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Inordinate   /ɪnˈɔrdənɪt/   Listen
Inordinate

adjective
1.
Beyond normal limits.  Synonyms: excessive, undue, unreasonable.  "A book of inordinate length" , "His dress stops just short of undue elegance" , "Unreasonable demands"



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"Inordinate" Quotes from Famous Books



... far beyond the habitations of men. While thus hiding himself from a host of pursuers, he acquired that habit, supposed to be peculiar to wild beasts, of passing several days without food, and then eating inordinate quantities—a habit which he found impossible to change in after-life, when he had become President of Mexico. The story of this man's sojourn among wild beasts had been told all over Mexico, and had given him a great popularity, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... operation owing to disease has at times given queer and unlooked-for results, as, for instance, in the case of the old man that Sprengle mentions, in whom castration did not remove an inordinate sexual desire. Sir Astley Cooper mentions a case in his "Diseases of the Testes" that is somewhat unique. After castration Sir Astley's patient showed the following results: "For nearly the first twelve months he stated that he had emissions in coitu, or that he had the sensations of emission; ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... Commons, Monday, May 11.—For a while PRIME MINISTER'S protest against inordinate questioning, his announcement of determination not to take part in further shorter catechism more or less distantly related to the "plot" and the "coup," had wholesome effect. As he stated, since the plot was discovered he had made seven hundred replies to friendly inquiries. A Member below Gangway ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various

... somewhere, so the sisters had a short dinner and a very long evening by the fire. Lucy dallied with her great news until Crewdson had served the coffee—then out it came, with inordinate and delightful delicacy of approach. Mabel's eyes throughout were fixed upon her face.... "And of course, naturally—" Here Lucy turned away her own. "But nothing—not a sign. Neither then nor since. I—"; she stopped, bit her lip, then broke forth. "I shall never understand ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... confusedly jumbled together; the very olla-podrida of moral and mental combination. They were chiefly those to whom the ordinary operations of human trade or labor had proved tedious or unproductive—with whom the toils, aims, and impulses of society were deficient of interest; or, upon whom, an inordinate desire of a sudden to acquire wealth had exercised a sufficiently active influence to impel to the novel employment of gold-finding—or rather gold-seeking, for it was not always that the search was successful—the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... thus moderately in the seventeenth century, the complaints concerning their avarice and extortions were loud and universal. This public discontent was due to the inordinate exactions of judges and place-holders rather than to the conduct of barristers and attorneys; but popular displeasure seldom cares to discriminate between the blameless and the culpable members of an obnoxious system, or to distinguish between the errors ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... His name is familiar enough, but the story of his life is almost unknown. Paul refers to him more than once as a fellow-labourer, which shows that for a time at least he was an exemplary Christian. But he failed in the hour of trial—failed through being dominated by an inordinate love of the world—and his memory survives, therefore, as a representative of that ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... that he remained there, he knew not how long, standing on the very spot on which she had left him; and that at last there grew upon him almost a fear of moving, a dread lest he should be heard, an inordinate desire to escape without the sound of a footfall, without the clicking of a lock. Everything in that house had been offered to him. He had refused it all, and then felt that of all human beings under the sun none had so little right to be standing there as he. His very ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... and some well-appointed hotels. Lake schooners, and steam and canal boats are here in abundance, it being an entrepot for western produce and eastern merchandize. A few straggling Indians are to be seen skulking about Buffalo, like dogs in Cairo, the victims of the inordinate use ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... pursuit of vengeance and the commission of murder he is self-reliant, coolly calculating, fierce and fatal as a tiger. Yet his religious fervour is sincere; his impulses are generous; and his heart on the whole is good. His vanity is inordinate; and his unmistakable courage is impaired, to Northern apprehension, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... that he has always escaped the sacrament of Holy Orders. He is Cardinal Deacon. The good souls who will have it that all goes well at Rome, dwell with fervour on the advantage he possesses in not being a priest. If he is accused of possessing inordinate wealth, these indulgent Christians reply, that he is not a priest! If you charge him with having read Machiavelli to good purpose; admitted—what then?—he is no priest! If the tongue of scandal is over-free with ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... Their inordinate vanity and their irreverent assumption of excessive piety were thus stigmatized: "But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries,[1129] and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... perpetuate drunkenness, and all its abominations, to the end of the world. Its very formation, therefore, is a violation of the will of God. It is, in its nature, an immorality, and springs from an inordinate desire of a kind or degree of bodily enjoyment—animal gratification, which God has shown to be inconsistent with his glory, and the highest good of man. It shows that the person who forms it is not satisfied with the proper gratification of those appetites and passions ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... all the privileges of a personality. She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her. She was now forty years of age, childless, and with that inordinate passion for pleasure which is the secret of ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... was right, and Godfrey knew it, and this vexed him the more. He had an inordinate opinion of himself and his own consequence, and felt humiliated at being disobeyed by a servant, without being able to punish him for his audacity. This feeling was increased by the presence of a third party, who was standing just outside ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... that he had not been mistaken. Was it Whitey Mack? Was the question answered? Was the Gray Seal known, too, as Jimmie Dale? Were they trailing him now, with the climax to come at the club, at his own palatial home, wherever the surroundings would best lend themselves to assuaging that inordinate thirst for the sensational that was so essentially a characteristic of the confirmed criminal? What a headline in the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... assistance. Satire reforms the drunkard, by exposing to the view of himself and the world the brutality of his actions and person when under the influence of intoxication. Satire reforms, likewise, the inordinate actions of those who are not awed by the belief of future reward and punishment, by exposing them to infamy during their present {105}existence. And those who are subject to the dominion of depraved habits satire awakens to a practice of reformation, from the poignant sense of ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... that follows evil-doers in this world, ready to strike with an invisible hand all who are lost to the sense of right and justice. In Frye's case the avenging goddess lurked in his inordinate belief in his own shrewdness, coupled with a fatuous love of speculation. A few lucky ventures at first in the stock market had fanned the flame until he believed he was as invincible in State Street as he was in ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... crossed, the gravel ground beneath our keel. So the boat made harbour. Then, without hesitation, she cast herself upon the mud, and I, sitting at the tiller, my companion ashore, and pushing at her inordinate sprit, but both revelling in safety, we gave thanks and praise. That night we scattered her decks with wine as I had promised, and lay easy in deep ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... in her strong nature, inherited from strong, full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter inordinate passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished at any moment? What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything else could ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... exclaimed Augustus in an inordinate fit of enthusiasm, at the supposed sympathy of his companion, "I never met with a gentleman so peculiarly to my fancy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... him but did not move him. The songs were brilliant but without meaning. He waited with fierce impatience for Mary to come on, and during this wait he did an inordinate amount of thinking. A hundred new conceptions came into his besieged brain—engaging but by no means confusing him. He perceived that Mary was already as much a part of this high-colored life as she had been of the life of Marmion, quite at ease, certain of herself, and the canon between ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... way he often obtained a dole. (18) Keawe-puni-pua'a. He was a glutton, very greedy of pork; he was also called Keawe-ai-pua'a. (19) Keawe-inoino. He was a sloven, unclean in all his ways. (20) Keawe-ilio. The only title to renown of this superhuman creature was his inordinate fondness for the flesh of the dog. So far none of the superhuman heings mentioned seemed fitted to the role of the Keawe of the text, who was passionately fond of the sea. The author had given up in despair, when one day, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... rising barrister? Those dull Temple-chambers are lucky enough if the sun condescends to visit them at rare intervals in his journey westward. But Waring's own singleness of purpose beguiled him more effectually than the most inordinate vanity could have done. Putting character out of the question, he thought a woman could only derogate by allying herself to one of inferior birth; and he knew his own blood to be nearly equal to Miss Tresilyan's. He was right so far—if she had only ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... the skin" of it, as the saying is, unless you have stopped sometime in your busy going, to consider, aside and with understanding, the pathos of the old actor. It is a curiously poignant human thing, written about by a few, suffered by many, and ignored by the loud, inordinate world. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... with the salam and Musa returned his greeting and entreated him with honour. Then quoth he to the Emir, "Are ye men or Jinn?" "Well, we are men," quoth Musa; "but doubtless ye are Jinn, to judge by your dwelling apart in this mountain which is cut off from mankind, and by your inordinate bulk." "Nay," rejoined the black; "we also are children of Adam, of the lineage of Ham, son of Noah (with whom be peace!), and this sea is known as Al-Karkar." Asked Musa, "O King, what is your religion and what worship ye?"; and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... fifteen feet of solid masonry, but my chief delight since landing on Martian soil was the inordinate springiness of my leg muscles against the feeble gravity. I ran and sprang lustily with the aid of the cross-bow, and I remember the doctor's surprised look when he saw me clear the entire wall without ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... it the more enraged I became. Did I say enraged? I do not know what passion possessed me. What I do know is that an inordinate desire for vengeance entered into my soul. How could I revenge myself on a woman? I would have paid any price for a weapon that could be used against her. But I had none, not even the one she had employed; I could not pay her in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Hume persuaded Rousseau to go with him to England, where the exile could find a secure shelter. In London his appearance excited general attention. Edmund Burke had an interview with him and held that inordinate vanity was the leading trait in his character. Mr. Davenport, to whom he was introduced by Hume, generously offered Rousseau a home at Wootton, in Staffordshire, near the, Peak Country; the latter, however, would only accept the offer ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... This, by those inordinate ministers of oppression, was deemed a horrible sacrilege, and the parents of all the poor children were obligated to give them up to punishment, of which none suffered more than did my grandfather, who was not only ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... cases in which it is the duty of the State to interfere from those cases in which it is the duty of the State to abstain from interference. In old times the besetting sin of rulers was undoubtedly an inordinate disposition to meddle. The lawgiver was always telling people how to keep their shops, how to till their fields, how to educate their children, how many dishes to have on their tables, how much a yard to give for the cloth which made their coats. He was always trying to remedy some ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... this indulgence to inordinate affection; and observers in general thought her happier in her marriage than the beloved wife who bathes her pillow with tears by the side of an angry husband, whose affection is so excessive that he unkindly upbraids her because ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... marked as cordial and frank friendships. They drank beer or ale, instead of wine, at their feasts, although their ordinary drink was water. Their food was fruits, cheese, milk, and venison. They had an inordinate passion for gambling, and would even stake their very freedom on a throw. Slavery was common, but not so severe and ruthless as among the Romans. They had but little commerce, and were unacquainted with the arts of usury. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... through this spoiled their appetites. Only Nina alone—a small, pug-nosed, snuffling country girl, seduced only two months ago by a travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a brothel—eats for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman of the common people has not yet ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... formed, and with their habits of frank utterance quite thoroughly matured. Certainly ... they do not seem to have been a company of gentle, dreamy and euphemistical saints, with a particular aptitude for martyrdom and an inordinate development of affability." ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... open support of foreign governments—a support which was hedged round with conditions—made necessary a system of petty expedients under which practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid asset it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the market was flooded with a worthless currency which it was unable to absorb. The Provincial leaders, ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... had an almost inordinate belief in the attraction youth holds for men. She had none of the hidden diffidence which had been such a troubling element in Lady Sellingworth's nature. Nor was there any imp which sat out of reach and mocked her. The violet eyes were satirical; but her satire ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the blind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, being filled with all iniquity of inordinate possession and power. Whereupon, the God of God's, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a once just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon them as might make them repent into restraining, gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from heaven's ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... this French colony of New Caledonia must be one of the most absurd that exists. The military and naval force far exceeds in number the whole civil population; and this, too, when the natives are quiet and submissive, few in number, and fast dying out through the inordinate use of the worst kind of tobacco, pulmonary consumption and other concomitants of civilization not necessary to enumerate. Contrast this with the rich and populous province of Victoria, which has only three hundred and fifty soldiers; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... to the aggrieved listener was small. George, Lady Manorwater, and the two Miss Afflints sought diligently for a camping-ground, which they finally found by a clear spring of water on the skirts of a great grey rock. Meanwhile, Alice Wishart and Lewis, having an inordinate love of high places, set out for the ridge summit, and reached it to find a wind blowing from the far Gled valley and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... immeasurable, was the basis of natural power upon which the Roman throne reposed. The military force which put Rome in possession of this inordinate power, was certainly in some respects artificial; but the power itself was natural, and not subject to the ebbs and flows which attend the commercial empires