"Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scriptures, that 'for every idle word we shall be brought to account,' so, in a particular manner, must we be judged for all those idle words and actions which have inflicted on any of our fellow-creatures pains we have no right to bestow, or tempted them to sins they had no inclination to follow; the petty tyrannies of our whims, changes, and fancies—of our scoldings, complainings, peremptory orders, and causeless contradictions, will all one day swell that awful list of sins, of which it may be truly said, 'we cannot answer ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... understood. The woods which controlled and regulated the flow of the river-sources were very often in one jurisdiction, the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action, on such a subject, between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties, was obviously impossible, and nothing but the permanent union of all the Italian States under a single government can render practicable the establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and restoration of the forests, and the regulation ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... folkways are produced consists in the frequent repetition of petty acts, often by great numbers acting in concert or, at least, acting in the same way when face to face with the same need. The immediate motive is interest. It produces habit in the individual and custom in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... quirks and quibbles to the great purposes of law; nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose out of politeness to the murderer's mistress. He hated crime; he whipped the criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand between him and a rascal. He had the sense to see that this course was not cruel, but merciful. In the eighteen years before Richelieu's administration, four thousand men perished in duels; in the ten years after Richelieu's death nearly a thousand ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... angry. Now she had been forestalled. She failed to perceive that the backslidings of his wife must of necessity touch him more nearly than those of his subaltern, and that to her own extravagance was added a host of petty evasions and deceits such as a man of his type would be little ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... may say will perhaps hurt their feelings. People really care about nothing that does not affect them personally. True and striking observations, fine, subtle and witty things are lost upon them: they cannot understand or feel them. But anything that disturbs their petty vanity in the most remote and indirect way, or reflects prejudicially upon their exceedingly precious selves—to that, they are most tenderly sensitive. In this respect they are like the little dog ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... came through the dining-room door. It was evident she had no share in the general gloom that the hermit's absence cast over Baldpate. Her eyes were bright with the glories of morning on a mountain; in their depths there was no room for petty annoyances. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... were, were laid to rest. The Spaniards left the Scottish coast and sailed away for Norway; and the game was played out, and the end was come, as the end of such matters generally comes, by gradual decay, petty disaster, and mistake; till the snow-mountain, instead of being blown tragically and heroically to atoms, melts helplessly and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... arrived, and it was agreed, at the suggestion of the Duke of Shoreditch, to take the offender to the Curfew Tower. Accordingly they crossed the lower ward, and passing beneath an archway near the semicircular range of habitations allotted to the petty canons, traversed the space before the west end of Saint George's Chapel, and descending a short flight of stone steps at the left, and threading a narrow passage, presently arrived at the arched entrance in the Curfew, whose hoary walls ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... my mem'ry do not fail, I've said, the youth's estates were put to sale, To pay for feasts the fair to entertain, And what he'd left was only one domain, A petty farm to which he now retired; Ashamed to show where once so much admired, And wretched too, a prey to lorn despair, Unable to obtain by splendid care, A beauty he'd pursued six years and more, And should for ever fervently adore. His want of merit was the cause ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Arts of base Brewings, abridging his Bottles, and connecting his Guests together, does not always reap the Fruits of his own Care and Industry. Few People being aware of the underhand Understandings and Petty-Partnerships these Sons of Benecarlo and Cyder have topp'd upon them; and the many other private Inconveniences that they, in the course of their Business, are subjected to. Now, to let my Readers into this great Arcanum or Secret, I must acquaint them, that ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... with speculations about peace and war. The good or ill success of battles and embassies extends itself to a very small part of domestic life: we all have good and evil, which we feel more sensibly than our petty part of public miscarriage or prosperity. I am sorry for your disappointment, with which you seem more touched than I should expect a man of your resolution and experience to have been, did I not know that general truths are seldom applied ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... sombre was the shade of oaks and pines. Once I wandered into a tract so overgrown with bushes and underbrush that I could scarcely force a passage through. Nothing is more annoying than a walk of this kind, where one is tormented by an innumerable host of petty impediments. It incenses and depresses me at the same time. Always when I flounder into the midst of bushes, which cross and intertwine themselves about my legs, and