies would have been supererogatory. Their voices fell lower and lower, and the case of Amy was laid bare and discussed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... means of the human beings, Barnabas and Ishmael and their sister Dalila. Thus, although the more abstract moralities persisted until late in the sixteenth century, these other types at the same time helped lead the way to the drama which depicts actual life. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... the money it would bring would go in defraying the expenses attendant upon Emma's education, but upon second consideration, she resolved that they would not part with her father's parting gift to her, unless compelled to do so by actual want; and so when their old home was broken up the piano was carefully packed and forwarded to Rockford. The home where they had resided so long was very dear to them, and it would have grieved them, to leave it at any time; but to leave at the glad season of spring, when the trees which shaded ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... my momentary contemplation of those popular effigies inflated by old newspapers and windy report, the earthly great. He sets me thinking of more personal and intimate applications, of the human beings one knows with a certain approximation to real knowledge, of the actual common substance of life. He turns me to the thought of rivalries and tendernesses, of differences and disappointments. I am suddenly brought painfully against the things that might have been. What if instead of that Utopia ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... mining camp Darrell received his first news of Kate's engagement. It did not come as a surprise, however; he knew it was inevitable; he even drew a sigh of relief that the blow had fallen, for a burden is far more easily borne as an actual reality than by anticipation, and applied himself with an almost dogged persistency ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... graceful black sleeve, and upon the little indentations in her cheek where the tips of her fingers rested. She should not have worn white at her wrist, or at the throat either, George felt; and then, strangely, his resentment concentrated upon those tiny indentations at the tips of her fingers—actual changes, however slight and fleeting, in his mother's face, made because of Mr. Eugene Morgan. For the moment, it seemed to George that Morgan might have claimed the ownership of a face that changed for him.. It was as if he ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington



Words linked to "Actual" :   current, true, potential, effective



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