of our days, (for all are in part commercial.) The depression, the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... desultorily: a great deal about themselves; sometimes wandering to the subjects that had interested them most before they had met each other. Clavering told her of the many plays he had written, and burned; because in his inordinate respect for the drama he had found them, when not wholly bad, too good to be good enough. But the long practice had given him a certain mastery of technique, and when she had set his brain on fire he had ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... of their own impressions, moods, the influence of others, or the circumstances around them. No desire should ever control us. No purpose, however right, should have such mastery over us that we are not perfectly free. The pure affection may be an inordinate affection. Our work itself may be a selfish passion. That thing that we began to do because it was God's will, we may cling to and persist in ultimately, because it is our own will. Lord, give us the spirit ever controlled by Thy Spirit and will, and the eye that looks to Thee every moment as the ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... sudden cloudbursts are common from October to April; they bring inordinate amounts of rain which can damage roads and houses; sandstorms and dust storms occur throughout the year, but are most common between ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... to the rescue. She slid into the silence with a technicality, asking if John still took his old inordinate amount of sugar. Thence it was but a step to the burning question of the day; and in tones a little shaken, she commented on the interval since she had last made tea for the prodigal, and congratulated him on his return. And then addressing Mr. Nicholson, she congratulated him also in ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hours dragged on the hopelessness of their position grew upon the minds of all. Their ammunition was almost gone—each man had but a few rounds remaining—and it was evident that Pesita, through an inordinate desire for revenge, would persist until he had reduced their fortress and claimed the last of them as ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... hold a subordinate place; to renounce our selfishness, and that eternal anxiety as to what we are to have, and what men think of us; and be content with the plenitude of God's great mercies, and so to be happy. For it is the inordinate devotion to self, and consideration of self, that is ever a stumbling-block in the way; that spreads questions, snares, and difficulties around us, darkens the way of Providence, and makes the world a far less happy one to us than it ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Providence had not thought fit to take it straight to the joys of heaven with its mother, though afterwards, as the boy's intelligence unfolded, he developed interest in him. This, however, he was careful to keep in check, lest he should fall into the sin of inordinate affection, denounced by St. Paul in common with ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... that a certain class of civilians cannot rid themselves of the suspicion that soldiers are consumed by an inordinate and bloodthirsty ambition. They cannot understand that a man brought up from his youth to render loyal obedience is less likely than most others to run counter to constituted authority. They will not see that a soldier's pride in his own army and in the manhood of his own race tends to make him ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... two pieces of gold, if he brought them the keys. To obtain them was not very difficult, and the bully was aided in accomplishing the task by the Earl of Rochester in the following manner. Chiffinch was an inordinate drinker, and satisfied he could turn this failing to account, the earl went into the ball where he was stationed, and after a little conversation, called for a flask of wine. It was brought, and while they were quaffing bumpers, Pillichody, who had entered unperceived, contrived to open a table-drawer ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... fantastic notions, such as I have mentioned, are not so apt to be excluded from the mind, and in this way many girls of good natural parts are spoiled, merely for lack of husbands. With the exception of this inordinate liking for the romantic and mysterious,—by which she was sometimes betrayed into follies and absurdities that provoked a little harmless scandal or ridicule,—Miss Cornelia has ever been held in good repute among her neighbors as a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... face of the eternal and infinite, the littlest of little things. Human nature is only an infinitely small part of absolutely infinite Nature; human life only a very tiny expression of infinite life. Inordinate conceit alone could conceive Nature to have been made designedly either for our pleasure or our discomfort. The stars were not hung in the heavens so that we may steer our petty courses across the seas; nor were the sun and moon put in their places so that we may have the day in which to waste ourselves ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... "The inordinate stupidity of that man Lagune is driving me out of the country," Lewisham saw. "It has been at last a definite stumbling block—even a legal stumbling block. I fear. I am off. I skedaddle. I break ties. I shall miss ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... is a sort of premature senescence and decay. The New World is pitied for her failure to know without illusion the futility of the hurried pursuit of wealth, of the passion for extravagant opulence and inordinate display, of all the hostages youth in America eternally gives to old age. "America has produced great artists," admits Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. Yet he maintains that "that fact most certainly proves that she is full of a fine futility and the end of all things. Whatever the American men of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... of His glories who is the portion of the soul. "My heart rejoiceth in the Lord." Alas! alas! how does even the Christian heart, which has professed to be satisfied with God, and content with his holy will, often depart from him, and "provoke him to jealousy" with many idols! Inordinate affection for some earthly object absorbs the soul which vowed to love him supremely. In its undisguised excess, it says to the beloved object, "Give me your heart; Jehovah must be your salvation, but let me be your happiness. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... doleful looking boy of about twelve, who had a crushed expression, and seemed to take gloomy views of life. The only name by which he was known to himself and others was Biler; but whether that was a Christian name, or a surname, or a nickname, cannot be said. Biler's chief trouble in life was an inordinate and insatiable appetite. Nothing came amiss, and nothing was ever refused. Zac had picked the boy up three years before, and since that time he had never known him to be satisfied. At the present moment, Terry was standing ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... consequences of your own inordinate appetite, Frances, and learn to subject it to the wholesome rules ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury

... rights and liberties, and sitting once more in security under their own vines and their own fig trees: Unwearied in their endeavours to introduce an absolute tyranny into this country, to which they were instigated, some from the principles of ambition or a lust of power, and others from an inordinate love of money which is the root of all evil, and which had before possessed the hearts of those who had undertaken to distribute the stamped papers, they met together in cabal and laid a new plan to render the people of this continent tributary to ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... things above, not on things on the earth. 3. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. 5. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6. For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience. 7. In the which ye also walked sometime, when ye lived in them. 8. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... in reference to changelings, or Killcrops, as they were then called. I have already quoted his opinion of them as devils; and the test of their true nature, which he seems to have thought infallible, was their inordinate appetite; nor did he attach any value to baptism as a means of exorcism. One excellent tale he tells on the subject concerns a peasant who lived near Halberstadt, in Saxony. This good man, in accordance with advice, was ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... should do in case of a reverse of fortune. I mention this as a fact of which I have often been a witness, and leave to his brothers in arms to decide whether his calculations were always correct. He had it in his power to do much, for he risked everything and spared nothing. His inordinate ambition goaded him on to the attainment of power; and power when possessed served only to augment his ambition. Bonaparte was thoroughly convinced of the truth that trifles often decide the greatest events; therefore he watched rather than provoked opportunity, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Christian perfection is the guidance of the soul by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is attained, ordinarily, first by bringing whatever is inordinate in our animal propensities under the control of the dictates of reason by the practice of mortification and self-denial; for it is a self-evident principle that a rational being ought to be master of his animal ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... give up the whole Lake Erie region. But he lingered and was lost. While Harrison was advancing with overwhelming numbers Procter was still trying to decide when and how to abandon Amherstburg. Then, when he did go, he carried with him an inordinate amount of baggage; and he retired so slowly that Harrison caught and crushed him near Moravian Town, beside the Thames, on the 5th of October. Harrison had three thousand exultant Americans in action; Procter had barely a thousand worn-out, ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... undressing. Before she lay down she went to open the window. With her hand on the sill, she hesitated, feeling suddenly as though some danger were lurking outside, some inordinate desire waiting to spring upon her in the darkness. She stood there for a long time, gazing at the infinite sweep of ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... thirst and are not injurious. This, indeed, is my own belief, and were it not for the abuse of iced drinks, the same opinion would be held almost universally. America is the country of countries in which the inordinate use of ice has gained for it a reputation which it has never deserved. Ice, says George Augustus Sala, is the alpha and omega of social life in the United States. At the hotels, first-class or otherwise, ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... as generosity, honesty, justice, and self-sacrifice; as well as the practical virtues of economy and providence. On the other hand, there are their counterparts of avarice, fraud, injustice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate lovers of gain; and the vices of thriftlessness, extravagance, and improvidence, on the part of those who misuse and abuse the means entrusted to them. "So that," as is wisely observed by Henry Taylor in his thoughtful "Notes from Life," "an right ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... it ought to be. Boys and girls will be boys and girls the world over." The tone of the captain's voice indicated the condition of his mind. He had at last arrived at a conclusion. Martha's head was muddled because of her inordinate and unnatural love for the child she had nursed. She had found a spookship in a fog bank, that was all. Jealousy might be at the bottom of it or a certain nervous fussiness. Whatever it was it was too trivial for him to waste ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... expect her to be; and I dare say I am the one to blame all through, as I made Lydia marry Vrain when she loved Ferruci. But I did it all for the best, so as to get money for my dear girl; and if it has turned out for the worst, my inordinate affection for my child is to blame. All I have done has been for Lydia's sake; all Ferruci did was for Lydia's sake, as he truly loved her; but I swear by all that I hold most holy that Lydia knew not how either of us was working to secure her happiness. Well, Ferruci is dead, and I am in ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... tipped at both ends with gold. Close by was a vast stag-horn, laboriously decked with choice and flashing gems, and this also did not lack chasing. Hard by was to be seen a very heavy bracelet. One man was kindled with an inordinate desire for this bracelet, and laid covetous hands upon the gold, not knowing that the glorious metal covered deadly mischief, and that a fatal bane lay hid under the shining spoil. A second also, unable ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... to that section of the city where Cantonese of high and low degree are laid away after death, we encounter a returning funeral party that made a curious procession, and one stretching to inordinate length. In front was a ragamuffin corps of drummers and men extracting ear-racking noises from metal instruments that looked like flageolets, but were not. Twenty or thirty bedraggled Buddhist priests in pairs trotted behind, proving by their individual gaits that in China ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... Russia's designs of conquest. Catherine II's policy was therefore to force back internal anarchy upon the nation that had abjured it, and to prevent the new Constitution from being carried into effect. She had in her hand a minority of Polish nobles who had no mind to part with their inordinate privileges that the new laws had abolished, and who regarded a liberal constitution with distrust and disfavour. At the Empress's instigation the chief of the malcontents, Felix Potocki, Xavery Branicki, and Severin Rzewuski, went to Petersburg to lay their grievances before her. Out of this ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... By this appellation had some one been denoted in the chamber dialogue of which I had been an unsuspected auditor. The man who pretended poverty, and yet gave proofs of inordinate wealth; whom it was pardonable to defraud of thirty thousand dollars; first, because the loss of that sum would be trivial to one opulent as he; and, secondly, because he was imagined to have acquired this opulence by other than honest methods. Instead of forthwith ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... land, at its registered valuation, in exchange for assignats to the same amount. There can be no question about the superiority of this plan over the one actually adopted. Had this course been followed, the assignats could never have been depreciated to the inordinate degree they were; for—as they would have retained all their purchasing power in relation to land, however much they might have fallen in respect to other things—before they had lost very much of their market value, they would probably have been brought in to be exchanged for land. It must ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the motives which led to its delineation, were such, as must excite universal admiration. Bold and daring, yet generous and disinterested, Colonel Clarke sought not his individual advancement in the projection or execution of this campaign. It was not to gratify the longings of ambition, or an inordinate love of fame, that prompted him to penetrate the Indian country to the Kaskaskias, nor that tempted him forth from thence, to war with the garrison at St. Vincent. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... losses to the moment; so I walked to Temple-Bar, pulled off my hat most gracefully to that venerable arch, and vowed never again to pass it in the pursuit of ill-gotten wealth. I had always a perfect horror of gambling, and little imagined I was pursuing it in a wholesale manner. To satisfy my inordinate curiosity, for sight-seeing, I have twice or thrice in my life passed the threshhold of a gambling-house in London, but never felt the least personal desire to embark the smallest sum, although keenly alive ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... of Jerusalem, the barons took the matter into their own hands. Their work of selection was not an easy one. Randolph of Chester was by far the most powerful of the royalist lords, but his turbulence and purely personal policy, not less than his excessive possessions and inordinate palatine jurisdictions, made him unsuitable for the regency. Yet had he raised any sort of claim, it would have been hardly possible to resist his pretensions.[1] Luckily, Randolph stood aside, and his withdrawal gave the aged earl marshal the position for which his nomination as justiciar at ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... the country, before reform had done its notable part in developing the political consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties; so that Mr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from his inordinate travel and habit of taking too much ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Conquest and Plunder.