brush my face, and seize hold of my clothes, with their multitudinous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... achievement is the watchword of the democracy since the Civil War. From petty towns built in the marshes, cities arose whose greatness and industrial power are the wonder of our time. The conditions were ideal for the production of captains of industry. The old democratic admiration for the self-made man, its old deference ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... believed that the present was the settled state of things; and that the old order of things was unsettled for ever: that the French revolution was as much more permanent than had been the French despotism, as was the great fabric of nature, than the petty plastic productions of art. To exclude the period since the revolution, would be to exclude some of the strongest evidences of the friendship of one nation, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... however, the priest had the colonists well in hand, as may be understood from the lofty language which he could assume towards petty sacramental infractions. At St. Croix, for instance, three light fellows made a mock of Sunday and the mass, saying, "We go a-fishing," and tried to persuade some neighbors to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... doctrines, or to conspire against slavery? Many an august council has attempted to settle doctrines, and in vain; and you had before you a subject so vast, so pressing, so momentous, that in presence of its sublimity, any petty jealousy and fancied idea of superiority ought to have fallen as dust from the boughs of a cedar. You as delegates, had to meet this awful fact in the face, and to consider how it should be grappled with; how the united power of civilized nations should be brought ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... alliance with the Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry of both ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is something in the misfortunes of our very best friends that does not displease us; assuredly we can, most of us, laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them. Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity, as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within hearing might ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... excessive accumulation of the riches of the world in the hands of some thousands of nobles or upstarts, under whom lived some hundreds of free men in poverty, and slaves by millions subjected to an unrestrained oppression. Each of these great proprietors lived in the midst of his slaves like a petty prince, indolent and capricious. His house at Rome was like a palace; every morning the hall of honor (the atrium) was filled with clients, citizens who came for a meagre salary to salute the master[151] and escort him in the street. For fashion required that a rich man should ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... most wealthy and puissant grandees of Spain; his possessions extended over some of the most fertile parts of Andalusia, embracing towns and seaports and numerous villages. Here he reigned in feudal state like a petty sovereign, and could at any time bring into the field an immense force of vassals ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Council has decided to buy an army hut for use as a day nursery. It is this policy of petty insult that is bound in the end to goad the military ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... The whole petty tale of this day's ride I shall not dwell upon. Indeed, I scarcely noted the miles as they pass'd. For all the way we were chattering, Delia telling me how Captain Settle and his gang had hurried her (tho' without ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... such power be? The scriptures give us the most wonderful accounts of divine interference: Animals talk like men; springs gurgle from dry bones; the sun and moon stop in the heavens in order that General Joshua may have more time to murder; the shadow on a dial goes back ten degrees to convince a petty king of a barbarous people that he is not going to die of a boil; fire refused to burn; water positively declined to seek its level, but stands up like a wall; grains of sand become lice; common walking-sticks, to gratify a mere freak, twist themselves into serpents, and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... night we passed among the mountains recalled us painfully from the enjoyment of nature to all the petty miseries of personal discomfort. Arrived at our inn, a forlorn parlour, filled with the blended fumes of tobacco and whiskey, received us; and chilled, as we began to feel ourselves with the mountain air, we preferred going ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... of advocate before the village squire, at that time Bowling Green. He realized that this experience was valuable, and never, so far as known, demanded or accepted a fee for his services in these petty cases. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... document, which, by the way, contains no single fact that could not be substantiated by the clearest testimony, so little are they at head-quarters acquainted with the pranks that are played off on the unfortunate people by multitudes of petty tyrants in remote districts of the country—Sir Thomas, we say, having perused the aforesaid document, grinned—almost laughed—with a ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Petty Officer fell flat upon the deck; They bore him to the Sick Bay just a weak and worthless wreck; But an A.B. who was standing by had caught the wicked word And told the Duty Officer exactly what occurred:— "Boy Simpkins (Second Class, too!), which I think yer oughter know, Sir, 'Ad the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... is a romance of Mediaeval Italy, the scene being laid in the 15th century. It relates the life of a young leader of Free Companions who, at the close of one of the many petty Italian wars, returns to his native city. There he becomes