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Brief   /brif/   Listen
Brief

adjective
1.
Of short duration or distance.
2.
Concise and succinct.
3.
(of clothing) very short.  Synonym: abbreviated.  "A brief bikini"



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"Brief" Quotes from Famous Books



... the brief and wholly inadequate message, they stood looking at each other, too mystified for speech. Brian read the note, again, aloud, speaking every word with slow distinctness. "Well, I'll be hanged!" he ejaculated, at the close of the remarkable ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... life was not worth as much as the life of a chicken in any law-abiding, law-governed community, for should any evil disposed person there maliciously kill his neighbor's chicken he would be compelled to pay some slight fine or endure some brief imprisonment; but no one of all the perpetrators of the crimes I have named has suffered or has dreamed or suffering any fine, imprisonment, or punishment whatever. I knew that in their own language my life was "worthless." I went South to reside in 1843, and there are ...
— A Letter to Hon. Charles Sumner, with 'Statements' of Outrages upon Freedmen in Georgia • Hamilton Wilcox Pierson

... francs, a bushel of potatoes two hundred francs, a bottle of wine one hundred francs. The reader may imagine, if he can, the distress of people with small incomes, pensioners and employees, mechanics and artisans in the towns out of work,[42102] in brief, all who have nothing but a small package of assignats to live on, and who have nothing to do, whose indispensable wants are not directly supplied by the labor of their own hands in producing wine, candles, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... a brief silence fell over the graveyard. The manse children did not feel like talking. They were digesting the new and not altogether palatable ideas Mary had suggested to them. Jerry and Carl were somewhat startled. But, after all, what did it matter? And it wasn't likely there was a word of truth in ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... before her with an altogether too tragic mien. In this somber land men did not laugh much. Their smiles held a background of gravity. Icy winter reigned two thirds of the year and summer was a brief hot blaze following no spring. Nature demanded of those who lived here that they struggle to find subsistence. In that conflict human beings forgot that they had been brought into the world to enjoy it ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... ago I contributed to a book on "Historic Towns," published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New York and London, a brief historical sketch of Pittsburgh. The approach of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh, and the elaborate celebrations planned in connection therewith, led to many requests that I would ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... quite well, except for the remains of his sore throat, and the two seniors were gruff and brief as to their watch. They had heard odd noises, and should discover the cause; the carpenter had already been sent for, and they had seen a light which was certainly due to reflection or refraction. Mr. Henderson committed himself to ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of a double lamp with apricot glass shades Howat Penny was turning over the pages, stiff with dry paste, of an album filled with opera programmes. The date of the brief, precisely penned label on the black cover was 1883-84; it was the first of a number of such thick, recording volumes he had gathered; and the operas, the casts, were of absorbing interest. At once a memento of the heroic period of American music and of his first manhood, the faded ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... "In brief breathing space," the falconer replied. "Those who first arrived I left swilling beer, and devouring pies and other provisions cooked for them last night, and from what I hear, they will set forth as soon as the last comer has arrived. Whichever ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... many different stocks were sailing westward, England did not gain possession of the whole Atlantic seaboard without contest. The Dutch came to Manhattan in 1623 and for fifty years held sway over the imperial valley of the Hudson. It was a brief interval, as history goes, but it was long enough to stamp upon the town of Manhattan the cosmopolitan character it has ever since maintained. Into its liberal and congenial atmosphere were drawn Jews, Moravians, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... To the foregoing brief sketch which was read before the Linnaean Society at the Anniversary Meeting 24th May 1845, it is scarcely necessary to make any addition. It is worthy of remark however, as showing how talents sometimes run ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... no sooner Christianized in any degree than pilgrims began to set out for the Jordan, for Bethlehem, for Jerusalem with its Gethsemane, its Calvary, and its Holy Sepulcher. Those who were taught that blessing came "by the work wrought," especially when the years prophesied a brief space of life left, eagerly sought to wash sin away in Jordan or to die near the hill ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell

... by the Thames, "flanked by its two Courts" of Hampton and Kew, and often, no doubt, the London stage, starting from the Chequers in Piccadilly, brought to it guests bearing names familiar in the annals of the time. There are three of his intimates who cannot be neglected in any record, however brief. When Lady Mary came back to England she took up her residence at Twickenham, and the hitherto epistolary adoration of the poet became a practical fact. According to a story popularized by the pencil of Frith, Pope at length so far forgot himself as to make a declaration in form, to which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... to render any assistance, and it was Harding who, single-handed, drafted and coded a brief message reporting what had been discovered. Not until this message was handed to ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... away with no more than a nod and a smile to them, but more and more, when he had finished, he came out where they were, and stood or sat to exchange brief impressions on the enchanting season, or on some social or aesthetic treat which "ces dames" had been enjoying. Austin Page was frequently with them, as in the earlier part of the winter, and it was finally he himself who one day took the step of asking Morrison if he would not go with them to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... originally appeared under the nom-de-plume of "Etonensis" in the Times of India, to the proprietors of which journal I am indebted for permission to publish them in book-form, They cannot claim to be considered critical studies, but are merely a brief record of persons whom I have met and of things that I have seen during several years' service as a Government official in Bombay. In placing them before the public in their present form, I can only hope that they will be found of brief interest by those unacquainted ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... references are made within these notes to a discussion in A Forward Look or to other selections in the group that pupils have not yet read. In case such references are found the teacher may well conduct a brief class discussion to make these questions significant to ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... this reflection to spur the most laggard of admirers into definite action, and before the service was over Reuben had made up his mind. He would speak to Ruth after church, and at least decide his own chances. The vicar's sermon was brief, for the good man had no rival, and could afford to please himself; but its duration, short as it was, gave Reuben ample time to be rejected and accepted a score of times over, and to gild the future with the ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... following volumes the authors seek to present a brief account of the beginnings, development, and final unity of the people of the United States. There are many histories of the country, many biographies which are in large measure histories; but these are exhaustive works traversing minutely certain periods, like Rhodes's History of the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... that brief speech during which the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... know you so successful so far. Yet be not over confident, says your father, and bids me remind you as a sow's ear ain't a silk purse, Barnabas, nor ever can be. Your description of horse reads well, though brief. But as to the Rayce, Barnabas, though you be a rider born, yet having ridden a many rayces in my day, I now offer you, my dear lad, a word of advice. In a rayce a man must think as quick as he sees, and act as quick as he thinks, and must have a nice ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... ex-Emperor Karl was disposed to offer to the Serbs as a basis of peace a Southern Slav kingdom consisting of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the whole of Albania. But this last item only made it clear that in his brief tenure of the throne the Emperor had grasped something of the grand generosity of European statesmen when they deal with the possessions of other people in the Near East. The Albanians are not Southern ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... peculiar unto itself. He is a physician, diagnosing a case of industrial anaemia. As in medicine, so industry has its quacks—experts who prescribe pink pills for pale industries, the administration of which may be attended with a brief show of energy and improvement, only to relapse into the old pallor. As between a half-baked "expert" and an "ignorant" employer whose heart is in the right place—take the employer. If he sincerely feels that long enough has he gone on the principle, ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... occasion the Master and his pupil were again fully acquitted. Verrocchio was at this time forty and Leonardo four-and-twenty. The documents referring to this affair are in the State Archives of Florence; they have been withheld from publication, but it seemed to me desirable to give the reader this brief account of the leading facts of the story, as the vague hints of it, which have recently been made public, may have given to the incident an aspect which it had not in reality, and which ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... she had clung to me. A brief flash of something, from her eyes to mine—from mine back to hers. The poets write that love can be born of such a glance. The first meeting, across all the barriers of which love springs unsought, unbidden—defiant, sometimes. And the ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... Communion. It was a strangely calm morning; through the unstained windows of the clerestory the sun sloped quivering ladders of golden light. He looked round with half a hope that Esther was in the church; but she was absent, and throughout the service that brief vision of her dark transit across the cold green sky of yester eve kept recurring to his imagination, so that for all the rich peace of this interior he was troubled in spirit, and the intention to make this Mass upon his seventeenth birthday another spiritual experience was frustrated. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... church composed of whites and Indians was organized. I was chosen pastor. About that time my younger son, Rev. Myron Eells, arrived at Skokomish, with the intention of making a brief stop. To me my early Indian charge, the Spokanes, together with the sparse white settlements in the vicinity, were attractive. I resigned the charge at Skokomish. It was committed to Rev. M. Eells. The seed of the word cast among Spokane ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various