—The kings of these Oriental despotisms seemed to be possessed with inordinate vanity, and when once raised to power used not only all the resources of the nation and of the people for magnifying that power, but also used the masses of the people at home at labor, and abroad in war, for the glory of the rulers. Hence, wars of conquest were frequent, always ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... sovereignty of the world, scrupled not to sacrifice virtue and good faith at the shrine of ambition. The fate of both chiefs was similar, for both perished in captivity—the one the victim, perhaps, of inordinate ambition, the other of unscrupulous avarice and envious malignity. The misfortunes of Toussaint L'Ouverture have indeed with justice been pronounced the "history of the negro race," for, in almost every instance where coloured men have pushed themselves ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... remember'—the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new proposition. 'She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.' ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... seem as if Jimmy, making his long rounds, was meeting with inordinate success; for life smiles on those who smile and the happy salesman is like the Happy Warrior, because all things, sooner or later, come to his feet. The art of salesmanship is the art of winning, and there ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... during his holidays to have a peep at the turbulent Irish. He had been in Ireland for a few weeks, and had visited some cabins and spoken to some laborers, and had settled the matter to his own satisfaction. "The ills of Ireland arise from the inordinate love of the soil in the Irish, and their lower civilization. For instance, an English farmer in renting a farm would consider how much would support his family first, and if the landlord would not accept as rent what was left the bargain would not be struck. The Irish farmer would think ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... the heiress of one of the richest families of Prague; a pretty but unintelligent girl, not understanding at all the character of her husband; detesting Vienna and Paris, and gradually exacting from Menko that he should live at Prague, near her family, whose ancient ideas and prejudices and inordinate love of money displeased the young Hungarian. He was left free to act as he pleased; his wife would willingly give up a part of her dowry to regain her independence. It was only just, she said insolently, that, having been mistaken as to the tastes ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... Bernard Romany chronicles with relish the dexterity requisite, the great strength and skill displayed by the participants in the violent exercise, although demurely moralizing the while on its perilous fascination to both players and spectators, by reason of the inordinate temptation presented by its doubtful chances to the reckless gambler. Lieutenant Timberlake ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterward you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... in their inordinate number and their up-to-dateness. There seemed, if anything, too many cars for the town, but then that was only because we are new to the Western Continent, where the automobile is as everyday a thing as the telephone. All ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... enjoyed the luxury to-day of eating a large quantity of excellent blue-berries and cran-berries (vaccinium uliginosum and v. vitis idaea) which were laid bare by the melting of the snow, but nothing could allay our inordinate appetites. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... of my father's, and a girl somewhat older than myself, had come to make us a visit just about the time that the beautiful jewels came into my hands. Incited by vanity, and an inordinate love of dress, this unhappy girl had recklessly allowed herself to become heavily involved in debt,—debt from which she saw no means of escape, and which she was resolved not to confess to her guardians. The sight of my diamonds aroused ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... America and Germany, many of which, when built, had neither population to use them nor traffic to carry; in the wild speculation that followed the German assertion of supremacy on the Continent; in the exaggerated armaments, which withdrew an inordinate amount of labour from productive industry, and over-weighed the taxpayers of the great European nations; and in over-production in the principal ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow." (I have owned that I do not think Addison's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and the Nature Man never came near me. He was waiting for the invitation. In the meantime he went aboard the Snark and took possession of her library, delighted by the quantity of scientific books, and shocked, as I learned afterwards, by the inordinate amount of fiction. The Nature Man never wastes ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... were not for this variability, it would be difficult to conceive the inordinate variety of human nature. But when you consider that all the important tendencies of the creature, his appetites, his loves, his hates, his curiosity, his sexual cravings, his fears, and pugnacity, are freely attachable to all sorts of objects as stimulus, and to all kinds of objects ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... affliction. Are they not exemplified in the case of the rich gentleman, who touches objects in order to avert the evil chance? This being has great gifts and many amiable qualities, but does not everybody see that his besetting sin is selfishness? He fixes his mind on certain objects, and takes inordinate interest in them, because they are his own, and those very objects, through the providence of God, which is kindness in disguise, become snakes and scorpions to whip him. Tired of various pursuits, he at ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... hardy, fishing and pastoral people. The profiteers will leave us, like rats and their parasites. We shall be able to feed ourselves by our industry. We shall be contented, and as happy as men with inordinate desires and subordinate capacities can ever hope to be. There is no reason to suppose that we need cease to be a nursery of heroes, that our old men will not see visions or our young men dream dreams. Neither vision ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful in the practice, and little imposing in the appearance, they have totally discarded. Their object is to merge all natural and all social sentiment in inordinate vanity. In a small degree, and conversant in little things, vanity is of little moment. When full-grown, it is the worst of vices, and the occasional mimic of them all. It makes the whole man false. It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him. His best ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... dense tangle of philosophical discussion. Thus, in the same treatise that contains the first illustrations and commendably accurate descriptions of the daily progress of the chick's development, Fabricius devotes an inordinate amount of space to tedious discussions of material and efficient causes in development, emphasizing thereby the supremacy of the logical framework to the observations. In 1620, Digby's last year of ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... observed, but observed with indifference, the sensations of both—there was but one passion which then held a place in her bosom, and that was vanity; vanity defined into all the species of pride, vain-glory, self-approbation—an inordinate desire of admiration, and an immoderate enjoyment of the art of pleasing, for her own individual happiness, and not for the happiness of others. Still had she a heart inclined, and oftentimes affected by tendencies less unworthy; but those approaches to what was estimable, were in their first ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... with morality, namely, far-sighted policy. Nevertheless, the common sense of mankind, which in questions of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize a distinction between crimes which originate in an inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To the benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. There is, we conceive, no reason to suspect that the Rohilla war, the revolution of Benares, or the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee to his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the passion for gain. Every being who allows himself to be overcome by that hateful sin, pays for it as a rule before his death. Look at the Panama business. Cooks, housekeepers, small proprietors who till then had lived in peace, seeking no inordinate gains, no illicit profit, threw themselves like madmen into that business. They had one only thought, to gain money; the chastisement of their cupidity was, as ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... after the little affair in Marseilles I don't trust them," replied The Sparrow. "When anyone makes a slip, either