involved in its politics, intrigues, and feuds, and finally joins an uprising of the townspeople against their lord. None can resent the frankness and apparent brutality ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... away portions of the classical figures, and "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." The soul of Tartuffe had entered into the body of a sinner of the last century. The antiquarian ghoul steals title-pages and colophons. The aesthetic ghoul cuts illuminated initials out of manuscripts. The petty, trivial, and almost idiotic ghoul of our own days, sponges the fly-leaves and boards of books for the purpose of cribbing the book-plates. An old "Complaint of a Book-plate," in dread of the wet sponge of the enemy, has been discovered by ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... facing should drive the petty little meannesses out of us, one would think, and call out all the latent heroism of our people. People talk about this being the Church's day of opportunity. So it is, for the war is teaching us ethical values, ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... and District Courts in every district. The higher courts are presided over by well trained, educated men. There is an efficient police force in every part of the group. The inhabitants are law-abiding and crimes of violence are very rare. There is very little petty theft, and even in Honolulu, the greatest center of population and a seaport town, many of the houses are left ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... continual occupation in the sessions of the Audiencia and rendering opinions. This year I am probate judge, and for the first four months of the year provincial alcalde; and since people find that matters are readily settled I am beset by the natives with their petty lawsuits. I wish that I might have had more time to collect what can be put together, and to write on law. However I shall not neglect perchance to make some slight report. The following is a clause from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... in close contact with the Medes, of whom, however, they seem to have been wholly independent. Like the modern Kurds in this same region, they owned no subjection to a single head, but were under the government of numerous petty chieftains, each the lord of a single town or of a small mountain district. Shalmaneser informs us that he took tribute from twenty-five such chiefs. Similar tokens of submission were paid also to his son and grandson. After this the Assyrian records are silent as to the Persians ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... three years of library work several men showed diligent interest in her—the treasurer of a fur-manufacturing firm, a teacher, a newspaper reporter, and a petty railroad official. None of them made her more than pause in thought. For months no male emerged from the mass. Then, at the Marburys', ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... hour; for she was tired—he could see that—and worried—he could see that also. And he!—had he ever been so solemn, so implacably in earnest, so impatient of the playfulness which at another time he would have found merely amusing? Why was he all at once growing so petty with her and exacting? Little by little he went over the circumstances judicially, in an effort to restore her to lovable supremacy over ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... nights in which the moon shines; or, according to almanac authority, ought to shine, the street lamps are not lighted; so that, as it too frequently happens, when the moon is overclouded, or on rainy evenings when she is totally obscured, the streets are for the most part in perfect darkness. This petty economy is called "the magistrates' light," they having the direction of the lighting, paving, and ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... sans sensation, "You murder hawks and kites, lest they Should rob you of your fatted prey; And that great rogues may hold their state, The petty rascal meets his fate." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... I fear," he called to Lana, leaping up the stairs. "And after my solemn promise to come early! But you excused me this morning when I was obliged to attend to petty affairs. Same excuse this time! Do I receive ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... foundation-stones upon all this worldly dirt, and its dome in the clear serene of the world of Spirit. He who can mount to a clear conception of Nirvana will find his thought far away above the common joys and sorrows of petty men. As to one who ascends to the top of Chimborazo or the Himalayan crags, and sees men on the earth's surface crawling to and fro like ants, so equally small do bigots and sectarians appear to him. ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... that he could scarcely speak. This was a new experience. At first it attracted him, but the hopeless vulgarity of the girl at his side, her tawdry clothes, her sordid, petty talk, her slang, her miserable profanity, soon began to revolt him. He felt that he could not keep his self-respect while such a ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... extreme of fashion, wear roses in their buttonholes, and spend upon ices and strawberries what would maintain a poor man for a year, would learn how infinitely more noble was the abstinence of this young Roman, who though born in the midst of splendour and luxury, learnt from the first to loathe the petty vice of gluttony, and to despise the unmanliness of self-indulgence. Very early in life he joined the glorious fellowship of those who esteem it not only a duty ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... reflect upon his present condition. All was lost! He was unfitted for the conduct of a small business, for the petty transactions and details which might suffice for one of meager wants. He would renounce the idea of that marriage which was his only salvation, and his creditors, as soon as they heard the news that this hope had vanished would fall