... wiser if I refused to attempt any such brief statement of the most valuable lesson that life has taught me. I am by no means sure that I had not better draw my pen through the page that holds the quintessence of my vital experiences, and leave those who wish to know what it is to distil ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... record of a blameless and beautiful life, the outcome of a mind that thought no evil of any one, but overflowed with loving kindness to all. Before pointing out, however, what we consider the salient qualities in Mrs. Leprohon's poetry, it may be well to give our readers a brief sketch ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... this horn would arise and prepare their meal; by six o'clock they were on their way to the fields. They would work all day, stopping only for a brief period at midday to eat. Mack Mullen says that some of the most beautiful spirituals were ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... brief reply to Gillingham. "I know I am entirely wrong, but I don't agree with you. As to her having lived with and had three children by him, my feeling is (though I can advance no logical or moral defence of it, on the old lines) ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... glances. Then he would make her presents of his favourite toys (which he always took away from her next morning) and she accepted them with a disturbing smile. The reason he was now become so wheedling and she so mysterious was (in brief) that they knew they were about to be sent to bed. It was then that Maimie was terrible. Tony entreated her not to do it to-night, and the mother and their coloured nurse threatened her, but Maimie ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... Governor, and said, smiling: "That is a brave fellow, and his exploit is something marvellous; all the same, when I was a young man, I also descended from the fortress at that very spot." In so saying the Pope spoke the truth: for he had been imprisoned in the castle for forging a brief at the time when he was abbreviator 'di Parco Majoris.' [2] Pope Alexander kept him confined for some length of time; and afterwards, his offence being of too ugly a nature, had resolved on cutting off his head. He postponed the execution, however, till after ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... is as a shining Light, which goeth forth and increaseth even to the day of salvation." Follow after them, behold their works, which ought to be to you as a beacon of light for guidance in the path of this most brief life. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... A catalogue, containing brief notices of many important scientific papers heretofore published in the SUPPLEMENT, may be had gratis ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... vision the walls of the room seemed to fade, and he was only conscious of a vastness of space, and knew that for this brief moment he was looking into eternity and realising for the first time the wonder ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... trainin' they got purty good at it. I had one two-year-old rooster that made fifty-four mile an hour behind one of those sixty-horsepower Panhandles. When cars didn't come along often enough, they'd all turn out and chase jack-rabbits. They wasn't much fun at that. After a short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down plumb terrified, while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... this sort. She stumbled and fell, and fear again gripped her; it seemed so long before she could rise and clamber over a fallen log and race on. But the darkness which tricked her protected her at the same time, playing no favorites now. Ruth, too, had fallen; Ruth, too, was frenzied at the brief delay. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... snatched the hatchet from the Indian's belt. It was a surprise, and the struggle was brief. Tegakwita was thrown a step backward. He hesitated between struggling for the hatchet and striking with the musket; before he had fully recovered and dropped the musket, Menard had leaped back and stood facing him with the hatchet in his ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... no courtship, no wooing, only a meeting, for a brief space, of two human beings who had been made for each other, but whom fate separated by a rift which could not be bridged. Mary Lincoln knew this, John Dacre did not; but as he had bade her good-night just before, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... together here a few brief extracts from Fleeming's letters, none very important in itself, but all together building up a pleasant picture of the father ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not need help, and the priests returned—the younger one, with the tears running down his face—and donned their vestments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while the squad stood uncovered, and the men in hollow square shook their accoutrements into place, and shifted their pieces and got ready for the order to march, and the band began again with the same quickstep which ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... faintest echo of noisy labours disturbed the silences; not an alien sight has intruded. What can there be in such a scene to exhilarate? Must not the inhabitants vegetate dully after the style of their own bananas? Actually the day has been all too brief for the accomplishment of inevitable duties and to the complete enjoyment of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... in wet clothes and wet boots. Early in his letters he speaks of bad colds, and it is matter of tradition that he despised flannel. Most of us have been like him, and have found pleasure in wading Tweed, for example, when chill with snaw-bree. In brief, while reading about Murray's youth most men must feel that they are reading, with slight differences, about their own. He writes thus of his long darkling tramps, in a rhymed epistle to his friend ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... a late number, a brief extract from an article on this subject from the "Eureka," and should have thought no more of it, had we not observed the following notice editorial in the N, Y. Farmer and Mechanic. We copy the article entire, that our readers may judge for themselves whether the style and ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various