by design or sheer carelessness, or perhaps by reason of inordinate avarice, then I always have to safeguard myself. I suspect—and my suspicion usually ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... fellow-citizens taking the shape of undue regard of competitors. I hear that a great trader among you deliberately endeavored to crush out everyone whose business competed with his own; and manifestly the man who, making himself a slave to accumulation, absorbs an inordinate share of the trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life harder for all others engaged in it and excludes from it many who might otherwise gain competencies. Thus, besides the egoistic motive, there are two altruistic motives which ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... by the margin of one of the many streams that watered the country. Nor did I spend those leisure hours idly, but employed them in calling many things to mind, especially the life I had led in the slaughter-house, and also that of my master and all his fellows, who were bound to satisfy the inordinate humours of their mistresses. O how many things I could tell you of that I learned in the school of that she-butcher, my master's lady; but I must pass them over, lest you should think me ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... easier attitude towards the accidents of life. Your whole scale of values has undergone a silent transformation, since you have ceased to fight for your own hand and regard the nearest-at-hand world as the only one that counts. You have become, as the mystics would say, "free from inordinate attachments," the "heat of having" does not scorch you any more; and because of this you possess great inward liberty, a sense of spaciousness and peace. Released from the obsessions which so long had governed them, will, heart, and mind ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... served; for, if the strict truth be told, Marian understood Jeb too well to confess how much she cared. His exceptional charm, fascinating her beyond anything she had experienced, was, on the other hand, marred by his inordinate vanity. His extreme courtesy, urban manner and quick instinct for thoughtful attentions to old and young alike, she read truly as superficial, rather than sincere, kindnesses. The casual acquaintance would not have discovered this—but ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... Sect. XIX. Inaequaliter, inordinate, ac praeter contraque voluntatem moventur spiritus animales per nervos ad partes mobiles, in motu convulsivo, ac tremore, ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson

... or heifers were killed, and no inordinate quantity of porter was drunk. There was, indeed, no special festivity on the island, and the other inhabitants took very little notice of what was happening. They were perhaps, as Michael Kane said, too sleepy to be stirred with excitement. But in spite of the general apathy, ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham

... door of his apartment revealed him for the disorderly genius he was—a huge, blotch-faced, tumble-bellied man, bullet-headed, bull-necked, and with flashing eyes. Inordinate alike in appetite, mind and action, he was always suffering for his furies, and always making a fine recovery. Just now he was at the last gasp for a breath, or so you would have said to look at him. But not so; his exertions were really his stimulant. Presently he ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... daughters, alas! are so sadly to seek while she dusts the Apostles' chairs in heaven. She was persuaded that labour was according to the will of God, nor did she ever harbour any complaint under contradictions, poverty, hardships; still less did she ever entertain the least idle, inordinate, or worldly desire! She blessed God for placing her in a station where she was ever busy, and where she must perpetually submit her will to that of others. "She was even very sensible of the advantages of her state, which afforded all necessaries of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... and he adds allusion to the boy's increase of stature: "By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine!"—in other words: "How the boy has grown!"—a chopine being a shoe with a heel of inordinate height. And then comes reference to that change of voice from alto to bass which attends ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... to excuse any inordinate or extreme attachment by labouring to show in their highest colours the merits ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... with a bunch of yellow flowers in his hand. This police superintendent, Flibusterov by name, was an ardent champion of authority who had only recently come to our town but had already distinguished himself and become famous by his inordinate zeal, by a certain vehemence in the execution of his duties, and his inveterate inebriety. Jumping out of the carriage, and not the least disconcerted at the sight of what the governor was doing, he blurted out all in one breath, with a frantic expression, yet with an air of conviction, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... log-wreckers. Now the money put into this new venture is very nearly exhausted. It will hold out for one more pay-day, but that is all. And as yet only barren rock has come up from that yawning shaft that seems to gulp down money with an appetite at once inordinate and insatiable. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... dared to mention to the king the torments and tortures to which the hostages of the pitiable town were subjected. No one had the courage to beg for mercy for those whose only crime was, that their riches were exhausted, their coffers empty, and that they did not possess the means to pay the inordinate sums ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... that I can beat her on her own Melancolia. Even then she wouldn't care. She says I can only do blood and bones. I don't believe she has blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia—"the Melancolia that transcends all wit." I'll do it at once, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... him with wonder, and a kind of shuddering, at something so unlike himself; but probably he very imperfectly estimated the forces that were at work within this strange being, and how dangerous they made him. He imputed it, a great deal, to the brandy, which he had kept drinking in such inordinate quantities; whereas it is probable that this had a soothing, emollient effect, as far as it went, on the Doctor's emotions; a sort of like to like, that he instinctively felt to be a remedy, But in truth it was difficult to see these two human creatures together, without feeling ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... both by the spirit and the Reason. For this end God has given it a watch, the liver, which is dense, smooth, and shining, and, containing in combination both bitter and sweet, is fitted to receive and reflect, as a mirror, the images of thoughts. Whenever the Reason disapproves, it checks inordinate desires by its bitterness, and, on the other hand, when it approves, all is soothed into gentle repose by its sweetness; moreover, in sleep, in sickness, or in inspiration it becomes prophetic, so ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... conclusion of his life, by embarking in a series of adventures, which, in spite of their profligacy, or rather in consequence of it, possess a very strong romantic interest. Finding that his father was either unwilling or unable to furnish him with funds to maintain his inordinate riot and luxury, he became the leader of a band of outlaws, and, by their agency, levied aids and benevolences upon the different travellers on the king's highway. A letter of the old lord, his father, which, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... book have suffered intensely from the inordinate use of other guides, having been compelled several times to rise at 3 o'clock a. m., in order to catch a car which did not go and which would not have stopped at the station if ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... if an old one failed, that he could not escape from us. A most remarkable circumstance is, that I really don't think he grasped this sum even so much for the gratification of his avarice, which was inordinate, as in the hatred he felt for Copperfield. He said so to me, plainly. He said he would even have spent as much, to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... said the Marquis, with a bitter smile on his disturbed countenance, for his vanity, which was becoming inordinate, could not brook ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... was the Kangaroo as now we do behold him, but a Different Animal with four short legs. He was gray and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on an outcrop in the middle of Australia, and he went to the Little God Nqa