upon him. He would find himself ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had acquired an unenviable fame by some petty act of larceny which the magistrates had been bound to punish, and was explaining in tears on her doorstep to some lady's sympathetic ears that she had done the unfortunate deed merely because she was "temp'ed," on which a neighbor, who had no need for repentance, promptly appeared on the scene ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... said to his young petty officer, "I want you to take command here with your four men. Disarm these fellows. I do not believe they will show trouble, but it will be well to let them know right at the start that the Nark has them under her guns. I am ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... and most able patriot, awaited my coming. No doubt you have heard, with a smile, of the insignificant wars and uprisings in those little tropic republics. They make but a faint clamour against the din of great nations' battles; but down there, under all the ridiculous uniforms and petty diplomacy and senseless countermarching and intrigue, are to be found statesmen and patriots. Don Rafael Valdevia was one. His great ambition was to raise Esperando into peace and honest prosperity and the respect of the serious nations. So he waited for ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... felt it was at last. As each day went by it grew harder and harder for the man to contain himself. Fighting desperately against it every hour, immersing himself as much as he could in the petty fiddling details of the office and the Victualing Yard so as to keep the fierce impulse under due control, Michael Trevennack yet found the mad mood within him more and more ungovernable with each week that went by. As he put it to his own mind he could ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... They like the spirit we have here. Well, now I come to you, and you are one of the big reasons for my wanting to put this over. Your salary makes me blush. It's all wrong that a man like you should have these petty worries, particularly with Mrs Holden so in need of the things a little money can do. Now this man Lewis is a reactionary. So, naturally, he doesn't ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... misdemeanour; but the grand jury would only find bills of indictment against two of them, and as two persons cannot commit a riot, the finding released them all. Mr. Plunkett then filed an ex-officio information against those persons, whom he, on evidence received, believed guilty; but the petty jury would not agree in their verdict, and the prisoners were discharged. This matter was investigated in parliament; but the result merely showed in what a daring manner juries were packed, and the name of justice ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... story, though he had perhaps too carefully guarded himself from his own eager desire to accept it Barter's every action with the cards offered confirmation of the belief that he had taken possession of the lost notes. He was certainly a petty rascal, and there was obviously nothing but opportunity needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a larger scale. So the temptation to drop the cards upon the table, to look his companion in the face, and to ask simply, 'How about that eight thousand pounds?' grew more ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... answered. "Human nature is very selfish, and then as now men who worked for the general welfare regardless of their own petty preferences were rare. To the side of the enemies of the infant invention flocked every one with a grievance. The gentry argued that the installation of locomotives would frighten the game out of the country ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... other; that if their chiefs were even disposed to live in peace they could not do it; their subjects would demand war and could not live without it. The same would have been said of the Seine, the Loire and every other dividing line between their petty communities. It would have been insisted on that such rivers were the natural boundaries of states and never ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... petty king that knoweth not his mind!' sneered Sir Gawaine, looking fiercely about the room. 'I pray thee, uncle,' he said to the king, 'listen not to their womanish persuasions, if thou ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... earnest. They give to such a clear stage and no favour, wherein to work unhindered for their fellow-men. But for the majority, who are neither brave, self- originating, nor earnest, but the mere puppets of circumstance, safety and comfort may, and actually do, merely make their lives mean and petty, effeminate and dull. Therefore their hearts must be awakened, as often as possible, to take exercise enough for health; and they must be reminded, perpetually and importunately, of what a certain great philosopher called, "whatsoever ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... regarded as its intense littleness and narrowness. The too often bitter and sordid realities of the struggle of life, as I saw it in London, had the effect upon me of making Sylvia's esoteric exclusiveness of interest seem so petty as to be an insult to human intelligence. I would stare out of the train windows, on my way back from Weybridge, at the countless lights, the endless huddled roofs of London; and, seeing in these a representation of the huge populace of the city, I would stretch out ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Wordsworth, he did not allow enough for the long series of noxious influences under which Spain had suffered. And this, at any rate, is notorious—he spoke of the Spanish people, the original stock (unmodified by courtly usages, or foreign sentiments, or city habits) of the Spanish peasantry and petty rural proprietors. This class, as distinguished from the aristocracy, was the class he relied on; and he agreed with us in looking upon the Spanish aristocracy as traitors—that is, as