... reason, also deserves in general a more lively assent than has been accorded to it, while his rejection of an infinite consciousness has justly met with contradiction. It has been impossible here to go into his discussions in the philosophy of nature—they cannot be described in brief—on matter (atomic forces), on the mechanical and teleological views of life and its development, on instinct, on sexual love, etc., which he very skillfully uses in support of his ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... side, he would stop and rest his cue on the floor, or sit down on the couch, until the matter was concluded. Such interruptions happened pretty frequently, and many of the bits of personal comment and incident scattered along through this work are the result of those brief rests. Some shot, or situation, or word would strike back through the past and awaken a note long silent, and I generally kept a pad and pencil on the window-sill with the score-sheet, and later, during his play, I would scrawl some reminder that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... discovered that a Jew had been to seek the knight, and that, after a very brief conference, he had called for Gurth and his armour, and had left the castle. King Richard was also gone, and no one ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... black would have scant chance of passing the educational test. Several other states followed in the wake of Mississippi, until in 1898 Louisiana discovered a new barrier through which only whites might make their way to the voting lists. This was the famous "grandfather clause." In brief, it allowed citizens to vote who had that right before January 1, 1867, together with the descendants of such citizens, regardless of their educational and property qualifications. As no negroes had voted in the state before that date, they were effectively debarred. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... in her society, and that he should not; without the extremest reluctance, find himself obliged to abandon the happiness she offered him to any other person in the company: to recompence this complaisance, as she called it, she gave him a brief detail of the characters of as many as she knew thro' their habits; and in doing this discovered a sweet impartiality and love of truth, which was no small addition to her other charms. She blamed the baroness de Guiche for not being able to ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... very important to all who keep domestic animals. The following brief directions for successful pasturing are essential. It is very poor economy to have all your pasture-lands in one field, or to put all your animals together. Pasture fields in rotation, two weeks each, allowing ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... the trials was prepared by the Intendant, by request of the city council. It passed through four editions in a few months,—the first and fourth being published in Charleston, and the second and third in Boston. Being, however, but a brief pamphlet, it did not satisfy the public curiosity, and in October of the same year, (1822,) a larger volume appeared at Charleston, edited by the magistrates who presided at the trials, Lionel H. Kennedy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... say in reprobation of the views suggested by Owen. Harlow, in a brief but powerful speech, bristling with numerous sanguinary references to the bottomless pit, protested against any interference with the sacred rights of property. Easton listened with a puzzled expression, and Philpot's goggle eyes rolled horribly ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... one really knew as she knew now where they were going; and things formed themselves into a pattern not only for her, but for them, and in that pattern lay satisfaction and meaning. When she looked back she could see that a meaning of some kind was apparent in the lives of her aunts, and in the brief visit of the Dalloways whom she would never see again, and in the life ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... because his rationality is based upon changing man's nature, not on making something out of "what's nateral to human beings." The act of parliament idea of solving the problem is riddled effectively by a stonemason, who points out that the head-citizen is not so worthy as the heart-citizen. In brief, the philosopher is routed by the doctrine that ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... could share our feelings thus far, it is irrational to doubt that he went further, to find, as we do, that upon that brief gladness there follows a certain sorrow,—the little light of awakened human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss of the unknown and unknowable; seems so insufficient to do more than illuminate the imperfections that cannot be remedied, ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley

... inconsequent. If man regrets his youth it is not for the passing of these pleasing, though tangled attributes, but rather because there exists between the two periods of progression a series of irremediable mistakes. And the subject of this brief commentary could look back on many a grievous one brought about by pride or carelessness ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... signed officially by John Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency the Lord General and his General Council of Officers," was brought to the Commons, with a brief note from Fairfax himself, on Monday, Nov. 20. It was presented in all form by a deputation of officers, consisting of Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-colonels Kelsay, Axtell, and Cooke, and three Captains. The House was thunderstruck, and for some hours there was a high and fierce debate. Some of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... with everything. It is sure to come. Sooner or later, what does that matter? 'The readiness is all,' as Hamlet says. Death, or the pawnshop, signifies nothing. 'Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes?' We do but forestall the grave for one brief ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald

... from the fact that it contained upwards of ten thousand names, including those of almost every prominent man, and of not a few remarkable women in the principal centres of the country. The details given were invariably brief and to the point, written down in a simple but safe form of cipher which was perfectly familiar to every one of the three. This vast mass of information was simply the outcome of the personal experience of the leaders, and of their trusted friends, but no detail which could by any possibility ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... to perpetual childhood, to constantly have those hopes of being a man blasted would eventually bring you to endless misery. No, Charles, childhood, to be happy and joyous, must be brief. The youth with ambition longs to enter man's estate. He sees life only in its rosiest hues, and his hopes and anticipations form ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... without pause, he took to the streets afoot, following the boulevard St. Germain to the rue du Bac; a brief walk up this time-worn thoroughfare brought him to the ample, open and unguarded porte-cochere of a court walled with beetling ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... no sign; and at last I began to go over my brief interview with the Colonel, and to wonder whether he would turn now upon the two scouts and charge them with having deceived themselves, for according to their report the enemy ought to have been upon us long before. I had got to this point when all at once I ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... unnoticed. She had seen enough; Pista was alive; but he must be badly injured, for his whole head was wrapped in bandages, and he had evidently neither seen nor heard anything of the last scene which, moreover, had lasted only a brief time. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... trouble; the whole countenance expressed pain and something like terror. (I am describing the impression made upon me at the moment, for the incident passed more quickly than it takes to tell, however brief the narration.) ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... Universal Historical Bibliotheque; or, an Account of most of the Considerable Books printed in All Languages, which was continued by various hands until 1693 in a series of twenty-five quarto volumes. Contemporary with this review was a number of similar publications which had for the most part a brief existence. Among them was the Athenian Mercury, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays (1691-1696), the History of Learning, which appeared for a short time in 1691 and again in 1694; Works of the Learned (1691-92); the Young Student's Library (1692) and its continuation, the Compleat Library ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... after the sale was effected Tom wrote home to his sisters, giving them a brief account of what had taken place since the letter he had posted to them before starting for the mountains, but saying very little of their adventures with Indians. "I am afraid you have been in a great fright ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... of a work of Makrizi's it is stated that this same King David died in A.H. 812, i.e. A.D. 1409; that he was succeeded by Theodorus, whose reign was very brief, and he again by Isaac, who died in Dhulkada 833, i.e. July-August 1430. These dates are in close or substantial agreement with Bruce's chronology, but not at all with Salt's or any chronology throwing the reigns ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... various congenital malformations of the face will be simplified by a brief consideration of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... Felipe—two dozen brown adobes, through which a solitary street threaded its way—sprawled in the bottom of a canyon near the Rio Grand. The cow camp had grown, in a few brief months, with all the rapidity of an agave plant, which adds five inches to its size in twenty-four hours. San Felipe ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... relate to the history and literature of King Alfred's day, and are sufficient to give the student a first-hand, though brief, acquaintance with the native style and idiom of Early West Saxon prose in its golden age. Most of the words and constructions contained in them will be already familiar to the student through their intentional ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... forests, brown grass and purple grazing grounds; a land where from a sea of tawny sand, flecked here and there with bleached bones, like whitecaps on the ocean, one gazes upon mountains glistening with snow; and where at times the intervals are so brief between aridity and flood, that one might choose, like Alaric, a river-bed for his sepulchre, yet see a host like that of Pharaoh drowned in it before the dawn. In almost every other portion of the world Nature reveals her finished work; but here she partially discloses the secrets of ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... at the right a cleared field, in which the young corn was growing amid the stumps, and on the left was the sheen of wheat also amid the stumps. Mr. Pennypacker rubbed his hands delightedly, but Henry was silent. Yet the feeling was brief with the youth. Thoughts of his people quickly crowded it out, and he swung the paddle more swiftly. The other two, who were now helping him, did likewise, and the boat doubled its pace. Through the thinned forest appeared the brown walls ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... heard the words, too, and must have understood them, for he stared stonily at the big, good-looking miner. Their greeting had been very brief; evidently they were ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... else you could do. You have not application enough for the bar, nor have I any friends among the attorneys except Sharpe, who, between you and me, might take your dinners, and leave you without a brief afterwards. You have talents, I grant," continued the commissioner, "and if you had but application, and if your uncle the judge had not died ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... your joy, my dear prince, for I come to take you out of prison—to open your cage for you. I had begged you to submit to a brief seclusion, entirely for your ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... gone. His first thought was to return to the cabin. He could easily find it and confront Bucky there before the others. And yet he did not move. His inclination to go back grew less and less, and after a brief hesitation he made up his mind to continue the struggle for life by himself. After all, his situation would not be much more desperate than that