at six before breakfast, saying, "Make me different from all other animals by ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... wish to believe it. It is much more selfish, brutal and lascivious than we care to admit, and as such, both too terrible and too ridiculous to please us. The Elizabethans understood human nature, and made glorious comedies and tragedies out of its inordinate crimes and cruelties, and its pathetic follies and fatuities. But people didn't like it, and they turned Puritan and closed the theaters. It is true, they repented, and opened them again; but the theater had got a bad name from which it is ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... matter for just a while more. The fatal objection to all Mr. Froude's advocacy of colour-domination is that [194] it is futile from being morally unreasonable. In view of the natural and absolute impossibility of reviving the same external conditions under which the inordinate deference and submission to white persons were both logically and inevitably engendered and maintained, his efforts to talk people into a frame of mind favourable to his views on this subject are but a melancholy waste ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... Witness the wanton destruction of your beautiful forests, the depletion of your coal beds and crude oil deposits. All this waste is the result of lack of Spiritual guidance; a gross materialism: an inordinate selfish greed. Instead of laying up Spiritual treasures you are worshiping at the altar of Mamon. Ultimately you will find your hoardings nothing but tarnished brass—an illusion leading you on ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... Rasputin said, as the Kaiser's emissary placed the letter carefully in his wallet, "please impress upon Number Seventy what I have said about money. All this costs much. Tell him that sometimes when inordinate demands are made upon me—as you know they are often are—I have to use my own funds in order to satisfy them. Smith in London receives unlimited funds through the Deutsche Bank, I know, so please tell our friend from me that I expect similar ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... rehearsed the most appropriate language in which to chronicle the event in her diary. Such expressions as "Arabian Nights entertainment," "Green sward," and "Princely Splendour," figured largely in the description, which ran to an inordinate length, and still seemed to have ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the greater part of the conversation upon himself, and evidently expected to be listened to. But that was nearly all he wanted. Let him talk, and hear you laugh when he was funny, and he was satisfied. He seemed to have no inordinate desire for admiration or even for approbation. He was fond of telling tales of adventure, some wonderful, some absurd, some having nothing in them but his own presence, and occasionally, while the detail was good the point for the sake of which it ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... buildit hie, and pit my hairt in the buildin' of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa', I think, laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife that loves ye, and that kenned your mither. And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae inordinate desires; haud your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh; dinna send it up like a hairn's kite into the collieshangic o' the wunds! Mind, Maister Erchie dear, that this life's a' disappointment, and a mouthfu' o' mools ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... memory is that quality which is most easily developed, especially in young persons. It is also its most showy quality, and the temptation to give it an inordinate development is strong. The habit of getting things by rote, is easily acquired by practice. It is astonishing what masses of Scripture texts young children will get by heart, when under some special stimulus of reward or display. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... contrary to his nature; nor, if in accordance with your wickedness you desire something shameful, would God be able to do it; nor must you believe at once that it will be done. For God is the author, not of inordinate desires nor of a nature disordered and confused, but of what is upright and just. For the soul, indeed, he might be able to provide everlasting life; but dead bodies, on the other hand, are, as Heraclitus observes, more worthless than dung. So, then, God neither will nor can declare contrary ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... I stood together, in the sunny street outside, posing for the photographer. And I swelled with inordinate pride. Though I knew I was bigger than both of them put together, yet, in the eyes of the world, these men were big men—and having my photograph taken with them was an indication to me, that I was beginning to come ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... histrionic movements"; their lips, their shoulders, their fingers are twisted, shrugged, or spread out as they think best to suit their delivery. The audience, filled with wonder and admiration at those inordinate gesticulations, at length bursts into laughter: "It seems to them they are at the play and not at church, and that they have only to look and not ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... exteriorities, nothing can be trivial, in a record of life so conceived. And this point of view also helps the writer to keep all his details in proportion; the autobiographer's usual fault, artistically at least, being an inordinate valuation of small concerns, because they happened to him. To St. Augustine, while not the smallest human event is without significance, in its relation to eternity, not the greatest human event is of importance, in its relation to time; and his own share in it would but ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... and the tree. On the contrary, he was most desirous to secure his friend's domestic happiness; and, if possible, to prevent the bad effects which were likely to ensue from excessive indulgence, and inordinate love of dominion. He had a high respect for our heroine's powers, and thought that they wanted only to be well managed. The same force which, ill-directed, bursts the engine, and scatters destruction, obedient ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... incandescence, when the sober limestone rocks take on the tints of molten copper, their convulsed strata standing out like the ribs of some agonized Prometheus, while the plain, where every little stone casts an inordinate shadow behind it, clothes itself in demure shades of pearl. Fine, and all too brief. For even before the descending sun has touched the rim of the world the colours fade away; only overhead the play of blues and greens continues—freezing, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... always short, unadorned, and practical. He has endeavoured, by moving a resolution, to reduce the inordinate length of the speeches in the House as the only way of saving time to get through the yearly increasing work of legislation, and he has proposed some other resolutions for facilitating ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... Rebellion of 1745, Manchester 'was taken by a Scots sergeant and a wench;' but it is a notorious fact that Nancy submitted without a murmur to five Uhlans, and that Bar-le-Duc was occupied by two. When the Uhlan arrives in a conquered city, he visits the mayor, and makes his usual inordinate demands for meat, drink, and cigars. If his demands are acceded to, he accepts everything with a grin. If he is refused, he remarks, likewise with a grin, that he will come again to-morrow with three thousand light horsemen, and he gallops ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... of old age, if we contemplate it in another point of view; if we consider it as delivering us from the tyranny of lust and ambition; from the angry and contentious passions; from every inordinate and irrational desire; in a word, as teaching us to retire within ourselves, and look for happiness in our own bosoms. If to these moral benefits naturally resulting from length of days be added that sweet food of the mind which is gathered ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... faithful service and were not disturbed in their ideas of their own importance, he would have been regarded as merely an amusing infant of great age, reaping a reward for by-gone merits in the careful consideration and indulgence now extended to him. His inordinate vanity of his personal appearance and his dignity might have given rise to smiles, down there; here there were those upon the platform who laughed loudly as he walked away, boasting vaingloriously, although he evidently feared the trip with the ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... of the earth ended, according to Ptolemy, at