recreants and apostates—from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Subaltern officers, therefore, used power for private ends, while the masses were so inured to oppression that they offered no resistance. There has been a marked improvement in the personnel of late years; and Mr. Banerjea's lurid pictures of corruption and petty tyranny apply to a past generation of policemen. The Lieutenant-Governor of Eastern Bengal does justice to a much-abused service in his Administrative Report for 1907-8. His Honour "believes the force to be a hard-working body of Government servants, the difficulties, trials, and even dangers ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... the soup. I was occupying my little chamber again and dreamed of Catherine day and night. But now, instead of being afraid of the conscription as I was in 1813, I had something else to trouble me. Man is never quite happy, some petty misery or other assails him. How often do we see this in life? My peace was ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... have overthrown? And if we turn our eyes towards our own country, how many of these instruments of Napoleon do we not see, who, after having fatigued him with their servile complaisance, have come to offer to a new power the tribute of their petty machiavelism? Now, as then, is it not upon the basis of vanity and corruption that the whole edifice of their paltry science rests, and is it not from the traditions of the imperial government that the counsels of ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... of Jews—petty merchants of the Trastevere—were leaving as Vergilius entered. The emperor, now alone save for his young caller, rose and gave him a sprig ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... petty persecution, whilst Geordie agitated for the starting of a union, and many a battle the two had, until the enmity between them developed into ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Homeric or Miltonic song;" or he stands in the crowd—breathless, yet swayed as forests or the sea by winds—hearing and to judge the pleadings for the crown; or the philosophy which soothed Cicero or Boethius in their afflictions, in exile, prison, and the contemplation of death, breathes over his petty cares like the sweet south; or Pope or Horace laughs him into good humor; or he walks with neas and the Sibyl in the mild light of the world of the laurelled dead; and the court-house is as completely forgotten as the dreams of a pre-adamite life. Well may he prize ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... England," the summit of Owl's Head is 2,743 feet above the level of the lake, and the path to it is a mile and a half and thirty rods in length. It may seem niggardly not to throw off the last petty fraction; and indeed we might well enough let it pass if it were at the beginning of the route,—if the path, that is, were thirty rods and a mile and a half long. But this, it will be observed, is not the case; and it is a fact perfectly well ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... chatter for a while, and the limbs shiver, and we do not feel particularly comfortable while breaking the ice in our jugs, and performing our cold ablutions amidst the sharp, glass-like fragments, and wiping our faces with a frozen towel. But these petty evils are quickly vanquished, and as we rush out of the house, and tread briskly and firmly on the hard ringing earth, and breathe our visible breath in the clear air, our strength and self-importance miraculously increase, and the whole frame begins to glow. The warmth and vigour thus acquired ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... It is as one feels. I do not mean that petty god of creeds and religions, the feeble image that coarse hands have made from vague glimpses caught by those who were indeed inspired. I mean the total force, the imperishable breath, of the universe. And of that breath, my child, you and I and all ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Road. Wat Dreary, alias Brown Will, an irregular Dog, who hath an underhand way of disposing of his Goods. I'll try him only for a Sessions or two longer upon his Good-behaviour. Harry Paddington, a poor petty-larceny Rascal, without the least Genius; that Fellow, though he were to live these six Months, will never come to the Gallows with any Credit. Slippery Sam; he goes off the next Sessions, for the Villain hath the Impudence to have ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... cross, this work of art having been an early (1647) victim of religious barbarism. In November he was accommodated with chambers in Whitehall. But from these he was soon ousted by claimants more considerable or more importunate, and in 1651 he removed to "a pretty garden-house" in Petty France, in Westminster, next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park. The house was extant till 1877, when it disappeared, the last of Milton's many London residences. It had long ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... locker. With this disgusting peace on, and no chance of prize-money, and plenty in their pockets for a good spell ashore, blue-jackets will be scarce when Sir Duncan Yordas sails. If I can get a decent berth as a petty officer, off I go for Calcutta, and watch (like the sweet little cherub that sits up aloft) for the safety of my dear papa and mamma, as the Frenchmen are teaching us to call them. What do you think ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... only be the result of sheer carelessness, or of the ignorance of some clerk employed to make out the list without adequate instructions given to him. It has, in my hearing, been held up as a specimen of invidious distinction to gratify some petty dislike; but this notion is simply absurd, and deserves no notice. At the same time, it betokens a carelessness that ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... visitor to that establishment, and that she had lost in one night some 6,000 pounds. In these circumstances it was remarkable, thought T. X., that