of the men he was leaving behind in the cabin. He buttoned himself ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... as they could, lest the cutter's people, releasing themselves, should attempt an attack. Now, there was no more concealment necessary, and the women as well as the men went down the precipitous path and brought up the treasure, while Ramsay introduced Wilhelmina to Lady Barclay, and, in a brief, but clear narrative, told her all that had passed, and what they had now to expect. There was not a moment for delay; the cutter's people might send the despatches over land if they thought of it, and be there as soon, if not sooner than themselves. Nancy Corbett was summoned immediately, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... brief narration of the direful circumstance. He and his father, Lord Dundaff, having crossed the south coast of Scotland on their way homeward, stopped to rest at Ayr. They arrived there the very day that Lord Aymer de Valence had entered it, a fugitive ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... The brief preamble sets forth by whom it was formed, for what purposes, and for whose benefit and protection. It declares that it is formed by the people of the United States; that is to say, by those who were ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... point under cover of a perfect cannonade of classics, no less than five of the most imposing of the Greek and Latin authors being brought out, for the benefit of the stunned and bewildered reader, in the course of one brief paragraph, the whole concluding with a reference to the Psalms, which nobody, of course, will undertake to call in question; whereas, in cases of ordinary difficulty, a proverb or two from Solomon ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... families of those Czech leaders who escaped abroad were brutally persecuted. It is impossible for us to give a detailed description of all the persecutions committed by Austria on the Czecho-Slovaks, but the following is a brief ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... life between birth and death, separation of the etheric body occurs only in exceptional cases, and for no longer than a brief space of time. If, for example, a man exposes one of his limbs to pressure, part of his etheric body may become separated from the physical one. We say on such occasion that the limb has "gone to sleep," ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... I am about to write may ever be found, or whether I the writer may ever be heard of more, are both very doubtful events. It may be of some use to mankind, should this brief narrative hereafter be read; as it may tend to exemplify the progress of the passions, and to shew after having begun in error the excesses of which they are capable. I speak under the supposition that this paper ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... After a brief siege the city was taken, and Domitius and his army were made prisoners. Everybody gave them up for lost, expecting that Cesar would wreak terrible vengeance upon them. Instead of this, he received the troops at once into his own service and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... brief pause, she went up to the young man, and, without a word, took him by the hand. She might, perhaps, have left them there, chattering under the wall, had she not felt that she herself was, to some extent, an accomplice in this fatal love. As she came back with Silvere, she turned on hearing ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... do—pay well for advances in the power field which are contributed by our engineers. As you know, our contract is the standard one—any discovery made by an engineer while in our employ is automatically ours. None the less, we give such men a handsome royalty." He paused, opened his brief case, and pulled out a notebook. After referring to it, he looked up at ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett

... hoped then to continue? Such brief success dazzled us to the past. Piedmont had long since struck the key-note of Italy's fortunes. As Charles Albert forsook Milan and suffered Austria once more to mouth the betrayed land and drip its blood from her heavy jaws, till in a baptism of redder dye he absolved himself from the sin,—so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... out as one of the oil men, and then, after a brief rehearsal, the improvised drama was ready to be taken on the sensitive film. A few preliminary scenes were made by Russ, and then, as word was given that the iron weight was about to be dropped on the cans of glycerine in the well-pipes, Mr. Pertell got his company as close to the derrick as was ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope

... ambition sufficient to occupy the passage to a robust and energetic old age. As for the private and personal side of his life, it had come up to the current standards, and if it had dropped, now and then, below a more ideal measure, even these declines had been brief, parenthetic, incidental. In the recognized essentials he had always remained strictly within the limit ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... whole of our present Gospel, and to bring under it the record of facts to as great an extent as discourse. It seems at least the simplest and most obvious interpretation to confine the word strictly or mainly to discourse. 'Matthew composed the discourses (those brief yet authoritative ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... flight the terrors of the darkness, whether their causes lie without us or within. When the first beam of the midsummer sunshine darted into the chamber, through the leafy limes which shaded one side of the apartment, Hester's mood transiently changed. There was a brief reaction in her spirits. She thought she had been making herself miserable far too readily. The mystery of the preceding evening might turn out a trifle: she had been thinking too seriously about her own fancies. If she had really been discovering a great and sad secret about ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... "It has been a delightful time, but all too brief. I am going to put you in a cab and send you back to the hotel, as I have to ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... M. Stanley by any detail of what the man has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... darkness which endured for ten years or more. From his father he heard nothing, nor on his part did he ever write to him again. Indeed the first news concerning him which reached Godfrey was that of his death which happened some seven years later, apparently after a brief illness. Even of this he would not have learned, since no one took the trouble to put it in any paper that he saw, had it not chanced that the Rev. Mr. Knight died intestate, and that therefore his small belongings descended to Godfrey ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay trill, sudden and brief like three ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... Castle, the City of Durham possesses several churches of decided interest to the student of architecture, which deserve a brief notice. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... on them, one shadowy form rose quickly to his feet and moved swiftly forward. There was the sound of a brief struggle, a cry stifled in his throat and the ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes

... choice," says Alan. "Set me on dry ground in Appin, or Ardgour, or in Morven, or Arisaig, or Morar; or, in brief, where ye please, within thirty miles of my own country; except in a country of the Campbells. That's a broad target. If ye miss that, ye must be as feckless at the sailoring as I have found ye at the fighting. Why, my poor country people in their bit cobles* ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of these fellows," he cried, crushing down the feelings that had been for a brief moment awakened in his heart by the Indian's words, "and give them plenty to eat and smoke." So saying he went off with the packet, ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... interrogated over his muffins. "I know his family; worthy people; sad scapegrace; ran away; parents longing for him; glad you did not flog him; devil to pay," and so forth. The Count was a man of few words, and told his tale in this brief, artless manner. But why, at its conclusion, did the gentle Helen leave the room, her eyes filled with tears? She left the room once more to kiss a certain lock of yellow hair she had pilfered. A dazzling, delicious thought, a strange wild hope, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... soon prepared, and Margaret ate with a keen appetite. After tea, she was much better. The cold perspiration ceased, and her skin became dry and warm. A brief conversation passed between the sisters, when Margaret fell off into a pleasant slumber. On the next morning, with much reluctance and many misgivings as to whether it were right to leave her sister ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... brief, clear and compact speech. He would sum up in a few vigorous and ringing sentences the argument to which other men would give hours or days. He had an instinct for the hinge or turning point of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... the roads were in a worse state than ever; all communications, so to say, were cut off completely; even medicine could with difficulty be got from the town.... The sick girl was not getting better. ... Day after day, and day after day ... but ... here....' (The doctor made a brief pause.) 'I declare I don't know how to tell you.' ... (He again took snuff, coughed, and swallowed a little tea.) 'I will tell you without beating about the bush. My patient ... how should I say?... Well, she had fallen ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... my terms at G— (and in speaking of that famous old school it is quite unnecessary to mention more than the first letter of its name) a serious epidemic broke out. It affected chiefly the lower half of the upper school, and during the brief period of its duration it assumed so malignant a type that it is still a marvel to me how any one of its victims ever survived it. The medical and other authorities were utterly incompetent to deal with it. In fact—incredible as it may seem—they deliberately ignored ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... WITH this brief sketch of Sholom Asch the man, I shall turn to a consideration of a few of his most important works. As Sir Walter Raleigh, the eminent English critic, has said, the best way to form a judgment of an author is to quote his good ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... the window of the cab, only to withdraw it quickly, as a bullet struck a quarter of an inch from his ear. But in that one brief glance he ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... had joined the staff of the great specialist, and resorted daily to the busy offices in the Athenian Building. A brief vacation had served to convince him of the folly that lay in indulging a parcel of incoherent prejudices at the expense of even that somewhat nebulous thing popularly called a "career." Dr. Lindsay made flattering offers; the work ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... to whom, as artist, I had been serving as a model, evidently preferred to handle me with pencil rather than with questions, for he was almost as brief as Mr. Reid. It is my view that they both had consigned me to petrification under Sir Charles Russell, and finding me alive and kicking, thought me too tough to expire under such coups de grace ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... dusty chambers, poring over grimy books and legal manuscripts, our "briefless" friend receives a telegram which he has been expecting rather anxiously the last few days. As brief as he is "briefless," it brings a flush to his cheek which has not been seen there since that great run with the hounds last Christmas holidays. "The fly is up; come at once." These are the magic words; and no ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... and depressed, but it was not until he sat in the stern cabin with its cheerful twinkling stove and swinging lamp that he understood how he had shrunk from that forbidding wilderness. His consultation with Dampier, who came in by and by, was brief. ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... none." The Marquis rose, and turned again to M. de Vilmorin, who had understood nothing of that brief exchange. "M. l'abbe," said he once more, "you have a very dangerous gift of eloquence. I can conceive of men being swayed by it. Had you been born a gentleman, you would not so easily have acquired these false views that ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... had wet pretty much all of the wood, so that a tenderfoot would have had a difficult task getting the blaze started, though after that trouble had been surmounted it would not be so bad. But Jud knew just how to split open a log, and find the dry heart that would take fire easily; and in a brief time he had ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... risks, and once we skidded by some transport with our off wheels almost over the lip of a ravine. We went through the narrow streets of Siwas like a fire-engine, while I shouted out in German that we carried despatches for headquarters. We shot out of drizzling rain into brief spells of winter sunshine, and then into a snow blizzard which all but whipped the skin from our faces. And always before us the long road unrolled, with somewhere at the end of it two armies ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... his beautiful delicacy and ingenuity in the varying epithets applied to them shows how in his great heart and tenacious memory individuals had a place. These shadowy saints live for ever by Paul's brief characterisation of them, and stand out to us almost as clearly and as sharply distinguished as they did ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... or maltreat their wives, "except on an occasional amorous evening"; on a level with the Sioux Indian, of whom Mrs. Eastman remarks that a girl is to him an object of contempt and neglect from her birth to her grave, except during the brief period when he wants her for his wife and may have ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... brief pause at the place where Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters seized upon the boat which bore them towards higher latitudes, even to that horizon of dark vapour whose rents permitted them to discern the huge human figure, the ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... patterns of the wall between the statue-niches, I saw the vacuous baby face of Asellia, Bambilio's pretty doll of a wife, between Vedia's countenance cleverly assuming a normal social expression after her brief glare at me, and Nemestronia's mask of horror, accentuated by the agony of the gripping spasm which throttled her, for the pain in her chest was induced by anything which startled her, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... Dorothy with such a warmth of affection that the girl felt no lack of others "belongin'"—for which lack Alfaretta had pitied her—and only yearned to find a way to show her own love and gratitude. There followed a happy half-hour of mutual confidences, a brief reading of the Word, a simple prayer for blessing on their new lives together, and the pair descended to the cheerful room where their guests were assembling: each, it seemed, enjoying to the utmost their beautiful surroundings and ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... Quebec with them. In passing through La Chine Rapids his canoe was wrecked, and Joliet barely escaped with his life. His precious reports and maps were lost in the rushing waters. Father Marquette's comparatively brief journal and his map form the only original records of the expedition, and they are preserved at St. Mary's College, Montreal. The humble priest who sought only to carry his religion to the savages becomes the historian, while the ambitious explorer is hardly remembered in connection ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... what you call proofs—though you'll want them badly if you mean to pursue your present line. I have my own proofs—perfectly in order, perfectly satisfactory. That's all I have to say about my part of the matter. About your part in it I can, I think, be almost equally brief. Are you merely Mr Iver's friend, or are you also, as you put it, paying attentions ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... long continued this performance when his claws caught in the crack of a loosened board. There was a ripping creak and a crash, and down came the board. Another followed, and Solomon, ceasing his violent threats for the instant, peered through a wide gap into another domain. His hesitation was brief; he scrambled through, walked out of the open door of the horse-stall into an ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... and listener on this, as on more common occasions. Susan was always ready to hear and to sympathise. Nobody else could be interested in so remote an evil as illness in a family above an hundred miles off; not even Mrs. Price, beyond a brief question or two, if she saw her daughter with a letter in her hand, and now and then the quiet observation of, "My poor sister Bertram must be in a great deal ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... to write home the amount of three lines per week; but even these brief messages were not always allowed to ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... through the gale?" he questioned, turning to Harriet after hearing a brief account of the loss of Captain Billy and the consequent experiences ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... whose lives and actions have so completely fallen into oblivion as those of the Earl of Peterborough. His career as a general was a brief one, extending only over little more than a year, and yet in that time he showed a genius for warfare which has never been surpassed, and performed feats of daring worthy of taking their place among those of the ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... brief the testamentary directions of Colonel McKee are to accumulate the rents and income of his estate until the decease of all his children and grand-children, meanwhile improving (under certain conditions) ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various



Words linked to "Brief" :   brevity, instrument, synopsis, precis, apprize, abstract, official document, instruct, legal document, concise, jurisprudence, short, apprise, law, outline, legal instrument



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