the heaven of Venus. Philalethes suggests that there may be here an allegorical meaning, the shadow of the earth being shown in feebleness of will, worldly ambition, and inordinate love, which have allotted the souls who appear in these first heavens to the lowest ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate degree—The less they understood of the matter the greater was their wonder about it—they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied—saw their doctors, the Parchmentarians, the Brassarians, the Turpentarians, on one side—the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... may plead the same. I understand you better. It is your inordinate vanity that prompts you to abuse your ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... many varieties of shade-glasses between the eye-piece of his telescope and the eye, in order to reduce the inordinate degree of heat and light transmitted by the instrument when directed towards the sun, he observed that certain combinations of colored glasses permitted very little light to pass, but transmitted so much heat that they could not be used; ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... man was never sane; it is indisputable that the mainspring of his least action was an inordinate pride. Here he had stumbled upon something which made of Demetrios of Anatolia a temporary discomfort, and which bedwarfed the utmost reach of his ill-doing into equality with the molestations of a house-fly; and perception ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... father of Honore Gabriel, the subject of these memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by the best education. He had, however, become independent at too early an age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... waves across the Atlantic. He found, however, that waves in order to traverse three thousand miles and retain sufficient energy on their arrival to affect a telephonic wave-detecting device must be generated by no inordinate power. ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... (shame); then through a confusion of fast with faced, a betrayal through the countenance of self-consciousness or guilt. Counterfeit meant a copy or a picture, then an unlawful duplication, especially of a coin. Lust meant pleasure of any sort, then inordinate sexual pleasure or desire. Virtue (to trace only a few of its varied activities) meant manliness, then the quality or attribute peculiar to true manhood (with the Romans this was valor), then any admirable quality, then female chastity. Pen meant a feather, then a quill ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like a civet-cat for ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... that she began to pray with an intensity that blotted out the world that He would not punish her if she had done wrong in His sight. Surely, if she lived henceforth in fear of Him, He would let her keep this priceless love which had come to her! And it was impossible that He should regard it as an inordinate and sinful affection—since it had filled her life with light. As the wife of Hugh Chiltern she sought a blessing. Would God withhold it? He would not, she was sure, if they lived a sober and a righteous life. He would take that into account, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to saddle the people with another Civil War debt. It was well for the State, he hinted, that those committees were composed of stanch men who would do their duty in all weathers, regardless of demagogues who sought to gratify inordinate ambitions. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the pompous, fatuous vanity of the Don Juan, beauty had always played, and always would play, a very prominent part in his life. It was, in fact, without exception, his greatest pleasure, and interest—even passion. The temperament that gave to beauty and charm a rather inordinate value had, no doubt, descended to his nephew. But Cecil was, in that as in everything else, much less of ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... is that the patients are younger in acute forms, the course is more rapid and the wasting away is more marked. The onset of the disease is gradual and either frequent passing of urine (six to forty pints in twenty-four hours) or inordinate thirst attracts attention. When it is fully established, there is great thirst, the passage of large quantities of sugar urine, a terrible appetite, and, as a rule, progressive emaciation. The thirst is one of the most distressing symptoms. Large quantities of water are required to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... republic have a reputation for inordinate self-appreciation, but we are thinking that they undervalue many of the advantages their ingenuity has won. It is admitted that they are restless, and must always be seeking something that they have not at home. But ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... of Vabre the notary, and wife of Duveyrier. She did not get on well with her husband, whom she hated, and her only passion was for music, which she practised to an inordinate extent. Pot-Bouille. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... for a couple of Scotland Yard detectives!" was my puzzled comment as Raffles produced an inordinate cab-fare. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... not some authors lately attempted to show that fertility increases and decreases in an inverse ratio with the amount of food. This strange doctrine has apparently arisen from individual animals when supplied with an inordinate quantity of food, and from plants of many kinds when grown on excessively rich soil, as on a dunghill, becoming sterile; but to this latter point I shall have occasion presently to return. With hardly an exception, our domesticated animals, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... and I retired. The next day my family deserted me and went to the mountains, and all my fears as to the inordinate sense of loneliness which was to be my lot were realized. Even Boswell neglected me apparently for a week. I went to my desk daily and returned at night hoping that my type-writer would bring forth something ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... well aware that this is not the experience of many others, my wife among the number, on whose nervous system tea acts mischievously, producing inordinate wakefulness, and its continued use, indigestion. But this is one of the things that people should learn, and act upon, namely, to take such things as suit them, and avoid such as do not. It is said that Mithridates could live and flourish on poisons, and if it be true that tea ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... the Treasury had been brought to light only a short time before! Even the great philosopher, who in his writings is so zealous against bribes, contracted during his administration the stain of receiving them. That he might stand on an equality with the great lords, he incurred inordinate expenses, which these bribes assisted him to meet. Edward Coke was wholly in the right when he exclaimed that a corrupt judge was 'the grievance of grievances.'[410] Two-and-twenty cases were proved in which the supreme judge, the Lord Chancellor of ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... and being a cheerful youth chose to gossip while he shaved me. I checked him, but he babbled on, and I could not choose but learn something about the disposition of the Caerlaverock household below stairs. I learned—what I knew before—that his lordship had an inordinate love for curries, a taste acquired during some troubled years as Indian Viceroy. I had often eaten that admirable dish at his table, and had heard him boast of the skill of the Indian cook who prepared it. James, it appeared, did not hold with the Orient in the kitchen. He described the said ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... United States. You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad; your strength and power are well known throughout the civilized world, as well as the high and gallant bearing of your sons. It is from within, among yourselves—from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power—that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... White House. He was then in the prime of his early manhood, tall, spare, and upright, with large, lustreless, gray-blue eyes, high cheek bones, a large mouth, a complexion saffron-hued, from his inordinate use of tobacco, and coarse, long hair, brushed back from his low forehead. He was brilliant in conversation, and when he addressed an audience he was the incarnation of effective eloquence. No one has ever poured forth in the Capitol of the United States such torrents of words, such ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore



Words linked to "Inordinate" :   inordinateness, immoderate, unreasonable



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