she should report to the police so small a matter as the petty pilfering of servants. This, however, she had done and whilst the lesser officers of Scotland Yard were interrogating pawnbrokers, the men higher up were genuinely worried by the ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... that's interesting, too. Aren't you rather astonished, Miss Vance, to see what a petty thing Beaton is making of that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wonder how, with his greatness—for he cannot but be conscious of it—he endures the restrictions of our narrow sphere. I mean," Miss Marty went on, as the Doctor lifted his eyebrows in some surprise, "the petty business of a country town such ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... occasionally, and always brought its quarrels to be settled by the minister. "It is a strange thing, Helen, my dear, what wonderful peace there often is in great misfortunes. They are quite different from the petty miseries which people make ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Sussex, had ever been in Ireland. He implored the Queen not to trifle with it, declaring that he wished some abler general to take the command, not from any want of will, 'for he would spend his last penny and his last drop of blood for her Majesty.' Right and left Shane was crushing the petty chiefs, who implored the protection of the Government. Maguire requested the deputy to write to him in English, not in Latin, because the latter language was well known, and but few of the Irish had any knowledge of the former, in which therefore ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... following description of the happy vallies frequently found among the mountain-ranges may testify: One may be chosen as a specimen of many. At its northern end it was about four miles wide, being bounded on all sides by rocky, wooded ranges, with dark gullies from which numerous petty streams run down into the main one in the centre. The valley gradually grows narrow towards the south, and is bounded by steep cliffs betwixt which the waters find an outlet. Sometimes a valley of this kind, most beautiful, most productive, will ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... roost. These brave and haughty men who had governed the country for half a century, who had held the power of the United States at bay for four years, who had never doffed their hats to any prince or noble on earth, even in whose faults or vices there was nothing mean or petty, never having been suspected of corruption, who as Macaulay said of the younger Pitt, "If in an hour of ambition they might have been tempted to ruin their country, never would have stooped to pilfer from her," could not brook the sight of a Legislature made ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... quality as meagre in quantity; but being a lad with literary tastes, a desire for information, and an omnivorous appetite for reading, every book that fell in the way of young Otis was eagerly seized and its contents ravenously devoured. The life of a poor farmer, with its ceaseless drudgery and petty needs, was distasteful to the lad, and he was anxious to obtain a collegiate education, and thus become fitted to fight the battle of life with brain instead of muscle. His ambition was not discouraged by his father, but there was a great difficulty in the way of its gratification—the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... aside the haversack. From it we took food; from the canteens we drank. We did not talk. Each knew what the other was thinking; infrequently, and thank the eternal law that some call God for that, come crises in which speech seems not only petty but when against it the mind ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... end by disclosing to the poet the faithlessness of his wife. Once she had been the mistress of the dying man, and that seems to him his one triumph in life. But when the poet arrives and begins to talk of the commonplaces of daily life, of petty gossip, petty intrigues, and petty jealousies, then the dying man suddenly sees the futility of the whole thing. To him, who has one foot across the final threshold, it means nothing, and he lets his friend ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... however, the lucky gambler returned to the room—but only to be a spectator, as he firmly said. Alas! his resolution failed him, and he quitted the tables indebted to a charitable bystander for a livre or two, to pay for his petty refreshments. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great practitioners in Crawlers way?—how many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a noble nobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has an execution in his house—and that one or other owes six or seven millions, the defeat ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Wales it never succeeded in uniting the people; the petty patriotism of the family stood in the way of the larger patriotism of the nation; local rivalries and jealousies were always stronger than the sense of national unity. The attempt of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth to create a National Council, like the Great Council of England, ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... political quarrels might be otherwise settled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no law of reason can be understood by nations; no law of justice submitted to by them: and that, while questions of a few acres, and of petty cash, can be determined by truth and equity, the questions which are to issue in the perishing or saving of kingdoms can be determined only by the truth of the sword, and the equity of the rifle. Grant this, and even then, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... anger which cut short the younger man's reply. On account of petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be, who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in it this girl would ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... American colonies of England did not think of union as of a peace scheme; they had been compelled into it by war, by the necessity of self-defense. It is only such an overpowering motive which has force enough to blot out petty rivalries and minor antagonisms. If union between States belonging to the same race and not divided either by history or by serious conflicting interests could be effected only under the pressure of a common peril, we must infer "a minori ad majus" ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... who can't get beyond himself, his own aggrandizement and interests, must of necessity be small, petty, personal, and at once marks his own limitations; while he whose life is a life of service and self-devotion has no limits, for he thus puts himself at once on the side of the Universal, and this more than all else combined gives a tremendous power in oratory. ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... on the goodwill or judgment of their employers, whose minds were divided between keeping down the wages and the rates, and who had little of real principle or knowledge to guide them. It was possible to have recourse to the magistrates at the Petty Sessions, who could give an order which would override the vestry; but it was apt to be only the boldest, and often the least deserving, who could make out the best apparent cases for themselves, that ventured on such ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who had escaped, managed to raise another band of warriors. Spain, in all ages a guerrilla country, prone to partisan warfare and petty maraud, was at that time infested by bands of licentious troops, who had sprung up in the civil contests; their only object pillage, their only dependence the sword, and ready to flock to any new and desperate ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... not, neither can it forget; and though, at present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... national institutions and a representation of the people. Gratitude has done its natural work in their hearts; it has made them better. Some days before the fete were passed in reconciling all strifes, composing all differences between cities, districts, and individuals. They wished to drop all petty, all local differences, to wash away all stains, to bathe and prepare for a new great covenant of brotherly love, where each should act for the good of all. On that day they all embraced in sign of this,—strangers, foes, all exchanged the kiss of faith and love; they exchanged banners, as a token ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... modify his policy to gratify the lord of Glamorgan, and win over the house of Mortimer by the erection of a new franchise that was a palatinate in all but name. But such great "regalities" were, after all, exceptional. Much more irritating to an orderly mind were the innumerable petty immunities which made half the hundreds in England the appendages of baronial estates, and such common privileges as "return of writs," which prevented the sheriff's officers from executing his mandates on ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... he visited the well-known botanist Dr Royle, the curator of the Company's botanic garden there, then engaged in those labours on the Flora of the Himmalayas which have been since given to the world; and at Boorea, leaving the British territory, he entered that of the protected Seik states, whose petty chieftains are secured in their semi-independence by the treaty with Runjeet in 1809, which confined the ruler of Lahore to the right bank of the Sutlej. But their reception of the colonel did not appear to indicate any great degree of gratitude for these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... moral were to be gathered from these petty and wretched circumstances, was, "Let the past alone: do not seek to renew it; press on to higher and better things,—at all events, to other things; and be assured that the right way can never be that which leads you back to the identical shapes that you long ago left behind. ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a rich man's abode, had a comfortable homeliness about it, but it had always been a costly house to keep, and now that it was less than ever needful to him to save money, he did not want to hear recriminations concerning such petty matters as the too frequent tuning of the schoolroom piano, and the unprofitable fabrics which had been bought for the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... child in matters of business. One of his Edinburgh neighbours remarked of him to Robert Chambers that it was strange a man who wrote so well on exchange and barter was obliged to get a friend to buy his horse corn for him. This idea of his helplessness in the petty transactions of life arose from observing his occasional fits of absence and his habitual simplicity of character, but his simplicity, nobody denies, was accompanied by exceptional acuteness and practical sagacity, and his fits of absence seem to have been neither so frequent nor ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... words become the pet of the petty. You care as little for the institution called 'Society' as I do, Mr. Mario. Moreover, there is no Society nowadays. Murray's has taken ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... occurred, lost his patience when he was not payed on time, lost his kindness towards beggars, lost his disposition for giving away and loaning money to those who petitioned him. He, who gambled away tens of thousands at one roll of the dice and laughed at it, became more strict and more petty in his business, occasionally dreaming at night about money! And whenever he woke up from this ugly spell, whenever he found his face in the mirror at the bedroom's wall to have aged and become more ugly, whenever embarrassment and disgust came over him, he continued ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... has scarcely been permitted to see the general aspect of the British aristocracy, or to become acquainted with their sentiments, their characters, or their manners. The petty, artificial world framed and got up for her deception, is no more capable of suggesting to her mind the vast moral and social creation beyond its narrow boundaries, than one or two leaves of a hortus siccus exemplify the productions ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... opponent John of Montfort could only secure his rights by promptitude. Accordingly he made his way to Nantes and, receiving a warm welcome from his burgesses, proclaimed himself duke. Very few of the great feudatories threw in their lot with him. His strength was in the petty noblesse, the townsmen, and the enthusiasm of the Celtic population of La Bretagne bretonnante, which made Leon, Cornouailles, and Vannes the strongholds of his cause. Yet the Penthievre influence took with it the Breton-speaking inhabitants of the diocese ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... sake, obey your impulses and let other people obey theirs. From now on you are to be identified with a profession that transcends the petty conventions of society. Confess! Aren't you already a little ashamed of getting angry with ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Closely identified with the aggressive spirit of his section, he voiced a growing sense of humiliation that his country should be buffeted by every British ministry. The people of Kentucky and Tennessee had little patience with half measures in defense of national rights. The petty diplomacy of closet statesmen did not appeal to the soul of the frontiersman who was accustomed to hew his way to his goal. The people of this section, imperial in its dimensions, were prepared for large tasks done in a bold way. Their ideas of the Union transcended the policies ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... my Copenhagen friends acknowledged. The impressions of the journey were immediately written down, and I gave them forth under the title of "Shadow Pictures." Whether I were actually improved or not, there still prevailed at home the same petty pleasure in dragging out my faults, the same perpetual schooling of me; and I was weak enough to endure it from those who were officious meddlers. I seldom made a joke of it; but if I did so, it was called arrogance and vanity, and it was asserted that I never would listen to rational ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... way the white man is telling the black to abide upon the plantation raising cotton and corn, and further than this nothing will be required of him. He can cheat a white man or a black, steal in a petty way anything that comes handy, live in marriage or out of it to please himself, kill another negro if he likes, and lastly shoot every wild thing that can be eaten, if only he raises the cotton and the corn. But the white sportsmen of ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... growly-wowly, snarley-warley as you, is quite beyond my comprehension; but then, you see, we live in a world of puzzles, you and I, Rosebud, and so it's of no use being puzzled, because that does no good, and only worries one. Don't it, deary sweety petty? Well, you can't answer of course, though I know that you ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... rearing and nursing it to its present state, and in the protection of it through the present war, that no man can doubt, but Providence has some nobler end to accomplish than the gratification of the petty elector of Hanover, or the ignorant and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... are most exorbitant, {116} I was advised to take a third-class ticket, and hire a cabin from one of the engineers or petty officers; I was greatly pleased with the notion, and hastened to carry it out. My astonishment, however, may be imagined when, on paying my fare, I was told that the third-class passengers were not respectable, that they were obliged to sleep upon deck, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... a hard fight was no doubt in preparation, and that it was the custom of the Spartans to array their hair with especial care when they were about to enter upon any great peril. Xerxes would, however, not believe that so petty a force could intend to resist him, and waited four days, probably expecting his fleet to assist him, but as it did not appear, the attack ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... doubtful characters with which our court abounded was one Joe Traill, who had been in prison many a time for petty larceny and the like. He was one of those who stink in the nostrils of cleanly, civilised society, and who are its shame and secret sore. There was no place for Joe in this great world of ours. He said to Joshua one night in his blithe way that there was nothing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... of offences for trial at the ensuing sessions, bears little comparison with those of former periods, and I am happy to state, that the crimes generally, are of a trifling nature, and principally petty thefts. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... people were not always inclined to bet the odds; and, if I would run no great risk, I even found it necessary to bet them sometimes myself. Every man who has made the experiment knows that the thirst of lucre, when thus awakened in a young mind, is insatiable, impetuous, and rash. I was weary of petty gains, and riches by retail. The ardour with which I examined the players, and each circumstance as it occurred, persuaded me that there were tokens by which an acute observer might discover the winning party. I had on former occasions remarked ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Spanish strain in them—girls with a drop of blood that might have been traced back a hundred years to Madrid or Seville or Barcelona. Small wonder if such girls felt like shrieking too, sometimes. Not over petty victories, and with joy; but when their hearts broke because the bells of memory called to them from away in the barred windows of Spain, or in walled gardens, or with ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge |
